The story begins with the Haskins family's arrival at Jim Council's farm in Iowa. Unable to buy land farther east, the Haskins family had settled in western Kansas, where they were eaten out by grasshoppers. Jim Council, kindly neighbor that he is, helps them out in purchasing farmland from Jim Butler, a landlord who believes that land speculation is the most dependable way to get rich. Haskins and his family set to work on the farm, pouring out heart and soul, sweat and effort, and after three years are prepared to buy the farm. Butler, noting the increased value of the farm, establishes a higher price for the farm then Haskins is able to pay. Haskins threatens Butler but does not kill him in the interest of his wife and daughters. The story concludes with Haskins sitting alone, crushed under the paw of the "lion" of land speculation.
It is generally acknowledged that Garland eventually became as much a propagandist for causes, notably the single tax, as a novelist. His advocacy of the single tax placed him on the side of the farmers, for which he had so much personal empathy, and opposed to the three "great fundamental monopolies" that threatened the fabric of American society: "the monopoly of land, the monopoly of transportaion, and the monopoly of money." The American settlers, like the Haskins of "Under the Lion's Paw," had been forced to the margins of society because the speculator, holding choice land for high prices, forced the settlers to seek cheap or free land in remote, unpopulated areas. In the cities, as well, Garland would argue in his speeches on the single tax, the monopolization of land had produced unfortunate effects: tenements, inflated rents, vice, crowding, and the dehumanization of laborers (who had to work like machines).
But what exactly was this "single tax"? Garland supported the idea as expressed by Henry George, a prominent social reformer of the 1880s and 90s. George, in the interests of equality of opportunity, devised a method of taxation which would make it impossible to hold unused land in areas where land was in demand. Land would be taxed, not in ration to improvements, but according to the average value of the land around it. This system would eliminate land speculation and free both industry and the public from all other forms of rent and taxation. Through this single reform, land would be opened to free use; industry would be furthered through lowered taxes and increased demand; laborers would achieve greater freedom of opportunity, higher wages; and, importantly in Garland's analysis, individual Americans would have the chance to rise spiritually and culturally once freed from bare economic need. Garland, for his part, believed wholly in the single tax as a panacea for America's social ills; he was convinced that democratic progress relied heavily on such reform, which would weaken the Butlers of the world and extend a much-needed hand to the suffering agrarian Haskinses. He campaigned widely for the single tax platform and became as well known for his exertions as social reformer as for his "local colorist" fiction.
Later in his life, Garland's chronicle of his family's experience on the Dakota prairies, A Son of the Middle Border, won him the Pulitzer Prize for biography. His place in American letters has been disputed, but there can be no doubt that in the context of Nash Smith's argument about the necessity of an interpretive approach to the American West that did not rely on the "paired but contradictory ideas of nature and civilization." America in the late 19th century was a rapidly expanding nation, one which saw the closing of the Western frontier (1890) and the dawning of a new and increasingly regimented era, one in which increased attention to social reform and individual dignity--of the sort Garland so fervently wrote about--would challenge America in new ways. paw.
The story begins with the Haskins family's arrival at Jim Council's farm in Iowa. Unable to buy land farther east, the Haskins family had settled in western Kansas, where they were eaten out by grasshoppers. Jim Council, kindly neighbor that he is, helps them out in purchasing farmland from Jim Butler, a landlord who believes that land speculation is the most dependable way to get rich. Haskins and his family set to work on the farm, pouring out heart and soul, sweat and effort, and after three years are prepared to buy the farm. Butler, noting the increased value of the farm, establishes a higher price for the farm then Haskins is able to pay. Haskins threatens Butler but does not kill him in the interest of his wife and daughters. The story concludes with Haskins sitting alone, crushed under the paw of the "lion" of land speculation.
It is generally acknowledged that Garland eventually became as much a propagandist for causes, notably the single tax, as a novelist. His advocacy of the single tax placed him on the side of the farmers, for which he had so much personal empathy, and opposed to the three "great fundamental monopolies" that threatened the fabric of American society: "the monopoly of land, the monopoly of transportaion, and the monopoly of money." The American settlers, like the Haskins of "Under the Lion's Paw," had been forced to the margins of society because the speculator, holding choice land for high prices, forced the settlers to seek cheap or free land in remote, unpopulated areas. In the cities, as well, Garland would argue in his speeches on the single tax, the monopolization of land had produced unfortunate effects: tenements, inflated rents, vice, crowding, and the dehumanization of laborers (who had to work like machines).
But what exactly was this "single tax"? Garland supported the idea as expressed by Henry George, a prominent social reformer of the 1880s and 90s. George, in the interests of equality of opportunity, devised a method of taxation which would make it impossible to hold unused land in areas where land was in demand. Land would be taxed, not in ration to improvements, but according to the average value of the land around it. This system would eliminate land speculation and free both industry and the public from all other forms of rent and taxation. Through this single reform, land would be opened to free use; industry would be furthered through lowered taxes and increased demand; laborers would achieve greater freedom of opportunity, higher wages; and, importantly in Garland's analysis, individual Americans would have the chance to rise spiritually and culturally once freed from bare economic need. Garland, for his part, believed wholly in the single tax as a panacea for America's social ills; he was convinced that democratic progress relied heavily on such reform, which would weaken the Butlers of the world and extend a much-needed hand to the suffering agrarian Haskinses. He campaigned widely for the single tax platform and became as well known for his exertions as social reformer as for his "local colorist" fiction.
Later in his life, Garland's chronicle of his family's experience on the Dakota prairies, A Son of the Middle Border, won him the Pulitzer Prize for biography. His place in American letters has been disputed, but there can be no doubt that in the context of Nash Smith's argument about the necessity of an interpretive approach to the American West that did not rely on the "paired but contradictory ideas of nature and civilization." America in the late 19th century was a rapidly expanding nation, one which saw the closing of the Western frontier (1890) and the dawning of a new and increasingly regimented era, one in which increased attention to social reform and individual dignity--of the sort Garland so fervently wrote about--would challenge America in new ways. paw.
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