On the Single Tax 1905

Sincere Repentance

The Editor of the Western Clarion pleads guilty to the charge of having travelled across the gulf to the City of Nanaimo on July 31, 1905, and there upon that date engaged in an alleged debate with one, John Z. White, of Chicago, Illinois, a person afflicted with a form of mental aberration, now happily exceeding [sic] rare, known as single-tax on the brain. The aforesaid editor pleads guilty to the further charge of having repeated the offense by again engaging in most ridiculous controversy with the afflicted White in the City of Victoria on the 4th day of the present month.

One of the most pronounced evidences of freakish tendencies is an inordinate appetite for debating, or in common parlance “chewing the rag.” The aforesaid editorial person is, as a rule, the very embodiment of sedate, dignified and sombre wisdom, that could not well be expected to unbend to the extent of even inviting adverse criticism. The only excuse the guilty wretch can now offer for having descended to the level of “chewing the rag,” just like a common ordinary every-day freak, is that he was in the hands of his friends, and they immolated him upon the altar of spectacular public discussion, for the amusement of the unwashed mob that usually foregathers when there is promise of anything like cheap sport to be had.

There is little to be said of the debate, for in fact there was none worth mentioning, as the Chicago gent with the single-tax wart on his brain had neither argument to offer nor point to make.

Some chunks of single-tax wisdom relating to matters economic, were thrown out by Mr. White as follows:

“It is not the capitalist that absorbs the product of labor, but the landlord.”

“There is no such thing as social labor.”

“It is the consumer and not the producer that puts value into commodities.”

“Working men do not sell their labor power. They sell the things they produce.”

“There has been no slavery on this Western continent since Abraham Lincoln freed the blacks.”

“He who is forced to work for another is [sic—not] a slave.”

In the face of such clinchers, it may be readily seen there was little room for argument by the opposition.

Mr. White, with much artistic merit erected numerous “straw men,” such as socialism would destroy “individual liberty,” and it wouldn’t work because everybody would want the best jobs, and so on, ad lib, ad nob, and then very neatly tore them to tatters.

Take it all in all and Mr. White’s put-up was about the clumsiest effort ever made to draw a “red herring across the trail,” in order to confuse the scent of capitalist game that the proletarians are now getting fixed in their nostrils.

Of all the ridiculous schemes set forth for the purpose of conjuring away the rising spectre of Revolution, that is frightening the ruling class of the world into cataleptic fits, the single-tax scheme is the most ludicrous. Time is worse than wasted in bothering with any scheme that is so devoid of a foundation upon which to build that after a half century of effort it can command neither a following nor a hearing.

It is to be hoped the Clarion editor will, in the future refrain from allowing his freakish tendencies to get the upper hand to the extent of indulging in the unseemly spectacle of “rag chewing” over nothing, with nothing and about nothing. It is time for repentance, and it should be sincere.