I am glad that Dr. Slobo-Yarros is disposed to force Mr. George A. Schilling to account for the muddled condition of his brain. Observation of his course for a year past has been a matter of much interest to me. A year ago, when I was in Europe, I saw in an American paper that at a national conference of labor bureau officials from the various States the Illinois representative had introduced a resolution providing for the appointment of a committee to investigate the advisability of laying a tax upon land values, and I said to myself: Hello! what’s up with Schilling?
It was but a few days later that I received a clipping from a Chicago paper, consisting of a letter written by Schilling in criticism of Liberty for presuming to criticise the Single Tax, and stating in plain terms that Liberty might be in better business. Then I knew what was up with Schilling. He had become a Single Taxer. And I made the further remark to myself: Now we shall see what else he will become.
And we have seen.
He has become a believer in the natural existence of the State apart from the creation of man (having divinely-ordained authority, I presume, since Schilling believes in God), and attributes to it rights which he denies to man himself,—for instance, the right to punish for invasion.
He has become a victim of the disease known as the banana-skin terror, which is a generic term for obsession of the mind by perpetual consciousness of the petty dangers that confront the individual in his daily life, accompanied by a believer’s confidence (and Schilling is a famous believer) that these dangers vanish by a process of exorcism as soon as the State waves its magic wand.
He has become a prohibitionist, who tries to deceive himself into believing that he saves the doctrine of liberty by securing to towns the privilege of local option, forgetting—what he once would have remembered—that liberty can be saved only by localizing the option in the individual himself.
And, latest of all, though undoubtedly there are further developments in store, he has become an advocate of State suppression of obscene literature. This phase of his evolution was made apparent at the dinner of the Chicago Sunset Club on February 14, 1895, at which the subject of Crusades against Vice
was discussed, the two leading disputants being Rev. Carlos Martyn and Mr. Victor Yarros. Mr. Yarros was not looking for support, in the discussion that followed, from any of those present except Mr. Schilling. To his surprise he received warm and able support from Mr. A. W. Wright and opposition from Mr. Schilling. The subject of obscene literature having arisen, Mr. Schilling put the question to Mr. Yarros: Has a father the right to prevent obscene books from passing into the hands of his child?
Receiving an affirmative answer, he asked further: Then have not all the fathers a similar right to come together in the municipality, or in the State, or as individuals in a society, and protest in the form of a law against any one practising the same thing that they each, individually, protect their children against?
This equals the error of logic in the matter of equal liberty of which I convict Dr. Foote, Jr., in another column, with this at least in Dr. Foote’s favor,—that he never has been an Anarchist, while Mr. Schilling has (in belief, though not accepting the name). Mr. Yarros, in his answer, drew the distinction between the right to prohibit the child from reading certain books and the right to prohibit their sale, affirming the former and denying the latter. It is a valid and important distinction, but it does not, it seems to me, confront the exact point of Mr. Schilling’s question as given in the official report of the discussion. Whatever the thought that lay in his mind, his question as reported implies the argument that, because an individual father has a right to prohibit his own children from reading certain books, all fathers collectively have a right to impose this prohibition upon all children collectively and upon those who would supply the children. Which, of course, is true, if we grant the assumption which Mr. Schilling works into his second question,—that each father actually wishes to prohibit his own children from reading the book—but which otherwise is as clearly false. Mr. Schilling’s first question premises only the right of the individual father to prohibit, which implies of course his equal right to permit. It did not premise at all that each individual father does prohibit, or wishes to prohibit, as a fact, and only with such a premise does the conclusion implied in the second question follow. And it is by such an argument as this that a whilom Anarchist would justify majority rule!
Thus we see the sad end to which a man may come [by] accepting the Single Tax. All the tyrannies hang together.