These were paid in the form of rents on the land, the buildings stood on and of course at once transferred to the rents paid by tenants for rooms, flats, shops, stores etc. Rents soon became higher than they had ever been known before the adoption of the single tax. To lighten these rents in the cities, it was now proposed to increase the rents of lands in the country.” CHAPTER VI. Confiscation of Lands. “The former owners of these lands had now been practically dispossessed. Many of them had gone to the cities and engaged in more profitable business than farming. Many who were mortgaged had been sold out, bankrupted and ruined, and had settled down into the condition of peasants. The lands were now regarded as the property of the state. This process of the transfer of the lands to the state went further in Minnesota than the other states, because she was the first to adopt the new plan of taxation. After the other states adopted it, the advantage their farmers had over those of Minnesota was lost. Rents under the name of taxes were levied, farming rendered unprofitable and the uncultivated portions of the land abandoned by their owners. The few southern states that did not go into this new plan could not reap much advantage from their position, because their products were different from those of the northern states and could not replace those whose cultivation was repressed. “Agricultural products fell off to such an extent, that in a few years the United States ceased to be an exporter of them. The cities having gained control of the states, it came to be a political theory that each state was a community, and that the lands abandoned or forfeited for taxes belonged to the Community and therefore came indirectly under the control of the cities. From this position it was an easy step to the idea that the taxes—or rents as they were designated—of the “people’s lands” might be spent where most beneficial to the majority, that is, in the cities. It was attempted to be pointed out by the more conservative that this was class legislation. But the radical progressives replied that it was in line with the theory of the single tax which was class legislation if anything could be. And they asserted that the adoption of the single tax carried with it an endorsement of the principle of class legislation when demanded by the interests of the majority. Whether their reasoning was sound or not they carried the day, and a great stride was taken toward the centralization of power and population. It now happened that when more money was wanted it was raised, not by increasing the rents of city lots, but those of farming lands, and after a time the principle revenues came to be derived from them. Although the exportation of grain, flour, beef etc., had practically ceased, still the people had to eat and their food had to be raised on the land. The business of farming gradually took on entirely new features. Large operators took