A Century Ago, Cincinnatians Led A Movement to Abolish All Taxes, Except On Property
It is possible that Ohio voters may be asked this year to vote on eliminating property taxes. Ironically, a little more than a century ago, there was a nationwide movement to do the exact opposite – remove all taxes except for property taxes. The national headquarters for this Single Tax League were right here in Cincinnati.
The Single Tax League was an outgrowth of the writings of Henry George, an American political economist, social philosopher and journalist. George’s best-selling book, “Progress and Poverty” (1879), established the economic philosophy known as Georgism, based on the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land should belong equally to all members of society.
Georgism attracted some rather wealthy adherents, notably Joseph Fels of Philadelphia, who made his fortune selling Fels-Naptha Soap. Fels created a fund to finance Georgist publications and projects. The national headquarters for the Fels Fund was in Cincinnati, at the Main Street office of one Daniel Kiefer. Kiefer served as chairman of the Fels Fund Commission, the group that controlled expenditures from the fund.
Kiefer was born in Cincinnati in 1856. He joined the Fechheimer clothing company as a young man and eventually worked his way into a partnership in the firm. He resigned while still in his 40s to pursue a career in political advocacy, specifically on behalf of the Single Tax League. According to a platform promulgated by the League in 1890, this was the essence of their proposal regarding taxation:
“We hold that each man is entitled to all that his labor produces. Therefore no tax should be levied on the products of labor. To carry out these principles we are in favor of raising all public revenues for national, state, county and municipal purposes by a single tax upon land values, irrespective of Improvements, and of the abolition of all forms of direct and Indirect taxation. Since in all our states we now levy some tax on the value of land, the single tax can be instituted by the simple and easy way of abolishing, one after another all other taxes now levied, and commensurately increasing the tax on land values, until we draw upon that one source for all expenses of government, the revenue being divided between local governments, state governments and the general government, as the revenue from direct taxes is now divided between the local and state governments; or, a direct assessment being made by the general government upon the states and paid by them from revenues collected in this manner.”
Kiefer was just one of several Cincinnatians at the center of the Single Tax League. Also prominent was Herbert Seely Bigelow, socialist pastor of the non-denominational People’s Church (formerly the Vine Street Congregational Church and later the Empress Theater). According to historian Daniel Beaver, writing in the Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio [January 1960], Bigelow was converted to the Single Tax cause by reading Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty”:
“Though the work was of little value as an economic tract, the paradox implied in its title and the tone of moral outrage that permeated the book made the ‘Single Tax’ an attractive answer to the problem posed by the accumulation of money in the hands of the few. In 1897, two years after he had become associated with the Vine Street Congregational Church, Bigelow began to investigate the possibilities of this intriguing panacea. A meeting with Tom Johnson, Mayor of Cleveland and one of the leading advocates of the ‘Single Tax’ in America, confirmed the pastor's belief in the measure.”
Bigelow’s enthusiasm led to full-time employment by the Single Tax League as a traveling promoter. Although he is among the most colorful characters in all of Cincinnati’s long history, even Bigelow had to take a back seat to Doctor Benjamin Franklin Longstreet, who had done jail time following arrests at Single Tax demonstrations.
Longstreet’s pulpit was the intersection of Race and Eighth streets, at that time the location of the statue honoring U.S. President James A. Garfield, now located a block east on Vine Street. Under the glow of a single electric streetlamp, Longstreet cobbled together a couple of carpet-covered wood planks balanced on a pair of sawhorses to assemble his nightly stage. On a nearby rock, he laid out some cotton banners painted with explanatory diagrams. As the sun went down, Longstreet fired up, expounding in a cultured oratorical style that attracted crowds as curious about his show as they were about the theory. According to the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune [19 June 1899]:
“Dr. Longstreet is a very effective talker, adopting the colloquial style in preference to the declamatory. His illustrations are of a homely nature, but none the less to the point, and each climax falls with the weight of a trip hammer.”
It was a great loss to the Single Taxers when Longstreet died from a bad cold in 1901.
Mainstream Cincinnati media rejected the Single Tax idea. The Cincinnati Times-Star, essentially the newsletter of the Boss Cox political machine editorialized [6 September 1902] against the Georgist concept, citing Bigelow as well as Cleveland mayor Tom Loftin Johnson:
“Johnson and Bigelow have sought to advance the interest of the single tax under a mask; but in this they have failed. They have sought to wear the lamb’s skin, but will be exposed. They have sought to pose as the friend of the property owner, whereas they are his worst enemy, seeking to make him pay all the taxes. Before the end of the campaign just opening every property owner in the State will know their real purposes and will understand the fanaticism which has led at least one of them to abuse his cloth by abasing himself to so low a degree as to become a hypocrite.”
By linking Johnson and Bigelow, the Times-Star put its finger on the major reason the Single Tax idea did not evolve beyond niche appeal – it attracted a lot of truly eccentric and controversial adherents. Mayor Johnson, for example, was totally opposed to vaccination, leading one newspaper to claim he imagined smallpox as a blessing to be bestowed upon humanity.
Bigelow, although an avowed and quite vocal Socialist, was forced by the political realities of Cincinnati to disguise himself as a Democrat throughout his electoral career. Although he supported the United States entering World War I against Germany, Bigelow’s opposition to forced military conscription through the draft led to him being kidnapped and horsewhipped. It was at this time that thirteen Cincinnati Socialists demonstrating against the draft were arrested and charged with treason in a case that lingered in the courts for seven years until the charges were finally dropped by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kiefer was not only opposed to the draft, but staunchly pacifist and opposed to American involvement in the war in any capacity. As a consequence, the Single Tax League essentially fired him in 1917 from all positions of responsibility in the organization. The League’s position held that the Single Tax would inevitably lead to the eradication of war and that quibbling about the draft would only delay its implementation. With Kiefer’s dismissal, Longstreet’s death and Bigelow’s shift to other causes, the Single Tax League disappeared from Cincinnati.
There are still Georgist and Single Tax organizations operating throughout the world, but none of them are headquartered in Cincinnati these days.
