BC's 19th Century Idea to End Inequality

• The Left in British Columbia: A History of Struggle
• Gordon Hak
• Ronsdale Press (2013)

[Editor's note: In his historical recounting of how B.C. became known -- for better or for worse -- as the Left Coast, author Gordon Hak explores a hundred-year-old idea that could just as easily have fit in with the language of inequality offered during Occupy Vancouver. With permission from Ronsdale Press, this passage details how Henry George's critique of inflated property values took hold in B.C in the late 1800s.]

Entwined with the early left of unionism and labour politics was the Single Tax crusade. Prominent in B.C. after 1889, the Single Tax movement was a product of the writing and activism of American Henry George. The phenomenon swept North America and Britain in the 1880s. At the core of George's analysis was land, which, he argued, when held in an unimproved state while still increasing in value, undermined the efforts of capital and labour to produce society's necessary goods. Landholders did nothing to increase the value of their properties; they just waited upon the industriousness of others, who created economic activity, to raise property values.

The wealth generated by true producers was sucked up by the parasitic class through increased rents and rising property values. George's notion of land included natural resources and, like air and water, land was seen as a gift of nature that should not be privately owned.

The solution was the Single Tax, a tax on all unimproved land and property to its full value, which would replace all other taxes, such as excise taxes, property taxes, and the most galling tax, that on property improvement.

George's ideas were set out in his 1879 book Poverty and Progress, as well as a number of pamphlets and speeches. In his thought, the so-called productive elements -- workers and industrial capitalists engaged in useful enterprises -- shared interests, as well as a legitimate hostility against a segment of the capitalist class that held private legal rights to natural resources and speculators.

Its radicalism was in its challenge to the unfettered rights of private property. According to historian Ramsay Cook, many feared that "once established ideas about the economic order were questioned, especially those concerning property, a large hole was opened in the established order. There was no reason to believe that the 'Single Tax' would be the stopping place."

Critics of the Single Tax deemed it socialism and communism, arguing that it was outright confiscation of private property that would engender a leveling of the social order whereby all would be equal, a belief in direct contradiction of human nature, God's will, and common sense.

In the mid-1880s George's ideas were not yet prominent in British Columbia. One Victoria commentator discussed George's 1886 lecture tour in Ontario, noting that his lack of appeal was due to the fact that "Canadians take no stock in socialism."

Two years later the same voice predicted the demise of George's popularity: "His converts in the United States and Canada are comparatively few and it would seem that they are becoming less zealous as well as diminishing in number."

However, the George era in British Columbia was just beginning.

A 'grievous' aristocracy

Byron H. West was a key figure. He was an active thinker and speaker, almost certainly a member of the Knights of Labor, who had been discuss- ing issues of interest to the working class for years. In 1889 the Single Tax solution became increasingly prominent in his addresses. He spoke at a Nanaimo Knights of Labor meeting in Jan. 1889. After endorsing labour organization, temperance, and anti-Chinese legislation, he spent the bulk of his time on the land question, a topic that "was greeted with loud applause."

West said that in British Columbia, land was falling into the hands of a few wealthy landowners and corporations: "The United States, Canada and British Columbia, and even Nanaimo, were building up an aristocracy as grievous as ever existed." The result was that the labouring classes, cajoled by "an unholy, unjust and detrimental law," were forced to pay tribute to a few.

The solution was Henry George's Single Tax system. Speaking during a coal-mining dispute, West said that if the Single Tax society came to be, there would be no strikes, because no longer would the few men who controlled the land or what was under it be able to dictate terms to the labouring man. West concluded by saying that "he had more faith in the principles advanced by Henry George than any since the days of Jesus Christ."

In May 1889, West spoke again in Nanaimo, and during the meeting the Nanaimo Reform league was formed.

In Oct. 1889, Walter Roos, a political activist with the federal liberals, spoke publicly in defence of the Single Tax. Thomas Forster, elected to the provincial legislature to represent Nanaimo in June 1890, was a longtime Single Taxer who was given the nomination by the miners "because they knew he was a single tax man."

The land question was relevant in B.C. Hostility to speculators and government favours in the granting of public lands had been a theme since the colonial era. In granting early timber rights in the 1860s, colonial governments were keen to keep away land speculators, and stipulations for the actual construction of sawmills in order to be given access to government timber were specified.

Despite this concern in granting timber-cutting rights, people still worried. In the 1870s and 1880s, there were complaints about the amount of timberland that was falling into private hands, the poor financial return that the government received for the people's timber, and wasteful logging practices. The coal lands were also in the hands of a few, most notoriously the Dunsmuir family.

The land grants for the railway construction projects of the 1880s also prompted criticism. Robert Dunsmuir was given some 2 million acres of land rich in coal and timber in 1884 in return for constructing a rail line from Nanaimo to Esquimalt, near Victoria, a line that was completed in 1887. This land grant, the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Belt, made up almost one-third of Vancouver Island.

Byron West called Dunsmuir "the Uncrowned King of Vancouver's Island."

Welcome to the club

Single Tax fever was widespread. Thomas Turnbull, a liberal federally, published the Single Tax Advocate in New Westminster.

In June 1890, a New Westminster Single Tax meeting, where Byron West spoke, attracted 500 people. New Westminster City Council passed a by-law, proposed by an alderman who was a member of the Single Tax movement, exempting improvements from taxation. The local Single Taxers were jubilant.

In late Sept. 1889, the Vancouver Single Tax Club was formed, based on the following principles:

Whereas, this meeting being of the opinion that the evils arising from the present system of making land, on which all men must live, the exclusive property of some, thereby creating a monopoly upon which all other monopolies rest, and recognizing that in countries widely separated, differing in forms of government tariffs, industrial development and religious belief, the tendencies and effects of this system are everywhere the same, causing greater inequalities of the distribution of wealth as the population increases, and land becomes more valuable, and Whereas, the single tax on land values advocated by Henry George is the simplest, surest and most effectual remedy for the removal of these evils, therefore be it Resolved, that this meeting do organize a Single Tax Club...

Long-time unionist and Knights of Labor activist George Pollay was the president. In the fall of 1890, a Vancouver alderman, Dr. J.T. Carroll, was pressing for the city to adopt the Single Tax. He was an unabashed Single Taxer in his run for the mayoralty the next year.

The Single Tax Club organization in Vancouver faltered, but in December 1891 the Club was reorganized, still under the guidance of George Pollay, making the Single Tax a major public issue in the city in early 1892. Robert Macpherson, a carpenter, unionist, and new president of the Vancouver Single Tax Club, along with Pollay, were the main advocates and defenders of the cause.

In 1892 they organized a series of 11 lectures over three months to consider the ramifications of the Single Tax. During the civic elections in late 1892 the Vancouver Trades and labour Council and the Single Tax Club cooperated, each putting forward candidates in the various wards. The Trades and Labour Council endorsed the Single Tax.

In Victoria, at a public meeting in late May 1890, in the run-up to the provincial election, hundreds filled a Victoria theatre to hear a debate on the Single Tax. Speakers in favour of the Single Tax included Byron West, his business partner, R. Jackson, Edward Bragg, a workingman and alder- man, and J. A. Cohen, a printer.

A Single Tax Club was formed in July 1890. The influence of the Single Taxers in Victoria was such that the entire Opposition slate vying for the four Victoria seats in the provincial legislature came out in favour of the Single Tax, which in Victoria was the major issue of the campaign. In June 1892, Victoria Single Taxers began publishing the Single Tax, and in October they were trying to bring the Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver, and New Westminster clubs together in one provincial body.

In Dec. 1892 they organized the Progressive Party to put forward candidates in elections.

Reduced to a minor strain

Although the Single Tax was associated with unionists and labour politicians, it had supporters across the political spectrum. Reform liberals, especially, were attracted to the Single Tax. In 1889, The Daily Times in Victoria came out in favour of the Single Tax. The paper also vociferously supported the federal liberal Party and the provincial Oppositionists, as well as free trade, and a prominent role for unions in the economy and society as a whole.

The other main paper, The Daily Colonist, was apoplectic in its criticism of the Single Tax, branding it socialism and simple confiscation of property owned by others. The Daily Colonist was the organ of the federal Conservatives and supported the provincial Government party. It also extolled the virtues of the Dunsmuir interests, defended the merits of large corporations, and barely tolerated the right of workingmen to form unions, and only then as long as these unions were not allowed to interfere in the management of companies, question the absolute rights of private property, or challenge employers, who were seen as overwhelmingly beneficent and the kingpins in development.

Despite the flurry of activity regarding the Single Tax and its interconnection with other goals, it was a short-lived phenomenon, and as the 1890s progressed it became an increasingly minor strain in political thought. Radical socialists opposed the Single Tax solution because its focus on land and rent missed what they saw as the crux of the problem, the capitalist exploitation of labour. All capitalists, not just major land-holders and resource controllers, held sway over the lives of workers. As British Columbia became more and more industrialized, with more workers in factory settings, the weakness of the Single Tax became clearer.

The Single Tax survived in municipal politics, and the mayor of Vancouver championed the cause in the years just before the First World War. But now the Single Tax was no longer a vehicle to transform society, but rather a tactic to encourage investment. The Single Tax did not disappear completely on the left. Bob Williams, a prominent cabinet minister in the BC NDP government of the 1970s, had a university degree in economics and took the ideas of Henry George seriously.