rnment is concerned about to-day. And the Conservatives are no
less sincere in their willingness to help in these matters. Legislative
proposals for social reform are treated as non-party questions, and the
chief item in the Conservative programme, Tariff Reform, was adopted and is
advocated mainly as a social reform, a cure for industrial evils, and the
misery of unemployment.

Socialism proposed the abolition of poverty, and the common ownership and
control of the land and the means of production, distribution, and exchange
as the solution of economic questions.

Social Reform proposes to mitigate the hardships of life for the multitude,
and, while leaving land and capital in private hands, to compel by taxation
provision for the wants of the people. Its aim is the abolition of
destitution by State assistance to voluntary effort, and the gradual
raising of the standard of life. It does not propose to remove the cause of
poverty.

Socialism would place the democracy in possession of the means of wealth.
Social Reform requires the State to tax wealth and provide for the people.
It promises a living wage, decent housing accommodation, an insurance
against unemployment, and security in old age, and leaves the question of
national ownership or private ownership to be settled by posterity.

LAND REFORM AND THE SINGLE TAX

Apart from the ideals of Socialism, the democratic ideal of a community
owning the full value of its land was presented by Henry George, an
American economist, in 1879, and his book "Progress and Poverty," was at
once received with enthusiasm by certain reformers in England and America.
George visited England in 1881, 1884, and 1889, and his visits resulted in
a strong movement for the taxation of land values. This movement has been
inspired by an ideal of a democratic community as definite as the Socialist
ideal, and it has grown steadily in popular favour as the justice of a tax
on land values has been recognised. "Progress and Poverty" is the bible of
the Land Reformers, as Marx's "Capital" is (or was) the bible of
Socialists. It is claimed that a tax on land values is the true remedy of
social and economic ills, and that democracy can eradicate the root-cause
of poverty by such a tax. In this belief the followers of Henry George have
preached the Single Tax, as it is called, with unquenchable fervour, and
the Liberal Party has been gradually won over--if not to the Single Tax, at
least to a tax on