Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3126

Quoting Richard T. Ely, Land Policies, 1922 (Vol. III of Outlines of Land Economics). (From materials in white, originals envelope 968)

October 27, 1939

Page 57/

“In an ideal system of land ownership there will be an endeavor to create in the land owner a feeling that land ownership carries with it a social mission.  …the place and function of the land owner is rarely considered in a discussion of tenancy.”

Page 90/

“The necessity for a reexamination of fundamental notions about taxation is becoming increasingly pressing. Underlying economic conditions social and economic mal­adjustments are being revealed with increasing clarity by the strain to which an economic system is being put in these trying years of political and economic reconstruc­tion. The crying need is for cool, dispassionate thinking. The problem of taxation in the modern state can properly receive much more attention than is at present being given it from persons willing and able to make critical and un­prejudiced examination of some of the hundred-years old theories which many of us have too long been accepting without much question.”

/Shows at page 110 that from 1850 to 1920 land values in the U.S. were roughly some 40% of total wealth. This agrees with George Opdyke, cited by Henry George in his earliest publication — that land and other property are about equal in value./