endings of the above four cases respectively are ē, ata, ava, en. Example: manuspaya (Lat. homo), man; gūnī (Lat. mulier), woman; oluva (Lat. caput), head; genitive manuspayage, hominis; gūnīgē, mulieris; oluvae, capitis; dative, manuspaya, homini, etc.; accusative, gūnīva, mulierem, etc.; ablative, oluven, capite, etc., as above detailed: plural, manuspayo, homines; alu, capita; manuspayinně, hominum, etc. The adjectives are indeclinable. There are no less than 14 different pronouns of the second person, the use of them being regulated by the rank, both of the speaker and the person addressed. The Singhalese literature, which is not very extensive, comprises several original poems of some merit, and an extensive and interesting series of native chronicles, together with a considerable body of devotional works and other religious writings. The oldest Singhalese document extant is a glossary to the commentary on the 'Dhammapada' (10th century). The language also contains histories and grammars. The sacred books of the Singhalese, originally written in Pali, and which have been translated into the popular tongue form a considerable body of literature which is widely read and distributed over most of the island. Consult Alwiz, Singhalese Hand-Book in Roman Characters (Colombo 1880); Carter, 'EnglishSinghalese Dictionary' (Colombo 1891); Clough, Singhalese-English Dictionary) (Colombo 1890); Geiger, Literatur und Sprache der Singhalesen (Strassburg 1901); Gunasekara, Comprehensive Grammar of the Singhalese Language' (Colombo 1891). SINGHARA NUT, the fruit of a floating aquatic plant Trapa bispinosa. The nut is large, about three-quarters of an inch thick, having normally four spines, two of which are often absent. It has a sweet starchy kernel, which is a staple food of the natives of Cashmere. SINGING. See VOICE AND VOICE CULTURE. LISM. SINGLETAX, The, is a name for the social reform which Henry George proposed in 'Progress and Poverty. This book was first published in 1879, but the social reform it proposes had been foreshadowed by its author in his monograph, Our Land and Land Policy,' published in 1871. He had discussed it, also, in newspaper editorials and magazine articles, and had subjected it to criticism through extensive personal correspondence. Having satisfied himself of the economic and moral soundness and the political feasibility of the reform, he devoted his life, from the beginning of his task of writing Progress and Poverty in 1877 until his death in 1897, to popularizing it and to promoting political action in furtherance of its legislative adoption. In the course of this agitation he wrote several additional books only less famous than 'Progress and Poverty,' among them being 'Social Problems,' (Protection or Free Trade,' an open letter to Pope Leo XIII on 'The Condition of Labor,' A Perplexed Philosopher' (a criticism of Herbert Spencer in certain respects), and a posthumously published_incomplete treatise, The Science of Political Economy. In addition he carried his agitational work to the lecture platform, making two tours of Great Britain and Ireland, one of Australasia, and several through the United States and Canada. As an editor he advocated the reform first in the San Francisco Post (a daily newspaper) and later in the New York Standard (a weekly), both under his own proprietorship; and as a magazine contributor he discussed it in the Popular Science Monthly, the North American Review, the Century Magazine, the Arena, and periodicals of similar character in the United States and abroad. His political activities including two gigantic campaigns for mayor of New York (1886 and 1897), in the latter of which he suddenly died a few days before the election, were inspired and rigidly governed, like his authorship and his editorial work and lecturing, by his devotion to the Singletax. Coming first into use in 1888, this name is the one now best known in the United States, Canada and Australasia. It had currency in Great Britain for a time, but the more familiar term there has for several years been "taxation of land values." In Germany the current name is "Bodenreform." Numerous other designations have been used; "land restoration," "antipoverty," "free soil," "land and labor," etc. None of them all, however, is satisfactorily descriptive. Although the reform they designate involves alterations in the prevailing systems of land tenure, it is more than a land-tenure reform; while it would begin (partly for strategic reasons) with land-value taxation, and notwithstanding that (for more substantial reasons) this method may be advocated as a permanency, yet the reform itself has no fiscal limitations; whereas the tax proposed would by a single tax, the essential character of the reform is neither the tax nor its singleness; and although the reform aims at abolition of involuntary poverty and of exploitation of labor, its fiscal method for attaining these ends is one of its characteristics. To understand the Singletax, therefore, recourse to verbal definitions of its names will not do. Its essential principles and its distinctive method for their realization in public policy and law, must be taken into account and considered together. The primary social-utility principle of the Singletax, as formulated by Henry George, is "association in equality." This is referred to as the natural law of progress. Without association progress would be impossible; without equality of opportunity to live and to earn, the progress which association produces reacts injuriously upon itself and engenders poverty as a social phenomenon. The secondary social-utility principle of the Singletax proceeds logically from its primary one. Equality of opportunity to live and to earn being inconsistent with monopoly of natural resources, equal rights to natural resources (which are comprehended in the economic technical term "land") is an unescapable condition of social progress without social poverty. It is also imperative as a condition of the social morality that is implied by such phrases as "the brotherhood of man," and which, finding religious expression in the Golden Rule of Christian teaching and "the Second Great Commandment" of Christian and Jewish teaching alike, gets political expression through the human equality clauses of the American Declaration of Independence. Inasmuch, then, as the requirements of social morality and social utility coincide in this respect, the broad basic principle of the Singletax is a co-ordination of social utility and social morality principles. It demands equal rights to land. But the basic principle of the Singletax is not necessarily inconsistent with individual titles to land. Whatever is socially useful in a public policy that recognizes individual titles may be harmonized in practice with the principle of equal rights. Any community could harmonize the two for itself, by socializing the land values within its jurisdiction. Instead of attaching equality of rights to the land directly, it could do so indirectly by socializing such of the profits of the whole area as are fairly attributable to its superior natural qualities and locational advantages. Nor would this be a difficult matter. Separation of the profits of mere ownership of natural opportunities from the profits of their use is practicable by reference to the principle of Ricardo's law of economic rent. This law affords an approximately accurate and substantially fair measure of the difference between the incomes that land users earn, whether they are landowners or not, and incomes or other financial benefits from mere ownership. For it measures with reasonable accuracy the varying financial advantages of natural resources through every gradation, from the zero value of superabundant fertile land at social frontiers to the fabulous values of rich mineral deposits easily accessible to markets and the choicest sites for business operations in a metropolitan city. These financial advantages, whether estimated as annual values or as capital values, are "land values" in Singletax terminology. To socialize land values is, therefore, the Singletax method of securing equality of rights to land without abolishing any of the socially useful attributes of private titles. Nor need the reform be made abruptly, or through novel modes of land administration, so as to shock a socially useful conservatism or any reasonable sense of social prudence. It can be established by a deviation from present fiscal principles and policies, with hardly any alteration of present fiscal methods. This is the point at which taxation principles and policies enter into the Singeltax. Though considered as a fiscal reform alone, the change proposed would be in the direction of simplicity and greater fairness. It consists in so modifying real estate taxation as to exempt improvements, leaving land values to bear the burden. This modification would not of itself socialize all land values, the entire amount of real estate taxation being less annually than annual land values; but besides socializing more land values than are socialized now, it would discourage monopoly of idle land by increasing the taxation expense of keeping it idle. And it would encourage the improving of land by lessening taxation expenses of improvement and maintenance. It would, therefore, tend toward the social aims of the Singletax. This tendency would be accelerated if all personal taxes for revenue were abolished. Taxes for police regulation are not within the purview of the Singletax, though objectionable as being the most unfair and least effective of regulation methods. But with land values as the sole source of public revenues, industrial activity would be doubly stimulated: first, by freedom from tax burdens; second, by the lowering of capitalized values of natural resources through market gluts of idle land taxed out of useless and obstructive ownership. The second of those causes of industrial stimulation would be progressively intensified by the forcing upon the real estate market of still more and better idle land, consequent upon the necessity, in order to derive public revenues exclusively from land values on a falling market, of increasing the rates of taxation on capitalized land values. This action and reaction-lowering of capitalized values of land by market gluts of idle land, and consequent raising of tax rates might result in drawing approximately all land values into public treasuries. In that event and so long as the condition continued, land values would be wholly socialized. If, however, any considerable amount remained continuously unsocialized, extensions of public functions and further improvements in public service could be made at the expense of land values until their socialization was approximately and permanently complete. To abolish all taxes save upon land values (in itself a beneficial tax reform) is, therefore, the method of the Singletax for securing all its social objects. To summarize in inverse order of statement, the singletax is a proposal to (1) abolish all taxation save upon land values, for the purpose (a) of improving taxation in the direction of simplicity and fairness and in the interest of industry, by (b) exempting production from taxation, and (c) promoting tendencies toward socialization of land values; its purpose in aiming to (2) socialize land values being to secure (3) equal rights to land in harmony with individual possession, and thereby to establish (4) equality of opportunity to live and to earn, impossible under land monopoly but an unescapable condition of progress without poverty under the law of (5) association in equality, which is a natural law of (a) social utility and (b) social morality. Objections to the Singletax are too numerous for complete consideration here. Some are frivolous, some are disingenuous, some proceed from misapprehension; but some are sincere, important and at least apparently reasonable. Most professorial economists are counted among objectors, and the economic atmosphere of the universities seems to be hostile. Yet the objections lack both system and comprehensiveness. Most comprehensive of all, perhaps, are those of Walker's Land and Its Rent,' a book which had vogue for a time but is now obsolete. It has been succeeded in university circles by a chapter on "The Single Tax" in Seligman's Essays on Taxation.) This chapter, which is limited to the subject in its fiscal aspects, is refuted in chapter XIV of Shearman's Natural Taxation.' Following is a summary of current objections and answers: (1) Objection: The Singletax would take private property for public use without compensation. Answer: As land value is attributable not to individual industry but to social progress, and attaches not to industrial products but to natural resources, it is in fairness social property, for which reason the just objection is not to taking land value for public use without compensation to land owners, but to allowing its continued appropriation by landowners without compensation to the public. (2) Obj.: The fiscal principle upon which the Singletax rests, that of taxation in proportion to individual benefits derived from government, is false, sound fiscal principles requiring taxation in proportion to each taxpayer's ability to pay. Ans.: (a) Taxation in proportion to ability to pay is a principle of arbitrary tribute-levying; (b) the sound fiscal principle under democratic government is in proportion to governmental benefits. (3) Obj.: Taxation in proportion to governmental benefits is impracticable, the benefits being too multifarious and subtle for financial measurement. Ans. (a) As land values financially reflect all governmental benefits, taxation of land values is in proportion to benefits; (b) it is, at any rate, in proportion to financial benefits, which is the crux of the matter. (4) Obj.: The tax would be shifted from landowner to tenant in higher rent. Ans.: This is (a) unthinkable with reference to unimproved land, and (b) since unimproved land would glut the market under pressure of burdensome taxation, all land would tend downward in market value. (5) Obj.: Unimproved building sites do not need the governmental protection that police and fire systems provide and which buildings do need; therefore, upon the principle of taxation according to benefits, building sites rather than buildings should be exempt from taxation for police and fire protection. Ans.: As the value of building sites is higher with police and fire protection than without, and the value of buildings is no higher (probably lower from the greater competition in building), it is building sites, not buildings, that are benefited financially by fire and police protection, and which, therefore, should bear the financial burden. (6) Obj.: The Singletax would produce public revenues in excess of public needs. Ans.: Probably not, if schools, highways and other public necessaries and conveniences were adequately provided and properly maintained. (7) Obj.: The Singletax would lack elasticity and therefore be unadaptable to balanced budgets. Ans: (a) This possibility of disadvantage would be outweighed by manifest advantages; (b) it might be obviated by estimating public expenditures after instead of prior to collection of the public revenues out of which they are paid; (c) estimates of aggregate land values for a fiscal year in advance of expenditures are as trustworthy for budget purposes as estimates of any other taxable values or of all together; (d) some Canadian municipalities have for several years balanced their budgets under a policy of land value taxation alone, and with apparent satisfaction for they have been legally at liberty to abandon the policy at the beginning of every fiscal year; (e) the problem of balanced budgets is the same with governments as with individuals, namely, to balance expenditures and savings in normal circumstances against normal incomes (in emergencies anticipating future income by drafts upon savings and by temporary borrowing), and as land values are essentially social property and therefore the normal income of governments, expenditures in government budgets should balance against land values. (8) Obj.: The Singletax would yield insufficient local revenues for the local needs of poor communities. Ans.: (a) The land values of every community are sufficient for strictly local needs; (b) the maintenance of local schools, highways, etc., are not properly local expenses, these services being necessary to maintain the standards of State and national life as a whole. (9) Obj.: The Singletax would exempt investors in labor products while taxing investors in land values, though both investments increased in value. Ans.: The latter would be taxed because their investments are in values that are produced, maintained and increased by the community and which attach to the site of the community, a common heritage the title to which investors hold as a government privilege; whereas the investments of the former are in products of industry the title to which investors hold from the producers. (10) Obj.: All values are produced, maintained and increased by the community. Ans.: The statement is not tenable; but irrespective of that, the values of labor products attach to objects of individual production, whereas land values attach to the natural resources and sites of production and of life. (11) Obj.: Labor products are no longer objects of individual production, individuals being unable alone to produce anything in our highly specialized industries. Ans.: This objection springs out of confusion of thought, specialized and individual industry not being essentially different, since every specialist contributes his labor individually so that though millions co-operate to produce, for instance a house, each individual is a housebuilder to the extent of his specialized contribution to the result. (12) Obj.: The Singletax would be class taxation. Ans.: (a) To take by taxation for public revenues property that is legally owned by one class but which morally belongs to all, would not be class taxation but common taxation; (b) it is exemption of such property, either in whole or in part, thereby necessitating taxation of legitimate private property, that is class taxation. (13) Obj.: It is impracticable to distinguish land values from improvement values. Ans. (a) Not with reference to unimproved land; (b) unimproved land affords a reasonable basis for calculating the land value of neighboring improved land; (c) the land value of building lots is easily distinguishable with approximate accuracy from the value of their buildings; (d) the value of mineral deposits is easily distinguishable with approximate accuracy from the value of their operating plants; (e) the land value of farms is as a rule so low, relatively to their improvement value, that error would usually be negligible; (f) literal accuracy of calculation is no more vital to this fiscal policy than to any other, and (g) unavoidable error would be less unfair to taxpayers and less injurious to the community. (14) Obj.: The Singletax would relieve great moneyed interests by placing all governmental expenses upon landowners. Ans: (a) No land would be taxed unless it were valuable irrespective of its improvements, and (b) valuable land would be taxed only in proportion to its value irrespective of its improvements; (c) as moneyed interests depend for wealth and social power not upon money literally but upon titles to mineral deposits, natural forests, highways, public utilities, building sites, water powers, extensive areas of farming and |