er
would merely need to pass the taxes along to the renter and be rid
of the subject."[157] The next day Mayor Gaynor in a letter to the
_Times_ quoted a message he had sent to the city council in the
previous year in which he had said: "Every landlord knows that he
cannot add the taxes to rents. If he could, he would not care how
high taxes grew. He would simply throw them on his tenants."

It is difficult, therefore, to see why the tenants of New York City
or Bridgeport should favor lower taxes, so long as they and their
children are in need of further public advantages that increased
taxes would enable the municipalities to supply. To favor reduced
taxes, while private ownership of land prevails, is not Socialism,
or even progressive capitalism. It is, as I have said, _reaction_.

The _New York Volkszeitung_ expresses in a few words the correct
Socialist attitude on municipal expenditures. After showing the need of
more money for schools, hygienic measures, etc., it concludes:--

"These increased expenditures of municipalities are thus absolutely
necessary if a Socialist city government is to fulfill its tasks.
Since the municipal expenditures must be raised through taxation,
it is evident that a good Socialist city government must raise the
taxes if it is up to the level of its duties. Provided that--as
just remarked--the raising of the taxes is so managed that the
possessing classes are hit by it and not the poor and the
workingmen.

"Most of the Socialist municipal administrations have been
shattered hitherto by the tax question; that has been especially
evident in France, where the Socialists lost the towns captured by
them because their administration appeared to be more costly than
those of their capitalist predecessors. That has happened
especially wherever the small capitalist element played a role in
the Socialist movement.

"We shall undoubtedly have this experience in America, also, if we
do not make it clear to the masses of workingmen that good city
government for them means a more expensive city government, and
that they are interested in this increase of the cost of the city
administration."[158]

If the Socialists promise much and perform comparatively little, they
have as a valid reason the fact that the city does not have the
aut