Both the statement of the mayor and that of the city clerk are concerned with matters that interest primarily the business man and taxpayer. Mr. Thompson disclaims that there is anything essentially new even in the Socialists' plans, to say nothing of their performances. He says of the most discussed municipal projects under consideration by the Socialist administration that all were advocated either by former administrations, by one or both of the older parties or by some of their leading members. He mentions the proposed river park, railway terminal station, and electric lighting plans, as well as home rule for Milwaukee, as being all strictly conservative projects (as they are). Other plans mentioned by Mayor Seidel—harbor improvements, playgrounds, a sterilization plant, and isolation hospital—are approved, if not by the conservatives of Milwaukee, at least by those of many other cities. Some minor and less expensive proposals, a child welfare commission, a board of recreation, and municipal dances are somewhat more novel. These are all the social reforms mentioned by the mayor, as planned or accomplished, with the exception of those that have to do primarily with efficiency or economy in municipal administration, such as improvement in street cleaning, sanitary inspection and inspection of weights and measures, which all conservative reform administration seek to bring about; many cities, especially abroad, having been eminently successful in this direction.
To secure the political support of taxpayers and business men, further evidence was required to show that the administration is neither doing nor likely to do anything unprecedented. They want a safe and sane business policy, and assurances that new sources of income will, if possible, be secured and applied to the reduction of taxation; or that, in case taxes are raised, municipal reforms will so improve business and rental values, as to bring into their pockets more than the increased taxation has cost them.
Mayor Seidel and City Clerk Thompson presented entirely satisfactory evidences on all these points. Business methods have been introduced, a "complete inventory" of the property of the city is being made, "blanket appropriations" are done away with, "a new system of voucher bills has been installed," all the departments are being brought on "a uniform accounting basis." Finally, taxable property is being listed that was formerly overlooked, and the city is more careful in settling financial claims against it. Mayor Seidel and City Clerk Thompson both promise that taxes will not be increased; the former points to the new resources from property that had escaped taxation and to the future rise in value of land the city intends to purchase, the latter refers to "revenue-producing enterprises which will relieve the burden of taxation rather than increase it." Neither goes so far as to suggest any plan, like the present law of Great Britain, introduced by a capitalist government, according to which not only are the taxes of the wealthy raised, but one fifth of the future increase of value of city lands, as being due to the community, accrues to the public treasury. It is true that such measures would have to be approved by the State of Wisconsin, but this would not prevent them being made the one prominent issue in the city campaign, and insistently demanded until they are obtained. The mayor's attitude on this tax question, which underlies all others, far from being Socialistic, is not even radical.
The tendency seems to have been widespread in the municipal campaigns undertaken by the Socialists in the fall of 1911, to abandon even radical, though capitalistic, municipal reformers' policy of raising new taxes to pay for reforms that bring modest benefits to the workers, but chiefly raise realty values and promote the interests of "business," and to substitute for this the conservative policy of reducing taxes. Thus the Bridgeport Socialist advised the voters:—
"Municipal ownership means cheaper water, cheaper light, cheaper gas, cheaper electricity, and a steady revenue into the city treasury which would reduce taxes." (Italics mine.)[156]
One might infer that the masses of Bridgeport were already sufficiently supplied with schools, parks, and all the free services a municipality can give.
Of course it is true that a considerable part of the wage earners in our small cities own their own homes (subject often to heavy mortgages) and, other things remaining as they are, would like to have taxes reduced. But two facts are indisputable: the average taxes paid by the wage earners are insignificant compared with those of the wealthier classes, and the wage earner gets, at first at least, an equal share in the benefits of most municipal expenditures. The Socialists know that most of the economic benefits are later absorbed by increasing rents; and that capitalist judges and State governments will see to it that only such expenditures are allowed as have this result, or such as have the effect, through improving efficiency, of increasing profits faster than wages. Socialists recognize, however, that at least municipal collectivism is in the line of capitalist progress, with some incidental benefits to labor, while the policy of decreasing taxes on the unearned increment of land is nothing less than reaction.
The only popular ground on which such a policy could be defended is the fallacy that landlords transmit to tenants the fluctuations in taxes, in the form of increased or diminished rents. Even if this were true, the tenants would be as likely as not to profit by enlarged municipal expenditures (i.e. in spite of paying for a minor part of their cost). But in the large cities, as a matter of fact, 90 per cent of the wage earners, who are tenants, and not home owners, do not feel these fluctuations at all. Increased land taxes do not as a rule cause an increase in average rents. Increased land taxes force unimproved land upon the market, and compel its improvement, to escape loss in holding it unimproved and idle. The resulting increased competition for tenants operates on the average to reduce rents, not to increase them. The taxes are paid at the cost of reduced profits for the landlord—until population begins to increase more rapidly than taxes. The capitalist leaders perceive the truth as regards this plainly enough. Thus, in their anxiety to get both landlord and capitalist support in the last municipal campaign in New York City, various allied real estate interests claimed credit for their work in keeping taxes down. Commenting upon the subject, the New York Times said: "Rents do not rise with taxes. If they did, the owner would merely need to pass the taxes along to the renter and be rid of the subject."[157] The next day Mayor Gaynor in a letter to the Times quoted a message he had sent to the city council in the previous year in which he had said: "Every landlord knows that he cannot add the taxes to rents. If he could, he would not care how high taxes grew. He would simply throw them on his tenants."
It is difficult, therefore, to see why the tenants of New York City or Bridgeport should favor lower taxes, so long as they and their children are in need of further public advantages that increased taxes would enable the municipalities to supply. To favor reduced taxes, while private ownership of land prevails, is not Socialism, or even progressive capitalism. It is, as I have said, reaction.
The New York Volkszeitung expresses in a few words the correct Socialist attitude on municipal expenditures. After showing the need of more money for schools, hygienic measures, etc., it concludes:—
"These increased expenditures of municipalities are thus absolutely necessary if a Socialist city government is to fulfill its tasks. Since the municipal expenditures must be raised through taxation, it is evident that a good Socialist city government must raise the taxes if it is up to the level of its duties. Provided that—as just remarked—the raising of the taxes is so managed that the possessing classes are hit by it and not the poor and the workingmen.
"Most of the Socialist municipal administrations have been shattered hitherto by the tax question; that has been especially evident in France, where the Socialists lost the towns captured by them because their administration appeared to be more costly than those of their capitalist predecessors. That has happened especially wherever the small capitalist element played a rôle in the Socialist movement.
"We shall undoubtedly have this experience in America, also, if we do not make it clear to the masses of workingmen that good city government for them means a more expensive city government, and that they are interested in this increase of the cost of the city administration."[158]
If the Socialists promise much and perform comparatively little, they have as a valid reason the fact that the city does not have the authority. But opponents can also say, as does the Milwaukee Journal, that "the administration would not dare to carry out its promises to engage in municipal Socialism if it had the authority." For while municipal "Socialism" or public ownership is perfectly good capitalism, it is not always good politics in a community where the small taxpayers dominate.
While the plans for municipal wood and coal yards and plumbing shops were doubtless abandoned in Milwaukee by reason of legal limitations, and not merely to please the small traders, as some have contended, no Socialist reason can be given for the practical abandonment years ago of the proposed plan for municipal ownership of street railways. If the charter prohibited such an important measure as this, all efforts should have been concentrated on changing the charter. Socialists do not usually allow their world-wide policy, or even their present demands to be shaped by a city charter.
If Mr. Berger had announced earlier and more clearly, and if he had repeated with sufficient frequency, his recent declaration that Milwaukee is administered by Socialists but does not have a Socialist administration, he would have avoided a world of misunderstanding. In fact, if he had enunciated this principle with sufficient emphasis before the municipal election of 1910, it is highly probable that the Socialists would not yet have won the city, and would never have felt obligated to claim, as they often do now, that Socialists, who must direct part of their energies towards future results, are more efficient as practical reformers than non-Socialists, who are ready to sacrifice every ultimate principle, if they have any, for immediate achievements.
The whole question between reformists and revolutionaries refers not so much to the policy of Socialists in control of municipalities, which is often beyond criticism, as to the value of municipal activity generally for Socialist purposes. None deny that it has value, but reformists and revolutionaries ascribe to it different rôles.