From these creatures and creators of slums it is absurd to talk of gratitude for the offer of betterment. People who expect gratitude do not deserve it. Neither can the slumsters by force be placed on land and be expected to till it. A generation, at least, will be required to work a change, and this change will come through educating the children—through the kindergarten and the kindergarten methods—and most of all through school-gardens. The so-called "back districts" are fast being annihilated, for quick transportation is bringing city and country close together. The time is coming, and shortly, too, when a fare of one cent a mile will be the universal rule, and a mile a minute will not be regarded as an unusual speed.
Now here is something which Henry George did not say, and if he knew was too diplomatic to mention: The reason the people have not had possession of the land is because they did not want it. The ownership of the land you need to use comes in answer to prayer—and prayer is the soul's desire, uttered or unexpressed. The will of the people is supreme. If fraud and rascality exist in high places, it is because we elect rascals to office.
The will of the people is supreme. When we cease toadying to brainless nabobs, and quit imitating them as soon as we get the money, we will be on the road to reformation. As it is, most poor people are just itching to live as the rich do. The average servant-girl who gets married quits work then and there, and is quite content to live the rest of her life as a slave, asking her husband for a quarter at a time and cajoling the money out of him by hook or crook, or else explorating his trousers for free coinage when opportunity offers. Fresh air is free, but the average individual does not know it; and neither would this same person use land if it were given him. Freedom is a condition of mind.
Yet apart from the "submerged tenth" is a very large class of people to whom land and a home would be a positive paradise, and who are simply forced into flats and tenements on account of present economic conditions: the land is monopolized, and held by men who neither improve it themselves nor will they allow others to. Then hold it awaiting a rise in value.
This increase in value is not on account of anything the owner may do —in fact, he is usually an absentee and does nothing. The increase comes from the enterprise and thrift of people for whom the owner has no interest, beyond contempt.
If these enterprising people who do the work of the world—making the things the world needs—want more land for their business or for homes, they have to pay the absentee for the increased value which they themselves have brought about. When you beautify and enrich the value of your own lot by improving it, you are making it impossible to buy the vacant lot next to you without bankruptcy.
Moreover, you are taxed by the State for any improvement you make on your land, and this taxation on improvements must of necessity tend toward discouragement of improvement. It is really a surer way to make money, to hang on to land and do nothing, than to improve it.
The remedy proposed by Henry George is simply the Single Tax, and this tax to be on land values and not on improvements.
That is to say, with the Single Tax, the man who owns the vacant lot covered with briars and brambles would pay the same tax that you pay on your lot next door upon which you have built a house, barn and conservatory and planted trees and flowers.
The immediate tendency of this policy would be to cause the gentleman who owned the vacant lot devoted to cockleburs to put up on it a sign, "For Sale Cheap."