Low there were Gen. Benjamin F. Tracy, who was
Secretary of the Navy under President Harrison in 1889, Robert A. Van
Wyck, chief judge of the city court, and Mr. Henry George.

The contest was a very lively one, and each man who thus offered his
services to his city had to endure a severe course of the abuse which it
is the fashion nowadays to heap on any man who puts himself before the
public gaze.

Accusations have been brought by each party against the others, until,
to the unprejudiced outsider, it has seemed as if none of the candidates
selected was fit to hold office at all.

Judge Van Wyck and General Tracy have been accused of being so much
under the rule of their party leaders that they could not possibly give
New York honest government. Mr. Seth Low has been declared to be such an
autocrat that he would rule the city according to his own ideas, were
they good or bad. Mr. George was called a visionary person, who would
turn the world upside down if ever he came into power. These were, of
course, the opinions of the candidates' enemies. To their friends each
of them was felt to be the one man for whom the city had been waiting,
and whose election would insure the best possible government at the
lowest possible cost to the people.

You may judge for yourselves that all these opinions could not possibly
be true; and that therefore the candidates, as well as their parties,
must have had their good sides and their bad sides. We can only hope
that Judge Van Wyck, who was elected to the position by a very large
majority, may prove to be the best man for the place.

A very sad and painful turn was given to the election by the sudden
death of Mr. Henry George, one of the candidates.

Mr. George was a man who had made a world-wide reputation for himself as
the originator of the Single-Tax system.

The Single Tax is rather a hard matter for you to understand.

In brief, it was Mr. George's belief that poverty could be done away
with, and every man placed in a position where he could earn a
comfortable income, by abolishing all taxes upon industry and the
products of industry, and substituting one single tax on land. The
land-owners would then be the only persons taxed, and, according to Mr.
George's theory, the land tax would be so heavy that it would prevent
the men who do not want to use the land from keeping it out of the hands
of the many who would like to have it for homes or raising crops. There
being no l