Scandinavians on the Pacific, Puget SoundStine, Thomas Ostenson
History
Scandinavians on the Pacific, Puget Sound
Stine, Thomas Ostenson
Scandinavian Americans; Washington (State) -- Emigration and immigration
In the fall of the same year, Mr. Evenson secured a position as teacher
in Milton College, Milton, Wisconsin, where he remained for three years;
at the end of that period he removed to Madison, South Dakota, to fill a
place as teacher in the State Normal School at that city, which position
he occupied for two years; he was then elected county superintendent of
schools for Lake county, in which capacity he served two terms. At the
close of the last term he made another move west, to Puget Sound, and
settled on 40 acres of land near the town of Kent, where he now resides
with his family. He is at present serving his second term as auditor of
King county.
Mr. Evenson is a firm believer in the "single tax" theories of Henry
George; that is, in placing all taxes on ground rents. The justice of
that method, he claims, is based on the following self-evident truths:
"1st: That whatever the individual produces, belongs to the individual,
and whatever the community produces, belongs to the community.
"2d: That the general rise in land value, commonly called ground rents,
is caused by the growth of the community and its competition for work,
and therefore, by right, belongs to the community.
"3d: That, as taxes are needed for the welfare of the community, it is
only in accordance with natural and divine law that the community makes
use of this common fund before it resorts to the confiscation of what
properly belongs to the individual.
"4th: That it is not only unjust in principle, but injurious to the last
degree in practice, that one man is taxed more for making land useful
and employing labor on it, than another is taxed for holding land idle
and keeping labor off it.
"5th: That to tax labor or its products, is to discourage industry.
"6th: That to tax land values to their full amount will compel every
individual controlling natural opportunities to either utilize them by
the employment of labor, or abandon them to others; that it will thus
provide opportunities of work for all men, and secure to each the full
reward of his labor."
[Illustration: H. P. RUDE AND FAMILY.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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