Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., Back to the land, November 20, 1910

              Ohio University Libraries, E.W. Scripps Papers, MSS 117, Series 4, http://media.library.ohiou.edu/scripps
"BACK TO THE LAND. It
They ars havin~ a great row over in England just now over
the question of how best to get the English people back to the land;
how to revive agricul trire in ~and.
The Liberal party that is so strongly tinctured with Social­ism,
apparently is making an effort to introduce the Henry George theory
of l~ taxation.
The plan of :he L~"be"'al. party is to appropriate by govern­ment
purchase large landed estates and to colonize these estates with
famil i ss who are to be induced to pursue agri cul ture . However, iust ead
of adopting the ~~m which was a number of years ago introduced in
Ireland, and that~· /.iJ~jeing pra.cticed in nearly all the continental
ean countries, viz; the selling to these new colonists small
lotments of land on such easy terms as will make it possible for the
lometa by ordinary industry and thrift to pay for the same, the
i bera.! party plan is to have the government/either of the nation or
ties or parishes jactually buy and own the land and lease the same
the tenants, eventually giving the tenants permanent tenure and
ee that the rents will not be rai sed as a reau! t of the land
improved in value for any reason.
It can be easily seen that it will only be necessary to
nr out this scheme long enough and far eno~ until the ~overnment
J ' (l-)
d own all the lands both rural and ur~ro-perty) so that all
upiers of land would be tenants. In time the rental paid by the
I.CCll"DJ.ers of the land would furnish the states so large an income as
.L"""'~ would be sufficient to pay all government expenses.
In this way it is conceivable that the Henry George land tax
e tax theory could be reduced to practice.
The Unionist pa.rty of England seems to be a.s thouroughly
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