Celebrity-Apr-16-1916-4713041 | NewspaperArchive (original) (raw)

American Single Taxers Invade Tiny AndorraFiske Warren Carries Their Gospel to the Republic Hidden for Twelve Centuries in the Pyrenees Between France and SpainWHEN Andorra, the republic hidden in the Pyrenees and the worlds oldest republic, in or out of hiding, has a history to be written, the first chapter may be headed “ Ch«*.ma*ne.” the second Henry George.- In all of the twelve centuries intervening so little happened that the Andorrans have not yet seen fit to set up the first printingpress to record it.perhaps the historian will decide tocall his second chapter “When Fiske Warren came from Tahanto” for it is Fiske Warren, founder of the single tax colony of Tahanto in Massachusetts, who has taken the land gospel according to Henry George to this queer little sovereign State wedged into the mountains between Frange and Spain. And already the land which he has purchased in Santa Coloma and converted into a single tax enclave is talked about by the natives as they have talked about the footprints in their mountain rocks showing where Charlemagne fought and conquered the Hoars twelve hundred years ago.It was then that the history of their republic began. The pilgrim fall era of the new nation were C atalonians driven from their homes and fields in Northern Spain into the mountains, where they found shelter in Andorra, the Valley of the Valira. so inaccessible, then as now. so apparently unlivable after getting to it, that onjv once did the Moors try to reach them there, and then Charlemagne came to the rescue. He saved them from the invaders, recognized their one hundred and seventy-five square miles cf rock as an independent State and left it to take care of itself, which it has done ever since under the joint protection of France and Spain, but never with any political interference on the part of either of those countries.The only tribute that Charlemagne levied was a tax of two trout a year from the Valira. merely as a token of gratitude, but there is 110 record that the fish were ever delivered. Perhaps the Parliament of farmers, wood cutters, and miners, to prove the absolute independence of their country, made a national game law prohibiting the catchingof Andorra trout for foreign monarchs. That, bke everything else pertaining to the laws and history of the republic, is a matter of conjecture, for there has never been a Government printer. Suth nmials as there are are laboriously hand written manuscripts kept under lock in the House of the Valley, that is, the national capitol, which looks verj niuth like a grist mill in a New England village.The natives never care to see these documents, partly because so few of them can read, partly because every one knows all the simple laws by heart, and the annals must never be shown to anybody from beyond the Valley because there is a tradition that records shown to a foreigner w’iH disappear; in some miraculous way, dot as souvenirs, for Andorra has never been in—the tourist track and knows nothing about such things. But the railroad is coming from France around the east end of the Pyrenees; it would be there now if the great war had not stopped the work of construction. And the changes that will eome with steam may make the thirdchapter of the history of Andorra not such simple reading as the Charlemagne and Henry George sections.Cp to this moment, however, there has been no change in more than a thousand yehrs. The republic is divided into six parishes with the same names and the same boundaries that they have bad since the year 819. And each parish is divided into towns or quarters. There is a council of the quarter, a council of the parish, and the Grand Council of the Valley, which is the National Parliament The twenty-four members of it. four from each parish, acquire upon election the title of Very Illustrious, but no man can be a Very Illustrious who is not also very industrious, actually engaged in some useful labor—cattle grazing, lumbering, farming or mining, and the like.Furthermore, being a Very Illustrious does not exempt a man from doing his personal r’v *e of viork to keep the mule tracks ove* the mountains passable. There are no carriage roads Other essential qualifications for a candidate for the Parliament arc that h** must be :0 years old, temperate, entirely free from