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WHO PAYS YOUR TAXES?

work. There is stone breaking, sand digging, woodcutting, coal mining, barn building, excavating, filling in,lime and charcoal burning, marl mining, sheep keeping,stone cutting, quarrying, brickmaking, seaweed gather-ing, oyster catching, fishing, clam digging, and you canthink of a thousand other occupations using nothing butbare land, which, were they only unimpeded by taxes andrestrictions, would drain off a portion of our urban popu-lation. Such a drain would raise wages, and, strange asit may appear, raise them without increasing the cost ofliving, and at the same time it would increase produc-tion. For the law of wages is this : Ten jobs with elevenmen bring down the wages by competition ; eleven jobswith ten laborers raise wages by the same rule. Butincreased production increases the supply of goods; andwhen the supply is large, competition always reducesthe prices of commodities.

II. The great problem, then, is to check the increaseof population in the cities, which makes morality anddecency almost impossible. As long as that exists, char-ity cannot do its full work, nor do it effectively. We mayestablish numberless fresh air funds, yet the children con-tinue to live and die like rats in a sewer. If they dorevive some of the little ones and bring fresh life andhealth for a year, what is the effect ? Still further to in-crease population in the cities, to make work still scarcerand bread still dearer. We may take them permanentlyto the country: others are born and live to take their