The Prohibitionists Embrace the Single Tax
A Seattle convention of the Prohibition party breaks with tradition, adopting a radical platform that includes municipal reform, open employment bureaus, and the single-tax system.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Prohibitionists assembled in mass convention yesterday afternoon in Olympic Hall. Rev. R. E. Dunlap was elected chairman and John Bushell secretary. Following a heated debate regarding whether to run a separate municipal ticket or support the Citizens' League, the convention voted to field its own candidates. The newly adopted platform is a combination of the party's standard principles and Populist ideals, notably adopting the single tax as a Prohibition principle. The platform demands that taxes be shifted from the products of industry and labor onto land values, with the objective of eventually taxing all land at its full rental value. Additionally, the party calls for a city-run free employment bureau, the weekly payment of city laborers in cash, and the removal of all unnecessary municipal offices. Rev. R. E. Dunlap was nominated for mayor by acclamation.
“With the objective of eventually taxing all land at its full rental value, so that land may become cheaper and rents lower, with the possibility of all persons owning their own homes becoming a reality instead of being as now, a delusion.”
This 1894 platform represents an early, radical intersection of the Prohibition movement with Georgist (single-tax) economic theory. The debates over whether to form an independent third-party ticket or align with a 'Citizens' League' to defeat incumbent machines echo the ongoing struggle between ideological purists and pragmatic coalitions in modern Seattle politics.
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