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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF HENRY GEORGE
OUR LAND
AND
LAND POLICY
SPEECHES, LECTURES AND
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS
NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY
PAGE & COMPANY 3 1904
Copyright, 1871, by
HENRY GEORGE
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PEEFATOEY NOTE.
THIS volume is made up of selections from the miscella-
neous written and spoken utterances of Henry George not
otherwise appearing in book form. It does not purport
to contain all of this class of his productions. To make
such a publication would require several volumes like
this. The present volume is intended to contain only such
speeches, lectures, sermons, essays and other writings as
serve to exhibit Mr. George's varied powers of tongue and
pen and set forth in many of its phases his philosophy of
the natural order.
The most important matter in this collection is that
with which it opens "Our Land, and Land Policy" given
to the public for the first time since its original limited
publication in 1871, when its author was only locally
known in San Francisco as a newspaper writer. It en-
gaged, with other work, four months in the writing, and
was Mr. George's first attempt to set forth the essentials
of his philosophy. Of it he said long afterwards : "Some-
thing like a thousand copies were sold, but I saw that
to command attention the work must be done more thor-
oughly." The work was done more thoroughly in "Prog-
ress and Poverty" eight years later. To that celebrated
book "Our Land and Land Policy" bears the relation of
acorn to oak. Mr. George towards the end of his life con-
templated republishing the little work, believing that it
might interest many whom the larger book would not at
first reach. Death intervened between the plan and its
carrying out. Mr. George thought of making such changes
in "Our Land and Land Policy" as in his opinion would
fit it more nearly to the present times, but as his was
the only hand that could properly do this, it is here pre-
sented precisely as he published it in 1871.
HENRY GEORGE, JR.
NEW YORK, December, 1900.
CONTENTS.
OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY ..... 1
THE LANDS OF THE UNITED STATES ... 3
THE LANDS OF CALIFORNIA . . . .36
LAND AND LABOUR 75
THE TENDENCY OF OUR PRESENT LAND POLICY . 89
-[WHAT OUR LAND POLICY SHOULD BE . . .98
THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY . . . 133
THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC 155
THE CRIME OF POVERTY 185
LAND AND TAXATION 219
"Tnou SHALT NOT STEAL" 241
To WORKINGMEN 263
"THY KINGDOM COME" 277
JUSTICE THE OBJECT TAXATION THE MEANS . . 295
CAUSES OF THE BUSINESS DEPRESSION . . . 323
PEACE BY STANDING ARMY 333
OUR LAND AND
LAND POLICY
L
THE LANDS OP THE UNITED STATES. .
EXTENT OP THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
ACCOKDING to the latest report of the Commissioner
JLJL of the General Land Office, the public domain not yet
disposed of amounted on the 30th of June, 1870, to
1,387,732,209 acres.
These figures are truly enormous, and paraded as they
always are whenever land enough for a small empire is
asked for by some new railroad company, or it is pro-
posed to vote away a few million acres to encourage
steamship building, it is no wonder that they have a daz-
zling effect, and that our public lands should really seem
"practically inexhaustible." For this vast area is more
than eleven times as large as the great State of California ;
more than six times as large as the united area of the
thirteen original States ; three times as large as all Europe
outside of Eussia. Thirteen hundred and eighty-seven
millions of acres! Boom for thirteen million good-sized
American farms; for two hundred million such farms as
the peasants of France and Belgium consider themselves
rich to own; or for four hundred million such tracts as
constituted the patrimony of an ancient Eoman! Yet
when we come to look closely at the homestead possibili-
3
4 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
ties expressed by these figures, their grandeur begins to
melt away. In the first place, in these 1,387,732,209 acres
are included the lands which have been granted, but not
yet patented, to railroad and other corporations, which,
counting the grants made at the last session, amount to
about 200,000,000 acres in round numbers; in the next
place, we must deduct the 369,000,000 acres of Alaska,
for in all human probability it will be some hundreds if
not some thousands of years before that Territory will
be of much avail for agricultural purposes; in the third
place, we must deduct the water surface of all the land
States and Territories (exclusive of Alaska), which, tak-
ing as a basis the 5,000,000 acres of water surface con-
tained in California, cannot be less than 80,000,000 acres,
and probably largely exceeds that amount. Still further,
we must deduct the amount which will be given under
existing laws to the States yet to be erected, and which
has been granted, or reserved for other purposes, which in
the aggregate cannot fall short of 100,000,000 acres; leav-
ing a net area of 650,000,000 acres less than half the
gross amount of public land as given by the Commis-
sioner.
When we come to consider what this land is, the mag-
nificence of our first conception is subject to still further
curtailment. For it includes that portion of the United
States which is of the least value for agricultural pur-
poses. It includes the three greatest mountain chains of the
continent, the dry elevated plains of the eastern slope of
the Kocky Mountains and the arid alkali-cursed stretches
of the great interior basin; and it includes, too, a great
deal of land in the older land States which has been
passed by the settler as worthless. Colorado, Wyoming,
Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona,
though having an abundance of natural wealth of another
UNITED STATES LANDS 5
kind, probably contain less good land in proportion to
their area than any other States or Territories of the
Union, excepting Alaska. They contain numerous val-
leys which with irrigation will produce heavy crops, and
vast areas of good grazing lands which will make this sec-
tion the great stock range of the Union; but the propor-
tion of available agricultural land which they contain is
very small.
Taking everything into consideration, and remembering
that by the necessities of their construction the railroads
follow the water courses and pass through the lowest val-
leys, and therefore get the best land, and that it is fair
to presume that other grants also take the best, it is not
too high an estimate to assume that, out of the 650,000,000
acres which we have seen are left to the United States,
there are at least 200,000,000 acres which for agricultural
or even for grazing purposes are absolutely worthless, and
which if ever reclaimed will not be reclaimed until the
pressure of population upon our lands is greater than is
the present pressure of population upon the lands of
Great Britain.
And, thus, the 1,387,732,209 acres which make such
a showing in the Land Office Eeports come down in
round numbers to but 450,000,000 acres out of which
farms can be carved, and even of this a great proportion
consists of land which can be cultivated only by means
of irrigation, and of land which is only useful for
grazing.
This estimate is a high one. Mr. E. T. Peters, of the
Statistical Bureau, estimates the absolutely worthless land
at 241,000,000 acres. Senator Stewart, in a recent
speech, puts the land fit for homes at one third of the
whole 332,000,000 acres by his figuring, as he makes
no deductions except for Alaska and the Texas Pacific
6 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
grant. Assuming his proportion to be correct, and ad-
mitting that the railroads, etc., take their proportion of
the bad as well as of the good land, we would have, after
making the proper deductions, but 216,000,000 acres of
arable land yet left to the United States.
But taking it at 450,000,000 acres, our present popu-
lation is in round numbers 40,000,000, and thus our 'lim-
itless domain/' of which Congressmen talk so much when
about to vote a few million acres of it away, after all
amounts to but twelve acres per head of our present
population.
CUE COMING POPULATION".
BUT let us look at those who are coming. The amount
of our public land is but one factor; the number of those
for whose use it will be needed is the other. Our popu-
lation, as shown by the census of last year, is 38,307,399.
In 1860 it was 31,443,321, giving an increase for the
decade of 6,864,078, or of a fraction less than twenty-two
per cent. Previous to this, each decade had shown a
steady increase at the rate of thirty-five per cent., and
this may be considered the rate of our normal growth.
The war, with its losses and burdens, and the political,
financial and industrial perturbations to which it gave
rise, checked our growth during the last decade, but in
that on which we have now entered, there is little doubt
that the growth of the nation will resume its normal rate,
to go on without retardation, unless by some such disturb-
ing influence as that of our great Civil War, until the
pressure of population begins to approximate to the pres-
sure of population in the older countries.
Taking, then, this normal rate as the basis of our cal-
UNITED STATES LANDS 7
dilation, let us see what the increase of our population
for the next fifty years will be:
Our population will be in An increase in that decade of
1880 51,714,989 13,407,590
1890 69,815,235 18,100,246
1900 94,250,567 24,435,332
1910 127,238,267 32,987,700
1920 171,771,610 44,533,593
This estimate is a low one. The best estimates here-
tofore made give us a population of from 100,000,000 to
115,000,000 in 1900, and from 185,000,000 to 200,000,-
000 in 1920, and there is little doubt that the Census of
1870, on which the calculation is based, does not show the
true numbers of our people. But it is best to be on the
safe side, and the figures given are sufficiently imposing.
In truth, it is difficult to appreciate, certainly impossible
to overestimate, the tremendous significance of these fig-
ures when applied to the matter we are considering.
By 1880, the end of the present decade, our population
will be thirteen millions and a half more than in 1870
that is to say, we shall have an addition to our popula-
tion of more than twice as many people as are now living
in all the States and Territories west of the Mississippi
(including the whole of Louisiana), an addition in ten
years of as many people as there were in the whole of the
United States in 1832.
By 1890 we shall have added to our present population
thirty-one and a half millions, an addition equal to the
present population of the whole of Great Britain.
By the year 1900 twenty-nine years off we shall have
an addition of fifty-six millions of people; that is, we shall
have doubled, and have increased eighteen millions beside.
8 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
By 1910, the end of the fourth decade, our increase
over the population of 1870 will be eighty-nine millions,
and by 1920 the increase will be nearly one hundred and
thirty-four millions; that is to say, at the end of a half
century from 1870 we shall have multiplied four and a
half times, and the United States will then contain their
present population plus another population half as large
as the present population of the whole of Europe.
What becomes of our accustomed idea of the immensity
of our public domain in the light of these sober facts?
Does our 450,000,000 acres of available public land seem
"practically inexhaustible" when we turn our faces towards
the future, and hear in imagination, in the years that are
almost on us, the steady tramp of the tens of millions,
and of the hundreds of millions, who are coming?
Vast as this area is, it amounts to but thirty-three acres
per head to the increased population which we will gain in
the present decade; to but fourteen acres per head to the
new population which we will have in twenty years ; to but
four acres per head to the additional population which we
will have by the close of the century !
We need not carry the calculation any further. Our
public domain will not last so long. In fact, if we go
ahead, disposing of it at the rate we are now doing, it will
not begin to last so long, and we may even count upon
our ten fingers the years beyond which our public lands
will be hardly worth speaking of.
Between the years 1800 and 1870 our population in-
creased about thirty-three millions. During this increase
of population, besides the disposal of vast tracts of wild
lands held by the original States, the Government has dis-
posed of some 650,000,000 acres of the public domain.
We have now some 450,000,000 acres of available land
left, which, in the aggregate, is not of near as good a qual-
UNITED STATES LANDS 9
ity as that previously disposed of. The increase of popu-
lation will amount to thirty-two millions in the next twenty
years! Evidently, if we get rid of our remaining public
land at the rate which we have been getting rid of it since
the organisation of the General Land Office, it will be all
gone some time before the year 1890, and no child born
this year or last year, or even three years before that, can
possibly get himself a homestead out of Uncle Sam's farm,
unless he is willing to take a mountain-top or alkali patch,
or to emigrate to Alaska.
But the rate at which we are disposing of our public
lands- is increasing more rapidly than the rate at which
our population grows. Over 200,000,000 acres have been
granted during the last ten years to railroads alone, while
bills are now pending in Congress which call for about all
there is left. And as our population increases, the public
domain becomes less and less, and the prospective value
of land greater and greater, so will the desire of speculators
to get hold of land increase, and unless there is a radical
change in our land policy, we may expect to see the public
domain passing into private hands at a constantly increas-
ing rate. When a thing is plenty, nobody wants it; when
it begins to get scarce, there is a general rush for it.
It will be said : Even if the public domain does pass into
private hands, there will be as much unoccupied land as
there otherwise would be, and let our population increase
as rapidly as it may, it will be a long time before there
can be any real scarcity of land in the United States.
This is very true. Before we become as populous as France
or England, we must have a population, not of one hun-
dred millions or two hundred millions, or even five hun-
dred millions ; but of one thousand millions, and even then,
if it is properly divided and properly cultivated, we shall
not have reached the limit of our land to support popula-
10 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
tion. That limit is far, far off so far in fact that we
need give ourselves no more trouble about it than about the
exhaustion of our coal measures. The danger that we
have to fear, is not the overcrowding, but the monopolisa-
tion of our land not that there will not be land enough
to support all, but that land will be so high that the poor
man cannot buy it. That time is not very far distant.
THE PROSPECTIVE VALUE X)F LAND.
SOME years ago an Ohio Senator 1 asserted that by the
close of the century there would not be an acre of average
land in the United States that would not be worth fifty
dollars in gold.
Supposing that our present land policy is to be con-
tinued, if he was mistaken at all, it was in setting the time
too far off.
Between the years 1810 and 1870, the increase in the
population of the United States was no greater than it will
be between the years 1870 and 1890. Coincident with this
increase of population we have seen the value of land go
up from nothing to from $20 to $150 per acre over a
much larger area than our public domain now includes of
good agricultural land.
And as soon as the public domain becomes nearly monop-
olised, land will go up with a rush. The Government,
with its millions of acres of public land, has been the
great bear in the land market. When it withdraws, the
bulls will have it their own way. That there is land to
be had for $2.50 per acre in Dakota lessens the value of
New York farms. Because there is yet cheap land to be
1 Ben Wade.
UNITED STATES LANDS 11
had in some parts of the State, land in the Santa Clara
and Alameda valleys is not worth as much.
And in considering the prospective value of land in the
United States, there are two other things to be kept in
mind: First, that with our shiftless farming we are ex-
hausting our land. That is, that year by year we require
not only more land for an increased population, but more
land for the same population. And, second, that the ten-
dency of cheapened processes of manufacture is to increase
the value of land.
LAND POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES.
THE best commentary upon our national land policy is the
fact, stated by Senator Stewart, that of the 447,000,000
acres disposed of by the Government, not 100,000,000 have
passed directly into the hands of cultivators. If we add
to this amount the lands which have been granted, but
not delivered, we have an aggregate of 650,000,000 acres
disposed of to but 100,000,000 acres directly to cultivators
that is to say, six sevenths of the land have been put into
the hands of people who did not want to use it themselves,
but to make a profit (that is, to exact a tax) from those
who do use it.
A generation hence our children will look with astonish-
ment at the recklessness with which the public domain has
been squandered. It will seem to them that we must have
been mad. For certainly our whole land policy, with here
and there a gleam of common sense shooting through it,
seems to have been dictated by the desire to get rid of our
lands as fast as possible. As the Commissioner of the
General Land Office puts it, seemingly without conscious-
ness of the sarcasm involved, "It has ever been the anx-
12 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
ious desire of the Government to transmute its title to the
soil into private ownership by the most speedy processes
that could be devised."
In one sense our land dealings have been liberal enough.
The Government has made nothing to speak of from its
lands, for the receipts from sales have been not much more
than sufficient to pay the cost of acquisition or extinguish-
ment of Indian title, and the expenses of surveying and of
the land office. But our liberality has been that of a
prince who gives away a dukedom to gratify a whim, or
lets at a nominal rent to a favoured Farmer-General the
collection of taxes for a province. We have been liberal,
very liberal, to everybody but those who have a right to our
liberality, and to every importunate beggar to whom we
would have refused money we have given land that is,
we have given to him or to them the privilege of taxing
the people who alone would put this land to any use.
So far as the Indians, on the one hand, and the English
proprietaries of Crown grants, on the other, were con-
cerned, the founders of the American Republic were clearly
of the opinion that the land belongs to him who will use
it ; but farther than this they did not seem to inquire. In
the early days of the Government the sale of wild lands
was looked upon as a source from which abundant
revenue might be drawn. Sales were at first made in
tracts of not less than a quarter township, or nine square
miles, to the highest bidder, at a minimum of $2 per acre,
on long credits. It was not until 1820 that the minimum
price was reduced to $1.25 cash, and the Government con-
descended to retail in tracts of 160 acres. And it was
not until 1841, sixty-five years after the Declaration of
Independence, that the right of pre-emption was given to
settlers upon surveyed land. In 1862 this right was ex-
tended to unsurveyed land. And in the same year, 1862,
UNITED STATES LANDS 13
the right of every citizen to land, upon the sole condition
of cultivating it, was first recognised by the passage of
the Homestead law, which gives to the settler, after five
years' occupancy and the payment of $22 in fees, 160 acres
of minimum ($1.25) or 80 acres of double-minimum
($2.50) land.
Still further in the right direction did the zeal of Con-
gress for the newly enfranchised slaves carry it in 1866,
when all the public lands in the five Southern land States
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Arkansas
were reserved for homestead entry. 1
But this growing liberality to the settler has been accom-
panied by a still more rapidly growing liberality to specu-
lators and corporations, and since the pre-emption and
homestead laws were passed, land monopolisation has gone
on at a faster rate than ever. Without dwelling on the
special means, such as the exercise of the treaty-making
power, by which large tracts of land in some of the West-
ern States have been given to railroad corporations and
individuals for a few cents per acre, let us look at the gen-
eral methods by which the monopolisation of Government
land has been and is being accomplished.
PUBLIC SALE AND PRIVATE ENTRY.
THE first method adopted for .the disposal of public lands
was their sale to the highest bidder. This theory has never
been abandoned. After lands have been surveyed, they
may, at any time, be ordered to be offered at public sale.
This public sale is only a matter of form, purchasers at
iThis reservation has been broken through by the passage of the
Southern Pacific Railroad bill, which gives 5,000,000 acres to a branch
road in Louisiana, which would be sure to be constructed without any aid.
14 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
more than the minimum price seldom or never appearing.
But the offering makes an important difference in the dis-
position of the lands. Before being offered at public sale
they are open only to pre-emption and homestead entry
that is, to actual settlers, in tracts not exceeding 160 acres.
After being offered, they are open to private entry that is,
they may be purchased by any one in any amount, at the
minimum price, $1.25 per acre.
Whether by the misrepresentations of speculators or the
inadvertence of the authorities, public sales, as a general
thing, have been ordered before the line of settlement had
fairly reached the land, and thus the speculator has been
able to keep in advance, picking out the choice lands in
quantities to retail at a largely advanced price, or to hold
back from improvement for years.
By means of cabins built on wheels or at the intersection
of quarter section lines, and false affidavits, a good deal of
land grabbing has also been done under the pre-emption
and homestead laws. More, however, in the Mississippi
Valley States than elsewhere.
DONATIONS OP PUBLIC LANDS.
THUS land monopolisation has gone on in the ordinary
course of our land dealings. But the extraordinary means
which have done most to hasten it, have been the donations
of land in immense bodies.
It is a trite saying that men are always disposed to be
liberal with that which is not their own a saying which
has had exemplifications enough in the history of all our
legislative bodies. But there is a check to the appropria-
tion of money, in the taxation involved, which, if not felt
by those who vote the money away, is felt by their con-
UNITED STATES LANDS 15
stituents. Not so with appropriations of land. No extra
taxation is caused, and the people at whose expense the
appropriations are made the settlers upon the land
have not yet appeared. And so Congress has always been
extremely liberal in giving away the public lands on all
pretexts, and its liberality has generally been sanctioned,
or at least never seriously questioned by public opinion.
The donations of land by Congress have been to indi-
viduals, to States, and to corporations.
THE BOUNTY LAND GRANTS.
THE grants to individuals consist chiefly of bounties to
soldiers and sailors of the War of 1812 and the Mexican
War, and amount to about 73,000,000 acres, for which
transferable warrants were issued. Nearly all of this
scrip passed into the hands of speculators, not one warrant
in five hundred having been located by or for the original
holder. It has been estimated that, on an average, the
warrants did not yield the donees twenty-five cents per
acre. But taking fifty cents as a basis, we are able to
form an idea of the disproportion between the cost of the
gift to the nation and the benefit to the soldiers. Leav-
ing out of the calculation the few that have taken the
land given them, we find that the Government gave up a
revenue of $91,067,500, which it would have received from
the sale of the land at $1.25 per acre, in order to give the
soldiers $36,427,000, or, in other words, every dollar the
soldiers got cost the nation $2.50! Nor does this tell
the whole story. Though some of this scrip was located by
settlers who purchased it from brokers at an advance on the
price paid soldiers, most of it has been located by specula-
tors who, with the same capital, have been enabled to mo-
16 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
nopolise much more land than they could otherwise have
monopolised, and to monopolise land even before it was
offered at public sale. If we estimate the advance which
settlers have had to pay in consequence of this speculation
at $2 per acre for the amount of transferred scrip, we
have a tax upon settlers of $145,708,000, which, added to
the loss of the Government, gives a total of $236,775,500,
given by the Government and exacted from settlers in
order to give the soldiers $36,427,000 ! And yet the story
is not told. To get at the true cost of this comparatively
insignificant gift, we should also have to estimate the loss
caused by dispersion by the widening of the distance be-
tween producer and consumer which the land specula-
tion, resulting from the issue of bounty warrants, has
caused. But here figures fail us.
GRANTS TO STATES.
THE donations of land by the general Government to indi-
vidual States have been large. Besides special donations
to particular States, the general donations are 500,000 acres
for internal improvements, ten sections for public build-
ings, seventy-two sections for seminaries, two sections in
each township (or l-18th) for common schools, and all
the swamp and overflowed lands, for purposes of reclama-
tion. These grants have been made to the States which
contain public land, of land within their borders. In
addition, all the States have been given 30,000 acres for
each of their Senators and Eepresentatives, for the estab-
lishment of agricultural colleges.
If land is to be sold, it is certainly more just that the
proceeds should go to the States in which it is located
than to the general Government, and the purposes for
UNITED STATES LANDS 17
which these grants have been made are of the best. Yet
judging from the standpoint of a right land policy, which
would give the settler his land at the mere cost of sur-
veying and book-keeping, even in theory, they are bad.
For why should the cost of public buildings, or even of
public education, be saddled upon the men who are just
making themselves farms, who, as a class, have the least
capital, and to whom their capital is of the most im-
portance ?
But whether right or wrong in theory, in practice, like
the military bounties, these grants have proved of but little
benefit to the States in comparison with their cost to the
nation and to settlers. As a general rule they have been
squandered by the States, and their principal effect has
been to aid in the monopolisation of land. How true this
is will be seen more clearly when we come to look at the
land policy of the State of California.
THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE GRANT.
THE Agricultural College grant was made in 1862, and
has since been extended as the Eepresentatives of other
States have been admitted. It aggregates 9,510,000 acres,
and if extended to the Territories as they come in, will
take at least 11,000,000 acres. This grant differs from
the other State grants in this : that it is given to all States,
whether they contain public land or not; those in which
there is no public land being permitted to take their land
in other States which do contain it. This feature makes
this grant, in theory at least, the very worst of the grants,
for it throws upon the settlers in new and poor States the
burden of supporting colleges not merely for their own
State but for other and far richer States.
18 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
For instance, the State of New York, the most popu-
lous and wealthy member of the Union, receives 990,000
acres, which must all be located in the poor far- Western
States. Thus to this old and rich State is given the power
of taxing the settlers upon nearly a million acres in far-
off and poor States for the maintenance of a college which
she is far more able to support than they are. If New
York has located this land well, and retains it (as I be-
lieve is the intention), in a very few years she will be able
to rent it for one fourth or even one third of the crop.
That is, for the support of one of her own institutions,
New York will be privileged to tax 50,000 people, fifteen
hundred or two thousand miles away, to the amount of
one fourth or one third of their gross earnings. And as
time passes, and population becomes denser, and land more
valuable, the number of people thus taxed will increase
and the tax become larger. The Cornell University, to
which the New York grant has been made over, is a noble
and beneficent institution; but will any one say that it is
just to throw the burden of its support upon the labour-
ing classes of far-off States?
The same thing is true of all the old and rich States
which are thus given the right to tax the producers of
new and poorer States. That most of these States have
sold this right to speculators at rates ranging from 3?i/ to
80 cents per acre, only makes the matter worse.
But perhaps this injustice is even more evident in the
case of those Southern States which do contain public
land. The public land of Texas (of which there are some
80,000,000 acres left) belongs to the State; that in the
other Southern land States was reserved for homestead
entry by the Act of 1866. These States get the same
amount of land under this grant as the others; but none
of it is taken from their own lands, and their college
UNITED STATES LANDS 19
scrip is now being plastered over the public lands in Cali-
fornia and the Northwest, much of it being located here.
California gets 150,000 acres under the Act. Yet, be-
sides this, there have been located here up to June of last
year more than 750,000 acres of the land scrip of other
States, and large amounts have since been located or are
here ready for location as soon as immigration sets in.
This scrip brought to the States to which it was issued
an average of, probably, 50 cents per acre. What the giv-
ing of this paltry donation has cost us we know too well.
A great deal of the land thus located at a cost to the
speculator of 50 cents per acre has been sold to settlers at
prices ranging from $5 to $10 per acre, much of it is held
for higher prices than can now be obtained; and a great
deal of it is being rented for one fourth of the gross pro-
duce, the renter supplying all the labour and furnishing
all the seed; while the land monopolisation, of which this
agricultural scrip has been one of the causes, has turned
back immigration from California, has made business of
all kinds dull, and kept idle thousands of mechanics and
producers who would gladly have been adding to the gen-
eral wealth.
Badly as California has suffered, other States have suf-
fered worse. Wisconsin is entitled to 210,000 acres; yet,
up to June, 1870, 1,111,385 acres had been located in that
State with agricultural scrip. Nebraska gets only 90,000
acres, yet the agricultural scrip locations in Nebraska up
to the same time were nearly a million acres.
BAILEOAD GRANTS.
SOME four millions of acres have been donated for the
construction of various wagon roads, and some four mil-
20 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
lions and a half for the construction of canals; but by far
the largest grants have been to railroads the amount
given to these companies within the last ten years aggre-
gating nearly one half as much as all the public lands dis-
posed of in other ways since the formation of the Govern-
ment. This policy was not commenced until 1850, when
six sections per mile, or in all 2,595,053 acres, were granted
for the construction of the Illinois Central road. This
donation was made to the State, and by it assigned to the
company on condition of the payment to the State of
seven per cent, of its gross receipts in lieu of taxation.
This grant, which now seems so insignificant, was then
regarded as princely, and so it was, as it has more than
paid for the building and equipment of the road. The
example being set, other grants of course followed. In
1862, a long leap ahead in the rapidity of the disposal of
the public lands was taken in the passage of the first
Pacific Kailroad bill, giving directly, without the inter-
vention of States, to the Union, Central and Kansas com-
panies ten sections of land per mile (at that time the larg-
est amount ever granted), and $16,000 per mile in bonds.
In 1864 this grant was doubled, making it twenty sections
or 12,800 acres per mile, and at the same time the bonded
subsidy was trebled for the mountain districts and dou-
bled for the interior basin while the Government first
mortgage for the payment of the bonds was changed into
a second mortgage.
But the disposition to give away lands kept on increas-
ing, and the Northern and Southern Pacific getting no
bonds, the land grant to them was again doubled mak-
ing it forty sections or 25,600 acres per mile, or, to speak
exactly, twenty sections in the States and forty sections
in the Territories. To these three Pacific roads alone
have been given 150,000,000 acres in round numbers
UNITED STATES LANDS 21
more than is contained in all Germany, Holland ard Bel-
gium, with their population of over fifty millions more
land than that of any single European state except Russia.
The largest single grant and it is a grant unparalleled in
the history of the world is that to the Northern Pacific,
which aggregates 58,000,000 acres. And besides this these
roads get 400 feet right of way (which in the case of the
Northern Pacific amounts to 100,000 acres), what land
they want for depots, stations, etc., and the privilege of
taking material from Government land, which means that
they may cut all the timber they wish off Government
sections, reserving that on their own. With these later
grants has also been inaugurated the plan of setting aside
a tract on each side of the grant in which the companies
may make up any deficiency within the original limits
by reason of settlement. Thus the grant to the Southern
Pacific withdraws from settlement a belt of land sixty
miles wide in California and one hundred miles wide in
the Territories, and that to the Northern Pacific withdraws
a belt one hundred and twenty miles wide from the west-
ern boundary of Minnesota to Puget Sound and the Co-
lumbia River.
Since the day when Esau sold his birthright for a mess
of pottage we may search history in vain for any parallel
to such concessions. Munificence, we call it! Why, our
common use of words leaves no term in the English tongue
strong enough to express such reckless prodigality. Just
think of it ! 25,600 acres of land for the building of one
mile of railroad land enough to make 256 good-sized
American farms; land enough to make 4,400 such farms
as in Belgium support a family each in independence and
comfort. And this given to a corporation, not for build-
ing a railroad for the Government or for the people, but
for building a railroad for themselves; a railroad which
22 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
they will own as absolutely as they will own the land a
railroad for the use of which both Government and people
must pay as much as though they had given nothing for
its construction.
THE VALUE OP THESE GRANTS.
IF we look but a few years ahead, to the time when we
shall begin to feel the pressure of a population of one
hundred millions, the value of these enormous grants is
simply incalculable. But their immediate value is greatly
underestimated. Land was given to the first Pacific roads
as though it had not and never would have any value.
Money enough to build the roads and leave princely for-
tunes besides was placed in the hands of the companies,
and the land was thrown in as a liberal grocer might
throw an extra lump of sugar into the already falling
scale. Yet it is already apparent that by far the most
valuable part of these franchises are these land grants.
The timber which the Central Pacific gets in the Sierras
will of itself yield more than the cost of the whole road.
In addition, it has large amounts of good agricultural lands
in California and along the Nevada river bottoms, and
millions of acres of the best grazing lands in the sage-
brush plains of Nevada and Utah, while there are thou-
sands of acres of its lands which will have enormous value
from the coal, salt, iron, lead, copper and other minerals
they contain. The Union Pacific lands in the Platte Val-
ley have, so far as sold, yielded it an average of $5 per
acre; and though it gets no timber to speak of, it has
millions of acres which will soon be valuable for grazing,
and for a long distance its route passes through the great-
est coal and iron deposits of the continent, where much
UNITED STATES LANDS 23
of its 12,600 acres per mile will in time be valued at
thousands of dollars per acre.
Twenty years ago, when the Illinois Central received its
grant, its lands were worth no more than those now given
the Northern Pacific. Yet the lands sold by the Illinois
Cejitral have averaged over $12 per acre, and those yet
remaining on hand are held at a still higher price. Count-
ing at the company's price what is held, the grant has
yielded over $30,000,000 much more than the cost of the
road. If six sections per mile will do this in twenty years,
what should forty sections per mile do ?
The Directors of the Northern Pacific have themselves
estimated their grant to be worth $10 per acre on the com-
pletion of the road. I think they rather under- than
over-estimated it, and for an obvious reason. A true state-
ment of the real value of the grant would tend to dis-
credit the whole affair in the eyes of the cautious foreign
capitalists, from whom the company seeks to borrow
money, for they would not believe that any Government
could be extravagant enough to make such a donation.
But it must be remembered that the line of the Northern
Pacific passes for nearly its whole length through as fine
an agricultural country as that of Illinois; that its grant
consists, in large part, of immensely valuable timber and
mineral land, and that it will build up town after town,
one of them at least a great commercial city, on its own
soil.
Furthermore, for reasons before stated, the increase in
the value of land during the next twenty years must
be much greater than it has been in the last twenty years.
Taking these things into consideration, is it too much to
say that in twenty years from now the lands of the com-
pany will have sold for or will be worth an average of at
least $20 per acre? At this rate the grant amounts to
24 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
over half a million dollars per mile, or in the aggregate
to the enormous sum of $1,160,000,000 a sum more than
half the national debt. This donated absolutely to one
corporation. And for what? For building a road which
cannot cost more than eighty millions, and for building it
for themselves ! .
No keener satire upon our land-grant policy could be writ-
ten than that which is to be found in the published adver-
tisement of this Northern Pacific Company. The Directors
show that if they get an average of but $2 per acre for
their land, they can pay the whole cost of building and
equipping the road and have a surplus of some $20,000,000
left. That is to say, the Government might have built
the road by merely raising the average price of the lands
$1 per acre, and have made a profit by the operation,
while it would then own the road, and could give or lease
it to the company which would agree to charge the lowest
rates. As it is, the Government has raised the price to
settlers on one half the land $1.25 per acre; the other half
it has given to the company to charge settlers just what
it pleases; and then on this railroad which it has made
the settlers pay for over and over again both Government
and settlers must pay for transportation just as though
the road had been built by private means.
THE ARGUMENT FOR RAILROAD GRANTS.
So plausible and so ably urged are the arguments for these
grants, such general acceptance have they gained, and so
seldom are they challenged (for the opposition which has
been made has been rather against the extravagance than
the theory of the grants) that it is worth while to consider
them with some care.
UNITED STATES LANDS 25
The plea for railroad land grants is about this: By
giving land to secure the building of railroads, we develop
the country without expense, or at least at the expense
of those who largely profit by the operation. The land
which we give is useless as it is ; the railroad makes it use-
ful and valuable. The Government giving really nothing
of present value, does not even deprive itself of that which
it might receive in the future, for it is reimbursed for the
selling price of the land it gives by doubling the price of
the land it retains. The Government in fact acts like a
sagacious individual, who having an unsaleable estate, gives
half of it away to secure improvements which will enable
him to sell the other half for as much as he at first asked
for the whole. The settler is also the gainer, for land
at $2.50 per acre with a railroad is worth more to him
than land at $1.25 per acre without a railroad, and vast
stretches of territory are opened to him to which he could
not otherwise go for lack of means to transport his pro-
duce to market; while the country at large is greatly the
gainer by the enormous wealth which railroads always
create.
"Here are thousands of square miles of fertile land,"
cries an eloquent Senator, "the haunt of the bear, the
buffalo and the wandering savage, but of no use whatever
to civilised man, for there is no railroad to furnish cheap
and quick communication with the rest of the world. Give
away a few millions of these acres for the building of a
railroad and all this land may be used. People will go
there to settle, farms will be tilled and towns will arise,
and these square miles, now worth nothing, will have a
market and a taxable value, while their productions will
stream across the continent, making your existing cities
still greater and their people still richer; giving freight
to your ships and work to your mills."
26 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
All this sounds very eloquent to the land-grant man
who stands in the lobby waiting for the little bill to go
through which is to make him a millionaire, and really
convinces him that he is a benefactor of humanity, the
Joshua of the hardy settler and the Moses of the down-
trodden immigrant. And backed up, as it is, by columns
of figures showing the saving in railroad over wagon trans-
portation, the rapidity of settlement where land grants
have been already made, and the increase in the value of
real estate, it sounds very plausible to those who have not
anything like the reason to be as easily convinced as has
the land-grant man. But will it bear the test of examina-
tion? Let us see:
In the first place it must be observed that the considera-
tion for which we make these grants is purely one of time
to get railroads built before they would otherwise be
built. No one will seriously pretend that without land
grants railroads would never be built; all that can be
claimed is that without grants they would not be built so
soon that is, until the prospective business would war-
rant the outlay. This is what we get, or rather expect to
get, for we do not always get it. What do we give? We
give land. That is, we give the company, in addition to
the power of charging (practically what it pleases) for
the carrying it does, the unlimited power of charging the
people who are to settle upon one half the land for the
privilege of settling there. If the Government loses noth-
ing, it is because the settlers on one half of the land must
pay double price to reimburse it, while the settlers on the
other half must pay just what the company chooses to ask
them.
Now, in the course of the settlement of this land there
comes a time when there are enough settlers, together with
the prospective increase of settlers, to warrant the build-
UNITED STATES LANDS 27
ing of a railroad without a land grant. Admitting that
the settlers who come upon the land before that time are
gainers by the land grant in getting a railroad before they
otherwise would, 1 it is evident that the settlers after that
time are losers by the amount of the additional price which
they must pay for their land, for they would have had a
railroad anyhow.
1 But as to this it must be remembered that the gain to the settler is
not to be measured by the increased advantage which the railroad gives
to the new land through which it is built, but by the difference in advan-
tage which that land offers over the land on which he would otherwise
have settled. Thus we cannot estimate the gain from the building of the
Northern Pacific road to the people now settling along its route in Minne-
sota and Dakota by the saving in the cost of transportation of the produce
of that land ; for had the road not been projected, they would not have
settled there, but would have settled in Iowa or Nebraska, where rail-
roads are already built ; and thus the gain they derive from the building
of the Northern Pacific is not to be measured by the increased advantage
which the railroad gives for the cultivation of the land on which they are
settling, but by the advantage which the railroad gives that land over
land in Iowa or Nebraska, on which they would otherwise have settled.
At first look, it would appear that all the people who go where a new
railroad is built must gain something that they could not gain elsewhere,
as otherwise they would not go there. This is doubtless true as regards
such gain as inures to the individual without regard to other individuals,
but not always true as regards such individual gain as is also a gain to
the community. For some part of the population which accompanies
the building of a railroad through an unsettled country comes to minis-
ter to the needs and desires of those who build it, and is merely to be
regarded as an appendage of the building force, and with many of the
others the expectation of advantage is prospective and speculative. They
settle in the new country which the road is opening up, not because their
labour will yield them a larger return than in other places to which they
might go, but because they can get choice locations or a larger amount of
land, which population afterwards to come will make valuable. That is,
the gain which they expect is not from the increased productiveness of
their own labour, but from the appropriation of some portion of other
people's labour and is not a gain to the community, though it may be a
28 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
And this point where the gain of settlers ceases, and
the loss of settlers commences, is very much nearer the
beginning of settlement that is to say, there are fewer
gainers and more losers, than might at first glance be
supposed. For if there were no land grants at all, the
land would be open to settlers as homesteads, or at $1.25
per acre, and therefore the number of actual settlers which
would justify the construction of a non-land-grant railroad
would be very much smaller than that which would suffice
to furnish a land-grant railroad with a paying business,
as the prospective increase during and upon the comple-
tion of the road would be very much greater.
So therefore, when, by giving a land grant, we get a
railroad to precede settlement, if the first settlers gain
at all, the others lose. The gain of the first is lessened
by their having to pay double price for their lands; the
loss of the others is mitigated by no gain. So that, as
far as settlers are concerned, we are sacrificing the future
for the present ; we are taxing the many for the very ques-
tionable benefit of the few. And even in the case of the
gainers, their first advantage, in having a railroad before
its natural time, is offset by the subsequent retardation
of settlement in their neighbourhood which the land grant
causes.
For if the first effect of the land grant is to hasten set-
tlement by getting a railroad built, its second effect is to
retard it by enhancing the price of lands. Illinois, where
the first railroad land grant was made, may in a year or
two after have had more people, but for years back her
population has certainly been less because of it. For
nearly half a million acres one fifth of this grant re-
mained unoccupied in 1870, the company holding it at an
average price of $13 per acre. If this land could have
been had for $1.25 per acre, it would have been occupied
UNITED STATES LANDS 29
years ago. This is the case wherever land grants have
been made, and long before the Territories, in which we
are now giving away 25,000 acres per mile for the building
of railroads, are one tenth settled, we will be asked to
give away like amounts of other unappropriated territory
(if there is any by that time left) in order to furnish
"cheap homes to the settlers !"
Considering all the people who are to come upon our
now unoccupied lands, weighing the near future with the
present, is it not evident that the policy of land grants
is a most ruinous one even in theory even when we get
by it -that which we bargain to get? Let us see how it
affects the community at large in the present.
Where a land grant is necessary to induce the building
of a road, it is because the enterprise itself will not pay
that is to say, at least, that it will not yield as large a
return for the investment as the same amount of capital
would yield if invested somewhere else. The land grant
is a subsidy which we give to the investors to make up
this loss.
Is it not too plain for argument, that where capital is
invested in a less remunerative enterprise than it other-
wise would be, there is a loss to the whole community?
Whether that loss is made up to the individuals by a sub-
sidy or not, only affects the distribution of the loss among
individuals the loss to the community, which includes all
its individuals, is the same.
But it will be said: Though this may be true so far as
the direct returns of the railroad are concerned, there are
other advantages from railroad building besides the re-
ceipts from fares and freights. The owners of the land
through which the road passes, the producer and the con-
sumer of the freight which it carries, and the passenger
who rides upon it, are all benefited to an amount far ex-
30 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
ceeding the sums paid as fares and freight. When we
give a land grant, we merely give the railroad company
a share in these diffused profits, which will make up to it
the loss which would accrue were it confined to its legiti-
mate share. Thus: Here is a railroad, the business of
which would not pay for building it for five years yet.
The loss to the unsubsidised company which would build
it now and run it for five years would be $10,000,000.
But the gain to landowners and others would be $100,000,-
000. Now, if by a land grant or otherwise, we secure to
the railroad company a share of this collateral gain,
amounting to $20,000,000, the railroad company will make
a profit of $10,000,000, instead of a loss of $10,000,000,
by building the road, and others would make a profit of
$80,000,000.
But it must be remembered that every productive enter-
prise, besides its return to those who undertake it, yields
collateral advantages to others. It is the law of the uni-
verse each for all, and all for each. If a man only plant
a fruit tree, his gain is that he gathers its fruit in its time
and its season. But in addition to his gain, there is a
gain to the whole community in the increased supply of
fruit, and in the beneficial effect of the tree upon the cli-
mate. If he build a factory, besides his own profit
he furnishes others with employment and with profit; he
adds to the value of surrounding property. And if he
build a railroad, whether it be here or there, there are
diffused benefits, besides the direct benefit to himself from
its receipts.
Now, as a general rule, is it not safe to assume that
the direct profits of any enterprise are the test of its
diffused profits? For instance: It will pay to put up an
ice-making machine rather in New Orleans than in Ban-
gor. Why? Because more people in New Orleans need
UNITED STATES LANDS 31
ice, and they need it more than those in Bangor. The
individual profit will be greater, because the general profit
will be greater. It will pay capitalists better to build
a railroad between San Francisco and Santa Cruz than
it will to build a like railroad in Washington Territory.
Why? Because there are more people who will ride, and
more freight to be carried, on the one than on the other.
And as the diffused benefit of a railroad can only inure
from the carrying of passengers and freight, is it not evi-
dent that the diffused benefit is greater in the one case
than in the other, just in proportion as the direct benefit
is greater?
In the second place, in any particular case in which we
have to offer a subsidy to get a railroad built, the ques-
tion is not, shall we have this railroad or nothing? but,
shall we have this road in preference to something else ?
for the investment of capital in one enterprise prevents
its investment in another. No legislative act, no issue
of bonds, no grant of lands, can create capital. Capital,
so to speak, is stored-up labour, and only labour can create
it. The available capital of the United States at any
given time is but a given quantity. It may be invested
here or it may be invested there, but it is only here or
there that it can be invested. Nor is there any illimitable
supply abroad to borrow from. The amount of foreign
capital seeking investment in the United States is about
so much each year ; and if by increasing our offers we get
any more, we must pay more, not merely for the increased
amount which we get, but for all which we get.
To recur, now, to our former example: Here is a rail-
road through an unsettled country, which to build now
would, relying upon its direct receipts, entail a loss of
$10,000,000, the diffused benefits of which may be esti-
mated at $100,000,000. Here is another railroad which
32 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
it would take the same capital to build, which, in the same
time, would yield a direct profit of $5,000,000, and the dif-
fused benefits of which it is fair to presume might be
expressed by $300,000,000. Now if we offer to the build-
ers of the first road a land grant which will enable them
to obtain one fifth of the diffused benefits of the road, we
could induce them to build that road rather than the
other, for they would make twice as much by doing so.
But what would be the net result to the community?
Clearly a loss of $215,000,000. That is to say: By offer-
ing a land grant we could induce capitalists to build a
road in Washington Territory, rather than between San
Francisco and Santa Cruz. But if we did do so, the peo-
ple between San Francisco and Santa Cruz would lose far
more than the capitalists and the Washington Territory
settlers would gain; the people of the Pacific Coast, as a
whole, and the United States, as a whole, would be poorer
than if we had left capital free to seek the investments
which would of themselves return to it the largest profits.
The comparison between an individual and the nation
is fallacious. The one is a part, the other is the whole.
The individual lives but a few years, the lifetime of the
nation is counted by centuries. It may profit an indi-
vidual to induce people to settle or capital to be invested
in certain places; the nation can only profit by having its
population and its capital so located and invested that the
largest returns will be realised. It may profit an indi-
vidual to sacrifice the near future to the present, but it
cannot profit a nation.
As concerns the statistics by which the benefits of land-
grant railroads are attempted to be shown, it must be re-
membered, first, that the population of the United States
is growing at the rate of a million per year, and next,
that increase in the value of land is not increase in wealth.
UNITED STATES LANDS 33
That whatever population railroads have brought to new
States and Territories is dispersion, not increase, is proven
by the fact that the population of the United States is not
increasing faster than it did before railroad building com-
menced, while the slightest consideration of economic laws
shows that whatever gain has resulted from their building
is at the expense of a greater gain which would have
resulted from the investment of the same capital where it
was more needed in fact, that there is no gain, but a
loss. We have been supposing that land grants secure the
consideration for which they are given the building of
roads before they would otherwise be built; but this is far
from being always the case. With the exception, per-
haps, of the little Stockton and Copperopolis road, the
California grants have not hastened the building of rail-
roads, but have actually retarded it, by retarding settle-
ment. The fact is, that in nearly all cases these land
grants are made to men who do not propose, and who
have not the means, to build the road. They keep them
(procuring extensions of time, when necessary x ) until
they can sell out to others who wish to build, and who, on
their part, generally delay until they can see a profit in
the regular business.
To sum up : When we give a land grant for the build-
ing of a railroad, we either get a railroad built before it
would be built by private enterprise, or we do not.
If we do not, our land is given for nothing; if we do,
capital is diverted from more to less productive invest-
ments, and we are the poorer for the operation.
In either case the land grant tends to disperse popula-
tion; in either case it causes the monopolisation of land;
1 Congress, in 1870, actually passed a bill extending the time for the
completion of the first twenty miles of Western road to which a land
grant was made in 1853.
34 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
in either case it makes the many poorer, and a few the
richer.
I have devoted this much space to answering directly
the argument for railroad land grants, because they are
constantly urged, and are seldom squarely met, and be-
cause so long as we admit that we may profit by thus
granting away land in "reasonable amounts/' we shall
certainly find our lands going in "unreasonable amounts."
But surely it requires no argument to show that this thing
of giving away from twelve to twenty-five thousand acres
per mile of road in order to get people to build a rail-
road for themselves, is a wicked extravagance for which
no satisfactory excuse can be made. This land, now so
worthless that we give it away by the million acres with-
out a thought, is only worthless because the people who are
to cultivate it have not yet arrived. They are coming fast
we have seen how fast. While there is plenty of uncul-
tivated land in the older States, we are giving away the
land in the Territories under the plea of hastening settle-
ment, and when the time comes that these lands are really
needed for cultivation, they will all be monopolised, and
the settler, go where he will, must pay largely for the
privilege of cultivating soil which since the dawn of cre-
ation has been waiting his coming. We need not trouble
ourselves about railroads; settlement will go on without
them as it went on in Ohio and Indiana, as it has gone
on since our Aryan forefathers left the Asiatic cradle of
the race on their long westward journey. Without any
giving away of the land, railroads, with every other appli-
ance of civilisation, will come in their own good time. Of
all people, the American people need no paternal Govern-
ment to direct their enterprise. All they ask is fair play,
as between man and man; all the best Government can
do for them is to preserve order and administer justice.
UNITED STATES LANDS 35
There may be cases in which political or other non-
economic reasons may make the giving of a subsidy for
the building of a road advisable. In such cases, a money
subsidy is the best, a land subsidy the worst. But if the
policy of selling our lands is continued, and it is desirable
to make the payment of the subsidy contingent upon the
sale of the land, then the proceeds of the land, not the
land itself, should be granted.
There is one argument for railroad land grants which
I have neglected to notice. Senator Stewart pleads that
these grants have kept the land from passing into the
hands, of speculators, who would have taken more than the
railroad companies, and have treated the settlers less lib-
erally than the companies. Perhaps he is right; there is
certainly some truth in his plea. But if he is right, what
does that prove? Not the goodness of railroad grants;
but the badness of the laws which allow speculation in
the public lands.
II.
THE LANDS OF CALIFOENIA.
HOW FAR LAND MONOPOLISATION HAS ALREADY GONE.
IN all the new States of the Union land monopolisation
has gone on at an alarming rate, but in none of them so
fast as in California, and in none of them, perhaps, are
its evil effects so manifest.
California is the greatest land State in the Union, both
in extent (for Texas owns her own land) and in the
amount of land still credited to the Government in De-
partment reports. With an area of 188,981 square miles,
or, in round numbers, 121,000,000 acres, she has a popula-
tion of less than 600,000 that is to say, with an area
twenty-four times as large as Massachusetts, she has a
population not half as great. Of this population not one
third is engaged in agriculture, and the amount of land
under cultivation does not exceed 2,500,000 acres. Surely
land should here be cheap, and the immigrant should come
with the certainty of getting a homestead at Government
price! But this is not so. Of the 100,000,000 acres of
public land which, according to the last report of the
Department, yet remain in California (which of course
includes all the mountains and sterile plains), some 20,-
36
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 37
000,000 acres are withheld from settlement by railroad
reservations, and millions of acres more are held under
unsettled Mexican grants, or by individuals under the pos-
sessory laws of the State, without color of title. Though
here or there, if he knew where to find it, there may be a
little piece of Government land left, the notorious fact is
that the immigrant coming to the State to-day must, as
a general thing, pay their price to the middlemen before
he can begin to cultivate the soil. Although the popula-
tion of California, all told miners, city residents, China-
men and Diggers does not amount to three to the square
mile ; .although the arable land of the State has hardly
been scratched (and with all her mountains and dry plains
California has an arable surface greater than the entire
area of Ohio), it is already so far monopolised that a
large part of the farming is done by renters, or by men
who cultivate their thousands of acres in a single field.
For the land of California is already to a great extent
monopolised by a few individuals, who hold thousands and
hundreds of thousands of acres apiece. Across many of
these vast estates a strong horse cannot gallop in a day,
and one may travel for miles and miles over fertile ground
where no plough has ever struck, but which is all owned,
and on which no settler can come to make himself a home,
unless he pay such tribute as the lord of the domain chooses
to exact.
Nor is there any State in the Union in which settlers
in good faith have been so persecuted, so robbed, as in
California. Men have grown rich, and men still make a
regular business of blackmailing settlers upon public land,
or of appropriating their homes, and this by the power of
the law and in the name of justice. Land grabbers have
had it pretty much their own way in California they
have moulded the policy of the general Government; have
38 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
dictated the legislation of the State; have run the land
offices and used the courts.
Let us look briefly at the modes by which this land mo-
nopolisation has been carried on.
THE MEXICAN GRANTS.
CALIFORNIA has had one curse which the other States
have not had 1 the Mexican grants. The Mexican land
policy was a good one for a sparsely settled pastoral coun-
try, such as California before the American occupation.
To every citizen who would settle on it, a town lot was
given; to every citizen who wanted it, a cattle range was
granted. By the terms of the cession of California to
the United States it was provided that these rights should
be recognised.
It would have been better, far better, if the American
Government had agreed to permit these grant-holders to
retain a certain definite amount of land around their im-
provements, and compounded for the rest of the grants
called for by the payment of a certain sum per acre, turn-
ing it into the public domain. This would have been best,
not only for the future population of California, but for
the grant-holders themselves as the event has proved.
Or, if means had been taken for a summary and definite
settlement of these claims, the evils entailed by them would
have been infinitesimal compared with what have resulted.
For it is not the extent of the grants (and all told the
bona fide ones call for probably nine or ten million acres
of the best land of California) which has wrought the
mischief, so much as their unsettled condition not the
treaty with Mexico, but our own subsequent policy.
1 The Territory of New Mexico is afflicted in the same way.
LANDS OF CALIFOBNIA 39
It is difficult in a brief space to give anything like an
adequate idea of the villainies for which these grants have
been made the cover. If the history of the Mexican grants
of California is ever written, it will be a history of greed,
of perjury, of corruption, of spoliation and high-handed
robbery, for which it will be difficult to find a parallel.
The Mexican grants were vague, running merely for
so many leagues within certain natural boundaries, or be-
tween other grants, though they were generally marked
out in rough fashion. It is this indefiniteness which has
given such an opportunity for rascality, and has made
them such a curse to California, and which, at the same
time, has prevented in nearly all cases their original owners
from reaping from them any commensurate benefit. Be-
tween the Commission which first passed upon the validity
of the grants and final patent, a thousand places were
found where the grant could be tied up, and where, indeed,
after twenty-three years of litigation the majority of them
still rest. Ignorant of the language, of the customs, of
the laws of the new rulers of their country, without the
slightest idea of technical subtleties and legal delays, mere
children as to business the native grant-holders were com-
pletely at the mercy of shrewd lawyers and sharp specu-
lators, and at a very early day nearly all the grants passed
into other hands.
HOW THE GRANTS FLOAT.
As soon as settlers began to cultivate farms and make
improvements, the grants began to float. The grant-hold-
ers watched the farmers coming into their neighbourhood,
much as a robber chief of the Middle Ages might have
watched a rich Jew taking up his abode within striking
distance of his castle. The settler may have been abso-
40 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
lutely certain that he was on Government land, and may
even have been so assured by the grant-holder himself;
but so soon as he had built his house and fenced his land
and planted his orchard, he would wake up some morn-
ing to find that the grant had been floated upon him, and
that his land and improvements were claimed by some
land shark who had gouged a native Californian out of
his claim to a cattle-run, or wanting an opportunity to
do this, had set up a fraudulent grant, supported by
forged papers and suborned witnesses. Then he must
either pay the blackmailer's price, abandon the results of
bis hard labour, or fight the claim before surveyor-gen-
eral, courts, commissioner, secretary, and Congress itself,
while his own property, parcelled out into contingent fees,
furnished the means for carrying the case from one tri-
bunal to another, for buying witnesses and bribing corrupt
officials. And then, frequently, after one set of settlers
had been thus robbed, new testimony would be discovered,
a new survey would be ordered, and the grant would
stretch out in another direction over another body of set-
tlers, who would then suffer in the same way, while in
many cases, as soon as one grant had been bought off or
beaten away, another grant would come, and there are
pieces of land in California for which four or five differ-
ent titles have been purchased.
The ruling of the courts has been, that so long as the
grants had not been finally located, their owners might
hold possession within their exterior boundaries and eject
settlers. Thus, if a grant is for one league, within cer-
tain natural boundaries which include fifty, the claimant
can put settlers off any part of the fifty leagues.
Whenever any valuable mine or spring is discovered in the
neighbourhood of any of these grants, then the grant jumps.
If they prove worthless, then it floats back again. Thus
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 41
the celebrated Mariposa claim, after two or three locations
in the valley, was finally carried up into the mountains,
where it had as much business as it would have had in
Massachusetts or Ohio, and stretched out into the shape
of a boot to cover a rich mining district. Among the
property given to John Charles Fremont and his partners,
by this location, was the Ophir mine and mill, upon which
an English company had spent over $100,000, after assur-
ances from the Mariposa people that the mine was outside
their claim. In the southern half of California, where
these grants run, there has been hardly a valuable spring
or mine discovered that was not pounced upon by a grant.
One of the latest instances was the attempt to float the
Cuyamaca grant over the new San Diego mining district,
and to include some sixty-five mines one of them, the Pio-
neer, on which $200,000 has been expended. Another was
the attempt to float a grant over the noted Geyser Springs,
in Sonoma county. In both these cases the attempt was
defeated, General Hardenburgh refusing to approve the
surveys. In the latter case, however, it was dog eat dog,
the great scrip locator, W. S. Chapman, having plastered
a Sioux warrant over the wonderful springs. He has
since obtained a patent, though I understand that some-
body else laid a school-land warrant on the springs before
Chapman.
HOW THE GRANTS ARE STRETCHED OUT.
HARDLY any attention seems to have been paid to the
amount of land granted by the Mexican authorities.
Though, under the colonisation laws, eleven leagues (a
Mexican league contains 4,438 acres) constituted the larg-
est amount that could be granted, many of these grants
have been confirmed and patented for much more (in
42 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
the teeth of a decision of the United States Supreme
Court), and under others yet unsettled, much larger
amounts are still held. Grants for one league have been
confirmed for eleven. Claims rejected by the Commis-
sion have been confirmed by the District Courts, and claims
rejected by other decisions of the Supreme Court have been
got through by the connivance of law officers of the Gov-
ernment who would suffer the time for appeal to lapse or
take it so that it would be thrown out on a technicality.
As for the surveys they might almost as well have been
made by the grant-holders themselves, and seem, as a gen-
eral thing, to have run about as the grant-holders wished.
The grants have been extended here, contracted there,
made to assume all sorts of fantastic shapes, for the pur-
pose of covering the improvements of settlers and taking
in the best land. There is one of them that on the map
looks for all the world like a tarantula a fit emblem of
the whole class. In numbers of cases, the names of which
might be recited, grants of four leagues have been stretched
in the survey to eight ; grants of two leagues to six ; grants
of five to ten; and in one case it has been attempted to
stretch one league to forty. In one case, the Saucal Ke-
dondo, where a two-league grant had been confirmed to
five, and a survey of 22,190 acres made, a new survey was
ordered by a clerk of the surveyor-general, and a survey
taking in 25,000 acres more of United States land covered
by settlers was made and fixed up in the office; and it was
not until after some years of litigation before the Depart-
ment that this fact was discovered. In some cases specula-
tors who were "on the inside" would buy from a Spanish
grantee the use of the name of his claim, and get a new
survey which would take in for them thousands of acres
more. The original claimant of Eancho la Laguna asked
for three leagues, or 13,314 acres; the survey was made
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 43
and confirmed for 18,000. Afterwards it was set aside,
on the pretence that the Santa Barbara paper, in which
the advertisement of survey had been published, was
printed for part of the time in San Francisco, and a sur-
vey taking in 48,703 acres made, which, after being re-
jected by Commissioner Edwards, was patented by Com-
missioner Wilson. The Kancho Guadaloupe, a grant of
21,520 acres, was surveyed for 32,408 acres in 1860, the
survey approved, a patent issued, and the ranch sold.
Now the new owner, supported by an affidavit from the
surveyor that objection was made to the 32,000 acre survey
in 1860 by the two Mexican owners (one of whom died
in 1858), is trying to get a new survey confirmed which
takes in 11,000 acres more. The survey of Los Nogales
was made in 1861, under a decree for one league and no
more, and now an application for a new survey which will
include 11,000 acres more is being pushed. The land is
covered by settlers.
THE BIG GRAPE-VINE RANCHO.
PERHAPS the most daring attempt to grab lands and rob
settlers under pretence of a Mexican grant so daring that
it has almost a touch of the comic is the case of Los
Prietos y Najalayegua, which was shown up first in a little
pamphlet by James F. Stuart, of San Francisco, and after-
wards in Congress by Mr. Julian, to whom the settlers of
California are indebted for many signal services. In
Santa Barbara county there is living an old Mexican,
named Jose Dominguez, on whose little ranch grows an
immense grape-vine. In the old times Dominguez had
petitioned for another tract of land of about a league and
a half, but he neglected to comply with the conditions, and
44 OUB LAND AND LAND POLICY
sold it for the sum of one dollar. In fact he seems to
have sold it twice. Finally the claim passed into the hands
of Thomas A. Scott, the Pennsylvania railroad king, and
Edward J. Pringle, of San Francisco. It had never been
presented to the United States Commission, and was con-
sequently barred. But in 1866 a bill confirming the grant,
and accompanied by a memorial purporting to be from
Dominguez, but which Dominguez swears he never saw,
was introduced by Mr. Conness, and slipped quietly
through, under pretence of giving the old man, with his
sixty children and grandchildren, the big grape-vine which
his mother had planted.
The bill was assisted in the House by the reading of a
letter from Mr. Levi Parsons, in which a visit to the Mexi-
can Patriarch and his great grape-vine, the only support
of a greater family, was most touchingly described, and
the intervention of Congress asked as a matter of justice
and humanity. Then came the survey; and the specula-
tors, emboldened by their success with Congress, went in for
a big grab, taking in the modest amount of 208,742 acres *
a pretty good dollar's worth of land, considering that it
included many valuable farms and vineyards. They asked
too much, for an outcry was made and a resurvey was
ordered, which is now pending.
BOGUS GRANTS.
THE real grants have been bad enough, the bogus grants
have been worse. Their manufacture commenced early
the signatures of living ex-Mexican officials being some-
1 The survey was not strictly official, though made by a United States
Deputy, he having reported that the calls were uncertain, and the grantees
asking a survey according to their views.
LANDS OF CALIFOENIA 45
times procured. Of this class was the famous Limantour
claim to a great portion of San Francisco. It was finally
defeated, but not until a large amount had been paid to
its holders, and enormous expenses incurred in fighting it.
Many of these claims have been pressed to final patent,
and settlers driven from their homes by sheriff's posses
or the bayonets of the United States troops. Others have
only been used for purposes of blackmail, the owners of
threatened property being compelled to remove the shadow
from their title when obliged to borrow or to sell, and find-
ing it cheaper to pay the sums asked than to incur the
expense of long and tedious litigation, many steps in which
had to be taken in Washington.
Thanks to the possessory law of the State, as interpreted
by State courts, where the holders of a bogus claim secure
possession they have been all right as long as they could
delay final action. After the action of the District Court
five years are allowed for appeal to the Supreme Court,
and then a smart attorney can easily keep the case hang-
ing from year to year. In one case where a modest de-
mand for some forty leagues was rejected, because in
forging the Mexican seal on the grant, the head of the
cactus-mounted eagle had been carelessly put where his
tail ought to be, the appeal has been kept at the foot of
the docket for years, while the claimants are enjoying the
land just as fully as if they had paid the Government for
it, and are actually selling it to settlers, who know the
claim to be fraudulent, at from $2 to $10 per acre. If the
Supreme Court ever does reach the case, the appeal will
be dismissed. A new motion will then be made, and
finally, when all the law's delays are exhausted, the set-
tlers will have to pay the Government $1.25 per acre for
the land. Meantime they can get it only by paying his
price to the holder of this notoriously fraudulent claim.
46 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
It has at all times been within the power of Congress
to end this uncertainty as to land titles, and settle these
Mexican claims. There has been a great deal of legisla-
tion on the subject, but somehow or other it has always
turned out for the benefit of the land grabbers. Modes of
procedure have been changed ; cases have been thrown from
the courts into the land offices; from the land offices
back to the courts, and then from the courts back to the
land offices again. Always some excuse for delay; al-
ways some loophole in the law, through which the land
grabber could easily pass, but in which the settler would
be crushed. The majority of these Mexican grants are
yet unsettled. Their owners do not want them settled
so long as they can hold thousands of acres more than they
have a shadow of claim to, and delay as much as possible.
These are cases where the last step to secure patent can
be taken at any time, by the making of a motion or the
payment of a fee ; but which are suffered to remain in that
condition, while in the meantime the claim holders are
selling quitclaim deeds to settlers, for land which their
patents would show they do not own.
THE PUEBLO OF SAN FRANCISCO.
FOE the injuries which these Mexican grants have done to
California, the Mexican land policy is not responsible.
.That merely furnished the pretext under cover of which
our policy has fostered land monopolisation. What of the
Mexican policy was bad under our different conditions, we
have made infinitely worse; what would still have been
good, we have discarded. The same colonisation laws
under which these great grants were made gave four square
leagues to each town in which to provide homes for its
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 47
inhabitants, the only conditions being good character and
occupancy. The American city of San Francisco, as the
successor of the Mexican pueblo, came into a heritage such
as no great city of modern times has enjoyed land enough
for a city as large as London, dedicated to the purpose of
providing every family with a free homestead. Here was
an opportunity to build up a great city, in which tenement
houses and blind alleys would be unknown ; in which there
would be less poverty, suffering, crime and social and
political corruption than in any city of our time, of equal
numbers. This magnificent opportunity has been thrown
away, and with the exception of a great sand bank, the worst
that could be found, reserved for a part, and a few squares .
reserved for public buildings, the heritage of all the people
of San Francisco has been divided among a few hundred.
Of the successive steps, culminating in the United States
law of 1866, by which this was accomplished, of the battles
of land grabbers to take and to keep, and of the municipal
corruption engendered, it is not worth while here to speak.
The deed is done. We have made a few millionaires, and
now the citizen of San Francisco who needs a home must
pay a large sum for permission to build it on land dedi-
cated to its use ere the American flag had been raised in
California.
THE RAILROAD GRANTS OF CALIFORNIA.
THE grants made to railroads of public lands in the State
of California are: The grant to the Western Pacific and
Central Pacific, of ten alternate sections on each side per
mile (12,800 acres), made to half that amount in 1862,
and doubled in 1864; the grants to the Southern Pacific
and to the California and Oregon, of ten alternate sec-
tions on each side, with ten miles on each side in which
48 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
to make up deficiencies, made in I860; the grant to the
Stockton and Copperopolis, of five alternate sections on
each side, with twenty miles on each side in which to make
up deficiencies, made in 1867; the grants to the Texas
Pacific x and to the connecting branch of the Southern
Pacific, of ten alternate sections on each side, with ten
miles for deficiencies, made in 1871. A grant was also
made in 1866 to the Sacramento and Placerville road, but
the idea of building the road was abandoned, and the
grant has lapsed.
Upon the map of California (see frontispiece) the reser-
vations for these grants are marked in red. This marking
does not show the exact limits of the reservations, as they
follow the rectilinear section lines, which it is, of course,
impossible to show on so small a scale nor are the routes
of the roads precisely drawn. But it gives a perfectly cor-
rect idea of the extent and general course of these reserva-
tions. The exhibit is absolutely startling a commentary
on the railroad land-grant policy of Congress to the force
of which no words can add. Observe the proportion which
these reservations bear to the total area of the State, and
observe at the same time the topography of California
how the railroad reservations cover nearly all the great
central valleys, and leave but the mountains, and you may
get an idea of how these reservations are cursing the State.
It is true that the companies do not get all of the land
included in these reservations, nor even half of it; but
for the present, at least, so far as the greater part of it
is concerned, they might as well get it all. Pre-emption
or homestead settlers may still go upon the even sections,
but the trouble is to find them. The greater part of this
1 Between the line of the road and the Mexican boundary this
company gets all the public land.
LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 49
land is unsurveyed, or having been, once surveyed, the
vaqueros, who share in the prejudices of their employers
against settlers, have pulled up the stakes, and the settler
cannot tell whether he gets on Government or on railroad
land. If on Government land, he is all right, and can
get 80 acres for $22, as a homestead; or 160 acres for
$400 by pre-emption. But it is an even chance that he is
on railroad land, and if so, he is at the mercy of a cor-
poration which will make with him no terms, in advance.
Settlers will not take such chances.
These railroad grants have worked nothing but evil to
California. Though given under pretext of aiding settle-
ment, they have really retarded it. Of all the roads ever
subsidised in the United States, the Central Pacific is the
one to which the giving of a subsidy is the most defensible.
But so large was the subsidy, in money and bonds, that
the road could have been built, and would have been built,
just as soon without the land grant. The Western Pacific
land grant became the property of a single individual,
who did nothing towards building the road the company
that did build the road (the Central) buying the fran-
chise minus the land grant. The Southern Pacific land
grant has actually postponed the building of a road south-
ward through California, and had the grant never been
made, it is certain that an unsubsidised road would already
have been running farther into Southern California than
the land-grant road yet does. Of the California and Ore-
gon land grant, the same thing may be said. The Stock-
ton and Copperopolis grant was made in 1867, but the
building of the road has only been commenced this year.
And it is exceedingly probable that had this land been
open to settlers, the business, actual and prospective, would
by this time have offered sufficient inducements for the
building of the road.
60 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
All these land grants, with the exception perhaps of that
from the Eastern boundary to San Diego, and with the
exception of the Western Pacific grant, are owned by a
single firm, who also own all the railroads in California,
having bought what they did not build.
It is generally argued when land grants are made, that
it is to the interest of the companies to sell their lands
cheaply, because settlement will bring them business. But
the land-grant companies of California seem in no hurry
to sell their lands, preferring to wait for the greater
promise of the future. Neither the Southern Pacific nor
the California and Oregon will make any terms with set-
tlers until their lands are surveyed and listed over to them.
It is, of course, to their interest to have the Government
sections settled first, and to reserve their own land for
higher prices after the Government land is gone. The
Central Pacific advertises to sell good farming land for
$2.50 per acre; but when one goes to buy good farming
land for that price, he finds that it has been sold to the
Sacramento Land Company, a convenient corporation,
which stands to the company in its land business just as
the Contract and Finance Company did in the building
of the road.
PRIVATE ENTRY AND SCRIP LOCATIONS.
LARGE bodies of the public lands of California were offered
at public sale long before there was any demand for them.
When the failure of placer mining directed industry to-
wards agriculture, and the beginnings of the railroad sys-
tem led to hopes of a large immigration, these lands were
gobbled up by a few large speculators, by the hundred
thousand acres. The larger part of the available portion
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 61
of the great San Joaquin Valley went in this way, and the
process has gone on from Siskiyou on the north to San
Diego on the south.
According to common report, the speculators have re-
ceived every facility in the land offices. While the poor
settler who wanted a farm would have to trudge off to
look at the land himself, the speculator or his agent had
all the information which could be furnished. Land, which
had never been sold or applied for, would be marked on
the maps as taken, in order to keep it from settlers and
reserve it for speculators; and in some cases, it is even
said that settlers selecting land and going to the Land
Office to apply for it, would be put off for a few minutes
while the land they wanted would be taken up in behalf
of the speculator, and then they would be referred to him,
if they desired to purchase.
A great deal of this land has been located with the Agri-
cultural College scrip of Eastern States, bought by the
speculators at an average of about fifty cents per acre,
in greenbacks, when greenbacks were low, and sold or held
at prices varying from $4 to $20 per acre, in gold. Whole
townships have been taken up at once in this way; but
the law was amended in 1867, so that only three sections
in the same township can now be located with this scrip.
The Agricultural scrip of California has been sold at
about $5 per acre, having special privileges.
The Act of last year, making this California scrip locat-
able on unsurveyed land, within railroad reservations, etc.,
is a good sample of the recklessness of Congressional leg-
islation on land matters. It is so loosely drawn that by
the purchase of forty acres a speculator can tie up a whole
township. The Land Agent of the University has only
to give notice to the United States Eegister that he has
an application for land (without specifying amount or
52 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
locality) in a certain township, and the Kegister must hold
the plats of survey for sixty days after their return.
Should a pre-emptor go on before this time, there is noth-
ing to prevent the speculator from swooping down upon
him and asserting that his farm is the particular piece of
ground he wanted. Happily, nearly all this scrip will be
used for locating timber land, for which the scrip of other
States is not available, as it can only be located on sur-
veyed land, and the surveyed timber land has long since
been taken up.
Besides the Agricultural scrip, a large amount of Half
Breed scrip has been located by speculators. This scrip
was issued to Indians in lieu of their lands, and was
made by law locatable only by the Indians themselves,
and though the speculators pretended to locate as the at-
torneys of the Indians, the location was illegal. How-
ever, it was made, and patents have been issued.
In this way millions of acres in California have been
monopolised by a handful of men. The chief of these
speculators now holds some 350,000 acres, while thousands
and thousands of acres which he located with scrip or paid
$1.25 per acre for, have been sold to settlers at rates vary-
ing from $5 to $20 per acre, the settlers paying cash
enough to clear him and leave a balance, and then giving
a mortgage for and paying interest on the remainder;
and a large quantity of his land is rented cultivators
furnishing everything and paying the landlord one fourth
of their crop.
And as has been the case in all the methods of land
monopolisation in California, these scrip locations have
been used not only to grab unoccupied lands, but to rob
actual settlers of their improved farms. In one instance
a large scrip speculator got a tool of his appointed to
make the survey of a tract of land in one of the southern
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 63
counties which had been long occupied by actual settlers.
This deputy surveyor persuaded the settlers that it would
be cheaper for them to get a State title to their lands than
to file pre-emption claims, and they accordingly proceeded
to do this. But as the clock struck nine, and the doors
of the Land Office in San Francisco were thrown open on
the morning the plats were filed, another agent of the
speculator entered with an armful of scrip which he pro-
ceeded to plaster over the settlers' farms.
MANAGEMENT OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE LANDS.
WE have seen what Federal legislation has done to inflict
the curse of land monopoly upon California. Let us now
see what has been done by the State herself. We shall
find that reckless as have been the dealings of the general
Government with our lands, the dealings of the State have
been even worse.
And here let it be remarked that for most of these wrong
acts of the Federal Government, the people of California
are themselves largely responsible. For the public mani-
festation of a strong sentiment here could not have failed
to exert great influence upon Congress. But, for instance,
instead of objecting to railroad grants, we have, for the
most part, hailed them as an evidence of Congressional
liberality; and when the Southern Pacific had once for-
feited its grant, the California Legislature asked Congress
to give it back without suggesting a single restriction on
the sale or management of the lands. In 1870, a bill
actually passed the House reserving the public lands of
California for homestead entry, as the lands of the South-
ern States had been reserved, but it went over in the Sen-
ate on the objection of Senator Nye, of Nevada. There is
64 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
little doubt that the manifestation of a strong desire on
our part would, at any time, secure the passage of such
a bill.
The specific grants made to California, in common with
other land States, which have been before enumerated,
amount to an aggregate of 7,421,804 acres an area al-
most as large as that of Massachusetts and Connecticut
combined. Besides these grants, all the swamp lands are
given to the State for purposes of reclamation, of which
3,381,691 acres have already been sold about all there is.
These large donations have proved an evil rather than
a benefit to the people of California; for in disposing of
them, the State has given even greater facilities for mo-
nopoly than has the Federal Government, and the prac-
tical effect of the creation of two sources of title to public
land has been to harass settlers and to give opportunity
for a great deal of robbery and rascality.
The land policy of the State of California must be
traced through some thirty-five or forty Acts, in whose
changes and technicalities the non-expert will soon be-
come bewildered. It is only necessary here to give its
salient features.
It must be understood in the first place that the only
grant of specific pieces of land is that of the 16th and
36th sections of each township. When these are occupied
or otherwise disposed of, other sections are given in lieu
of them. These lieu lands, as well as the lands granted
in specific amounts, the State has had the privilege of
taking from any unappropriated Government land, the
ownership of the swamp lands being decided by the nature
of the land itself. With this large floating grant, as it
may be termed, the general policy of the State has been,
not to select the lands and then to sell them, but in effect
to sell to individuals its right of selection.
LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 55
Now, under the general laws of the United States, until
land is offered at public sale, there is no way of getting
title to it save by actual settlement, and then in tracts
of not over 160 acres to each individual. And though
since 1862 the pre-emption right has applied to unsur-
veyed lands, yet until land is surveyed and the plats filed,
the settler can make no record of his pre-emption.
To this land thus reserved by the general laws for the
small farms of actual settlers, the State grants gave an
opportunity of obtaining title without regard to settle-
ment or amount an opportunity which speculators have
well improved. In defiance of the laws of the United
States, and even of the Act admitting California into the
Union, the State at first sold even unsurveyed land, a
policy which continued until the courts declared it illegal
in 1863. In 1852, to dispose of the 500,000 acre grant
(which the Constitution of the State gave to the School
Fund), warrants were issued purchasable at $2 per acre in
depreciated scrip, and locatable on any unoccupied Gov-
ernment land, surveyed or unsurveyed. These warrants,
however, were not saleable to any one person in amounts
of more than 640 acres, and the buyer had to make affi-
davit that he intended to make permanent settlement on
the land. But as the warrants were assignable, and affi-
davits cheap, these restrictions were of but little avail.
Passing for the most part into the hands of speculators,
the warrants enabled them to forestall the settler and even
in many cases to take his farm from him; for though by
the terms of the law the warrants could only be laid on
unoccupied land, yet when once laid, they were prima facie
evidence of title, and the difficulty could be got over only
by collusion with countyjefficers and false affidavits. These
school-land warrants "nave been a terror to the California
settler, and many a man who has made himself a home,
Be OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
relying upon the general laws of the Federal Government,
has seen the results of his years of toil and privation pass
into the hands of some soulless cormorant, who, without
his knowledge, had plastered over his farm with school-
land warrants. The law under which the warrants were
issued was repealed in 1858, and the policy adopted of
settling the State title to applicants for land, in amounts
not to exceed 320 acres to each individual, at the rate
of $1.25 per acre, payable either in cash, or twenty per-
cent, in cash, and the balance on credit with interest at
ten per cent. The 16th and 36th sections, or the lands
in lieu of them, were at first given to the respective town-
ships, to be sold for the benefit of the Township School
Fund; but were afterwards made saleable as other lands
for the benefit of the General Fund.
The swamp lands were from the first made saleable in
tracts not exceeding 320 acres to each person, for $1 per
acre, cash or credit, the proceeds to be applied to the
reclamation of the land, under regulations varied by differ-
ent laws, from time to time. This was virtually giving
them away the true policy; but the trouble is that for
the most part they have been given to a few men.
Up to 1868, the State had always, in words at least,
recognised the principle that one man should not be per-
mitted to take more than a certain amount of land; but
by the Act of March 28th, of that year, which repealed
all previous laws, and is still, with some trifling amend-
ments, the land law of the State, all restrictions of amount,
except as to the 16th and 36th sections proper, were swept
away; and with reference to those lands, the form of affi-
davit was so changed that the applicant was not required
to swear that he wanted the land for settlement, or wanted
it for himself. This Act has some good features ; but from
enacting clause to repealing section, its central idea seems
LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 57
to be the making easy of land monopolisation, and the
favouring of speculators at the expense of settlers. In
addition to sweeping away the restrictions as to amount
and to use, it provided that the settlers upon the 16th
and 36th sections should only be protected in their occu-
pancy for six months after the passage of the Act, after
which the protection should only be for sixty days; and
changed the affidavit previously required, from a denial
of other settlement to a denial of valid adverse claim.
Under this provision a regular business has been driven
in robbing settlers of their homes. Unless a new law
is very generally discussed in the newspapers (and land
laws seldom are) it takes a long time for the people
to become acquainted with it; and there were many set-
tlers on State land who knew nothing of the limitation
until they received notification that somebody else had
possession of a clear title to their farms. Did space per-
mit, numbers of cases of this kind of robbery might be
cited some of them of widows and orphans, whose all
was ruthlessly taken from them; but I will confine myself
to one case of recent occurrence, where the looked-for
plunder is unusually large.
The town of Amador, and the very valuable Keystone
Mine, are situated on the east half of a 36th section. The
survey which developed this fact was only made in the
early part of the present year. The Deputy Surveyor,
who was evidently in the plot, returned to the United
States Land Office the plat of the township, with the mine
and the town marked in the west half. Application was
at the same time made to the State Surveyor-General, in
the name of Henry Casey, for the east half. In regular
course, the Surveyor-General sent the application to the
United States Land Office, whence it was returned, with
a certificate that the land was free; whereupon, the Sur-
58 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
veyor-General approved the application, and twenty-five
cents per acre was paid the State. And thus for $80 cash,
and $32 per annum interest, a little knot of speculators
have secured title to the Keystone Mine, worth at least a
million dollars, and the whole town of Amador, besides.
And as further evidence of the recklessness of Califor-
nia land legislation, and of the lengths to which the land
grabbers are prepared to go, two facts may be cited: The
last Legislature, instead of repealing or removing the ob-
jectionable features from this Green law, actually passed a
special bill legalising all applications for State lands, even
where the affidavits by which they were supported did not
conform to the requirements of the law, either in form or
in substance. After this had been passed, on the last day
of the session a bill was got through and was signed by
the Governor, designed to restrict applicants for lieu lands
to 320 acres. But after the Legislature had adjourned,
when the Act came to be copied in the Secretary of
State's office, lo, and behold! it was discovered that the
engrossed and signed copy did not contain this provision.
Yet, to understand fully what a premium the State has
offered for the monopolisation of her school lands, there
is another thing to be explained. To purchase land of
the State, an application must be filed in the State Land
Office, describing the land by range, township and section,
and stating under what grant the title is asked. This
application must be accompanied by a fee of five dollars.
The Surveyor-General then issues a certificate to the appli-
cant, and sends the application to the United States Land
Office, for certification that the land is free, before he
approves the application and demands payment for the
land. If there be no record in his office of pre-emption,
homestead or other occupation, the United States Eegister
thereupon marks the land off on his map, but he does not
LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 59
certify to the State Surveyor-General until he gets his fee.
The State Surveyor-General has no appropriation to pay
the fee, although the present incumbent asked for one in
his first report; and so the payment of the fee and the
return of the United States certificate depend upon the
applicant, whose interest it is, of course, not to get it
until he wishes to pay for his land. And thus, by the
payment of five dollars, a whole section of United States
land can be shut up from the settler. There are 1,244,696
acres monopolised in California to-day in this way. For
thousands and thousands of the acres which are offered for
sale on California and Montgomery streets there is no
other title than the 'payment of this five dollars. When
the immigrant buys of the speculator for two, five, ten or
twenty dollars an acre, as the case may be, then the specu-
lator goes to the United States Land Office, pays the
Kegister's fee, gets his certificate and the State Surveyor-
General's approval, and pays the State $1.25 per acre; or,
if with the immigrant he has made a bargain of that kind,
he pays twenty-five cents per acre, and leaves his pur-
chaser to pay the dollar at some future time, with interest
at ten per cent.
SWAMP LAND GRABBING.
AND as the speculator has had a far better opportunity in
dealing with the State than with the United States, there
has been every inducement to get as much land as possible
under the jurisdiction of the State, by declaring it swamp
land. The certificate of United States officers as to the
character of the land has not been waited for; but the
State has sold to every purchaser who would get the County
Surveyor to segregate the land he wanted, and procure a
couple of affidavits as to its swampy, character. Probably
60 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
one half of the land sold (or rather given, as the money
is returned) by the State as swamp, is not swamp at all,
but good dry land, that has been sworn to as swamp, in
order to take it out of the control of the pre-emption
laws of the United States. The State has been made the
catspaw of speculators, and her name used as the cover
under which the richest lands in California might be mo-
nopolised and settlers robbed. The seizure of these lands
of the State (or rather by speculators in the name of the
State) is for the most part entirely illegal; but by the
Act of 1866, previous seizures were confirmed, and the land
grabbers of California, though Mr. Julian occasionally
makes them some trouble, have powerful friends in Wash-
ington, and unless energetic remonstrance is made, gen-
erally get what they ask. This swamp land grant has not
yielded a cent to the State, but it has enabled speculators
to monopolise hundreds of thousands of acres of the most
valuable lands in California, and, of course, to rob settlers.
For the settler, though he has a right under United States
laws, can get no record nor evidence of title until his land
is surveyed and the plats filed. In the meantime, if the
speculator comes along and can get a couple of affidavits
as to the swampy character of the settler's farm, he has
been able to buy the title of the State. Lands thousands
of feet above the level of the sea have been purchased as
swamp; lands over which a heavily loaded wagon can be
driven in the month of May; and even lands which can-
not be cultivated without irrigation.
Sierra Valley is in Plumas county, in the very heart
of the mountains. Standing on its edge, you may at your
option toss a biscuit into a stream which finally sinks in
the great Nevada Basin, or into the waters which join the
Pacific. When the snow melts in the early spring, the
mountain streams which run through the valley overflow
LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 61
and spread over a portion of the land; but after a freshet
has passed, water has to be turned in through irrigating
ditches to enable the lands to produce their most valuable
crop, hay. The valley is filled with pre-emption and home-
stead settlers, who, besides their own homes and improve-
ments, have built two churches and seven schoolhouses.
Many of their farms are worth $20 per acre. The swamp
land robbers cast their eyes on this pretty little valley and
its thrifty settlement, and the first thing the settlers knew
their farms had been bought of the State as swamp lands,
and the United States was asked to list them over. En-
ergetic remonstrance was made, and the matter was re-
ferred by the Department to the United States Surveyor-
General to take testimony. His investigation has just
been concluded, and the attempted grab has probably
failed. But in hundreds of cases, similar ones on a smaller
scale have succeeded.
Another recent attempt has been made to get hold of
46,000 acres adjoining Sacramento. This land was for-
merly overshadowed by the rejected Sutter grant, and for
some time has been all pre-empted. Something like a
year ago it was surveyed and the plats returned to the
United States Land Office, with this land marked as
swamp; applications being at the same time made to the
State for the land. The ex-Surveyor-General, Sherman
Day, signed the plats, and the land had actually been listed
over by the Department, when a protest was made and for-
warded to Washington, accompanied by his own personal
testimony, by the new Surveyor-General, Hardenburgh,
who, having been long a resident of Sacramento, knew the
character of the land. This forced the suspension of the
lists, very much, it seems, to the indignation of the Acting
Commissioner of the General Land Office, W. W. Curtis,
who wrote a letter to the Surveyor-General, which has
62 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
been published in the newspapers (which is a curiosity
of official impudence), and which betrays a very suspi-
cious anger with what the Acting Commissioner seems to
consider the interference of the Surveyor-General.
Mr. Julian, in his speech entitled "Swamp Land Swin-
dles," has detailed how a party of speculators, one of whom
was ex-State Surveyor-General Houghton, and another the
son of the then United States Surveyor-General Upson,
got hold of sixteen thousand acres in Colusa (as to the
dry character of which he gives affidavits), under the
swamp-land laws, by having the survey of two townships
made and approved in a few days, just before the map
of the California and Oregon Eailroad Company was filed.
These swamp-land speculators are in many cases attempt-
ing to shelter themselves behind the growing feeling
against railroad grants ; but bad as the railroad grants are,
the operations of these speculators are worse. The rail-
road companies can only take half the lands; the specu-
lators take it all. The railroad companies cannot easily
disturb previous settlers; but the speculators take the set-
tler's home from under his feet.
.WHO HAVE CUE LANDS.
THE State Surveyor-General ought to give in his next
report (and if he does not the Legislature ought to call
for it) a list of the amounts of State lands taken in large
quantities by single individuals (with their names) under
the Act of 1868. Such a list would go far to open the
eyes of the people of California to the extent their State
Government has been used to foster the land monopoly of
which they are beginning to complain. Yet such a list
would not fully show what has been done, as a great deal
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 63
of land has been taken by means of dummies. Of the
16th and 36th sections proper, to which even now one
individual cannot apply for more than 320 acres, one
speculator has secured 8000 acres in Colusa county alone.
Among those who have secured the largest amount from
the State, either in their own names or as attorneys for
others, are W. S. Chapman, George W. Roberts, ex-Sur-
veyor-General Houghton, John Mullan, Will S. Green, H.
C. Logan, George H. Thompson, B. F. Maulden, I. N.
Chapman, Leander Eansom, N. N. Clay, E. H. Miller and
James W. Shanklin. The larger amounts secured by sin-
gle individuals range from 20,000 acres to over 100,000.
WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE.
THE true course in regard to State lands is that urged
upon the Legislature by the present Surveyor-General in
his first annual report to issue title only to the actual
settler who has resided on the land three years, and who
has shown his intention to make it his home by placing
upon it at least $500 worth of improvements. 1 Had this
course been adopted from the start, California would to-
day have had thousands more of people and millions more
of property. Had it even been adopted when urged by
General Bost, over half a million acres of land would have
1 In his biennial message to the same Legislature (the last) Governor
Haight speaks in the same strain. He says : " Our land system seems to
be mainly framed to facilitate the acquisition of large bodies of land by
capitalists and corporations, either as donations or at nominal prices. It
is to be regretted that the land granted by Congress to railroad corpora-
tions had not been subject to continued pre-emption by settlers, giving to
the corporation the proceeds at some fixed price, and it would have been
much better for the State and country if the public lands had never been
disposed of except to actual settlers under the pre-emption law."
64 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
been saved to settlers that is to say, four thousand fami-
lies might have found homesteads in California at nominal
rates at rates so much lower than that which they must
now pay that the difference would more than have sufficed
for all the expenses of their transportation from the East.
To amend our policy in regard to sales of State land
now, is a good deal like locking the stable door after the
horse is stolen. Still it should be done. Our swamp
lands are all gone, and the most available of the school
lands have gone also. Yet there may be a million acres
of good land left. These we cannot guard with too jeal-
ous care.
THE POSSESSORY LAW.
BUT the catalogue of what the State of California has done
towards the monopolisation of her land does not end with
a recital of her acts as trustee of the land donated her
by the general Government. Besides giving these lands
for the most part to monopolists, she has, by her legisla-
tion, made possible the monopolisation of other vast bodies
of the public lands. Under her possessory laws before
alluded to, millions of acres are shut out from settlement,
without their holders having the least shadow of title.
It is Government land, but unsurveyed. The only way
of getting title to it is to go upon it and live; but the
laws of California say that no one can go upon it until
he has a better title than the holder that of possession.
Tracts of from two to ten thousand acres thus held are
common, and in one case at least (in Lake county) a
single firm has 28,000 acres of Government land, open
by the laws of the United States to pre-emption settlers,
enclosed by a board fence, and held under the State laws.
It is these laws that enable the Mexican grant owners to
LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 65
hold all the land they can possibly shadow with their
claims, and that offer them a premium to delay the adjust-
ment of their titles, in order that they may continue to
hold, and in many cases, to sell, far more than their grants
call for.
HOW A LARGE QUANTITY OP PUBLIC LAND MAY
BE FREED.
A LARGE appropriation for the survey of the public lands
in California, managed by a Surveyor-General who really
wished to do his duty, 1 would open to settlers millions of
acres from which they are now excluded by railroad reser-
vations or the monopolisation of individuals. If our Eep-
resentatives in Congress desire to really benefit their State,
they will neglect the works at Mare Island, the erection
of public buildings in San Francisco, and the appropria-
tions for useless fortifications, until they can get this.
And one of the first acts of the next Legislature should
be to limit the possessory law to 160 acres, which would
be a quick method of breaking up possessory monopolisa-
tions. In the meantime there is a remedy, though a slower
and more cumbrous one. At the last session of Congress
an Act was passed (introduced by Mr. Sargent) authoris-
ing the credit to settlers, on payments for their lands, of
money advanced for surveying them. Here is a means
by which, with combined effort, a large amount of public
land may be freed. Let a number of settlers, sufficient
to bear the expense, go upon one of these large possessory
claims. If ejected, let them deposit the money for a sur-
vey with the United States Surveyor-General, and the
moment the lines are run and the plats are filed they have
a sure title to the land.
1 And we seem to have secured one in the present Surveyor-General
66 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
MORE MONOPOLISATION THREATENED FOOD AND WATER.
THERE is little doubt that one of the greatest attempts
at monopolisation yet made in California would have fol-
lowed the passage of Sargent's bill for the sale of the
Pacific Coast timber lands, which was rushed through the
House at the last session, but was passed over by the Sen-
ate, and which has been re-introduced. These timber
lands are of incalculable value, for from them must come
the timber supply, not of the Pacific States alone, but of
the whole Interior Basin, and nearly all the Southern
Coast. The present value of these lands when they can
be got at, may be judged by the fact that there are single
trees upon the railroad lands which yield at present prices
over $500 worth of lumber. Under this bill, these lands
would have been saleable at $2.50 per acre. The limita-
tion of each purchaser to 640 acres would of course amount
to nothing, and within a short time after the passage of
the bill, the available timber lands would have passed into
the hands of a small ring of large capitalists, who would
then have put the price of lumber at what figure they
pleased. The amount of capital required to do this would
be by no means large when compared with the returns,
which would be enormous, for though some estimates of
the timber lands of California go as high as 30,000,000
acres, the means of transportation as yet make but a small
portion of this available. And it would be only necessary
to buy the land as it is opened, to virtually control the
whole of it. There is, however, a good deal to be said
in favour of the sale of these lands, and some legislation
is needed, as there is a great deal of land of no use but
for its timber, but upon which individuals cannot cut,
except as trespassers, while the railroad company in the
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 67
Sierras, having been given the privilege of taking timber
off Government land for construction, has a monopoly
there, and is clearing Government land in preference to
its own. If waste could be prevented, it would perhaps
be best to leave the timber free to all who chose to cut,
on the principle that all the gifts of nature, whenever pos-
sible, should be free. This is problematical, perhaps im-
possible. If so, the plan proposed by Honourable Will S.
Green, of Colusa, seems to be the best of those yet brought
forward; that is, to sell the lands only to the builders of
saw-mills, in amounts proportioned to the capacity of the
mill. At all events, almost anything would be better than
the creation of such a monstrous monopoly as would at
once- have sprung up under the Sargent bill a monopoly
which would have taxed the people of California millions
annually, and would have raised the price of timber on
the whole coast.
It is not only the land and the timber, but even the
water of California that is threatened with monopoly, as
by virtue of laws designed to encourage the construction
of mining and irrigation ditches, the mountain streams
and natural reservoirs are being made private property,
and already we are told that all the water of a large section
of the State is the property of a corporation of San Fran-
cisco capitalists.
THE EFFECT OF LAND MONOPOLISATION IN CALIFORNIA.
IT is not we, of this generation, but our children of the
next, who will fully realise the evils of the land monopo-
lisation which we have permitted and encouraged; for
those evils do not begin to fully show themselves until
population becomes dense.
68 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
But already, while our great State, with an area larger
than that of France or Spain or Turkey with an area
equal to that of all of Great Britain, Holland, Belgium,
Denmark and Greece combined does not contain the
population of a third-class modern city; already, ere we
have commenced to manure our lands or to more than
prospect the treasures of our hills, the evils of land mo-
nopolisation are showing themselves in such unmistakable
signs that he who runs may read. This is the blight that
has fallen upon California, stunting her growth and mock-
ing her golden promise, offsetting to the immigrant the
richness of her soil and the beneficence of her climate.
It has already impressed its mark upon the character
of our agriculture more shiftless, perhaps, than that of
any State in the Union where slavery has not reigned.
For California is not a country of farms, but a country of
plantations and estates. Agriculture is a speculation.
The farm-houses, as a class, are unpainted frame shanties,
without garden or flower or tree. The farmer raises wheat ;
he buys his meat, his flour, his butter, his vegetables, and,
frequently, even his eggs. He has too much land to spare
time for such little things, or for beautifying his home,
or he is merely a renter, or an occupant of land menaced
by some adverse title, and his interest is but to get for
this season the greatest crop that can be made to grow with
the least labour. He hires labour for his planting and his
reaping, and his hands shift for themselves at other sea-
sons of the year. His plough he leaves standing in the
furrow, when the year's ploughing is done; his mustangs
he turns upon the hills, to be lassoed when again needed.
He buys on credit at the nearest store, and when his crop
is gathered must sell it to the Grain King's agent, at the
Grain King's prices.
And there is another type of California farmer. He
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 69
boards at the San Francisco hotels, and drives a spanking
team over the Cliff House road; or, perhaps, he spends
his time in the gayer capitals of the East or Europe. His
land is rented for one third or one fourth of the crop, or
is covered by scraggy cattle, which need to look after them
only a few half-civilised vaqueros; or his great wheat
fields, of from ten to twenty thousand acres, are ploughed
and sown and reaped by contract. And over our ill-kept,
shadeless, dusty roads, where a house is an unwonted land-
mark, and which run frequently for miles through the
same man's land, plod the tramps, with blankets on back
the labourers of the California farmer looking for
work, in its seasons, or toiling back to the city when the
ploughing is ended or the wheat crop is gathered. I do
not say that this picture is a universal one, but it is a
characteristic one. 1
It is not only in agriculture, but in all other avocations,
and in all the manifestations of social life, that the effect
of land monopoly may be seen in the knotting up of
business into the control of little rings, in the concentra-
tion of capital into a few hands, in the reduction of wages
in the mechanical trades, in the gradual decadence of
that independent personal habit both of thought and action
which gave to California life its greatest charm, in the
palpable differentiation of our people into the classes of
rich and poor. Of the "general stagnation" of which we
1 An old Californian, a gentleman of high intelligence, who has recently
travelled extensively through the State upon official business, which com-
pelled him to pay particular attention to the material condition of the
people, writes : "The whole country is poverty-stricken; the fanners
shiftless, and crazy on wheat. I have seen farms cropped for eighteen
years with wheat, and not a vine, tree, shrub or flower on the place. The
roads are too wide, and are imworked, and a nest for noxious weeds. The
effect of going through California is to make you wish to leave it, if you
are poor and want to farm."
70 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
of California have been so long complaining, this is the
most efficient cause. Had the unused land of California
been free, at Government terms, to those who would cul-
tivate it, instead of this "general stagnation" of the past
two years, we should have seen a growth unexampled in
the history of even the American States. For with all
our hyperbole, it is almost impossible to overestimate the
advantages with which nature has so lavishly endowed
this Empire State of ours. "God's Country," the return-
ing prospectors used to call it, and the strong expression
loses half of its irreverence as, coming over sage-brush
plains, from the still frost-bound East, the traveller winds,
in the early spring, down the slope of the Sierras, through
interminable ranks of evergreen giants, past laughing rills
and banks of wild flowers, and sees under their cloudless
sky the vast fertile valleys stretching out to the dark blue
Coast Eange in the distance. But while nature has done
her best to invite newcomers, our land policy has done
its best to repel them. We have said to the immigrant:
"It is a fair country which God has made between the
Sierras and the sea, but before you settle in it and begin
to reap His bounty, you must pay a forestaller roundly for
his permission." And the immigrant having far to come
and but scanty capital, has as a general thing stayed away.
THE LANDED ARISTOCRACY OF CALIFORNIA.
THOUGH California is a young State ; though she is a poor
State, and though a few years ago she was a State in which
there was less class distinction than in any State in the
Union, she can already boast of an aristocracy based on
the surest foundation that of landownership.
I have been at some trouble to secure a list of the
LANDS OF CALIPOENIA 71
large landowners of California, but find exact and reliable
information on that point difficult to obtain. The prop-
erty of most of the largest landowners is scattered through
various counties of the State, and a comparison of the
books of the various assessors would be the only means of
forming even an approximate list. These returns, however,
are far from reliable. It has not been the custom to list
land held by mere possessory title, and the practice of
most of the assessors has been to favour large landholders.
The Board of Equalisation have ferreted out many inter-
esting facts in this regard, which will probably be set
forth in their coming report. Some remarkable discrep-
ancies, of which the proportion is frequently as one to
ten, are shown between the assessors' lists and the in-
ventories of deceased landowners. In San Luis Obispo,
one of the largest landowners and land speculators in the
State returns to the assessor a total of 4366 acres. Eef-
erence to the United States Land Offices shows that he
holds in that county, of United States land, 43,266
acres.
The largest landowners in California are probably the /
members of the great Central-Southern Pacific Kailroad
Corporation. Were the company land divided, it would
give them something like two million acres apiece; and in
addition to their company land, most of the individual
members own considerable tracts in their own name.
McLaughlin, who got the Western Pacific land grant,
has some three or four hundred thousand acres. Outside
of these railroad grants, the largest single holder is, prob-
ably, Wm. S. Chapman, of San Francisco, the "pioneer"
scrip speculator, who has some 350,000 acres; though ex-
State Surveyor-General Houghton is said by some to
own still more. Ex-United States Survey or- General Beals
has some 300,000 acres. Across his estate one may ride
72 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
for seventy-five miles. Miller & Lux, San Francisco
wholesale butchers, have 450,000. Around one of their
patches of ground there are 160 miles of fence. An-
other San Francisco firm, Bixby, Flint & Co., have between
150,000 and 200,000 acres. George W. Roberts & Co. own
some 120,000 acres of swamp land. Isaac Friedlander,
San Francisco grain merchant, has about 100,000 acres.
Throckmorton, of Mendocino, some 146,000; the Murphy
family of Santa Clara, about 150,000 ; John Foster of Los
Angeles, 120,000; Thomas Fowler, of Fresno, Tulare and
Kern, about 200,000. Abel Stearns, of Los Angeles, had
some 200,000 acres, but has sold a good deal. A firm in
Santa Barbara advertises for sale 200,000 acres, owned by
Philadelphia capitalists.
As for the poorer members of our California peerage
the Marquises, Counts, Viscounts, Lords and Barons who
hold but from 80,000 to 20,000 acres, they are so numer-
ous, that, though I have a long list, I am afraid to name
them for fear of making invidious distinctions, while the
simple country squires, who hold but from five to twenty
thousand acres, are more numerous still.
These men are the lords of California lords as truly
as ever were ribboned Dukes or belted Barons in any
country under the sun. We have discarded the titles of
an earlier age; but we have preserved the substance, and,
though instead of "your grace," or "my lord," we may
style them simply "Mr.," the difference is only in a name.
They are our Land Lords just as truly. If they do not
exert the same influence and wield the same power, and
enjoy the same wealth, it is merely because our population
is but six hundred thousand, and their tenantry have not
yet arrived. Of the millions of acres of our virgin soil
which their vast domains enclose, they are absolute mas-
ters, and upon it no human creature can come, save by
LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 73
their permission and upon their terms. 1 From the zenith
above, to the centre of the earth below (so our laws run),
the universe is theirs.
It must not be imagined that these large landholders
are merely speculators that they have got hold of land
for the purpose of quickly selling it again. On the con-
trary, as a class, they have a far better appreciation of the
future value of land and the power which its ownership
gives, than have the people at large who have thought-
lessly permitted this monopolisation to go on. Many of
the largest landholders do not desire to sell, and will not
sell for anything like current prices; but on the contrary
are continually adding to their domains. Among these,
is one Irish family, who have seen at home what the own-
ership of the soil of a country means. They rent their
land ; they will not sell it ; and this is true of many others.
Sometimes this indisposition to sell is merely the result
of considerations of present interest. As for instance:
An agent of a society of settlers recently went to a large
landholder in a southern county, and offered him a good
price for enough land to provide about two hundred people
with small farms. The landholder refused the offer, and
the agent proceeded to call his attention to the increase
in the value of his remaining land which this settlement
would cause. "It may be/' said the landholder, "but I
should lose money. If you bring two hundred settlers
here, they will begin agitating for a repeal of the fence
law, and will soon compel it by their votes. Then I will
be obliged to spend two or three hundred thousand dollars
to fence in the rest of my ranch, and as fences do not
fatten cattle, it will be worth no more to me than now."
1 They are coming. According to Government statisticians, California
will, in 1890, contain a population of 3,500,000.
74 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
Let me not be understood as reproaching the men who
have honestly acquired large tracts of land. As the world
goes, they are not to be blamed. If the people put sad-
dles on their backs, they must expect somebody to jump
astride to ride. If we must have an aristocracy, I would
prefer that my children should be members of it, rather
than of the common herd. While as for the men who
have resorted to dishonest means, the probabilities are
that most of them enjoy more of the respect of their fel-
lows, and its fruits, than if they had been honest and got
less land.
The division of our land into these vast estates derives
additional significance from the threatening wave of Asi-
atic immigration whose first ripples are already breaking
upon our shores. What the barbarians enslaved by for-
eign wars were to the great landlords of ancient Italy,
what the blacks of the African coast were to the great
landlords of the Southern States, the Chinese coolies may
be, in fact are already beginning to be, to the great land-
lords of our Pacific slope.
III.
LAND AND LABOUR.
WHAT LAND IS.
LAND, for our purpose, may be defined as that part of
the globe's surface habitable by man not merely his habi-
tation, but the storehouse upon which he must draw for
all his needs, and the material to which his labour must
be applied for the supply of all his desires, for even the
products of the sea cannot be taken, or any of the forces
of nature utilised without the aid of land or its products.
On the land we are born, from it we live, to it we return
again children of the soil as truly as is the blade of grass
or the flower of the field.
OF THE VALUE OF LAND.
THOUGH land is the basis of all that we have, yet neither
land nor its natural products constitute wealth. Wealth
is the product or to speak more precisely, the equiva-
lent of labour. That which may be had without labour
has no value, for the value of any object is measured by
the labour for which it will exchange. 1 And when in
1 1 use the word value throughout in the sense in which it is used by
the writers on political economy that of exchangeable power, not of
utility.
75
76 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
speaking of "natural wealth," we mean anything else than
the general possibilities which nature offers to labour, we
mean such peculiar natural advantages as will yield to
labour a larger return than the ordinary, and which are
thus equivalent to the amount of labour dispensed with
that is, such natural objects or advantages as are scarce
as well as desirable. If I find a diamond, I may not have
expended much labour, but I am rich because I have some-
thing which it usually takes an immense amount of labour
to obtain. If I own a coal mine which is valuable, it is
because other people have not coal mines, and cannot ob-
tain fuel with as little expenditure of labour as I can, and
will therefore give me the equivalent of more labour for
my coal than I have to bestow to get it. If diamonds
were as plenty as pebbles, they would be worth by the cart-
load just the cost of loading and hauling. If coal could
everywhere be had by digging a hole in the ground, the
possession of a coal mine would make nobody rich.
And so it is with land. It is only valuable as it is
scarce. Land (of the average quality) is not naturally
scarce, but abundant, and it may be doubted whether there
is any country, even the most populous, where the soil
could not easily support in comfort all the people, though
the law of diminishing return, as laid down by the Eng-
lish economists, is doubtless true. But the density of
population permits other economies which go far to make
up for, and which, probably, in a right social state would
fully make up for, any increase in the amount of labour
necessarily devoted to agricultural production.
But land is a fixed quantity, which man can neither in-
crease nor diminish, and is therefore very easily made arti-
ficially scarce by monopolisation. And artificial scarcity
arising from unequal division produces the same effect as
real scarcity in giving land a value. There is no scarcity
LAND AND LABOUR 77
of building lots in San Francisco, for there is room yet
within the settled limits for ten thousand more houses.
But if I want to put up a house I must pay for the privi-
lege, just as if there were more people wanting to put up
houses than there is room to put them up on.
And the value of land is the power which its owner-
ship gives of appropriating the labour of those who have
it not; and in proportion as those who own are few, and
those who do not own are many, so does this power which
is expressed by the selling price of land increase. We
speak of railroads raising the value of land by reducing
the time and cost of transportation. But if we analyse
the operation by imagining the construction of a railroad
through a country in which there are few settlers and
land can be had for the taking, we will see that the direct
effect of the railroad or other improvement which in-
creases the value of the product of land is to increase the
value of labour or to speak more precisely, of the value
of labour and capital, in the relative proportions deter-
mined by the circumstances which fix the shares of each
and that it is only when the land is so far monopolised as
to enable the landowners to appropriate to themselves this
benefit that the value of land is increased. No matter how
few people there might be, if the land were all in private
hands the owners might appropriate to themselves the
whole benefit. This is the result in a country like Eng-
land, but in a new country, those owners having more
land than they can work or desire to work, will, in selling
or renting their lands, yield some of the new advantage
in order to induce people to take their surplus land. It
will be said: If the value of land is the power which its
ownership gives of appropriating the labour of others, so
is the value of everything else, from a twenty-dollar piece
to a keg of nails. But in this is the distinction: The
78 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
twenty-dollar piece or the keg of nails are themselves the
result of labour, and when given for labour the transac-
tion is an exchange. Land is not the result of labour,
but is the creation of God, and when labour must be
given for it the transaction is an appropriation. In the
one case labour is given for labour; in the other, labour
is given for something that existed before labour was.
OF THE VALUE OF LAND AND THE COMMON WEALTH.
AND thus we see that the value of land, being intrinsically
merely the power which its ownership gives to appropriate
the fruits of labour, is not an element of the wealth of a
community. This principle is as self-evident as that two
and two make four, yet we seem to have lost sight of it
altogether. All over the country the increase in the value
of land is cited as an increase of wealth. Year after year
we add up the increased price which land will bring, and
exclaim, Behold how rapidly the United States is growing
rich ! Yet we might with equal propriety count the debts
which men owe each other, in estimating the assets of a
community. The increased price of his land may be in-
creased wealth to the owner, because it enables him to
obtain a larger share in the distribution of its products,
but it is not increased wealth to the community, because
the shares of other people are at the* same time cut down.
The wealth of a community depends upon the product of
the community. But the productive powers of land are
precisely the same whether its price is low or high. In
other words, the price of land indicates the distribution of
wealth, not the production. The manner of distribution
certainly reacts on production, and so the price of land
indirectly and gradually affects the wealth of the com-
LAND AND LABOUR 79
munity; but this effect is the reverse of what seems gen-
erally imagined. High prices for land tend to decrease
instead of adding to the wealth of a community. For high
priced land means luxury on the one side, and low wages
on the other. Luxury means waste, and low wages mean
unintelligent and inefficient labour.
OF THE VALUE OF LAND AND THE VALUE OF LABOUK.
THE value of land and of labour must bear to each other
an inverse ratio. These two are the "terms" of produc-
tion, and while production remains the same, to give more
to the one is to give less to the other. The value of land
is the power which its ownership gives to appropriate the
product of labour, and, as a sequence, where rents (the
share of the landowner) are high, wages (the share of the
labourer) are low. And thus we see it all over the world,
in the countries where land is high, wages are low, and
where land is low, wages are high. In a new country the
value of labour is at first at its maximum, the value of
land at its minimum. As population grows and land be-
comes monopolised and increases in value, the value of
labour steadily decreases. And the higher land and the
lower wages, the stronger the tendency towards still lower
wages, until this tendency is met by the very necessities
of existence. For the higher land and the lower wages,
the more difficult is it for the man who starts with noth-
ing but his labour to become his own employer, and the
more he is at the mercy of the landowner and the capitalist.
OF SPECULATION IN LAND.
THE old prejudice against speculators in food and other
articles of necessity is passing away, for more exact habits
80 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
of thought have shown that where speculators do not con-
trol all the sources and means of production (which is
impossible as to most things in this age of the world 1 ),
and speculation does not become monopoly, instead of caus-
ing scarcity, it tends to alleviate it; and this, on the one
side, by giving notice of the impending scarcity, and thus
inducing economy, and on the other by stimulating pro-
duction.
But land not being a thing of human production, specu-
lation in land cannot have this result. A country may
export people, but it cannot import land. Whatever be
the price put upon it, the number of acres in any given
place is just so many, with just such capabilities. And
though high prices for land may lessen the demand by
driving people farther away, this is not economy, but
waste, as the labour of a diffused population cannot be so
productive as that of a more concentrated population, com-
bined action cannot be so effective and economical, and
exchanges must be much more difficult and at a greater
cost. It is sometimes said (and the English landlords
piously believe that in raising their rents to the highest
figure they are doing their best for their fellow-men) that
the increase in the price of land leads to increased thor-
oughness of cultivation, yet how can that be when the in-
crease in the price of land must take from the means of
the cultivator, either by reducing his capital when he buys,
or by reducing his earnings when he rents ? 2 That the
1 Possible as to some things. The Rothschilds and the. Bank of Cali-
fornia control the quicksilver production of the world, and sell quicksilver
in China cheaper than in California, where it is produced.
2 It may be said (and it is probably to some extent true in new coun-
tries), that where land is low a man will buy as much as he can ; where
land is higher, and he must take less for the same money, he will cul-
tivate it better. But if a man takes more than he can well use, this in
LAND AND LABOUR 81
two things go together is undoubtedly true; but it seems
to me that the increased thoroughness of cultivation is
due to the increased pressure of population to higher
prices for produce and lower prices for labour rather
than directly to the increased price of land.
There is another attribute in which land differs from
things of human production. It is imperishable. The
speculator in grain must sell quickly, not merely because
he knows another crop will soon come in, but because his
grain will spoil by keeping; the speculator in a manufac-
tured article must also sell quickly, not merely because
the mills are at work, but because the articles in which
he is speculating will spoil or go out of fashion. Not so
with land. The speculator in land can wait ; his land will
still be there as good as ever. If he dies before he reaps
the benefit, the land will be there for his children.
Thus land, being a thing of limited quantity, of imper-
ishable nature and of unchanging demand, is a thing in
which there are more inducements for speculation than
in anything else. And being, not the result of human
labour, but the field for human labour, the increased price
caused by speculation is a tax for which there can be no
beneficial return. Speculation in land is, in fact, but a
shutting out from the land of those who want to use it,
until they agree to pay the price demanded the land
speculator is a true "dog in the manger." He does not
want to use the land himself, but he finds his profit in
preventing other people from using it. The speculator
itself is speculation, and another remedy should be looked for than the
increase of speculation. Whereas, if by high prices a man is driven to
bestow the same labour on a smaller piece of ground than he would with
greater profit expend on a larger piece the increased thoroughness of
cultivation reduces production instead of increasing it is an evil, not a
benefit.
82 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
knows that more people are coming, and that they must
have land, and he gets hold of the land which they will
want to use, in order that he may force them to pay him
a price for which he gives them no return that is, that he
may appropriate a portion of their labour. Our emigrat-
ing race may be likened to a caravan crossing the desert,
and the land speculator to one of their number who rides
a little in advance, taking possession of the springs as
they are reached and exacting a price from his comrades
for the water which nature furnishes without price.
OP PROSPECTIVE VALUE AS AFFECTING THE PRESENT
VALUE OF LAND.
ACCORDING to the doctrine of rent advanced by Ricardo
and Malthus, 1 and generally accepted by the best authori-
ties on political economy, the value of land should be de-
termined by the advantages which it possesses over the
least advantageous land in use. This would be true,
though subject to the modifications arising from custom
and the inertia of population, were it not for the influ-
ence which prospective value exercises upon present value.
Where speculation in land is permitted more so, where
it is encouraged, as it is with us the prospective value
of land (the incentive to speculation) must exercise a
very great influence upon the present value of land, and
the value of land be determined, not by its actual advan-
tages over the poorest land in use, but by its advantages,
prospective as well as actual, over land which offers just
sufficient prospective advantage to make its possession de-
1 Henry George made no real study of the authorities on political econ-
omy until the " Progress and Poverty " period. H. G., JE.
LAND AND LABOUR 83
sirable. The prices of land in the United States to-day
are not warranted by our present population, but are sus-
tained by speculation founded upon the certainty of the
greater population which is coming. Every promise, every
hope, is discounted by land speculation. And land being
indestructible and costing less to keep than anything else
(for the taxes on unimproved land are generally lighter
than on anything else), and being limited in amount (so
that no increase in price brings about increase in supply),
these anticipations form a firm basis for price. Land has
no intrinsic value. It is not like a keg of nails, which costs
about so much to produce, and the price of which cannot,
therefore, go much above or fall much below that point.
It is worth just what can be had for it. If a man must
have land where speculative prices rule, he must pay the
price asked, and the price he pays is the gauge by which
all the surrounding holders measure the value and assess
the price of their lands. One rise encourages another
rise, and the course of prices is up and up, so long as
there is expectation of future demand. And whenever a
temporary panic comes, the land prices recover as quickly
as it is natural for hope to reassert itself in the human
breast. A great singer buys a lot in a little Illinois town
and real estate advances fifty per cent.; a train of cars
comes to Oakland, and for miles around land cannot be
bought for less than a thousand dollars an acre ; a few men
in San Francisco say to each other that the city is sure
to be the second on the continent, and straightway the
hill-tops for long distances are being bought and sold at
rates which would be exorbitant if San Francisco really
contained a million people, and he who wants a piece of
land to use must pay the speculative price. We are thus
compelled to pay in the present, prices based on what
people will be compelled to pay in the future.
84 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
OF SPECULATION IN LAND, AND THE SUPPLY OP CAPITAL.
WE frequently hear it said : "Times are hard because land
speculation has locked up so much capital." Now it is
evident that no amount of buying and selling in a com-
munity can lock up capital, and the direct effect of a
rise in land values, is to alter the distribution of wealth,
not to affect its amount. But to some extent the same
effect is produced as would be by the locking up of capital.
When a rise in land values takes place, certain men find
themselves much richer, without any addition to the capi-
tal of the community having been made. Some of these
will employ part of their new wealth in unproductive uses
in building finer houses, buying diamonds for their
wives, or travelling in the East, or in Europe. This re-
duces the supply of productive capital. At the same time
the profits of land speculation, and the new security which
the rise in values gives, will increase the number of bor-
rowers, and competition between them will have a ten-
dency to keep up rates of interest. But a fall in land
prices does not at once increase the available supply of
capital, as capitalists are made timid, and there is a ten-
dency to hoard rather than lend.
OP THE NECESSARY VALUE OF LAND.
WHERE the monopolisation of land is not permitted, where
a man can only take land which he wants to use, unused
land can have no value at least, none above the price
fixed by the State for the privilege of occupying it. But
as land becomes occupied, most of it would acquire a value
either from the possession of natural advantages supe-
LAND AND LABOUR 85
rior to that still unoccupied, or from its more central posi-
tion as respects population. This we may call the neces-
sary or real value of land, in contradistinction to the un-
necessary or fictitious value of land which results from
monopolisation. To illustrate : If, on the outskirts of San
Francisco, any one who wished to build a house might
take a lot from the unused ground, outside land would
be worth nothing, but Montgomery or Kearney street prop-
erty would still be very valuable, as, being in the heart
of the city, it is more convenient for residences or more
useful for business purposes. The difference, however,
between this necessary value of the land of the United
States and the aggregate value at which it is held must
be most enormous, and the difference represents the un-
necessary tax which land monopolisation levies upon
labour.
OF PROPERTY IN LAND.
THE right of every human being to himself is the foun-
dation of the right of property. That which a man pro-
duces is rightfully his own, to keep, to sell, to give, or
to bequeath, and upon this sure title alone can ownership
of anything rightfully rest. But man has also another
right, declared by the fact of his existence the right to
the use of so much of the free gifts of nature as may
be necessary to supply all the wants of that existence, and
as he may use without interfering with the equal rights
of any one else, and to this he has a title as against all
the world.
This right is natural; it cannot be alienated. It is the
free gift of his Creator to every man that comes into the
world a right as sacred, as indefeasible as his right to
life itself.
86 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
Land being the creation of God and the natural habi-
tation of man, the reservoir from which man must draw
the means of maintaining his life and satisfying his wants ;
the material to which it was pre-ordained that his labour
should be applied, it follows that every man born into
this world has a natural right to as much land as is
necessary for his own uses, and that no man has a right
to any more. To deny this is to deny the right of man
to himself, to assert the atrocious doctrine that the Al-
mighty has created some men to be the slaves of others.
For, to permit one man to monopolise the land from
which the support of others is to be drawn, is to permit
him to appropriate their labour, and, in so far as he is
permitted to do this, to appropriate them. It is to insti-
tute slavery.
For whether a man owns the bodies of his fellow beings,
or owns only the land from which they must obtain a
subsistence, makes but little difference to him or to them.
In the one case it is slavery just as much as the other.
And of the two forms of slavery, that which pretends to
the ownership of flesh and blood seems to me, on the
whole, far the more preferable. For in England, where
the monopolisation of land has reached a point which
gives to the mere labourer a share of the product of his
labour just sufficient to maintain his existence, the land-
owner gets from the labourer all that any master can get
from his slave, while he is not affected by the selfish
interest which prompts the master to look out for the well-
being of his slave, and is not influenced by those warmer
feelings which any ordinarily well-disposed man feels to-
wards any living thing of which he claims the ownership,
be it even a dog. For in free, rich England of the Nine-
teenth Century England, whose boast it is that no slave
can breathe her air England, that has spent millions of
LAND AND LABOUR 87
pounds for the abolition of slavery in far-off lands, and
that sends abroad annually hundreds of thousands of
pounds for the conversion of the heathen the condition
of the agricultural labourer is to-day harder, more hope-
less and more brutalising than that of the average slave
under any system of slavery which has prevailed in mod-
ern times. And, going even further, I do not believe that
the cold-blooded horrors brought to light by the various
Parliamentary Commissions which have investigated the
condition of the labouring poor of England, can be matched
even by the records of ancient slavery, under which sys-
tem slaves were sometimes fed to fishes, or tortured for
sport, or even by the annals of Spanish conquests in the
New World. Certain it is that, the condition of the slaves
upon our Southern plantations was not half so bad as
that of the land monopoly slaves of England. Legrees
there may have been in plenty, but I have yet 'to hear of
the Legree who worked children to physical and moral
death in his fields, or ground them, body and soul, in
his mills.
There is in nature no such thing as a fee simple in
land. The Almighty, who created the earth for man and
man for the earth, has entailed it upon all the genera-
tions of the children of men by a decree written upon the
constitution of all things a decree which no human action
can bar and no prescription determine. Let the parch-
ments be ever so many, or possession ever so long, in the
Courts of Natural Justice there can be but one title to
land recognised the using of it to satisfy reasonable
wants.
Now, from this, it by no means follows that there should
be no such thing as property in land, but merely that
there should be no monopolisation no standing between
the man who is willing to work and the field which nature
88 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
offers for his labour. For while it is true that the land
of a country is a free gift of the Creator to all the people
of that country, to the enjoyment of which each has an
equal natural right, it is also true that the recognition
of private ownership in land is necessarvto its proper use
is, in fact, a condition of civilisation. I^hen the millen-
nium comes, and the old savage, selfish instincts have died
out in men^ land may perhaps be held in common; but
not till thenTj^In our present state, at least, the "magic
of property which turns even sand into gold" must be
applied to our lands if we would reap the largest benefits
they are capable of yielding must be retained if we would
keep from relapsing into barbarism.
And a full appreciation of the value of landownership
tends to the same practical conclusion as the considera-
tions I have been presenting. If the worker upon land is
a better worker and a better man because he owns the
land, it should be our effort to make this stimulus felt
by all to make, as far as possible, all land-users also
landowners.
Nor is there any difficulty in combining a full recogni-
tion of private property in land with a recognition of the
right of all to the benefits conferred by the Creator, as
I will hereafter attempt to show.
We are not called upon to guarantee to all men equal
conditions, and could not if we would, any more than we
could guarantee to them equal intelligence, equal indus-
try or equal prudence; but we are called upon to give to
all men an equal chance. If we do not, our republicanism
is a snare and a delusion, our clatter about the rights of
man the veriest buncombe in which a people ever indulged.
IV.
THE TENDENCY OF OUR PRESENT LAND
POLICY.
WHAT OUR LAND POLICY IS.
Is our land policy calculated to give to all men an equal
chance? We have seen what it is how we are enabling
speculators to rob settlers; how we are by every means
enhancing the tax which the many must pay to the few;
how we are making away with the heritage of our children,
and putting in immense bodies into the hands of a few
individuals the soil from which the coming millions of
our people must draw their support. If we continue this
policy a few years, the public domain will all be gone;
the homestead law and the pre-emption law will remain
upon the statute books but to remind the poor man of the
good time past, and we shall find ourselves embarrassed
by all the difficulties which beset the statesmen of Europe
the social disease of England; the seething discontent
of France.
Was there ever national blunder so great ever national
crime so tremendous as ours in dealing with our land?
It is not in the heat and flush of conquest that we are
thus doing what has been done in every country under the
sun where a ruling class has been built up and the masses
90 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
condemned to hopeless toil; it is not in ignorance of true
political principles and in the conscientious belief that
the God-appointed order of things is that the many should
serve the few. We are monopolising our land deliber-
ately our land, not the land of a conquered nation, and
we are doing it while prating of the equal rights of the
citizen and of the brotherhood of men.
THE VALUE OP OUR PUBLIC DOMAIN.
THIS public domain that we are getting rid of as recklessly
as though we esteemed its possession a curse, can never
be replaced, nor are there other limitless bodies of land
which we may subdue. Of the whole continent, we now
occupy nearly the whole of the zone in which all the
real progressive life of the world has been lived. North
of us are the cold high latitudes, south of us the tropical
heats. The table-lands of Mexico and the valleys of the
Saskatchewan and Eed rivers, which comprise almost all
of the temperate portions of the continent yet unoccupied
by our race, are of very small extent when compared with
the vast country we have already overrun, and when our
emigration is compelled to set upon them will be filled as
we now populate a new State.
It is not pleasant to think of the time when the public
domain will all be gone. "This will be a great country,"
we say, "when it is all fenced in." Great it will be
great it must be, in arts and arms, in population and in
wealth. But will it be as great in all that constitutes
true greatness? Will it be such a good country for the
poor man? Will there be such an average of comfort and
independence and virtue among the masses? And which
to me is the important fact that I am one of a nation
PRESENT LAND POLICY 91
of so many more millions, or that I can buy my chil-
dren shoes when they need them? "The greatest glory of
America," says Carlyle, "is that there every bootblack may
have a turkey in his pot." We shall be credited with no
such glory when the country is all "fenced in" as we are
now rapidly fencing it.
From this public domain of ours have sprung and still
spring subtle influences which strengthen our national
character and tinge all our thought. This vast back-
ground of unfenced land has given a consciousness of
freedom even to the dweller in crowded cities, and has
been a well-spring of hope even to those who never thought
of taking refuge upon it. The child of the people as he
grows to manhood in Europe finds every seat at the ban-
quet of life marked "taken," and must struggle with his
fellows for the crumbs that fall, without one chance in a
thousand of forcing or sneaking his way to a seat. In
America, whatever be his condition, there is always more
or less clearly and vividly the consciousness that the pub-
lic domain is behind him; that there is a new country
where all the places are not yet taken, where opportu-
nities are still open; and the knowledge of this fact, act-
ing and reacting, penetrates our whole national life,
giving to it generosity and independence, elasticity and
ambition.
Why should we seek so diligently to get rid of this
public domain as if for the mere pleasure of getting rid
of it ? What have the buffaloes done to us that we should
sacrifice the heritage of our children to see the last of
them extirpated before we die? Are the operatives of
New England, the farmers of Ohio, the mechanics of San
Francisco better off for the progress of this thing which
we call national development this scattering of a thou-
sand people over the land which would suffice for a mil-
92 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
lion; this fencing in for a dozen of the soil to which tens
of millions must before long look for subsistence?
All that we are proud of in the American character, all
that makes our condition and institutions better than
those of the older countries, we may trace to the fact
that land has been cheap in the United States; and yet
we are doing our utmost to make it dear, and actually
seem pleased to see it become dear, looking upon the lien
which the few are taking upon the labour of the many as
an actual increase in the wealth of all.
NO TENDENCY TO EQUALISATION.
NOR can we flatter ourselves that the inequality in con-
dition which we are creating will right itself by easy and
peaceful means. It is not merely present inequality which
we are creating, but a tendency to further inequality.
When we allow one man to take the land which should
belong to a hundred, and give to a corporation the soil
from which a million must shortly draw their subsistence,
we are not only giving in the present wealth to the few
by taking it from the many, but we are putting it in the
power of the few to levy a constant and an increasing tax
upon the many, and we are increasing the tendency to
the concentration of wealth not merely upon the land
which is thus monopolised, but all over the United
States.
Even if the large bodies of land which we are giving
away for nothing, or selling to speculators for a nominal
price, are subdivided and sold for small farms, the mis-
chief we have done is not at an end. The capital of the
settlers has been taken from them, and put in large masses
into the hands of the speculators or railroad kings. The
PRESENT LAND POLICY 93
many are thereafter the poorer; the few thereafter the
richer. We have concentrated wealth; that is, we have
concentrated the power of getting wealth. We have set in
operation the law of attraction the law that "unto him
that hath shall it be given/' and never in any age of the
world has this law worked so powerfully as now.
It must not be thought that because we have no laws
of entail and primogeniture the vast estates which we are
creating will in time break up of themselves. There were
no laws of entail and primogeniture in ancient Eome
where the monopolisation of land and the concentration
of wealth went so far that the empire, and even civilisa-
tion, itself, perished of the social diseases engendered. It
is not the laws of entail and primogeniture that have pro-
duced the concentration of wealth in England which makes
the richest country in the world the abode of the most
hopeless poverty. In spite of entail and primogeniture,
wealth is constantly changing from hand to hand, but al-
ways in large masses. The richest families of a few cen-
turies back are extinct, the blood of the noblest of a com-
paratively recent time flows in the veins of people who
live in garrets and toil in kitchens. And the same causes
which have reduced the 374,000 landholders of England
in the middle of the last century to 30,000 now are work-
ing in this country as powerfully as they are working
there. Wealth is concentrating in a few hands as rapidly
in New York as in London ; the condition of the labouring
classes of New England is steadily approximating to that
of Old England.
Nor, if we are to have a very rich class and a very poor
class, is there any particular advantage in the fact that
one is constantly being recruited from the other, though
there are people who seem to think that the fact that
most of our millionaires were poor boys is a sufficient an-
94: OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
swer to anything that may be said of the evils of a con-
centration of wealth. As wealth concentrates, the chance
for any particular individual to escape from one class to
another becomes less and less, until practically worth noth-
ing, while there is nothing in human nature to cause us
to believe, and nothing in history to show that members
of a privileged class are less grasping because they once
belonged to an unprivileged class. Nor, after wealth has
become concentrated, is there any tendency in this chang-
ing of the individuals who hold it to diffuse it again.
The social structure is like the flame of a gas-burner,
which retains its form though the particles which com-
pose it are constantly changing.
THE TENDENCY TO' CONCENTRATION.
THERE is no tendency yet to the breaking up of large
landholdings in the United States; but the reverse is
rather the case. The railroad lands are not being sold
anything like as fast as they are being granted, and large
private estates are increasing instead of diminishing. It
is true that tracts bought for speculation are frequently
cut up and sold, but it will generally be found that others
are at the same time secured farther ahead, though not
always by the same parties. And as wealth concentrates,
population becomes denser, and the advantages of land-
ownership greater, the tendency on the part of the rich
to invest in land increases, and the same cause which has
so largely reduced the number of landowners in Great
Britain is put in operation. Already the custom of rent-
,ing land is unmistakably gaining ground, and the con-
centration of landownership seems to be going on in our
older States almost as fast as the monopolisation of new
PRESENT LAND POLICY 95
and goes on in the younger ones. 1 And at last the steam
jlough and the steam wagon have appeared to develop,
perhaps, in agriculture the same tendencies to concen-
tration which the power loom and the triphammer have
developed in manufacturing.
We are not only putting large bodies of our new lands
in the hands of the few; but we are doing our best to
keep them there, and to cause the absorption of small
farms into large estates. The whole pressure of our reve-
nue system, National and State, tends to the concentra-
tion of wealth and the monopolisation of land. A hun-
1 'iOur farms in older States instead of being divided and subdivided
as they ought to be, are growing larger and more unwieldy. The ten-
dency of the times is unquestionably towards immense estates, each with
a manorial mansion in the center and a dependent tenantry crouching in
the shadow." North American Review, 1859.
"A non-resident proprietary like that of Ireland is getting to be the
characteristic of large farming districts in New England, adding yearly to
the nominal value of leasehold farms, advancing yearly the rent de-
manded, and steadily degrading the character of the tenantry, until, in
the place of the boasted intelligence of rural New England, a competent
authority can to-day write : ' The general educational condition of the
farm laborer is very low, even below that of the factory operative ; a large
percentage of them can neither read nor write.'" New York World,
May, 1871, in an article on the returns for New England of the Census
of 1870.
"The part of the report [Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics],
however, which of all is, in our opinion, the most remarkable, is that
relating to agriculture in Massachusetts. It may be summed up in two
words : rapid decay. Increased nominal value of land, higher rents,
fewer farms occupied by owners ; diminished product, general decline of
prosperity, lower wages ; a more ignorant population, increasing number
of women employed at hard outdoor labor (surest sign of a declining civ-
ilization), and steady deterioration in the style of fanning these are the
conditions described by a cumulative mass of evidence that is perfectly
irresistible, and that is unfortunately only too strongly confirmed by such
details of census statistics as have been so far made public." New York
Nation, June, 1871.
9 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
died thousand dollars in the hands of one man pays but
a slight proportion of the taxes which are paid by the
same sum in the hands of fifty; a hundred thousand acres
owned by a single landholder are assessed but for a frac-
tion of the amount assessed upon the hundred thousand
acres of six hundred farms. Especially is this true of
the State of California, where the large landholders are
frequently assessed at the rate of one dollar per acre on
land for which they are charging settlers twenty or thirty,
and where the small farmer sometimes pays taxes at a
rate one hundredfold greater than his neighbour of the
eleven league ranch. Our whole policy is of a piece
everything is tending with irresistible force to make us a
nation of landlords and tenants of great capitalists and
their poverty-stricken employes.
The life of all the older nations shows the bitterness
of the curse of land monopolisation; we cannot turn a
page of their history without finding the blood stains and
the tear marks it has left. But never since commerce and
manufactures grew up, and men began to engage largely
in other occupations than those connected directly with
the soil, has it been so important to prevent land monopo-
lisation as now. The tendency of all the improved means
and forms of production and exchange of the greater
and greater subdivision of labour, of the enslavement of
steam, of the utilisation of electricity, of the ten thou-
sand great labour-saving appliances which modern inven-
tion has brought forth, is strongly and more strongly to
extend the dominion of capital and to make of labour its
abject slave. Once to set up in the business of making
cloth required only the purchase of a hand loom and a
little yarn, the means for which any journeyman could
soon save from his earnings; now it requires a great fac-
tory, costly machinery, large stocks and credits, and to
PRESENT LAND POLICY 97
go into business on his own account one must be a mil-
lionaire. So it is in all branches of manufacture ; so, too,
it is in trade. Concentration is the law of the time. The
great city is swallowing up the little towns ; the great mer-
chant is driving his poorer rivals out of business; a thou-
sand little dealers become the clerks and shopmen of the
proprietor of the marble-fronted palace; a thousand mas-
ter workmen, the employes of one rich manufacturer, and
the gigantic corporations, the alarming product of the
new social forces which Watt and Stephenson introduced
to the world, are themselves being welded into still more
titanic corporations. From present appearances, ten years
from now we shall have but three, possibly but one railroad
company in the United States, yet our young men remem-
ber the time when these giants were such feeble infants
that we deemed it charity to shelter them from the cold,
and feed them, as it were, with a spoon. In the new con-
dition of things what chance will there be for a poor man
if our land also is monopolised?
Of the political tendency of our land policy, it is hardly
necessary to speak. To say that the land of a country
shall be owned by a small class, is to say that that class
shall rule it; to say which is the same thing that the
people of a country shall consist of the very rich and the
very poor, is to say that republicanism is impossible. Its
forms may be preserved; but the real government which
clothes itself with these forms, as if in mockery, will be
many degrees worse than an avowed and intelligent des-
potism.
V.
WHAT OUB LAND POLICY SHOULD BE.
HOW WE SHOULD DISPOSE OF OUE NEW LAND.
WHEN we reflect what land is; when we consider the rela-
tions between it and labour; when we remember that to
own the land upon which a man must gain his subsist-
ence is to all intents and purposes to own the man himself,
we cannot remain in doubt as to what should be our policy
in disposing of our public lands.
We have no right to dispose of them except to actual
settlers to the men who really want to use them; no
right to sell them to speculators, to give them to railroad
companies or to grant them for agricultural colleges; no
more right to do so than we have to sell or to grant the
labour of the people who must some day live upon
them.
And to actual settlers we should give them. Give, not
sell. For we have no right to step between the man who
wants to use land and land which is as yet unused, and
to demand of him a price for our permission to avail him-
self of his Creator's bounty. The cost of surveying and
the cost of administering the Land Office may be proper
charges; but even these it were juster and wiser to charge
as general expenses, to be borne by the surplus wealth of
98
TRUE LAND POLICY 99
\
the country, by the property which settlement will make
more valuable. We can better afford to bear the neces-
sary expenses of the Land Office than we can the expense
of keeping useless men-of-war at sea or idle troops in
garrison posts. When we can give a few rich bankers
twenty or thirty millions a year we can afford to pay a
few millions in order to make our public lands perfectly
free. Let the settler keep all of his little capital ; it is his
seed wheat. When he has gathered his crop, then we may
take our toll, with usury if need be.
And we should give but in limited quantities. For
while every man has a right to as much land as he can
properly use, no man has a right to any more, and when
others do or will want it, cannot take any more without
infringing on their rights. One hundred and sixty acres
is too much to give one person ; it is more than he can cul-
tivate; and our great object should be to give every one
an opportunity of employing his own labour, and to give
no opportunity to any one to appropriate the labour of
others. We cannot afford to give so much in view of the
extent of the public domain and the demand for homes
yet to be made upon it. While we are calling upon all
the world to come in and take our land, let us save a little
for our own children. Nor can we afford to give so
much in view of the economic loss consequent upon the
dispersion of population. Four families to the square
mile are not enough to secure the greatest return to labour
and the least waste in exchanges. Eighty acres is quite
enough for any one, and I am inclined to think forty acres
still nearer the proper amount.
There should be but this one way of disposing of the
agricultural lands. None at all should be given to the
States, except such as was actually needed for sites of
public buildings; none at all for school funds or agricul-
100 OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY
tural colleges. The earnings of a self-employing, inde-
pendent people, upon which the State may at any time
draw, constitute the best school fund; to diffuse wealth so
that the masses may enjoy the luxury of learning is the
best way to provide for colleges.
SOME OBJECTIONS.
IT will be said: If the public land is to be morselled out
in this way, what is to be done for stock ranches and
sheep farms? There will be the unused land, the public
commons. Let the large herds and flocks keep upon that,
moving farther along as it is needed for settlement. But
there would be plenty of stock kept on eighty-acre or even
forty-acre farms. In Belgium each six-acre farmer has
his cow or two of the best breed, and kept in the best
condition.
And it may be said : There is some land which requires
extensive work for its reclamation. Capital cannot be
induced to undertake this work if the land be given away
in small pieces. But if capital cannot, labour can. The
most difficult reclamation in the world that of turning
the shifting sands of the French sea-coast into gardens
has been done by ten- and twelve-acre farmers. Observe
that it is proposed to give the lands only to actual settlers.
Is there any of our land which requires for its reclama-
tion greater capital than that involved in the labour of
sixteen men to the square mile, working to make them-
selves homes? The cost of reclaiming the swamp lands
of California, which has been made an excuse for giving
them away by the hundred thousand acres, does not in
most cases equal the cost of the fencing required on the
uplands. Let men be sure that they are working for them-
TRUE LAND POLICY 101
selves, give them a little stake in the general prosperity,
and labour will combine intelligently and economically,
enough.
HOW SETTLEMENT WOULD GO ON.
UNDER such a policy as this, settlement would go on regu-
larly and thoroughly. Population would not in the same
time spread over as much ground as under the present
policy; but what it did spread over would be well settled
and well cultivated. There would be no necessity for
building costly railroads to connect settlers with a mar-
ket. The market would accompany settlement. No one
would go out into the wilderness, to brave all the hardships
and discomforts of the solitary frontier life; but with the
foremost line of settlement would go church and school-
house and lecture-room. The ill-paid, overworked me-
chanic of the city could find a home on the soil, where
he would not have to abandon all the comforts of civili-
sation, but where there would be society enough to make
life attractive, and where the wants of his neighbours
would give a market for his surplus labour until his land
began to produce ; and to tell those who complain of want
of employment and low wages to make for themselves
homes on the public domain would then be no idle taunt.
Consider, too, the general gain from this mode of set-
tlement. How much of our labour is now given to trans-
portation, and wasted in various ways, because of the scat-
tering of our population which land grabbing has caused?
SOMETHING STILL MORE RADICAL NEEDED.
BET still the adoption of such a policy would affect only
the land that is left us. It would be preventive, not reme-
102 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
dial. It would still leave the great belts granted to rail-
roads, the vast estates such as those with which California
is cursed, and the large bodies of land which everywhere
have been made the subject of speculation. It would
leave, moreover, still in full force, the tendency which is
concentrating the ownership of the land in a few hands
in the older settled States. And further than this, I
hardly think, agitate as we may, that we can secure the
adoption of such a preventive policy until we can do some-
thing to make the monopolisation of land unprofitable.
What we want, therefore, is something which shall de-
stroy the tendency to the aggregation of land, which shall
break up present monopolisation, and which shall prevent
(by doing away with the temptation) future monopolisa-
tion. And as arbitrary and restrictive laws are always
difficult to enforce, we want a measure which shall be
equal, uniform and constant in its operation; a measure
which will not restrict enterprise, which will not curtail
production, and which will not offend the natural sense
of justice.
When our 40,000,000 of people have to raise $800,000,-
000 per year for public purposes * we cannot have any diffi-
culty in discovering such a remedy, in the adjustment of
taxation.
A LESSON FROM THE PAST.
LET us turn for a moment from the glare of the Nine-
teenth Century to the darkness of mediaeval times. The
spirit of the Feudal System dealt far more wisely with
the land than the system which has succeeded it, and rude
outcome of a barbarous age though it was, we may, remem-
1 Estimate of Commissioner Wells.
TRUE LAND POLICY 103
bering the difference of times and conditions, go back to
it for many valuable lessons. The Feudal System an-
nexed duties to privileges. In theory, at least, protection
was the corollary of allegiance, and honour brought with
it the obligation to a good life and noble deeds, while the
ownership of land involved the necessity of bearing the
public expenses. One portion of the land, allotted to the
Crown, defrayed the expenses of the State; out of the
profits of another portion, allotted to the military tenants,
the army was provided and maintained ; the profits of- a
third portion, given to religious uses, supported the Church
and relieved the sick, the indigent and the wayworn, while
there was a fourth portion, the commons, of which no
man was master, but which was free to all the people.
The great debt, the grinding taxation, which now falls
on the labouring classes of England, are but the results of
a departure from this system. Before Henry VIII. sup-
pressed the monasteries and enclosed the commons there
were no poor laws in England and no need for any; until
the Crown lands were got rid of there was no necessity
for taxation for the support of the Government; until the
military tenants shirked the condition on which they had
been originally permitted to reap the profits of landowner-
ship, England could at any time put an army in the field
without borrowing and without taxation; and a recent
English writer has estimated that had the feudal tenures
been continued, England would have now had at her com-
mand a completely appointed army of six hundred thou-
sand men, without the cost of a penny to the public trea-
sury or to the labouring classes. Had this system been con-
tinued the vast war expenses of England would have come
from the surplus wealth of those who make war; the ex-
penses of government would have borne upon the classes
who direct the Government; and the deep gangrene of
104 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
pauperism, which perplexes the statesman and baffles the
philanthropist, would have had no existence. England
would have been stronger, richer, happier. Why should
we not go back to the old system, and charge the expenses
of government upon our lands?
If we do, we shall go far towards breaking up land mo-
nopoly and all its evils, and towards counteracting the
causes now so rapidly concentrating wealth in a few hands.
We shall raise our revenues by the most just and the most
simple means, and with the least possible burden upon
production.
TAXATION OF LAND FALLS ONLY ON ITS OWNER.
THERE is one peculiarity in a land tax. With a few tri-
fling exceptions of no practical importance it is the only
tax which must be paid by the holder of the thing taxed.
If we impose a tax upon money loaned, the lender will
charge it to the borrower, and the borrower must pay it,
otherwise the money will be sent out of the country for
investment, and if the borrower uses it in his business
he, in his turn, must charge it to his customers or his
business becomes unprofitable. If we impose a tax upon
buildings, those who use them must pay it, as otherwise
the erection of buildings becomes unprofitable, and will
cease until rents become high enough to pay the regular
profit on the cost of building and the tax besides. But
not so with land. Land is not an article of production.
Its quantity is fixed. No matter how little you tax it there
will be no more of it; no matter how much you tax it
there will be no less. It can neither be removed nor made
scarce by cessation of production. There is no possible
way in which owners of land can shift the tax upon the
TRUE LAND POLICY 105
user. And so while the effect of taxation upon all other
things is to increase their value, and thus to make the
consumer pay the tax the effect of a tax upon land is
to reduce its value that is, its selling price, as it reduces
the profit of its ownership without reducing its supply.
It will not, however, reduce its renting price. The same
amount of rent will be paid; but a portion of it will now
go to the State instead of to the landlord. And were we
to impose upon land a tax equal to the whole annual profit
of its ownership, land would be worth nothing and might
in many cases be abandoned by its owners. But the users
would still have to pay as much as before paying in
taxes, what they formerly paid as rent. And reversely, if
we were to reduce or take off the taxes on land, the owner,
not the user, would get the benefit. Kents would be no
higher, but would leave more profit, and the value of land
would be more.
LAND TAXATION THE BEST TAXATION.
THE best tax is that which comes nearest to filling the
three following conditions:
That it bear as lightly as possible upon production.
That it can be easily and cheaply collected, and cost
the people as little as possible in addition to what it yields
the Government.
That it bear equally that is, according to the ability
to pay.
The tax upon land better fulfils these conditions than
any tax it is possible to impose.
1. As we have seen, it does not bear at all upon produc-
tion it adds nothing to prices, and does not affect the
cost of living.
106 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
2. As it does not add to prices, it costs the people noth-
ing in addition to what it yields the Government; while
as land cannot be hid and cannot be moved, it can be col-
lected with more ease and certainty, and with less expense
than any other tax.
3. A tax upon the value of land is the most equal of
all taxes, not that it is paid by all in equal amounts, or
even in equal amounts upon equal means, but because the
value of land is something which belongs to all, and in
taxing land values we are merely taking for the use of the
community something which belongs to the community,
which by the necessities of our social organisation we are
obliged to permit individuals to hold.
Of course, in speaking of the value of land, I mean the
value of the land itself, not the value of any improvement
which has been made upon it I mean what I believe is
sometimes called in England the unearned value of land.
From its very nature it must be apparent that property
in land differs essentially from other property, and if the
principles I have endeavoured to state in the third section
of this paper are correct, it must be evident that it is
not unjust to impose taxes upon land values which are not
imposed on other property. But as the proposition may
be somewhat startling, it may be worth while to dwell a
little on this point.
OF THE JUSTICE OF TAXING LAND.
HERE is a lot in the central part of San Francisco, which,
irrespective of the building upon it, is worth $100,000.
What gives that value? Not what its owner has done, 1
1 Though he may have done some part, as in grading, etc.
TRUE LAND POLICY 107
but the fact that 150,000 people have settled around it.
This lot yields its owner $10,000 annually. Where does
this $10,000 come from? Evidently from the earnings
of the workers of the community, for it can come from no-
where else.
Here is a lot on the outskirts. It is in the same condi-
tion in which nature left it. Intrinsically it is worth
no more than when there were but a hundred people at
Yerba Buena Cove. Then it was worth nothing. Now
that there are 150,000 people here and more coming, it is
worth $3000. That is, its owner can command $3000
worth of the labour or of the wealth of the community.
What does he give for this? Nothing; the land was there
before he was.
Suppose a community like that of San Francisco, in
which land, though in individual hands as now, has no
value. Suppose, then, that all at once the land was given
a value of, say, $150,000,000, which is about the present
value of land in San Francisco. What would be the effect ?
That a tax, of which $150,000,000 is the capitalised value,
would be levied upon the whole community for the benefit
of a portion. There would be no more in the community
than before, and no greater means of producing wealth.
But of that wealth, beyond the share which they formerly
had, the landowners would now command $150,000,000.
That is, there would be $150,000,000 less for other people
who were not landholders.
And does not this consideration of the nature and effect
of land values go far to explain the puzzling fact that not-
withstanding all the economies in production and distri-
bution which a dense population admits, just as a com-
munity increases in population and wealth, so does the
reward of the labourer decrease and poverty deepen?
One hundred men settle in a new place. Land has at
108 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
first little or no value. The net result of their labour is
divided pretty equally between them. Each one gets pretty
nearly the full value of his contribution to the general
stock. The community becomes 100,000. Land has be-
come valuable, its value perhaps aggregating as much as
the value of all other property. The production of the
community may now be more per capita for each indi-
vidual who works, but before the division is made, one
half of the product must go to the landholders. How
then can the labourer get so much as he could in the small
community ?
Now in this view of the matter considering land values
as an indication of the appropriation (though doubtless
the necessary appropriation) of the wealth of all; consid-
ering land rentals as a tax upon the labour of the com-
munity, is not a tax upon land values the most just and
the most equal tax that can be levied? Should we not
take that which rightfully belongs to the whole before we
take that which rightfully belongs to the individual?
Should we not tax this tax upon labour before we tax
productive labour itself?
That the value of our land, even the "necessary value"
which it would have when stripped of speculative value,
would easily bear the whole burden of taxation, there
can be no doubt. The statistics are too confused and
too unreliable to enable us to judge accurately of the value
of land as compared with the value of other property;
but we have high authority for the belief that the value
of our land is equal to the value of all other property,
including the improvements upon it. The New York
Commissioners for the Kevision of the Kevenue Laws
David A. Wells, Edwin Dodge and George W. Cuyler, the
first named of whom, as United States Special Commis-
sioner of the Kevenue, has had better opportunities for
TRUE LAND POLICY 109
studying all matters connected with taxation than any
other man in the United States say in their report, ren-
dered this year : "A careful consideration and study of the
nature and classification of property inclines the Com-
missioners to indorse the correctness of an opinion which
appears to have been originally proposed by a financial
writer of New York [George Opdyke] as far back as 1851,
viz. : 'That universally the market value of the aggregate
of land and that of the aggregate of productive capital are
equal: " 1
And it may be here remarked that these New York Com-
missioners in their elaborate report recommend the total
abolition of the tax on personal property on the ground
1 By "productive capital " Opdyke means all property other than land.
In his Treatise on Political Economy he says : "The statistics presented
by assessments of property for the purposes of taxation invariably exhibit
the estimated value of land and its meliorations under the head of 'real
estate,' and the estimated value of all other productive capital under the
head of ' personal estate. ' Thus divided, we may readily infer that the
value of real estate greatly exceeds that of personal estate, and so these
statistics invariably indicate. But if we take the estimate for any given
village, town or city, and from the gross value of the real estate deduct
the value of the buildings, and add to it the personal estate, we shall
then find them equal, provided the assessment has been correctly made,
which, by the way, very rarely occurs. "
After citing examples from New York and Cincinnati, he goes on to
say: "It is thus of all other cities, towns and villages throughout the
civilized world ; and it is thus in all agricultural districts, but in these
the land and its meliorations are so much more intimately blended that
we cannot perceive the facts so readily. The truth is, the market value
of land is merely the reflection of the value of the productive capital
placed upon it and its immediate vicinity. It has no real value of its
own; it costs nothing to produce; but since the laws have endowed it
with the vital principle of wealth by subjecting it to individual owner-
ship, it can no longer be obtained without giving in exchange for it an
equivalent portion of the capital present and designed to concur with it
in the production of wealth."
110 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
(which has been proved in every State in the Union,
and, in fact, by every nation of ancient or modern times)
that it is utterly impossible to collect it with any degree
of fulness and anything like fairness, and that the at-
tempt to do so results in injury both to the material and
the moral interests of the community. They propose in-
stead of the tax on personal property, to tax every indi-
vidual on an amount three times as great as the annual
rental of the house or place of business he occupies, and
present a strong array of reasons to show that this would
be a much more equitable and productive mode of taxa-
tion. Better still, for the reasons I have given, to abandon
the attempt to tax personal property or anything in lieu
of it, and to put the bulk of taxation entirely on land
values.
Nevertheless, after all that can be said, it must be con-
fessed that there would be some slight injustice in doing
so. I had ten thousand dollars, let us say, which I might
have put out at high interest, or invested in my business.
Supposing the existing policy would be continued, I bought
land with it, calculating that in a few years, when popu-
lation became greater, people would be glad to buy it of
me for a much higher price, or give me one fourth of the
crop for the privilege of cultivating it. You now im-
pose taxation, which will lower the value of my land. If
you do this, you make my speculation less profitable than
others I might have gone into, and thus do me injustice,
for you gave me no notice.
This is true, and it is this consideration which makes
men like John Stuart Mill shrink from the practical ap-
plication of deductions from their own doctrines, and pro-
pose that in resuming their ownership of the land of Eng-
land, the people of England shall pay its present proprie-
tors not only its actual value, but also the present value
TRUE LAND POLICY 111
of its prospective increase in value. But if we once do a
public wrong, we can never right it without doing some-
body injustice. England sought to right the wrong of
slavery without injustice to the slaveholders who had in-
vested their capital in human flesh and blood. She suc-
ceeded by making them pecuniary compensation; but in
doing this she did a worse injustice to her own white
slaves on whom the burden of the payment has been im-
posed. And by shrinking from doing this slight injustice
which would affect but very few people in the community,
and those most able to stand it, we continue a ten thou-
sandfold greater injustice; and the longer we delay action,
the greater will be the injustice which we must do.
OF SOME EXEMPTIONS, AND SOME ADDITIONS.
FOE the purpose of making it still more sure that taxation
should not bear heavily upon any one; for the purpose
of still further counteracting the tendency to the con-
centration of wealth, and for the purpose of securing as
far as possible to every citizen an interest in the soil,
there should be a uniform exemption to a small amount
made to each landholder perhaps a smaller amount in
the cities, where land is only used for residences and busi-
ness purposes, than in the country, where labour is di-
rectly applied to the land. Those whose land did not ex-
ceed in value this minimum would have no taxes to pay;
those whose land did, would pay upon the surplus. This
would reverse the present effect of our revenue system,
and tend to make the holding of land in large bodies less
profitable than the holding of it in small bodies.
And while, perhaps, it might not be wise to attempt to
limit the accumulations of any individual during bis life-
112 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
time, or at any rate it is not yet necessary to try the ex-
periment, there should be a very heavy duty, amounting to
a considerable part of the whole, levied upon the estates
of deceased persons, and in the case of intestates the
whole should escheat to the State, where there were no
heirs of the first or second degree.
There is still another source from which a large reve-
nue might be harmlessly drawn license taxes upon such
businesses as it is public policy to restrict and discourage,
such as liquor selling, the keeping of gambling houses
(where this cannot be prevented), etc. All other taxes
of whatever kind or nature, whether National, State,
County, or Municipal, might then be swept away.
THE EFFECTS OF SUCH A CHANGE.
CONSIDER the effects of the adoption of such a system :
The mere holder of land would be called on to pay just
as much taxes as the user of land. The owner of a vacant
city lot would have to pay as much for the privilege of
keeping other people off it till he wanted to use it, as his
neighbour who has a fine house upon his lot, and is either
using or deriving rent from it. The monopoliser of agri-
cultural land would be taxed as much as though his land
were covered with improvements, with crops and with stock.
Land prices would fall; land speculation would receive
its death-blow; land monopolisation would no longer pay.
Millions and millions of acres from which settlers are now
shut out would be abandoned by their present owners, or
sold to settlers on nominal terms. It is only in rare cases
that it would pay any one to get land before he wanted
to use it, so that those who really wanted to use land
would find it easy to get.
TBUE LAND POLICY 113
The whole weight of taxation would be lifted from pro-
ductive industry. The million dollar manufactory, and
the needle of the seamstress, the mechanic's cottage, and
the grand hotel, the farmer's plough, and the ocean steam-
ship, would be alike untaxed. All would be free to buy
or sell, to make or save, unannoyed by the tax-gatherer.
Imagine this country with all taxes removed from pro-
duction and exchange! How demand would spring up;
how trade would increase ; what a powerful stimulus would
be applied to every branch of industry ; what an enormous
development of wealth would take place. Imagine this
country free of taxation, with its unused land free to
those who would use it ! Would there be many industrious
men walking our streets, or tramping over our roads in
the ,vain search for employment ? Would we hear much
of stagnation in business, and of "over production" of
the things that millions of us want? Consider the enor-
mous gain which would result from leaving capital and
labour, untrammelled by tax or restriction, to seek the
most remunerative fields; the enormous saving which
would result from the settling of people near each other,
as they would settle, if any one could get enough unused
land for his needs, and it would pay nobody to get any
more.
Consider the effects of this policy on the distribution of
wealth directly, by reversing the effect of taxation
which is now to make the poor poorer, and the rich richer;
indirectly, by freeing and cheapening land, and thus put-
ting labour in a position to make better terms with capital.
And consider how equalisation in the distribution of wealth
would react on production how it would lessen the great
army of involuntary idlers; how it would increase the
vigour and industry and skill of workers; for poorly re-
warded labour is poor labour all the world over, and the
114 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
greater its reward, the greater the efficiency of labour.
Consider, too, the moral effects: Sharp alternations of
wealth and poverty breed vice and crime, as surely as they
breed misery. Personal independence is the foundation
of all the virtues. Deep poverty brutalises men. Where
it exists, the preacher will preach in vain; and the philan-
thropist will toil in vain; they are dumping their good
words and good deeds into such a Slough of Despond as
Pilgrim saw.
WHO WOULD GAIN AND WHO WOULD LOSE.
THAT the policy proposed would be to the advantage of
all who do not hold land is clear enough. But it must
not be imagined that all who hold land would lose. On
the contrary, the large majority of landholders would be
gainers. Whether a landholder would gain or lose, would
depend upon whether his interest as a landholder, which
would be adversely affected, was greater or less than his
other interests, which would be beneficially affected. The
man who owns a house and lot of equal value would have
less taxes to pay if taxation were taken off of buildings
and put on land, as the aggregate value of land is greater
than that of buildings. His homestead would sell for less
than before, but the money it sold for would buy just as
good a house and lot as before; so that, if his intention
is to always keep a homestead, he would not lose any-
thing by the shrinkage in its value ; or even if it was not,
he would not have to keep it long before his gain on taxes
would make up for the loss in value. While, if he was
a mechanic, engaged in or connected with any of the
building trades, he would gain in more constant work and
better wages by the stimulus which the exemption of im-
TRUE LAND POLICY 115
provements from taxation, and the reduction in the value
of land would give to building. Or if he kept a store, or
was engaged in any business or profession, he would gain
by the quickened growth and increased activity of the
community.
And if taxes were removed from everything but land
(with the exceptions and exemptions I have before indi-
cated) the gain would be largely greater. Let the farmer,
the mechanic, the manufacturer, or the business man, who
is also a landowner, calculate how much he pays of the
taxes which enter into the cost of everything he buys, or
in any way uses, and how much he loses by the restrictive
effect which those taxes have upon all industry and busi-
ness. Then let him set against this amount, which he
now pays and loses, the additional amount which he would
pay .as taxes on land, or which he would lose by the re-
duction of its value, were all taxes placed upon land.
Did they make this calculation, three out of every four
of those who own land would see they would be gainers.
For as yet tb.e class whose other interests are subordinate
to their interest in the high value of land is really small.
And it must be remembered that were our whole revenue
raised by a direct land tax, the amount taken from the peo-
ple in order to give the same amount to the Government
would be very much smaller than now, and that there would
be a positive increase in wealth, a large share of which
would go to the landowners who would have additional
taxes to pay.
WHAT CAN BE DONE AT ONCE.
THE more the matter is considered, the more, I think, it
will appear that all our taxation, or at least the largest part
of it, should be placed upon land values. By doing so
116 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
we would substitute the best possible revenue system for
our present cumbrous, unjust, wasteful and oppressive
modes of taxation; we would, without resort to special
and arbitrary laws, prevent and break up land monopolisa-
tion, and we would, at the same time, and in the same
simple, just way, do a great deal to counteract the alarm-
ing tendency to the concentration of wealth in a few
hands, which is now so apparent.
Nevertheless, the application of this remedy is not yet
practicable. We are so used to look upon land as upon
other property, so accustomed to consider its enhancement
in value as a public gain, that it will take some time to
educate public opinion up to the proper point to permit
this ; and even then there will be constitutional difficulties
to be removed.
But in the meantime, we can do something to check the
progress of land monopolisation, and even to break it up.
So far as the General Government is concerned, we can
insist that no more land grants be made on any pretext
or for any purpose ; but that all of the public domain still
left to us shall be reserved for the small farms of actual
settlers. We can go further, and demand that something
be done to open to settlers the great belts which have
been already handed over to railroad corporations. These
grants, in the first place, outraged natural justice, and
Congress had no more right to make them than Catherine
of Kussia had to give away her subjects to her para-
mours and courtiers, or than the Pope had to divide the
Southern Hemisphere between the Spanish and the Portu-
guese. We should be perfectly justified in taking this
land back, throwing it open to settlers upon Government
terms, and paying the companies the Government price.
Such an operation would largely increase our debt, but
the money would be well expended. If this cannot be
TRUE LAND POLICY 117
done, the land can at least be immediately surveyed, so
that settlers can find the Government sections, and the
right of the Companies to land reserved for them be de-
clared subject to State taxation.
In this monopoly-cursed State of ours, we may at once
do a great deal to free our land. By restricting posses-
sory rights to the maximum amount allowed by the Gen-
eral Government to pre-emptors, and by demanding pay-
ment for the large tracts now held by speculators under
five-dollar certificates, or the payment of twenty per cent,
of the purchase money, the Legislature could, in the first
week of its session, throw open to settlers some millions
of acres now monopolised. 1 And millions of acres more
would be forced into market if its holders were only com-
pelled to pay upon their land the same rate of taxation
levied upon other property. The Board of Equalisation
created by the last Legislature is endeavouring to secure
the proper assessment of these large tracts; but the law
under which it works is defective, and the Constitutional
requirement of the election of County Assessors is very
much in the way of a thorough reform, perhaps makes
it impossible. But as under our Constitution, as inter-
preted by the Supreme Court, all property must be taxed
equally, we can do no more than this to break up large
estates until the Constitution is amended.
THE NECESSITY OP A RADICAL REMEDY.
THERE are many who will think that if we do these things,
or even if we merely do something to check the grosser
1 Under the decisions of the Department, land within the exterior limits
of Spanish grants, and included in railroad reservations, does not go to
the Railroad Company when the grant is confined to its real limits, or is
rejected, but becomes open to settlement.
118 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
abuses in the disposition of our new land, we shall have
done all that is necessary. I wish to call the attention of
those who thus think to a certain class of facts:
There is a problem which must present itself to every
mind which dwells upon the industrial history of the pres-
ent century; a problem into which all our great social,
industrial, and even political questions run which already
perplexes us in the United States; which presses with still
greater force in the older countries of Europe; which, in
fact, menaces the whole civilised world, and seems like a
very riddle of the Sphinx, which fate demands of modern
civilisation, and which not to answer is to be destroyed
the problem of the proper distribution of wealth.
How is it that the increase of productive power and
the accumulation of wealth seem to bring no benefit, no
relief to the working classes; that the condition of the
labourer is better in the new and poor country than in
the old and rich country; that in a country like Great
Britain, whose productive power has been so enormously
increased, whose surplus wealth is lent to all the world,
and whose surplus productions are sent to every market,
pauperism is increasing in England, while one third of
the families of Scotland live in a single room each, and
one third more in two rooms each ? * How is it, though
within the century steam machinery has added to the
productive force of Great Britain a power greater than
that of the manual labour of the whole human race, that
the toil of mere infants is cruelly extorted that cultiva-
tion in the richest districts is largely carried on by gangs
of women and children, in which mere babies are worked
under the lash; that little girls are to be found wielding
sledge hammers, and little boys toiling night and day in
1 Census of 1861. See Journal of Statistical Society, voL 32.
TRUE LAND POLICY 119
the fearful heat of glass furnaces, or working to the ex-
treme limit of human endurance in fetid garrets and damp
cellars, at the most monotonous employments children
who work so early and work so hard that they know noth-
ing of God, have never heard of the Bible, call a violet a
pretty bird, and when shown a cow in a picture, think it
must be a lion; 1 children whose natural protectors have
been changed by brutalising poverty and the want that
knows no law, into the most cruel of taskmasters?
Why is it that in the older parts of the United States
we are rapidly approximating to the same state of things?
Why is it that, with all our labour-saving machinery, all
the new methods of increasing production which our fer-
tile genius is constantly discovering with all our rail-
roads, and steamships, and power looms, and sewing ma-
chines, our mechanics cannot secure a reduction of two
hours in their daily toil; that the general condition of the
working classes is becoming worse instead of better; and
the employment of women and children at hard labour
is extending ; that though wealth is accumulating, and lux-
ury increasing, it is becoming harder and harder for the
poor man to live?
A very Sodom's apple seems this "progress" of ours to
the classes that have the most need to progress. We have
been "developing the country" fast enough. We have
been building railroads, and peopling the wilderness, and
extending our cities. But what is the gain? We count
up more millions of people, and more hundreds of millions
of taxable- property ; our great cities are larger, our mil-
lionaires are more numerous, and their wealth is more
enormous; but are the masses of the people any better
off ? Is it not so notoriously true that we accept the state-
1 Report Children's Employment Commission.
120 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
merit without question, that just as population increases
and wealth augments just in proportion as we near the
goal for which we strive so hard, poverty extends and
deepens, and it becomes harder and harder for a poor man
to make a living?
That the startling change for the worse that has come
over the condition of the masses of the United States in
the last ten years is attributable in some part to the
destruction caused by the war, and in much greater part
to stupid, reckless, wicked legislation, there can be no
doubt. The whole economic policy of the General Gov-
ernment the management of the debt and of the cur-
rency, the imposition of a tariff which is oppressing all
our industry, and actually killing many branches of it, the
immense donations to corporations has tended with irre-
sistible force, as though devised for the purpose, to make
a few the richer and the many the poorer; to swell the
gains of a few rich capitalists, and make hundreds of
thousands of willing workmen stand with idle hands.
But beneath and beyond these special causes, we may
see, as could be seen before the war had given the money
power an opportunity and excuse for wresting the ma-
chinery of Government to its own selfish ends, the work-
ing of some general tendency, observable all over the world,
and most obvious in the countries which have made the
greatest advances in productive power and in wealth.
What is the cause or the causes of this tendency? If
we say, as many of the economists say, that it is over-
population in England that the working classes get mar-
ried too early and have too many children what is it in
the United States ? If we say that in the United States it
is solely due to special conditions, what is it in Australia
and other countries of widely differing circumstances ?
Now, although there are undoubtedly other general
TRUE LAND POLICY 121
causes, such as the tendency of modern processes to require
greater capital and rarer administrative ability, to offer
greater facilities for combination, and give more and
more advantage to him who can work on a large scale;
yet if the principles previously stated are correct, are we
not led irresistibly to the conclusion that the main cause
of this general tendency to the unequal division of wealth
lies in the pursuance of a wrong policy in regard to land
in permitting a few to take and to keep that which
belongs to all; in treating the power of appropriating
labour as though it were in itself labour-produced wealth ?
Is not this mistake sufficient of itself to explain most of
the perplexing phenomena to which I have alluded?
When land becomes fully monopolised as it is in Eng-
land and Ireland when the competition between, land-
users becomes greater than the competition between land-
owners, whatever increase of wealth there is must go to
the landowner or to the capitalist; the labourer gets noth-
ing but a subsistence. Amid lowing herds he never tastes
meat; raising bounteous crops of the finest wheat, he lives
on rye or potatoes; and where steam has multiplied by
hundreds and by thousands manufacturing power, he is
clad in rags, and sends his children to work while they
are yet infants. No matter what be the increase in the
fertility of the soil, no matter what the increase in pro-
duct which beneficent inventions cause, no matter even
if good laws succeed bad laws, as when free trade suc-
ceeds protection, as has been the case in Great Britain, all
the advantage goes to the landowner; none to the landless
labourer, for the ownership of the land gives the power
of taking all that labour upon it will produce, except
enough to keep the labourer in condition to work, and
anything more that is given is charity. And so increase
in productive power is greater wealth to the landowner
122 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
more splendour in his drawing rooms, more horses in his
stables and hounds in his kennels, finer yachts, and pic-
tures and books more command of everything that makes
life desirable; but to the labourer it is not an additional
crust.
And where land monopolisation has not gone so far,
steadily with the increase of wealth goes on the increase
of land values. Every successive increase represents so
much which those who do not produce may take from the
results of production, measures a new tax upon the whole
community for the benefit of a portion. Every succes-
sive increase indicates no addition to wealth, but a
greater difference in the division of wealth, making one
class the richer, the other the poorer, and tending still
further to increase the inequality in the distribution of
wealth on the one side, by making the aggregations of
capital larger and its power thus greater, and on the other,
by increasing the number of those who cannot buy land
for themselves, but must labour for or pay rent to others,
and while thus swelling the number of those who must
make terms with capital for permission to work, at the
same time reducing their ability to make fair terms in
the bargain.
Need we go any further to find the root of the difficulty ?
to discover the point at which we must commence the
reform which will make other reforms possible? And
while, on the one hand, the recognition of the main cause
of the inequality in the distribution of wealth, which is
becoming a disease of our civilisation, condemns the wild
dreams of impracticable socialisms, and the impossible
theories of governmental interference to restrict accumu-
lation and competition and to limit the productive power
of capital, by discovering a just and an easy remedy; on
the other hand, the spread of such theories should ad-
TRUE LAND POLICY 123
monish those who consider the remedy of a common-sense
policy in regard to land as too radical, of the necessity
of making some attempt at reform. This great problem
of the more equal distribution of wealth must in some way
be solved, if our civilisation, like those that went before
it, is not to breed seeds of its own destruction. In one
way or another the attempt must be made if not in
one way, then in another. The spread of education, the
growth of democratic sentiment, the weakening of the in-
fluences which lead men to accept the existing condition
of things as divinely appointed, insure that, and the gen-
eral uneasiness of labour, the growth of trade-unionism,
the spread of such societies as the International prove it !
The terrible struggle of the Paris commune was but such
an attempt. 1 And in the light of burning Paris we may
see how it may be that this very civilisation of ours, this
second Tower of Babel, which some deem reaches so far
towards heaven that we can plainly see there is no God
there, may yet crumble and perish. How prophetic, in
view of those recent events, seem the words of Macaulay,
when, alluding to Gibbon's argument that modern civili-
sation could not be overturned as was the ancient, he
x And this French struggle also shows the conservative influence of the
diffusion of landed property. The Radicals of Paris were beaten by the
small proprietors of the provinces. Had the lands of France been in the
hands of a few, as the first revolution found it, the raising of the red flag
on the H6tel de Ville would have been the signal for a Jacquerie in every
part of the country. So conscious are the extreme reds of the conservative
influence of property in land that they have for a long time condemned as
a fatal mistake the law of the first Republic which provided for the equal
distribution of land among heirs, not because it has not improved the
condition of the peasantry, but because the improvement in their con-
dition and the interest which their possession of land gives them in the
maintenance of order dispose them to oppose the violent remedies which
the workmen of the cities think necessary.
124 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
declared that in the very heart of our great cities, in the
shadow of palaces, libraries and colleges, poverty and igno-
rance might produce a race of Huns fiercer than any who
followed Attila, and of Vandals more destructive than
those led by Genseric.
THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF THE NATION.
FIVE years must yet pass before we can celebrate the hun-
dredth anniversary of the Kepublic. A century ago, as
the result of nearly two hundred years of colonisation,
the scarce three million people of the thirteen colonies
but fringed the Atlantic seaboard with their settlements.
Pittsburg was to them the Far West, and the Mississippi
as little known as is now the great river that through a
thousand miles of Arctic solitudes rolls sluggishly to its
mouth in our newly acquired Northern possessions.
Looking back over the history of the great nations from
whom we derive our blood, our language and our institu-
tions, and a hundred years seems but a small span. A
hundred years after the foundation of the city, and Home
had scarce begun her conquering mission; a hundred years
after the Norman Invasion, and the England of the first
Plantagenet differed but little from the England of the
Bastard.
How wondrous seems our growth when compared with
the past ! So wondrous, so unprecedented, that when the
slow lapse of years shall have shortened the perspective, and
when, in obedience to altered conditions, the rate of in-
crease shall have slackened, it will seem as though in our
time the very soil of America must have bred men.
We have subdued a continent in a shorter time than
many a palace and cathedral of the Old World was a-build-
TRUE LAND POLICY 125
ing; in less than a century we have sprung to a first rank
among the nations; our population is increasing in a
steady ratio; and we are carrying westward the centre of
power and wealth, of luxury, learning and refinement,
with more rapidity than it ever moved before.
We look with wonder upon the past. When we turn
to the future, imagination fails, for sober reason with her
cold deductions goes far beyond the highest flights that
fancy can dare, and we turn dazzled and almost awe-
struck from the picture that is mirrored. Judging from
the past, in all human probability there will be on this
continent, a century from now, four or five, perhaps five
or six, hundred million English-speaking people, stretch-
ing from the isothermal line which marks the northern
limit of the culture of wheat, to the southern limit of the
semi-tropical clime four or five hundred million people,
with the railroad, the telegraph, and all the arts and ap-
pliances that we now have, and with all the undreamed-of
inventions which another century such as the past will
develop. Beside the great cities of such a people, the
Paris of to-day will be a village, the London, a provin-
cial town, and to the political power which will grow up,
if these people remain under one government, the great
nations of Europe will occupy such relative positions as
the South American States now hold to the great Republic
of the North.
Yet we should never forget that we have no exemption
from the difficulties and dangers which have beset other
peoples, though they may come to us in somwhat differ-
ent guise. The very rapidity of our growth should ad-
monish us that though we are still in our youth, our
conditions are fast changing; the very possibilities of our
future warn us that this is the appointed theatre upon
which the questions that perplex the world must be worked
126 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
out, or fought out. What good, or what evil, we of this
generation do, will appear in the next on an enormously
magnified scale. The blunders that we are carelessly
making, saying "these things will right themselves in
time," will indeed right themselves; but how? How was
the wrong of slavery righted in the United States? The
whole history of mankind, with its story of fire and sword,
of suffering and destruction, is but one continued example
of how national blunders and crimes work themselves out.
On the smaller scale of individual life and actions, the
workings of Divine justice are sometimes never seen; but
sure, though not always swift, is the Nemesis that with
tireless feet follows every wrong-doing of a people.
The American people have had a better chance and a
fairer field than any nation that has gone before. Com-
ing to a new world with all the experiences of the old;
possessed of all the knowledge and the arts of the most
advanced of the families of men, the temperate zone of
an immense continent lay before them, where, unembar-
rassed by previous mistakes, they might work out the
problem of human happiness by the light of the history
of two thousand years. Yet nobly and well as our fathers
reared the edifice of civil and religious liberty, true ideas
as to the treatment of land, the very foundation of all
other institutions, seem never to have entered their minds.
In a new country where nothing was so abundant as
land, and where there was nothing to suggest its monopo-
lisation, the men who gave direction to our thought and
shaped our polity shook off the idea of the divine right of
kings without shaking off that of the divine right of
landowners. They promulgated the grand truth that all
men are born with equal rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, without promulgating the doctrines
in respect to land which alone could maintain those rights
TRUE LAND POLICY 127
as a living reality; they instituted a form of government
based on the theory of the independence and virtue of
the masses of the people without imposing those restric-
tions upon land monopolisation which alone can keep the
masses virtuous and independent. They laid the founda-
tions for a glorious house ; but they laid them in the sand.
Already we can see that the rains will come, the winds
will blow. We see it in the increase of the renting sys-
tem in agriculture; in the massing of men in the employ
of great manufacturers; in the necessity under which
thousands of our citizens lie of voting, and even of speak-
ing on political matters, as their employers dictate ; 1 in
the marked differentiation of our people in older sections
into the rich and the poor ; in the evolution of "dangerous
classes" in our large cities; in the growth of enormous
individual fortunes; in the springing up of corporations
which dwarf the States, and fairly grapple the General
Government; in the increase of political corruption; in
the ease with which a few great rings wrest the whole
power of the nation to their aggrandisement.
Go to New York, the greatest of our American cities,
the type of what many of them must soon be, the best
example of the condition to which the whole country is
tending New York, where men build marble stables for
their horses, and an army of women crowd the streets at
night to sell their souls for the necessities which unre-
mitting toil, such as no human being ought to endure, will
not give them where a hundred thousand men who ought
to be at work are looking for employment, and a hundred
thousand children who ought to be at school are at work.
Notice the great blocks of warehouses, the gorgeousness
of Broadway, the costly palaces which line the avenues.
1 See Reports Massachusetts Bureau Labour Statistics.
128 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY
Notice, too, the miles of brothels which flank them, the
tenement houses, where poverty festers and vice breeds,
and the man from the free open West turns sick at heart;
notice in the depth of winter the barefooted, ragged chil-
dren in the press of the liveried equipages, and you will
understand how it is that republican government has
broken down in New York; how it is that republican gov-
ernment is impossible there; and how it is that the cru-
cial test of our institutions is yet to come. If you say
that New York is a great seaport, with different condi-
tions from the rest of the country, go to the manufactur-
ing towns, to the other cities, and see the same character-
istics developing just in proportion to their population
and wealth.
And while we may see all this, we are doing our utmost
to make land dear, giving away the public domain in
tracts of millions of acres, drawing great belts across it
upon which the settler cannot enter; offering a premium
by our taxation for the concentration of landownership,
and pressing with the whole weight of our revenue system
in favour of the concentration of wealth.
HOW A GEEAT PEOPLE PERISHED.
IN all the history of the past there is but one nation with
which the great nation now growing up on this continent
can be compared; but one people which has occupied the
position and exerted the influence which, for good or
evil, the American people must occupy and exert a na-
tion which has left a deeper impress upon the life of the
race than any other nation that ever existed; whose sway
was co-extensive with the known world; whose heroes and
poets, and sages and orators, are still familiar names to
TRUE LAND POLICY 129
us ; whose literature and art still furnish us models ; whose
language has enriched every modern tongue, and though
long dead, is still the language of science and of religion,
and whose jurisprudence is the great mine from which
our modern systems are wrought. That a nation so pow-
erful in arms, so advanced in the arts, should perish as
Rome perished ; that a civilisation so widely diffused should
be buried as was the Roman civilisation, is the greatest
marvel which history presents. To the Roman citizen of
the time of Augustus or the Antonines, it would have ap-
peared as incredible, as utterly impossible that Rome could
be overwhelmed by barbarians, as to the American citizen
of to-day it would appear impossible that the great Ameri-
can Republic could be conquered by the Apaches, or the
Chinooks, our arts forgotten, and our civilisation lost.
How did this once incredible thing happen? What
were the hidden causes that sapped the strength and ate
out the heart of this world-conquering power, so that it
crumbled to pieces before the shock of barbarian hordes?
A Roman historian himself has told us. "Great estates
ruined Italy !" In the land policy of Rome may be traced
the secret of her rise, the cause of her fall.
"To every citizen as much land as he himself may use;
he is an enemy of the State who desires any more/' was
the spirit of the land policy which enabled Rome to as-
similate so quickly the peoples that she conquered; that
gave her a body of citizens whose arms were a bulwark
against every assault, and who carried her standards in
triumph in every direction. At first a single acre consti-
tuted the patrimony of a Roman; afterwards the amount
was increased to three acres and a half. These were the
heroic days of the Republic, when every citizen seemed
animated by a public spirit and a public virtue which made
the Roman name as famous as it made the Roman arms
130 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY
invincible; when Cincinnatus left his two-acre farm to
become Dictator, and after the danger was over and the
State was safe, returned to his plough; when Kegulus, at
the head of a conquering army in Africa, asked to be re-
lieved, because his single slave had died, and there was
no one to cultivate his little farm for his family.
But, as wealth poured in from foreign conquests, and
the lust for riches grew, the old policy was set aside. The
Senate granted away the public domain in large tracts,
just as our Senate is doing now ; and the fusion of the little
farms into large estates by purchase, by force and by
fraud went on, until whole provinces were owned by two
or three proprietors, and chained slaves had taken the
place of the sturdy peasantry of Italy. The small farmers
who had given her strength to Eomo were driven to the
cities, to swell the ranks of the proletarians, and become
clients of the great families, or abroad to perish in the
wars. There came to be but two classes the enormously
rich and their dependents and slaves; society thus con-
stituted bred its destroying monsters; the old virtues van-
ished, population declined, art sank, the old conquering
race actually died out, and Eome perished, as a modern
historian puts it, from the very failure of the crop of men.
Centuries ago this happened, but the laws of the uni-
verse are to-day what they were then.
I have endeavoured in this paper to group together some
facts which show with what rapidity, and by what methods,
the monopolisation of our land is going on; to answer
some arguments which are advanced in its excuse ; to state
some principles which prove the matter to be of the deep-
est interest to all of us, whether we live directly by the
soil or not; and to suggest some remedies.
TEUE LAND POLICY 131
That land monopolisation when it reaches the point to
which it has been carried in England and Ireland is pro-
ductive of great evils we shall probably all agree. But
popular opinion, even in so far as any attention has been
paid to the subject, seems to regard the danger with us
as remote. There are few who understand how rapidly
our land is becoming monopolised; there are fewer still
who seem to appreciate the evils which land monopolisa-
tion is already inflicting upon us, or the nearness of the
greater evils which it threatens.
And so as to the remedy. There are many who will
concede that the reckless grants of public land should
cease, and even that the public domain should be reserved
for actual settlers, but who will be startled by the propo-
sition to put the bulk of taxation on land exclusively.
But the matter will bear thinking of. It is impossible to
overestimate the importance of this land question. The
longer it is considered, the broader does it seem to be and
the deeper does it seem to go. It imperatively demands
far more attention than it has received; it is worthy of
all the attention that can be given to it.
To properly treat so large a subject in so brief a space
is a most difficult matter. I have merely outlined it ;
but if I have done something towards calling attention to
the recklessness of our present land policy, and towards
suggesting earnest thought as to what that policy should
be, I have accomplished all I proposed.
HENRY GEOBGE.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 27, 1871.
THE STUDY OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY
THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
[A lecture delivered before the students of the University of Cali-
fornia, March 9, 1877, and published in "The Popular Science Monthly,"
March, 1880.]
I TAKE it that these lectures are intended to be more
suggestive than didactic, and in what I shall have to
say to you my object will be merely to induce you to think
for yourselves. I shall not attempt to outline the laws of
political economy, nor even, where my own views are
strong and definite, to touch upon unsettled questions.
But I want to show you, if I can, the simplicity and cer-
tainty of a science too generally regarded as complex and
indeterminate, to point out the ease with which it may
be studied, and to suggest reasons which make that study
worthy of your attention.
Of the importance of the questions with which political
economy deals it is hardly necessary to speak. The sci-
ence which investigates the laws of the production and
distribution of wealth concerns itself with matters which
among us occupy more than nine tenths of human effort,
and perhaps nine tenths of human thought. In its prov-
ince are included all that relates to the wages of labour
and the earnings of capital; all regulations of trade; all
questions of currency and finance ; all taxes and public dis-
bursements in short, everything that can in any way
affect the amount of wealth which a community can secure,
135
136 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
or the proportion in which that wealth will be distributed
between individuals. Though not the science of govern-
ment, it is essential to the science of government. Though
it takes direct cognisance only of what are termed the
selfish instincts, yet in doing so it includes the basis of all
higher qualities. The laws which it aims to discover are
the laws by virtue of which states wax rich and populous,
or grow weak and decay; the laws upon which depend the
comfort, happiness, and opportunities of our individual
lives. And as the development of the nobler part of hu-
man nature is powerfully modified by material conditions,
if it does not absolutely depend upon them, the laws
sought for by political economy are the laws which at last
control the mental and moral as well as the physical states
of humanity.
Clearly, this is the science which of all sciences is of
the first importance to us. Useful and sublime as are the
sciences which open to us the vistas of Nature which read
for us the story of the deep past, or search out the laws
of our physical or mental organisation what is their
practical importance as compared with the science which
deals with the conditions that alone make the cultivation
of the others possible? Compare on this ground of prac-
tical utility the science of political economy with all others,
and its pre-eminence almost suggests the reply of the
Greek: "No, I cannot play the fiddle; but I can tell you
how to make of a little village a great and glorious city !"
How is it, then, it will naturally be asked, that a sci-
ence so important is so little regarded? Our laws per-
sistently violate its first and plainest principles, and that
the ignorance thus exemplified is not confined to what are
called the uneducated classes is shown by the debates in
our legislative bodies, the decisions of our courts, the
speeches of our party leaders, and the editorials of our
UNIVERSITY LECTUEE 137
newspapers. A century has elapsed since Adam Smith
published his "Wealth of Nations," and sixty years since
Ricardo enunciated his theory of rent. Yet not only has
political economy received no substantial improvement
since Bicardo, but, while thousands of new discoveries
in other branches of human knowledge have been eagerly
seized and generally utilised, and the most revolutionary
conclusions of other sciences become part of the accepted
data of thought, the truths taught by political economy
seem to have made little real impression, and it is even
now a matter of debate whether there is, or can be, such
a science at all.
This cannot be on account of the paucity of politico-
economic literature. Enough books have been written on
the subject within the last hundred years to fill a large
library, while all of our great institutions of learning
have some sort of a chair of political economy, and mat-
ters of intense public interest in which the principles of
the science are directly involved are constantly being dis-
cussed.
It seems to me that the reasons why political economy is
so little regarded are referable partly to the nature of
the science itself and partly to the manner in which it
has been cultivated.
In the first place, the very importance of the subjects
with which political economy deals raises obstacles in its
way. The discoveries of other sciences may challenge per-
nicious ideas, but the conclusions of political economy in-
volve pecuniary interests, and thus thrill directly the sen-
sitive pocket-nerve. For, as no social adjustment can exist
without interesting a larger or smaller class in its main-
tenance, political economy at every point is apt to come
in contact with some interest or other which regards it
as the silversmiths of Ephesus did those who taught the
138 STUDY OP POLITICAL ECONOMY
uselessness of presenting shrines to Diana. Macaulay has
well said that, if any large pecuniary interest were con-
cerned in denying the attraction of gravitation, that most
obvious of physical facts would not lack disputers. This
is just the difficulty that has beset and still besets the
progress of political economy. The man who is, or who
imagines that he is, interested in the maintenance of a
protective tariff, may accept all your professors choose to
tell him about the composition of the sun or the evolution
of species, but, no matter how clearly you demonstrate the
wasteful inutility of hampering commerce, he will not be
convinced. And so, to the man who expects to make
money out of a railroad-subsidy, you will in vain try to
prove that such devices to change the natural direction of
labour and capital must cause more loss than gain. What,
then, must be the opposition which inevitably meets a sci-
ence that deals with tariffs and subsidies, with banking
interests and bonded debts, with trades-unions and com-
binations of capital, with taxes and licenses and land-
tenures ! It is not ignorance alone that offers opposition,
but ignorance backed by interest, and made fierce by
passions.
Now, while the interests thus aroused furnish the in-
centive, the complexity of the phenomena with which polit-
ical economy deals makes it comparatively easy to palm off
on the unreasoning all sorts of absurdities as political
economy. And, when all kinds of diverse opinions are
thus promulgated under that name, it is but natural that
the great number of people who depend on others to save
themselves the trouble of thinking should look upon polit-
ical economy as a field wherein any one may find what
he pleases. But what is far worse than any amount of
pretentious quackery is that the science even as taught
by the masters is in large measure disjointed and indeter-
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 139
minate. As laid down in the best text-books, political
economy is like a shapely statue but half hewn from the
rock like a landscape, part of which stands out clear and
distinct, but over the rest of which the mists still roll.
This is a subject into which, in a lecture like this, I can-
not enter; but, that it is so, you may see for yourselves
in the failure of political economy to give any clear and
consistent answer to most important practical questions
such as the industrial depressions which are so marked a
feature of modern times, and in confusions of thought
which will be obvious to you if you carefully examine even
the best treatises. Strength and subtilty have been
wasted in intellectual hair-splitting and super-refinements,
in verbal discussions and disputes, while the great high-
roads have remained unexplored. And thus has been
given to a simple and attractive science an air of repellent
abstruseness and uncertainty.
And springing, as it seems to me, from the same funda-
mental cause, there has arisen an idea of political economy
which has arrayed against it the feelings and prejudices
of those who have most to gain by its cultivation. The
name of political economy has been constantly invoked
against every effort of the working classes toincrease their
wages or decrease their hours of labour. \The impious
doctrine always preached by oppressors to oppressed the
blasphemous dogma that the Creator has condemned one
portion of his creatures to lives of toil and want, while
he has intended another portion to enjoy "all the fruits
of the earth and the fullness thereof" has been preached
to the working classes in the name of political economy^
just as the "cursed-be-Ham" clergymen used to preach
the divine sanction of slavery in the name of Christianity.
In so far as the real turning questions of the day are
concerned, political economy seems to be considered by
140 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
most of its professors as a scientific justification of all
that is, and by the convenient formula of supply and de-
mand they seem to mean some method which Providence
has of fixing the rate of wages so that it can never by any
action of the employed be increased. Nor is it merely
ignorant pretenders who thus degrade the name and terms
of political economy. This character has been so firmly
stamped upon the science itself as currently held and
taught that not even men like John Stuart Mill have been
able to emancipate themselves. Even the intellectually
courageous have shrunk from laying stress upon principles
which might threaten great vested interests; while others,
less scrupulous, have exercised their ingenuity in elimi-
nating from the science everything which could offend
those interests. Take the best and most extensively circu-
lated text-books. While they insist upon freedom for
capital, while they justify on the ground of utility the sel-
fish greed that seeks to pile fortune on fortune, and the
niggard spirit that steels the heart to the wail of distress,
what sign of substantial promise do they hold out to the
workingman save that he should refrain from rearing
children ?
What can we expect when hands that should offer bread
thus hold out a stone? Is it in human nature that the
masses of men, vaguely but keenly conscious of the injus-
tice of existing social conditions, feeling that they are
somehow cramped and hurt, without knowing what cramps
and hurts them, should welcome truth in this partial form ;
that they should take to a science which, as it is presented
to them, seems but to justify injustice, to canonise selfish-
ness by throwing around it the halo of utility, and to pre-
sent Herod rather than Vincent de Paul as the typical
benefactor of humanity? Is it to be wondered at that
they should turn in their ignorance to the absurdities of
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 141
protection and the crazy theories generally designated by
the name of socialism?
I have lingered to inquire why political economy has in
popular apprehension acquired the character of indefinite-
ness, abstruseness, and selfishness, merely that I may be
the better able to convince you that none of these quali-
ties properly belong to it. I want to draw you to its
study by showing you how clear and simple and beneficent
a science it is, or rather should be.
Although political economy deals with various and com-
plicated phenomena, yet they are phenomena which may
be resolved into simple elements, and which are but the
manifestations of familiar principles. The premises from
which it makes its deductions are truths of which we are
all conscious and upon which in every-day life we con-
stantly base our reasoning and our actions. Its processes,
which consist chiefly in analysis, have a like certainty, al-
though, as with all the causes of which it takes cognisance
are at all times acting other causes, it can never predict
exact results but only tendencies.
And, although in the study of political economy we can-
not use that potent method of experiment by artificially
produced conditions which is so valuable in the physical
sciences, yet, not only may we find, in the diversity of
human society, experiments already worked out for us, but
there is at our command a method analogous to that of the
chemist, in what may be called mental experiment. You
may separate, combine, or eliminate conditions in your own
imagination, and test in this way the working of known
principles. This, it seems to me, is the great tool of politi-
cal economy. It is a method with which you must be fa-
miliar and doubtless use every day, though you may never
have analysed the process. Let me illustrate what I mean
by something which has no reference to political economy.
142 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
When I was a boy I went down to the wharf with an-
other boy to see the first iron steamship which had ever
crossed the ocean to our port. Now, hearing of an iron
steamship seemed to us then a good deal like hearing of a
leaden kite or a wooden cooking-stove. But, we had not
been long aboard of her, before my comrade said in a tone
of contemptuous disgust: "Pooh! I see how it is. She's
all lined with wood ; that's the reason she floats." I could
not controvert him for the moment, but I was not satis-
fied, and, sitting down on the wharf when he left me, I set
to work trying mental experiments. If it was the wood
inside of her that made her float, then the more wood the
higher she would float; and, mentally, I loaded her up
with wood. But, as I was familiar with the process of
making boats out of blocks of wood, I at once saw that,
instead of floating higher, she would sink deeper. Then,
I mentally took all the wood out of her, as we dug out our
wooden boats, and saw that thus lightened she would float
higher still. Then, in imagination, I jammed a hole in her,
and saw that the water would run in and she would sink,
as did our wooden boats when ballasted with leaden keels.
And, thus I saw, as clearly as though I could have actually
made these experiments with the steamer, that it was not
the wooden lining that made her float, but her hollowness,
or, as I would now phrase it, her displacement of water.
Now, just such mental operations as these you doubt-
less perform every day, and in doing so you employ the
method of imaginative experiment, which is so useful in
the investigations of political economy. You can, in this
way, turn around in your mind a proposition or phenome-
non and look on all sides of it, can isolate, analyse, recom-
bine, or subject it to the action of a mental magnifying
glass which will reveal incongruities as a reductio ad absur-
dum. Let me again illustrate:
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 143
Before I had ever read a line of political economy, I
happened once to hear a long and well-put argument in
favour of a protective tariff. Up to that time I had sup-
posed that "protection to domestic industry" was a good
thing; not that I had ever thought out the matter, but
that I had accepted this conclusion because I had heard
many men whom I believed wiser than I say so. But
this particular speaker had, so far as one of his audience
was concerned, overshot his mark. His arguments set me
thinking, just as when a boy my companion's solution of
the iron-ship mystery had set me thinking. I said to
myself: The effect of a tariff is to increase the cost of
bringing goods from abroad. Now, if this benefits a coun-
try, then all difficulties, dangers, and impediments which
increase the cost of bringing goods from abroad are like-
wise beneficial. If this theory be correct, then the city
which is the hardest to get at has the most advantageous
situation: pirates and shipwrecks contribute to national
prosperity by raising the price of freight and the cost of
insurance; and improvements in navigation, in railroads
and steamships, are injurious. Manifestly this is absurd.
And then I looked further. The speaker had dwelt on
the folly of a great country like the United States export-
ing raw material and importing manufactured goods which
might as well be made at home, and I asked myself, What
is the motive which causes a people to export raw material
and import manufactured goods ? I found that it could be
attributed to nothing else than the fact that they could in
this way get the goods cheaper, that is, with less labour.
I looked to transactions between individuals for parallels
to this trade between nations, and found them in plenty
the farmer selling his wheat and buying flour; the grazier
sending his wool to a market and bringing back cloth and
blankets; the tanner buying back leather in shoes, instead
144 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
of making them himself. I saw, when I came to analyse
them, that these exchanges between nations were precisely
the same thing as exchanges between individuals; that
they were, in fact, nothing but exchanges between indi-
viduals of different nations; that they were all prompted
by the desire and led to the result of getting the greatest
return for the least expenditure of labour; that the social
condition in which such exchanges did not take place was
the naked barbarism of the Terra del Fuegians; that just
in proportion to the division of labour and the increase
of trade were the increase of wealth and the progress of
civilisation. And so, following up, turning, analysing,
and testing all the protectionist arguments, I came to con-
clusions which I have ever since retained.
Now, just such mental operations as this are all that is
required in the study of political economy. Nothing more
is needed (but this is needed) than the habit of careful
thought the making sure of every step without jumping
to conclusions. This habit of jumping to conclusions
of considering essentially different things as the same be-
cause of some superficial resemblance is the source of the
manifold and mischievous errors which political economy
has to combat.
But I can probably, by a few examples, show you what I
mean more easily than in any other way. Were I to put
to you the child's question, "Which is heavier, a pound of
lead or a pound of feathers?" you would doubtless be
offended; and were I seriously to ask you, Which is the
most valuable, a dollar's worth of gold or a dollar's worth
of anything else? you might also feel that I had insulted
your intelligence. Yet the belief that a dollar's worth of
gold is more valuable than a dollar's worth of anything
else is widespread and persistent. It has molded the
policy of great nations, dictated treaties, marched armies,
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 145
launched fleets, fought battles, constructed and enforced
elaborate and vexatious systems of taxation, and sent men
by thousands to jail and to the gallows. Certainly a large
portion, probably a large majority, of the people of the
United States including many college graduates, mem-
bers of what are styled the learned professions, senators,
representatives, authors, and editors seem to-day utterly
unable to get it fully through their heads that a dollar's
worth of anything else is as valuable as a dollar's worth
of the precious metals, and are constantly reasoning, argu-
ing, and legislating on the assumption that the community
which exchanges gold for goods is suffering a loss, and
that it is the part of wisdom, by preventing such exchange,
to "keep money in the country." On this absurd assump-
tion the revenue system of the United States is based to-
day, and, if you will notice, you will find it cropping out
of current discussions in all sorts of forms. Even here,
where the precious metals form one of our staples, and for
a long time constituted our only staple, you may see the
power of the same notion. The anti-cooly clubs complain
of the "drain of money to China/' but never think of com-
plaining of the drain of flour, wheat, quicksilver, or
shrimps. And the leading journals of San Francisco, who
hold themselves on an immeasurably higher intellectual
level than the anti-cooly clubs, never, I think, let a week
pass without congratulating their readers that we have
ceased to import this or that article, and are thereby keep-
ing so much money that we used to send abroad, or lament-
ing that we still send money away to pay for this or that
which might be made here. Yet that we send away wine
or wool, fruit or honey, is never thought of as a matter
of lament, but quite the contrary. What is all this but
the assumption that a dollar's worth of gold is worth more
than a dollar's worth of anything else ?
146 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
This fallacy is transparently absurd when we come to
reduce it to a general proposition. But, nevertheless, the
habit of jumping at conclusions, of which I have spoken,
makes it seem very natural to people who do not stop to
think. Money is our standard, or measure of values, in
which we express all other values. When we speak of
gaining wealth, we speak of "making money"; when we
speak of losing wealth, we speak of "losing money" ; when
we speak of a rich man, we speak of him as possessed of
much money, though as a matter of fact he may, and
probably has, very little actual money. Then, again, as
money is the common medium of exchange, in the process
of getting things we want for things we are willing to
dispose of, we generally first exchange the latter for money
and then exchange the money for the things we want.
And, as the number of people who want things of all sorts
must manifestly be greater than the number of people
who want the particular thing, whatever it may be that
we have to exchange, any difficulty there may be in mak-
ing our exchange will generally attend the first part of it ;
for, in exchanging anything for money, I must find some
one who wants my particular thing, while in exchanging
money for a commodity, any one who wants any commodity
or service will be willing to take my money. Now, this
habit of estimating wealth in money, and of speaking of
gain or loss of wealth as gain or loss of money, and this
habit of associating difficulties of exchange in individual
cases with the difficulty of obtaining money, constantly
lead people who do not think clearly to jump at the con-
clusion that money is more valuable than anything else.
Yet the slightest consideration would show them that
wealth never consists, but in very small part, of money;
that the difficulty in individual exchanges has no refer-
ence to the relative value of money, and is eliminated
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 147
when the exchanges of large numbers of individuals are
concentrated or considered, and, in short, a dollar in
money is worth no more than a dollar's worth of wheat
or cloth; and that, instead of the exchange of money for
other commodities being proof of a disadvantageous bar-
gain, it is proof of an advantageous bargain, for, if we did
not want the goods more than the money, we would not
make the exchange.
Or, to take another example: In connection with the
discussion of Chinese immigration, you have, doubtless,
over and over again heard it contended that cheap labour,
which would reduce the cost of production, is precisely
equivalent to labour-saving machinery, and, as machinery
operates to increase wealth, so would cheap labour. This
conclusion is jumped at from the fact that cheap labour
and labour-saving machinery similarly reduce the cost of
production to the manufacturer. But, if, instead of jump-
ing at this conclusion, we analyse the manner in which
the reduction of cost is produced in each case, we shall
see the fallacy. Labour-saving machinery reduces cost by
increasing the productive power of labour; a reduction of
wages reduces cost by reducing the share of the product
which falls to the labourer. To the employer the effect
may be the same; but, to the community, which includes
both employers and employed, the effect is very different.
In the one case there is increase in the general wealth;
in the other there is merely a change in distribution
whatever one class gains another class necessarily losing.
Hence the effect of cheap labour is necessarily very differ-
ent from that of improved machinery.
And precisely similar to this fallacy is that which seems
so natural to men of another class that because the in-
troduction of cheaper labour in any community does, in
the present organisation of society, tend to reduce the
148 STUDY OP POLITICAL ECONOMY
general level of wages, so does the importation of cheap
goods. This, also but I must leave you to analyse it for
yourselves springs from a confusion of thought which
does not distinguish between the whole and the parts,
between the distribution of wealth and the production of
wealth.
Did time permit, I might go on, showing you by in-
stance after instance how transparently fallacious are
many current opinions some, even, more widely held than
any of which I have spoken when tried by the simple
tests which it is the province of political economy to apply.
But my object is not to lead you to conclusions. All I
wish to impress upon you is the real simplicity of what is
generally deemed an abstruse science, and the exceeding
ease with which it may be pursued. For the study of
political economy you need no special knowledge, no ex-
tensive library, no costly laboratory. You do not even
need text-books nor teachers, if you will but think for
yourselves. All that you need is care in reducing complex
phenomena to their elements, in distinguishing the essen-
tial from the accidental, and in applying the simple laws
of human action with which you are familiar. Take no-
body's opinion for granted ; "try all things : hold fast that
which is good." In this way, the opinions of others will
help you by their suggestions, elucidations, and correc-
tions; otherwise they will be to you but as words to a
parrot.
If there were nothing more to be urged in favour of
the study of political economy than the mental exercise
it will give, it would still be worth your profoundest atten-
tion. The study which will teach men to think for them-
selves is the study of all studies most needed. Education
is not the learning of facts; it is the development and
training of mental powers. All this array of professors,
UNIVEESITY LECTURE 149
all this paraphernalia of learning, cannot educate a man.
They can but help him to educate himself. Here you may
obtain the tools; but they will be useful only to him who
can use them. A monkey with a microscope, a mule pack-
ing a library, are fit emblems of the men and, unfortu-
nately, they are plenty who pass through the whole edu-
cational machinery, and come out but learned fools,
crammed with knowledge which they cannot use all the
more pitiable, all the more contemptible, all" the more in
the way of real progress, because they pass, with them-
selves and others, as educated men.
But, while it seems to me that nothing can be more
conducive to vigorous mental habits and intellectual self-
reliance than the study which trains us to apply the analy-
sis of thought to the every-day affairs of life, and to see in
constantly changing phenomena the evidence of unchang-
ing law; which leads us to distinguish the real from the
apparent, and to mark, beneath the seething eddies of in-
terest, passion, and prejudice, the great currents of our
times it is not on such incentives that I wish to dwell.
There are motives as much higher than the thirst for
knowledge, as that noble passion is higher than the lust
for power or the greed of gold.
In its calculations the science of wealth takes little note
of, nay, it often carefully excludes, the potent force of
sympathy, and of those passions which lead men to toil,
to struggle, even to die for the good of others. And yet
it is these higher passions, these nobler impulses, that
urge most strenuously to its study. The promise of po-
litical economy is not so much what it may do for you, as
what it may enable you to do for others.
I trust you have felt the promptings of that highest
of ambitions the desire to be useful in your day and gen-
eration; the hope that in something, even though little,
150 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
those who come after may be wiser, better, and happier
that you have lived. Or, if you have never felt this, I
trust the feeling is only latent, ready to spring forth when
you see the need.
Gentlemen, if you but look, you will see the need ! You
are of the favoured few, for the fact that you are here,
students in a university of this character, bespeaks for
you the happy accidents that fall only to the lot of the
few, and you cannot yet realise, as you may by-and-by
realise, how the hard struggle which is the lot of so many
may cramp and bind and distort how it may dull the
noblest faculties and chill the warmest impulses, and grind
out of men the joy and poetry of life; how it may turn
into the lepers of society those who should be its adorn-
ment, and transmute into vermin to prey upon it and
into wild beasts to fly at its throat, the brain and muscle
that should go to its enrichment ! These things may never
yet have forced themselves on your attention; but still, if
you will think of it, you cannot fail to see enough want
and wretchedness, even in our own country to-day, to move
you to sadness and pity, to nerve you to high resolve; to
arouse in you the sympathy that dares, and the indigna-
tion that burns to overthrow a wrong.
And seeing these things, would you fain do something
to relieve distress, to eradicate ignorance, to extirpate vice ?
You must turn to political economy to know their causes,
that you may lay the axe to the root of the evil tree. Else
all your efforts will be in vain. Philanthropy, unguided
by an intelligent apprehension of causes, may palliate or
it may intensify, but it cannot cure. If charity could
eradicate want, if preaching could make men moral, if
printing books and building schools could destroy igno-
rance, none of these things would be known to-day.
And there is the greater need that you make yourselves
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 151
acquainted with the principles of political economy from
the fact that, in the immediate future, questions which
come within its province must assume a greater and greater
importance. To act intelligently in the struggle in which
you must take part for positively or negatively each of
you must carry his weight you must know something of
this science. And this, I think, is clear to whoever con-
siders the forces that are mustering that the struggle to
come will be fiercer and more momentous than the strug-
gles that are past.
There is a comfortable belief prevalent among us that
we have at last struck the trade-winds of time, and that
by virtue of what we call progress all these evils will cure
themselves. Do not accept this doctrine without exami-
nation. The history of the past does not countenance it,
the signs of the present do not warrant it. Gentlemen,
look at the tendencies of our time, and see if the earnest
work of intelligent men be not needed.
Look even here. Can the thoughtful man view the de-
velopment of our State with unmixed satisfaction? Do
we not know that, under present conditions, just as that
city over the bay grows in wealth and population, so will
poverty deepen and vice increase; that just as the liveried
carriages become more plentiful, so do the beggars; that
just as the pleasant villas of wealth dot these slopes, so
will rise up the noisome tenement house in the city slums.
I have watched the growth of San Francisco with joy and
pride, and my imagination still dwells with delight upon
the image of the great city of the future, the queen of all
the vast Pacific perhaps the greatest city of the world.
Yet what is the gain? San Francisco of to-day, with her
three hundred thousand people, is, for the classes who de-
pend upon their labour, not so good a place as the San
Francisco of sixty thousand; and when her three hundred
152 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
thousand rises to a million, San Francisco, if present ten-
dencies are unchanged, must present the same sickening
sights which in the streets of New York shock the man
from the open West.
This is the dark side of our boasted progress, the Neme-
sis that seems to follow with untiring tread. Where
wealth most abounds, there poverty is deepest; where lux-
ury is most profuse, the gauntest want jostles it. In
cities which are the storehouses of nations, starvation an-
nually claims its victims. Where the costliest churches
rear the tallest spires towards heaven, there is needed a
standing army of policemen; as we build new schools, we
build new prisons; where the heaviest contributions are
raised to send missionaries to the ends of the earth to
preach the glad tidings of peace and good-will, there may
be seen squalor and vice that would affright a heathen.
In mills where the giant power of steam drives machinery
that multiplies by hundreds and thousands the productive
forces of man, there are working little children who ought
to be at play or at school; where the mechanism of ex-
change has been perfected to the utmost, there thousands
of men are vainly trying to exchange their labour for the
necessaries of life !
Whence this dark shadow that thus attends that which
we are used to call "material progress," that which our
current philosophy teaches us to hope for and to work for ?
Here is the question of all questions for us. We must
answer it or be destroyed, as preceding civilisations have
been destroyed. For no chain is stronger than its weakest
link, and our glorious statue with its head of gold and its
shoulders of brass has as yet but feet of clay !
Political economy alone can give the answer. And, if
you trace out, in the way I have tried to outline, the laws
of the production and exchange of wealth, you will see the
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 153
causes of social weakness and disease in enactments which
selfishness has imposed on ignorance, and in maladjust-
ments entirely within our own control.
And you will see the remedies. Not in wild dreams of
red destruction nor weak projects for putting men in lead-
ing-strings to a brainless abstraction called the state, but
in simple measures sanctioned by justice. You will see
in light the great remedy, in freedom the great solvent.
You will see that the true law of social life is the law of
love, the law of liberty, the law of each for all and all for
each; that the golden rule of morals is also the golden
rule of the science of wealth; that the highest expressions
of religious truth include the widest generalisations of
political economy.
There will grow on you, as no moralising could teach,
a deepening realisation of the brotherhood of man; there
will come to you a firmer and firmer conviction of the
fatherhood of God. If you have ever thoughtlessly ac-
cepted that worse than atheistic theory that want and
wretchedness and brutalising toil are ordered by the Crea-
tor, or, revolting from this idea, if you have ever felt
that the only thing apparent in the ordering of the world
was a blind and merciless fate careless of man's aspira-
tions and heedless of his sufferings, these thoughts will
pass from you as you see how much of all that is bad and
all that is perplexing in our social conditions grows simply
from our ignorance of law as you come to realise how
much better and happier men might make the life of man.
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC:
ITS DANGERS AND POSSIBILITIES.
THE AMEEICAN EEPUBLIC: ITS DANGEES
AND POSSIBILITIES.
[An oration delivered in the California Theatre, San Francisco, on the
celebration of the 4th of July, 1877.]
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
ris under circumstances that inspire gratitude and
:enew patriotism that we celebrate the completion by
the American Eepublic of the first year of her second cen-
tury. How much that year has held of the possibilities
of dire calamity it may be too soon to speak. 1 But for
the deliverance let us give thanks. Through the web
woven by passion and prejudice has run the woof of a
beneficent purpose. Through clash of plans and conflict
of parties; through gateways hung with cloud and by
paths we knew not of, have we come to this good estate!
As, when the long struggle was over, the men of the
Eevolution turned to pour forth their thanks to Him in
whose hands are the nations, so let us turn to-day. Last
year was the Centennial; but this year, if we read the
times aright, marks the era, and with 1877 will the his-
torian, in future ages, close the grand division of our
history that records the long, sad strife of which slavery
was the cause. Most gracious of our national anniver-
saries is that we keep. Never before has the great Decla-
1 Hayes-Tilden Presidential contest
157
158 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
ration rung through the land as to-day. For the first;
time have its words neither fallen on the ears of a slave
nor been flung hack by a bayonet-guarded State House !
For year after year, while they who won our indepen-
dence faded away; for year after year, while their sons
grew old, and in their turn taught us to light the altar
fires of the Eepublic, at every recurring anniversary of
the nation's birth, the unexpressed thought of an inherited
curse that was sowing the land with dragon's teeth,
checked the pride and gave to the rejoicings of the thought-
ful a sombre background, and between thunder of gun and
voice of trumpet, the black shadow of a great wrong
mocked in silence the burning words that protested to the
world the inalienable rights of man. To this there came
an end. In the deadly close of civil war, when all fierce
and wicked passions were loosed, while the earth shook
with the tread of fratricidal armies, and the heavens were
red with the blaze of burning homes, amid the groans of
dying men and the cry of stricken women, the great curse
passed away. But still the shadow. Could we boast a
Union in which State Governments were maintained by
extra-State force, or glory in a republic whose forms were
mocked in virtual provinces?
But all this is of the past. The long strife is over.
The cancer has been cut out. And may we not also say
to-day that the wound of the knife has healed? To-day
we celebrate the nation's birth, more truly one people than
for years and years. Again in soul as in form, the many
are one. Over palmetto as over pine floats the flag that
typifies the glory of our common past, the promise of our
common future the flag that rose above the blood-stained
snow at Valley Forge, that crossed with Washington the
icy Delaware the flag that Marion bore, that Paul Jones
nailed to the mast, that Lafayette saluted ! Over our un-
FOUETH OF JULY ORATION 159
divided heritage of a continent it floats to-day, with the
free will of a united people under its folds no slave, and
in its blue no star save that of a free and sovereign State.
And, as in city and town and hamlet, to-day, has been read
once more the declaration of a nation's birth, again, I be-
lieve me, in the hearts of their people, has Adams signed
with Jefferson and Eutledge with Livingston, pledging
to the Eepublic one and indivisible, life and fortune and
sacred honour !
Beside me on this platform, around me in this audience,
sit men who have borne arms against each other in civil
strife, again united under the folds of that flag. Men of
the South and men of the North, do I not speak what is in
your hearts, do I not give voice to your hope and your
trust, when I say that the Union is again restored in spirit
as in form not a union of conquerors and conquered, but
the union of a people one in soul as one in blood ; one in
destiny as one in heritage !
Let our dead strifes bury their dead, while we cherish
the feeling that makes us one. Let us spare no myrrh nor
frankincense nor costly spices as we feed the sacred fire.
It is not a vain thing these flags, these decorations, these
miles of marching men. Stronger than armies, more po-
tent than treasure is the sentiment of nationality they
typify and inculcate!
Yet to more than the sentiment of nationality is this
day sacred. It marks more than the birth of a nation
it marks a step in the progress of the race. More than
national independence, more than national union, speaks
out in that grand document to which we have just lis-
tened; it is the declaration of the fundamental principle
of liberty of a truth that has in it power to renovate the
world.
It is meet that on this day the flags of all nations should
160 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
mingle above our processions and wreathe our halls. For
this is the festival of her to whom under all skies eyes
have turned and hands been lifted of her who has had in
all lands her lovers and her martyrs of her who shall
yet unite the nations and bid the war drums cease ! It is
the festival of Liberty!
And in keeping this day to Liberty, we honour all her
sacred days those glorious days on which she has stepped
forward, those sad days on which she has been stricken
down by open foes, or fallen wounded in the house of her
friends. Far back stretches the lineage of the Eepublic
at whose birth Liberty was invoked from every land have
been gathered the gleams of light that unite in her beacon
fire. It is kindled of the progress of mankind ; it witnesses
to heaven the aspirations of the ages; it shall light the
nations to yet nobler heights!
Let us keep this day as the day sacred to Union and to
Liberty should be kept. Let us draw closer the cords of
our common brotherhood and renew our fathers' vows.
Let it be honoured as John Adams predicted it would be
honoured with clangour of bells and roar of guns, with
music and processions and assemblages of the people, with
every mark of respect and rejoicing that its memories of
glory may entwine themselves with the earliest recollec-
tions of our children, that even the thoughtless may catch
something of its inspiration !
Yet it is not enough that with all the marks of vener-
ation we keep these holidays. It is possible to cherish the
form and lose the spirit.
No matter how bright the lights behind, their usefulness
is but to illumine the path before. Whatever be the causes
of that enormous difference almost a difference in kind
between the stationary and the progressive races, here is
FOURTH OP JULY ORATION 161
its unfailing indication the one look to the past, the other
to the future. The moment we believe that all wisdom
was concentrated in our ancestors, that moment the petri-
faction of China is upon us. For life is growth, and
growth is change, and political progress consists in getting
rid of institutions we have outgrown. Aristocracy, feu-
dality, monarchy, slavery all the things against which
human progress has been a slow and painful struggle
were, doubtless, in their times relatively if not absolutely
beneficial, as have been in later times things we may
have to cast away. The maxim commended to us by him
who must ever remain the greatest citizen of the Kepublic
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," embodies a
truth which goes to the very core of philosophy, which
must everywhere and at all times be true. Ever and ever
we sail an unknown sea. Old shapes of menace fade but
to give place to others. Even new rocks lurk ; ever in new
guise the syrens sing !
As through the million-voiced plaudits of to-day we hear
again the words that when first spoken were ominous of
cord and gibbet, and amid a nation's rejoicing our pulses
quicken as imagination pictures the bridge of Lexington,
the slender earthworks of Bunker Hill, the charge of
tattered Continentals, or the swift night-ride of Marion's
men, let us not think that our own times are common-
place, and make no call for the patriotism that, as it wells
up in our hearts, we feel would have been strong to dare
and do had we lived then.
How momentous our own times may be the future alone
can tell. We are yet laying the foundations of empire,
while stronger run the currents of change and mightier
are the forces that marshal and meet.
Let us turn to the past, not in the belief that the great
men of the past conquered for us a heritage that we have
162 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
but to enjoy, but that we may catch their heroic spirit to
guide and nerve us in the exigencies of the present; that
we may pass it on to our children, to carry them through
the dangers of the future.
Now, as a hundred years ago, the Eepublic has need of
that spirit of the noble sensitiveness that is jealous for
Freedom; of the generous indignation that weighs our
consideration of expediency against the sacrifice of one
iota of popular right; of the quick sympathy that made
an attack on the liberties of one colony felt in all; of the
patient patriotism that worked and waited, never flagging,
never tiring, seeking not recognition nor applause, looking
only to the ultimate end and to the common good; of the
devotion to a high ideal which led men to risk for it all
things sweet and all things dear!
We shall best honour the men of the Eevolution by in-
voking the spirit that animated them; we shall best per-
petuate their memories by looking in the face whatever
threatens the perpetuity of their work. Whether a cen-
tury hence they shall be regarded as visionaries or as men
who gave a new life to mankind, depends upon us.
For let us not disguise it republican government is yet
but an experiment. That it has worked well so far, de-
termines nothing. That republican institutions would
work well under the social conditions of the youth of the
Republic cheap land, high wages and little distinction
between rich and poor there was never any doubt, for
they were working well before. Our Revolution was not
a revolution in the full sense of the term, as was that
great outburst of the spirit of freedom that followed it in
France. The colonies but separated from Great Britain,
and became an independent nation without essential
change in the institutions under which they had grown up.
The doubt about republican institutions is as to whether
FOURTH OP JULY ORATION 163
they will work when population becomes dense, wages low,
and a great gulf separates rich and poor.
Can we speak of it as a doubt? Nothing in political
philosophy can be clearer than that under such conditions
republican government must break down.
This is not to say that these forms must be abandoned.
We might and probably would go on holding our elections
for years and years after our government had become es-
sentially despotic. It was centuries after Caesar ere the
absolute master of the Eoman world pretended to rule
other than by authority of a Senate that trembled before
him. It was not till the thirteenth century that English
kings dropped the formal claim of what was once the
essence of their title the choice of the people; and to
this day the coronation ceremonies of European monarchs
retain traces of the free election of their leader by equal
warriors.
But forms are nothing when substance has gone. And
our forms are those from which the substance may most
easily go. Extremes meet, and a republican government,
based on universal suffrage and theoretical equality, is of
all governments that which may most easily become a
despotism of the worst kind. For there, despotism ad-
vances in the name of the people. The single source of
power once secured, everything is secured. There is no
unf ranchised class to whom appeal may be made ; no privi-
leged orders, who in defending their own rights may de-
fend those of all. No bulwark remains to stay the flood,
no eminence to rise above it.
And where there is universal suffrage, just as the dis-
parity of condition increases, so does it become easy to seize
the source of power, for the greater is the proportion of
power in the hands of those who feel no direct interest in
164 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
the conduct of the government, nay, who, made bitter by
hardships, may even look upon profligate government with
the sort of satisfaction we may imagine the proletarians
and slaves of Eome to have felt as they saw a Caligula or
Nero raging among the rich patricians.
Given a community with republican institutions, in
which one class is too rich to be shorn of their luxuries, no
matter how public affairs are administered, and another
so poor that any little share of the public plunder, even
though it be but a few dollars on election day, will seem
more than any abstract consideration, and power must pass
into the hands of jobbers who will sell it, as the prastorian
legions sold the Eoman purple, while the people will be
forced to reimburse the purchase money with costs and
profits. If to the pecuniary temptation involved in the
ordinary conduct of government are added those that come
from the granting of subsidies, the disposition of public
lands and the regulation of prices by means of a protec-
tive tariff, the process will be the swifter.
Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selec-
tion by lot (the plan of some of the ancient republics)
may sometimes place the wise and just in power, but in a
corrupt republic the tendency is always to give power to
the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted and un-
scrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate to
the bottom, the worst float to the top; and the vile can
only be ousted by the viler. And as a corrupt government
always tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer,
the fundamental cause of corruption is steadily aggra-
vated, while as national character must gradually assimi-
late to the qualities that command power and consequently
respect, that demoralisation of opinion goes on which in
the long panorama of history we may see over and over
again, transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves.
FOURTH OF JULY OEATION 165
As in England, in the last century, where Parliament
was but a close corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt
oligarchy, where it is clearly fenced off from the masses,
may exist without much effect on national character; be-
cause, in that case, power is associated in the popular
mind with other things than corruption; but where there
are no hereditary distinctions, and men are habitually seen
to raise themselves by corrupt qualities from the lowest
plaoes to wealth and power, tolerance of these qualities
finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic govern-
ment must finally corrupt the people, and when a people
become corrupt, there is no resurrection. The life has
gone, only the carcass remains; and it is left but for the
ploughshares of fate to bury it out of sight.
Secure in her strength and position from external dan-
gers, with the cause gone that threatened her unity, the
Kepublic begins to count the years of her second century
with a future, to all outward seeming, secure. But may
we not see already closing round her the insidious perils
from which, since her birth, destruction has been predicted ?
Clearly, to him who will look, are we passing from the
conditions under which republican government is easy,
into those under which it becomes endangered, if not dan-
gerous. While the possessor of a single million is ceasing
to be noticeable in the throng of millionaires, and larger
private fortunes are mounting towards hundreds of mil-
lions, we are all over the country becoming familiar with
widespread poverty in its hardest aspects not the pov-
erty that nourishes the rugged virtues, but poverty of the
kind that dispirits and embrutes.
And as we see the gulf widening between rich and poor,
may we not as plainly see the symptoms of political deteri-
oration that in a republican government must always ac-
166 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC
company it? Social distinctions are sharpest in our great
cities, and in our great cities is not republican government
becoming a reproach ? May we not see in these cities that
the worst -social influences are become the most potent
political factors; that corrupt rings notoriously rule; that
offices are virtually purchased and, most ominous of all,
may we not plainly see the growth of a sentiment that
looks on all this as natural, if not perfectly legitimate;
that either doubts the existence of an honest man in pub-
lic place, or thinks of him as a fool too weak to seize his
opportunity? Has not the primary system, which is sim-
ply republicanism applied to party management, already
broken down in our great cities, and are not parties in
their despair already calling for what in general govern-
ment would be oligarchies and dictatorships ?
We talk about the problem of municipal government !
It is not the problem of municipal government that we
have to solve, but the problem of republican government.
These great cities are but the type of our development.
They are growing not merely with the growth of the coun-
try, but faster than the growth of the country. There are
children here to-day who in all human probability will see
San Francisco a city as large as London, and will count
through the country New Yorks by the score !
Fellow-citizens, the wind does not blow north or south
because the weather-cocks turn that way. The complaints
of political demoralisation that come from every quarter
are not because bad men have been elected to office or
corrupt men have taken to engineering parties. If bad
men are elected to office, if corrupt men rule parties, is
it not because the conditions are such as to give them the
advantage over good and pure men? Fellow-citizens, it
is not the glamour of success that makes the men whose
work we celebrate to-day loom up through the mists of a
FOUETH OP JULY ORATION 167
century like giants. They were giants some of them so
great, that with all our eulogies we do not yet appreciate
them, and their full fame must wait for yet another cen-
tury. But the reason why such intellectual greatness gath-
ered around the cradle of the Eepublic and guided her
early steps, was not that men were greater in that day,
but that the people chose their best. You will hardly find
a man of that time, of high character and talent, who was
not in some way in the public service. This certainly can-
not be said now. And it is because power is concentrating,
as it must concentrate as our institutions deteriorate. If
one of those men were to come back to-day and were
spoken of for high position say for the United States
Senate instead of Jefferson's three questions, the know-
ing ones would ask: "Has he money to make the fight?"
"Are the corporations for him?" "Can he put up the
primaries?" No less a man than Benjamin Franklin a
man whose fame as a statesman and philosopher is yet
growing a man whom the French Academy, the most
splendid intellectual assemblage in Europe, applauded as
the modern Solon represented the city of Philadelphia in
the provincial Assembly for ten years, until, as their best
man, he was sent to defend the colony in London. Are
there not to-day cities in the land which even a Benjamin
Franklin could not represent in a State Assembly unless
he put around his neck the collar of a corporation or took
his orders from a local ring ?
You will think of many things in this connection to
which it is not necessary for me to allude. We all see
them. Though we may not speak it openly, the general
faith in republican institutions is narrowing and weak-
ening it is no longer that defiant, jubilant, boastful belief
in republicanism as the source of all national blessings and
the cure for all human woes that it once was. We begin
168 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
to realise that corruption may cost as much as a royal
family, and that the vaunted ballot, under certain condi-
tions, may bring forth ruling classes of the worst kind,
while we already see developing around us social evils that
we once associated only with effete monarchies. Can we
talk so proudly of welcoming the oppressed of all nations
when thousands vainly seek for work at the lowest wages ?
Can we expect him, who must sup on charity, to rejoice
that he cannot be taxed without being represented ; or
congratulate him who seeks shelter in a station-house that,
as a citizen of the Kepublic, he is the peer of the monarchs
of earth?
Is there any tendency to improvement?
Fellow-citizens, we have hitherto had an advantage over
older nations which we can hardly overestimate. It has
been our public domain, our background of unfenced
land, that made our social conditions better than those of
Europe; that relieved the labour market and maintained
wages ; that kept open a door of escape from the increasing
pressure in older sections, and acting and reacting in many
ways on our national character, gave it freedom and inde-
pendence, elasticity and hope.
But with a folly for which coming generations may curse
us, we have wasted it away. Worse than the Norman con-
queror, we have repeated the sin of the sin-swollen Henry
VIII. ; and already we hear in the "tramp" of the sturdy
vagrant of the sixteenth century, the predecessor of the
English pauper of this. We have done to the future the
unutterable wrong that English rule and English law did
to Irelan^, and already we begin to hear of rack-rents and
evictions. We have repeated the crime that filled Italy
with a servile population in place of the hardy farmers
who had carried her eagles to victory after victory the
FOURTH OP JULY ORATION 169
crime that ate out the heart of the Mistress of the World,
and buried the glories of ancient civilisation in the dark-
ness of medieval night. Instead of guarding the public
domain as the most precious of our heritages; instead of
preserving it for our poorer classes of to-day and for the
uncounted millions who must follow us, we have made it
the reward of corruption, greed, fraud and perjury. Go
out in this fair land to-day and you may see great estates
tilled by Chinamen, while citizens of the Kepublic carry
their blankets through dusty roads begging for work; you
may ride for miles and miles through fertile land and see
no sign of human life save the ghastly chimney of an
evicted settler or the miserable shanty of a poverty-stricken
renter. Cross the bay, and you will see the loveliest piece
of mountain scenery around this great city, though desti-
tute of habitation, walled in with a high board fence, that
none but the owner of 20,000 acres of land may look upon
its beauties. Pass over these broad acres which lie as they
lay ere man was born on this earth, and under penalty of
fine and imprisonment you must confine yourself to the
road, purchased of him with poll taxes of four dollars a
head wrung from men packing their blankets in search
of work at a dollar a day.
Fellow-citizens, the public domain fit for homes is al-
most gone, and at the rate we are parting with the rest,
it is certain that by the time children now in our public
schools come of age, the pre-emption law and the home-
stead law will remain on our statute books only to remind
them of their squandered birthright. Then the influences
that are at work to concentrate wealth in the hands of the
few, and make dependence the lot of the many, will have
free play.
How potent are these influences! Though in form
everything seems tending to republican equality, a new
170 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
power has entered the world that, under present social ad-
justments, is working with irresistible force to subject the
many to the few. The tendency of all modern machinery
is to give capital an overpowering advantage and make
labour helpless. Our boys cannot learn trades, because
there are few to learn. The journeyman who, with his
kit of tools, could make a living anywhere, is being re-
placed by the operative who performs but one part of a
process, and must work with tools he can never hope to own,
and who consequently must take but a bare living, while
all the enormous increase of wealth which results from
the economy of production must go to increase great for-
tunes. The undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us
back again to the old conditions from which we dreamed
we had escaped. The development of the artisan and com-
mercial classes gradually broke down feudalism after it
had become so complete that men thought of heaven as
organised on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and sec-
ond persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and Tenant-in-
Chief. But now the development of manufacture and ex-
change has reached a point which threatens to compel every
worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which followed
the final break up of the Eoman Empire compelled every
freeman to seek a lord. Nothing seems exempt from this
tendency. Even errands are run by a corporation, and
one company carries carpet-sacks, while another drives the
hack. It is the old guilds of the middle ages over again,
only that instead of all being equal, one is master and the
others serve. And where one is master and the others
serve, the one will control the others, even in such matters
as votes.
In our constitution is a clause prohibiting the granting
of titles of nobility. In the light of the present it seems
a good deal like the device of the man who, leaving a big
FOURTH OP JULY OEATION 171
hole for the cat, sought to keep the kitten out hy blocking
up the little hole. Could titles add anything to the power
of the aristocracy that is here growing up? Six hundred
liveried retainers followed the great Earl of Warwick to
Parliament; but in this young State there is already a
simple citizen who could discharge any one of thousands
of men from their employment, who controls 2200 miles of
railroad and telegraph, and millions of acres of land, and
has the power of levying toll on traffic and travel over an
area twice that of the original thirteen States. Warwick
was a king-maker. Would it add to the real power of our
simple citizen were we to dub him an earl?
.uook at the social conditions which are growing up here
in California. Land monopolised; water monopolised; a
race of cheap workers crowding in, whose effect upon our
own labouring classes is precisely that of slavery; all the
avenues of trade and travel under one control, all wealth
and power tending more and more to concentrate in a few
hands. What sort of a republic will this be in a few years
longer if these things go on? The idea would be ridicu-
lous, were it not too sad.
Fellow-citizens, I am talking of things not men. Most
irrational would be any enmity towards individuals. How
few are there of us who under similar circumstances would
not do just what those we speak of as monopolists have
done. To put a saddle on our back is to invite the booted
and spurred to ride. It is not men who are to blame but
the system. And who is to blame for the system, but the
whole people ? If the lion will suffer his teeth to be pulled
and his claws to be pared, he must expect every cur to
tease him.
But, fellow-citizens, while it is true that a republican
government worth the name cannot exist under the social
172 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
conditions into which we are passing, it is also true that
under a really republican government such conditions
could not be.
I do not mean to say we have not had enough govern-
ment; I mean to say that we have had too much. It is a
truth that cannot be too clearly kept in mind that the
best government is that which governs least, and that the
more a republican government undertakes to do, the less
republican it becomes. Unhealthy social conditions are
but the result of interferences with natural rights.
There is nothing in the condition of things (it were a
libel on the Creator to say so) which condemns one class
to toil and want while another lives in wasteful luxury.
There is enough and to spare for us all. But if one is
permitted to ignore the rights of others by taking more
than his share, the others must get less; a difference is
created which constantly tends to become greater, and a
greedy scramble ensues in which more is wasted than
is used.
If you will trace out the laws of the production of
wealth and see how enormous are the forces now wasted, if
you will follow the laws of its distribution, and see how,
by human laws, one set of men are enabled to appropriate
a greater or less part of the earnings of the others; if
you will think how this robbery of labour degrades the
labourer and makes him unable to drive a fair bargain,
and how it diminishes production, you will begin to see
that there is no necessity for poverty, and that the grow-
ing disparity of social conditions proceeds from laws which
deny the equal rights of men.
Fellow-citizens, we have just listened again to the Dec-
laration, not merely of national independence, but of the
rights of man.
FOURTH OF JULY OEATION 173
Great was Magna Charta a beacon of light through
centuries of darkness, a bulwark of the oppressed through
ages of wrong, a firm rock for Liberty's feet, as she still
strove onward !
But all charters and bills of right, all muniments and
titles of Liberty, are included in that simple statement of
self-evident truth that is the heart and soul of the Decla-
ration: "That all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of hap-
piness."
In these simple words breathes not only the spirit of
M^gna Charta, but the spirit which seeks its inspiration
in the eternal facts of nature through them speak not
only Stephen Langton and John Hampton, but Wat Tyler
and the Mad Priest of Kent.
The assertion of the equal rights of all men to life, lib-
erty and the pursuit of happiness is the assertion of the
right of each to the fullest, freest exercise of all his facul-
ties, limited only by the equal right of every other. It in-
cludes freedom of person and security of earnings, free-
dom of trade and capital, freedom of conscience and speech
and the press. It is the declaration of the same equal
rights of all human beings to the enjoyment of the bounty
of the Creator to light and to air, to water and to land.
It asserts these rights as inalienable as the direct grant
of the Creator to each human being, of which he can be
rightfully deprived neither by kings nor congresses, nei-
ther by parchments nor prescriptions neither by the com-
pacts of past generations nor by majority votes.
This simple yet all-embracing statement bears the stamp
royal of primary truth it includes all partial truths and
co-ordinates with all other truths. This perfect liberty,
which, by giving each his rights, secures the rights of all
174 THE AMEBICAN REPUBLIC
is order, for violence is the infringement of right; it is
justice, for injustice is the denial of right; it is equality,
for one cannot have more than his right, without another
having less. It is reverence towards God, for irreverence
is the denial of His order; it is love towards man, for it
accords to others all that we ask for ourselves. It is the
message that the angels sang over Bethlehem in Judea it
is the political expression of the Golden Eule !
Like all men who build on truth, the men of the Eevo-
lution builded better than they knew. The Declaration of
Independence was ahead of their time ; it is in advance of
our time; it means more than perhaps even he saw whose
pen traced it man of the future that he was and still is !
But it has in it the generative power of truth; it has
grown and still must grow.
They tore from the draft of the Declaration the page in
which Jefferson branded the execrable crime of slavery.
But in vain ! In those all-embracing words that page was
still there, and though it has taken a century, they are, in
this respect, vindicated at last, and human flesh and blood
can no longer be bought and sold.
It is for us to vindicate them further. Slavery is not
dead, though its grossest form be gone. What is the dif-
ference, whether my body is legally held by another, or
whether he legally holds that by which alone I can live.
Hunger is as cruel as the lash. The essence of slavery
consists in taking from a man all the fruits of his labour
except a bare living, and of how many thousands mis-
called free is this the lot? Where wealth most abounds
there are classes with whom the average plantation negro
would have lost in comfort by exchanging. English vil-
leins of the fourteenth century were better off than Eng-
lish agricultural labourers of the nineteenth. There ia
FOURTH OP JULY ORATION 175
slavery and slavery ! "The widow/' says Carlyle, "is gath-
ering nettles for her children's dinner; a perfumed seig-
neur, delicately lounging in the (Eil de Bceuf, has an
alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle,
and call it rent !"
Fellow-citizens, let us not be deluded by names. What
is the use of a republic if labour must stand with its hat
off begging for leave to work, if "tramps" must throng the
highways and children grow up in squalid tenement
houses ? Political institutions are but means to an end
the freedom and happiness of the individual; and just so
far as they fail in that, call them what you will, they are
condemned.
Our conditions are changing. The laws which impel
nations to seek a larger measure of liberty, or else take
from them what they have, are working silently but with
irresistible force. If we would perpetuate the Republic,
we must come up to the spirit of the Declaration, and
fully recognise the equal rights of all men. We must free
labour from its burdens and trade from its fetters; we
must cease to make government an excuse for enriching
the few at the expense of the many, and confine it to neces-
sary functions. We must cease to permit the monopolisa-
tion of land and water by non-users, and apply the just
rule, "No seat reserved unless occupied." We must cease
the cruel wrong which, by first denying their natural
rights, reduces labourers to the wages of competition, and
then, under pretence of asserting the rights of another
race, compels them to a competition that will not merely
force them to a standard of comfort unworthy the citizen
of a free republic, but ultimately deprives them of their
equal right to live.
Here is the test: whatever conduces to their equal and
inalienable rights to men is good let us preserve it.
176 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
Whatever denies or interferes with those equal rights is
bad let us sweep it away. If we thus make our institu-
tions consistent with their theory, all difficulties must van-
ish. We will not merely have a republic, but social con-
ditions consistent with a republic. If we will not do this,
we surrender the Eepublic, either to be torn by the volcanic
forces that already shake the ground beneath the standing
armies of Europe, or to rot by slow degrees, and in its
turn undergo the fate of all its predecessors.
Liberty is not a new invention that, once secured, can
never be lost. Freedom is the natural state of man.
"Who is your lord?" shouted the envoys of Charles the
Simple to the Northmen who had penetrated into the heart
of France. "We have no lord ; we are all free men !" was
their answer; and so in their time of vigour would have
answered every people that ever made a figure in the
world. But at some point in the development of every
people freedom has been lost, because as fresh gains were
made, or new forces developed, they were turned to the
advantage of a few.
Wealth in itself is a good, not an evil; but wealth con-
centrated in the hands of a few, corrupts on one side, and
degrades on the other. No chain is stronger than its
weakest link, and the ultimate condition of any people
must be the condition of its lowest class. If the low are
not brought up, the high must be brought down. In the
long run, no nation can be freer than its most oppressed,
richer than its poorest, wiser than its most ignorant. This
is the fiat of the eternal justice that rules the world. It
stands forth on every page of history. It is what the
Sphinx says to us as she sitteth in desert sand, while the
winged bulls of Nineveh bear her witness ! It is written in
the undecipherable hieroglyphics of Yucatan; in the brick
mounds of Babylon; in the prostrate columns of Persiopo-
FOURTH OP JULY OEATION 177
lis; in the salt-sown plain of Carthage. It speaks to us
from the shattered relics of Grecian art; from the mighty
ruins of the Coliseum ! Down through the centuries comes
a warning voice from the great Republic of the ancient
world to the great Republic of the new. In three Latin
words Pliny sums up the genesis of the causes that ate
out the heart of the mightiest power that the world ever
saw, and overwhelmed a widespread civilisation: "Great
estates ruined Italy!"
Let us heed the warning by laying the foundations of
the Republic upon the work of the equal, inalienable rights
of all. So shall dangers disappear, and forces that now
threaten turn to work our bidding; so shall wealth in-
crease, and knowledge grow, and vice, and crime and mis-
ery vanish away.
They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her
mission, when she has abolished hereditary privileges and
given men the ballot, who think of her as having no fur-
ther relations to the every-day affairs of life, have not
seen her real grandeur to them the poets who have sung
of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools ! As
the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light ; as his beams
not merely pierce the clouds, but support all growth, sup-
ply all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise
be a cold and inert mass, all the infinite diversities of
being and beauty, so is liberty to mankind. It is not for
an abstraction that men have toiled and died ; that in every
age the witnesses of liberty have stood forth, and the
martyrs of liberty have suffered. It was for more than
this that matrons handed the Queen Anne musket from its
rest, and that maids bid their lovers go to death !
We speak of liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth,
knowledge, invention, national strength and national inde-
178 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
pendence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty is
the source, the mother, the necessary condition. She is to
virtue what light is to colour, to wealth what sunshine is
to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to the sight. She is
the genius of invention, the brawn of national strength,
the spirit of national independence ! Where Liberty rises,
there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands,
invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and
spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbours as Saul
amid his brethren taller and fairer. Where Liberty
sinks, there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is
forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in
arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians !
Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of
Liberty yet beamed among men, yet all progress hath she
called forth.
Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyp-
tian whips, and led them forth from the House of Bondage.
She hardened them in the desert and made of them a race
of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic law took
their thinkers up to heights where they beheld the unity
of God, and inspired their poets with strains that yet
phrase the highest exaltations of thought. Liberty
dawned on the Phenician coast, and ships passed the Pil-
lars of Hercules to plough the unknown sea. She broke
in partial light on Greece, and marble grew to shapes of
ideal beauty, words became the instruments of subtlest
thought, and against the scanty militia of free cities the
countless hosts of the Great King broke like surges against
a rock. She cast her beams on the four-acre farms of
Italian husbandmen, and born of her strength a power
came forth that conquered the world ! She glinted from
shields of German warriors, and Augustus wept his legions.
Out of the night that followed her eclipse, her slanting
FOURTH OP JULY OEATION 179
rays fell again on free cities, and a lost learning revived,
modern civilisation began, a new world was unveiled; and
as Liberty grew so grew art, wealth, power, knowledge
and refinement. In the history of every nation we may
read the same truth. It was the strength born of Magna
Charta that won Crecy and Agincourt. It was the revival
of Liberty from the despotism of the Tudors that glorified
the Elizabethan age. It was the spirit that brought a
crowned tyrant to the block that planted here the seed of
a mighty tree. It was the energy of ancient freedom that,
the moment it had gained unity, made Spain the might-
iest power of the world, only to fall to the lowest depth
of weakness when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in
France, all intellectual vigour dying under the tyranny of
the seventeenth century to revive in splendour as Liberty
awoke in the eighteenth, and on the enfranchisement of
the French peasants in the great revolution, basing the
wonderful strength that has in our time laughed at dis-
aster.
What Liberty shall do for the nation that fully accepts
and loyally cherishes her, the wondrous inventions, which
are the marked features of this century, give us but a hint.
Just as the condition of the working classes is improved,
do we gain in productive power. Wherever labour is best
paid and has most leisure, comfort, and refinement, there
invention is most active and most generally utilised.
Short-sighted are they who think the reduction of working
hours would reduce the production of wealth. Human
muscles are one of the tiniest of forces ; but for the human
mind the resistless powers of nature work. To enfran-
chise labour, to give it leisure and comfort and indepen-
dence, is to substitute in production mind for muscle.
When this is fully done, the power that we now exert over
matter will be as nothing to that we shall have.
180 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
It has been said that, from the very increase of our
numbers, the American Union must in time necessarily
break up. I do not believe it. Even now, while the
memories of a civil war are fresh, I do not think any part
of our people regret that this continent is not bisected by
an imaginary line, separating two jealous nations, two
great standing armies. If we respect the equal rights of
all, if we reduce the operation of our national Government
to the purposes for which it is alone fitted, the preserva-
tion of the common peace, the maintenance of the common
security and the promotion of the common convenience,
there can be no sectional interest adverse to unity, and
the blessings of the bond that makes us a nation must be-
come more apparent as years roll on.
So far from this Union necessarily falling to pieces from
its own weight, it may, if we but hold fast to justice, not
merely embrace a continent, but prove in the future capa-
ble of a wider extension than we have yet dreamed.
The crazy king, the brutal ministers, the rotten Parlia-
ment, the combination of tyranny, folly, corruption and
arrogance that sundered the Anglo-Saxon race, is gone,
but stronger and stronger grows the influence of the death-
less minds that make our common language classic. The
republic of Anglo-Saxon literature extends wherever the
tongue of Shakespeare is spoken. The great actors who
from time to time walk this stage, find their audiences
over half the globe ; it is to one people that our poets sing ;
it is one mind that responds to the thought of our think-
ers. The old bitternesses are passing away. With us the
hatreds, born of two wars, are beginning to soften and die
out, while Englishmen, who this year honour us in hon-
ouring the citizen whom we have twice deemed worthy of
our foremost place, are beginning to look upon our Eevo-
lution as the vindication of their own liberties.
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 181
A hundred years have passed since the fast friend of
American liberty the great Earl Chatham rose to make
his last appeal for the preservation, on the basis of justice,
of that English-speaking empire, in which he saw the
grandest possibility of the future. Is it too soon to hope
that the future may hold the realisation of his vision in a
nobler form than even he imagined, and that it may be
the mission of this Republic to unite all the nations of
English speech, whether they grow beneath the Northern
Star or Southern Cross, in a league which, by insuring
justice, promoting peace, and liberating commerce, will be
the forerunner of a world-wide federation that will make
war the possibility of a past age, and turn to works of use-
fulness the enormous forces now dedicated to destruction.
And she to whom on this day our hearts turn, our an-
cient ally, our generous friend thank God we can say, our
sister Republic of France ! It was not alone the cold cal-
culations of kingcraft that when our need was direst,
helped us with money and supplies, with armies and fleets.
The grand idea of the equal rights of man was stirring in
France, her pulses were throbbing with the new life that
was soon to shake the thrones of Europe as with an earth-
quake, and French sympathy went out where Liberty made
her stand. "They are a generous people," wrote Franklin,
"they do not like to hear of advantages in return for their
aid. They desire the glory of helping us." France has
that glory, and more. Let her column Vendome fall, and
the memory of the butchers of mankind fade away; the
great things that France has done for freedom will make
her honoured of the nations, while, with increasing and
increasing meaning, rings through the ages the cry with
which she turned to the thunder-burst of Valmy: "Live
the people!"
182 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
Beset by difficulties from which we are happily exempt
on the one side those who dream of bringing back the
middle ages, on the other the red spectre ; compelled, or in
fancy compelled, by the legacy of old hates to maintain
that nightmare of prosperity and deadly foe of freedom, a
large standing army France has yet steadily made prog-
ress. Italy is one; the great Germanic race at last have
unity ; as out of a trance, life stirs in Spain ; Russia moves
as she marches. May it not be France's to again show
Europe the way ?
Fellow-citizens: If I have sought rather to appeal to
thought than to natter vanity, it is not that I do not see
the greatness and feel the love of my country. Drawing
my first breath almost within the shadow of Independence
Hall, the cherished traditions of the Eepublic entwine
themselves with my earliest recollections, and her flag sym-
bolises to me all that I hold dear on earth. But for the
very love I bear her, for the very memories I cherish, I
would not dare come before you on this day and ignore the
dangers I see in her path.
If I have not dwelt on her material greatness or pic-
tured her future growth, it is because there rises before me
a higher ideal of what this Republic may be than can be
expressed in material symbols an ideal so glorious that,
beside it, all that we now pride ourselves on seems mean
and pitiful. That ideal is not satisfied with a republic
where, with all the enormous gains in productive power,
labour is ground down to a bare living and must think the
chance to work a favour ; it is not satisfied with a republic
where prisons are crowded and almshouses are built and
families are housed in tiers. It is not satisfied with a
republic where one tenant for a day can warn his co-
tenants off more of the surface of this rolling sphere
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 183
than he is using or can use, or compel them to pay him
for the bounty of their common Creator; it is not satis-
fied with a republic where the fear of poverty on the one
hand and the sight of great wealth on the other makes
the lives of so many such a pitiful straining, keeps eyes
to the ground that might be turned to the stars, and sub-
stitutes the worship of the Golden Calf for that of the
Living God !
It hopes for a republic where all shall have plenty, where
each may sit under his vine and fig tree, with none to vex
him or make him afraid; where with want shall gradually
disappear vice and crime; where men shall cease to spend
their lives in a struggle to live, or in heaping up things
they cannot take away; where talent shall be greater than
wealth and character greater than talent, and where each
may find free scope to develop body, mind and soul.
Is this the dream of dreamers? One brought to the
world the message that it might be reality. But they cru-
cified him between two thieves.
Not till it accepts that message can the world have
peace. Look over the history of the past. What is it but
a record of the woes inflicted by man on man, of wrong
producing wrong, and crime fresh crime? It must be so
till justice is acknowledged and liberty is law.
Some things have we done, but not all. In the words
with which an eminent Frenchman closes the history of
that great revolution that followed ours: "Liberty is not
yet here ; but she will come !"
Fellow-citizens, let us follow the star that rose above
the cradle of the Eepublic ; let us try our laws by the test
of the Declaration. Let us show to the nations our faith
in Liberty, nor fear she will lead us astray.
Who is Liberty that we should doubt her; that we
184 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
should set bounds to her, and say, "Thus far shall thou
come and no further !" Is she not peace ? is she not pros-
perity? is she not progress? nay, is she not the goal to-
wards which all progress strives ?
Not here ; but yet she cometh ! Saints have seen her in
their visions; seers have seen her in their trance. To
heroes has she spoken, and their hearts were strong; to
martyrs and the flames were cool !
She is not here, but yet she cometh. Lo! her feet are
on the mountains the call of her clarions ring on every
breeze ; the banners of her dawning fret the sky ! Who
will hear her as she calleth; who will bid her come and
welcome ? Who will turn to her ? who will speak for her ?
who will stand for her while she yet hath need?
THE CEIME OF POVERTY
THE CEIME OF POVEKTY.
[An address delivered in the Opera House, Burlington, Iowa, April 1,
1885, under the auspices of Burlington Assembly, No. 3135, Knights of
Labou., which afterwards distributed fifty thousand copies in tract form.]
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I PROPOSE to talk to you to-night of the Crime of
Poverty. I cannot, in a short time, hope to convince
you of much; but the thing of things I should like to
show you is that poverty is a crime. I do not mean that
it is a crime to be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is
not a crime to be murdered; and a man who is in pov-
erty, I look upon, not as a criminal in himself, so much
as the victim of a crime for which others, as well perhaps
as himself, are responsible. That poverty is a curse, the
bitterest of curses, we all know. Carlyle was right when
he said that the hell of which Englishmen are most afraid
is the hell of poverty; and this is true, not of Englishmen
alone, but of people all over the civilised world, no matter
what their nationality. It is to escape this hell that we
strive and strain and struggle; and work on oftentimes in
blind habit long after the necessity for work is gone.
The curse born of poverty is not confined to the poor
alone; it runs through all classes, even to the very rich.
They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there cannot be
suffering in a community from which any class can totally
escape. The vice, the crime, the ignorance, the meanness
187
188 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
born of poverty, poison, so to speak, the very air which
rich and poor alike must breathe.
Poverty is the mother of ignorance, the breeder of crime.
I walked down one of your streets this morning, and I
saw three men going along with their hands chained to-
gether. I knew for certain that those men were not rich
men; and, although I do not know the offence for which they
were carried in chains through your streets, this I think
I can safely say, that, if you trace it up you will find it in
some way to spring from poverty. Nine tenths of human
misery, I think you will find, if you look, to be due to
poverty. If a man chooses to be poor, he commits no
crime in being poor, provided his poverty hurts no one
but himself. If a man has others dependent upon him;
if there are a wife and children whom it is his duty to
support, then, if he voluntarily chooses poverty, it is a
crime aye, and I think that, in most cases, the men who
have no one to support but themselves are men that are
shirking their duty. A woman comes into the world for
every man; and for every man who lives a single life, car-
ing only for himself, there is some woman who is deprived
of her natural supporter. But while a man who chooses
to be poor cannot be charged with crime, it is certainly a
crime to force poverty on others. And it seems to me
clear that the great majority of those who suffer from
poverty are poor not from their own particular faults, but
because of conditions imposed by society at large. There-
fore I hold that poverty is a crime not an individual
crime, but a social crime, a crime for which we all, poor
as well as rich, are responsible.
Two or three weeks ago I went one Sunday evening to
the church of a famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr. Sankey
was singing and something like a revival was going on
there. The clergyman told some anecdotes connected with
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 189
the revival, and recounted some of the reasons why men
failed to become Christians. One case he mentioned
struck me. He said that he had noticed on the outskirts
of the congregation, night after night, a man who lis-
tened intently and who gradually moved forward. One
night, the clergyman said, he went to him, saying: "My
brother, are you not ready to become a Christian?" The
man said, no, he was not. He said it, not in a defiant
tone, but in a sorrowful tone; the clergyman asked him
why, whether he did not believe in the truths he had been
hearing ? Yes, he believed them all. Why, then, wouldn't
he become a Christian ? "Well," he said, "I can't join the
church without giving up my business ; and it is necessary
for the support of my wife and children. If I give that
up, I don't know how in the world I can get along. I had
a hard time before I found my present business, and I
cannot afford to give it up. Yet I can't become a Chris-
tian without giving it up." The clergyman asked, "are
you a rum-seller?" No, he was not a rum-seller. Well,
the clergyman said, he didn't know what in the world the
man could be; it seemed to him that a rum-seller was the
only man who does a business that would prevent his be-
coming a Christian; and he finally said: "What is your
business?" The man said, "I sell soap/' "Soap!" ex-
claimed the clergyman, "you sell soap ? How in the world
does that prevent your becoming a Christian?" "Well,"
the man said, "it is this way; the soap I sell is one of
these patent soaps that are extensively advertised as en-
abling you to clean clothes very quickly, as containing no
deleterious compound whatever. Every cake of the soap
that I sell is wrapped in a paper on which is printed a
statement that it contains no injurious chemicals, whereas
the truth of the matter is that it does, and that though it
will take the dirt out of clothes pretty quickly, it will, in a
190 THE CEIME OF POVERTY
little while, rot them completely. I have to make my
living in this way; and I cannot feel that I can become
a Christian if I sell that soap." The minister went on,
describing how he laboured unsuccessfully with that man,
and finally wound up by saying : "He stuck to his soap and
lost his soul."
But, if that man lost his soul, was it his fault alone?
Whose fault is it that social conditions are such that men
have to make that terrible choice between what conscience
tells them is right, and the necessity of earning a living?
I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the fault
of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who would
bring cholera to this country, or the man who, having the
power to prevent its coming here, would make no effort to
do so, would be guilty of a crime. Poverty is worse than
cholera; poverty kills more people than pestilence, even in
the best of times. Look at the death statistics of our
cities; see where the deaths come quickest; see where it
is that the little children die like flies it is in the poorer
quarters. And the man who looks with careless eyes upon
the ravages of this pestilence, the man who does not set
himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is guilty of a
crime.
If poverty is appointed by the power which is above us
all, then it is no crime; but if poverty is unnecessary,
then it is a crime for which society is responsible and for
which society must suffer.
I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can
fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is not
by the decree of the Almighty, but it is because of our
own injustice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance, that
this scourge, worse than any pestilence, ravages our civili-
sation, bringing want and suffering and degradation, de-
stroying souls as well as bodies. Look over the world, in
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 191
this heyday of nineteenth century civilisation. In every
civilised country under the sun you will find men and
women whose condition is worse than that of the savage:
men and women and little children with whom the veriest
savage could not afford to exchange. Even in this new
city of yours with virgin soil around you, you have had
this winter to institute a relief society. Your roads have
been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am told, at one time
taking shelter in a round-house here. As here, so every-
where ; and poverty is deepest where wealth most abounds.
What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in
nature like this poverty which to-day curses us. We see
rapine in nature; we see one species destroying another;
but as a general thing animals do not feed on their own
kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all
creatures of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever
saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the
great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds,
of which two or three were swimming in grease and the
others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there any-
thing like the poverty that festers in our civilisation.
In a rude state of society there are seasons of want, sea-
sons when people starve; but they are seasons when the
earth has refused to yield her increase, when the rain has
not fallen from the heavens, or when the land has been
swept by some foe not when there is plenty. And yet
the peculiar characteristic of this modern poverty of ours
is that it is deepest where wealth most abounds.
Why, to-day, while over the civilised world there is so
much distress, so much want, what is the cry that goes up ?
What is the current explanation of the hard times ? Over-
production ! There are so many clothes that men must go
ragged, so much coal that in the bitter winters people
have to shiver, such over-filled granaries that people actu-
192 THE CRIME OP POVERTY
ally die by starvation! Want due to over-production!
Was a greater absurdity ever uttered? How can there be
over-production till all have enough? It is not over-pro-
duction; it is unjust distribution.
Poverty necessary ! Why, think of the enormous powers
that are latent in the human brain ! Think how invention
enables us to do with the power of one man what not long
ago could not be done by the power of a thousand. Think
that in England alone the steam machinery in operation
is said to exert a productive force greater than the physical
force of the population of the world, were they all adults.
And yet we have only begun to invent and discover. We
have not yet utilised all that has already been invented
and discovered. And look at the powers of the earth.
They have hardly been touched. In every direction as we
look new resources seem to open. Man's ability to pro-
duce wealth seems almost infinite we can set no bounds
to it. Look at the power that is flowing by your city in
the current of the Mississippi that might be set at work
for you. So in every direction energy that we might
utilise goes to waste; resources that we might draw upon
are untouched. Yet men are delving and straining to
satisfy mere animal wants; women are working, working,
working their lives away, and too frequently turning in
despair from that hard struggle to cast away all that
makes the charm of woman.
If the animals can reason what must they think of us?
Look at one of those great ocean steamers ploughing her
way across the Atlantic, against wind, against wave, abso-
lutely setting at defiance the utmost power of the elements.
If the gulls that hover over her were thinking beings could
they imagine that the animal that could create such a
structure as that could actually want for enough to eat?
Yet, so it is. How many even of those of us who find life
KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 193
easiest are there who really live a rational life ? Think of
it, you who believe that there is only one life for man
what a fool at the very best is a man to pass his life in
this struggle to merely live? And you who believe, as I
believe, that this is not the last of man, that this is a life
that opens but another life, think how nine tenths, aye,
I do not know but ninety-nine-hundredths of all our vital
powers are spent in a mere effort to get a living; or to
heap together that which we cannot by any possibility take
away. Take the life of the average workingman. Is that
the life for which the human brain was intended and the
human heart was made? Look at the factories scattered
through our country. They are little better than peni-
tentiaries.
I read in the New York papers a while ago that the girls
at the Yonkers factories had struck. The papers said
that the girls did not seem to know why they had struck,
and intimated that it must be just for the fun of strik-
ing. Then came out the girls' side of the story and it
appeared that they had struck against the rules in force.
They were fined if they spoke to one another, and they
were fined still more heavily if they laughed. There was
a heavy fine for being a minute late. I visited a lady in
Philadelphia who had been a forewoman in various fac-
tories, and I asked her, "Is it possible that such rules are
enforced ?" She said it was so in Philadelphia. There is
a fine for speaking to your next neighbour, a fine for
laughing ; and she told me that the girls in one place where
she was employed were fined ten cents a minute for being
late, though many of them had to come for miles in winter
storms. She told me of one poor girl who really worked
hard one week and made $3.50; but the fines against her
were $5.25. That seems ridiculous; it is ridiculous, but
it is pathetic and it is shameful.
194 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
But take the cases of those even who are comparatively
independent and well off. Here is a man working hour
after hour, day after day, week after week, in doing one
thing over and over again, and for what? Just to live.
He is working ten hours a day in order that he may sleep
eight and may have two or three hours for himself when
he is tired out and all his faculties are exhausted. That
is not a reasonable life; that is not a life for a being
possessed of the powers that are in man, and I think every
man must have felt it for himself. I know that when I
first went to my trade I thought to myself that it was in-
credible that a man was created to work all day long just
to live. I used to read the "Scientific American," and as
invention after invention was heralded in that paper I
used to think to myself that when I became a man it would
not be necessary to work so hard. But on the contrary,
the struggle for existence has become more and more in-
tense. People who want to prove the contrary get up
masses of statistics to show that the condition of the work-
ing classes is improving. Improvement that you have to
take a statistical microscope to discover does not amount
to anything. But there is not improvement.
Improvement! Why, according to the last report of
the Michigan Bureau of Labour Statistics, as I read yester-
day in a Detroit paper, taking all the trades, including
some of the very high priced ones, where the wages are
from $6 to $7 a day, the average earnings amount to $1.77,
and, taking out waste time, to $1.40. Now, when you
consider how a man can live and bring up a family on
$1.40 a day, even in Michigan, I do not think you will
conclude that the condition of the working classes can
have very much improved.
Here is a broad general fact that is asserted by all who
have investigated the question, by such men as Hallam,
KNIQHTS OF LABOUR J3PEECH 195
the historian, and Professor Thorold Kogers, who has made
a study of the history of prices as they were five centuries
ago. When all the productive arts were in the most primi-
tive state, when the most prolific of our modern vegetables
had not been introduced, when the breeds of cattle were
small and poor, when there were hardly any roads and
transportation was exceedingly difficult, when all manu-
facturing was done by hand in that rude time the condi-
tion of the labourers of England was far better than it is
to-day. In those rude times no man need fear want save
when actual famine came, and owing to the difficulties of
transportation the plenty of one district could not relieve
the scarcity of another. Save in such times, no man need
fear want. Pauperism, such as exists in modern times,
was absolutely unknown. Everyone, save the physically
disabled, could make a living, and the poorest lived in
rude plenty. But perhaps the most astonishing fact
brought to light by this investigation is that at that time,
under those conditions in those "dark ages," as we call
them, the working day was only eight hours. While with
all our modern inventions and improvements, our working
classes have been agitating and struggling in vain to get
the working day reduced to eight hours.
Do these facts show improvement? Why, in the rudest
state of society in the most primitive state of the arts
the labour of the natural bread-winner will suffice to pro-
vide a living for himself and for those who are dependent
upon him. Amid all our inventions there are large bodies
of men who cannot do this. What is the most astonishing
thing in our civilisation ? Why, the most astonishing thing
to those Sioux chiefs who were recently brought from the
Far West and taken through our manufacturing cities in
the East, was not the marvelous inventions that enabled
machinery to act almost as if it had intellect; it was not the
196 THE CRIME OP POVERTY
growth of our cities; it was not the speed with which
the railway car whirled along; it was not the telegraph or
the telephone that most astonished them; but the fact that
amid this marvelous development of productive power they
found little children at work. And astonishing that ought
to be to us ; a most astounding thing !
Talk about improvement in the condition of the work-
ing classes, when the facts are that a larger and larger
proportion of women and children are forced to toil. Why,
I am told that, even here in your own city, there are chil-
dren of thirteen and fourteen working in factories. In
Detroit, according to the report of the Michigan Bureau of
Labour Statistics, one half of the children of school age
do not go to school. In New Jersey, the report made to
the legislature discloses an amount of misery and igno-
rance that is appalling. Children are growing up there,
compelled to monotonous toil when they ought to be at
play, children who do not know how to play; children who
have been so long accustomed to work that they have be-
come used to it; children growing up in such ignorance
that they do not know what country New Jersey is in,
that they never heard of George Washington, that some
of them think Europe is in New York. Such facts are
appalling; they mean that the very foundations of the
Eepublic are being sapped. The dangerous man is not the
man who tries to excite discontent; the dangerous man is
the man who says that all is as it ought to be. Such a
state of things cannot continue; such tendencies as we
see at work here cannot go on without bringing at last an
overwhelming crash.
I say that all this poverty and the ignorance that flows
from it is unnecessary; I say that there is no natural rea-
son why we should not all be rich, in the sense, not of
having more than each other, but in the sense of all hav-
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 197
ing enough to completely satisfy all physical wants; of all
having enough to get such an easy living that we could
develop the better part of humanity. There is no reason
why wealth should not be so abundant, that no one should
think of such a thing as little children at work, or a
woman compelled to a toil that nature never intended her
to perform; wealth so abundant that there would be no
cause for that harassing fear that sometimes paralyses
even those who are not considered "the poor," the fear that
every man of us has probably felt, that if sickness should
smite him, or if he should be taken away, those whom he
loves better than his life would become charges upon char-
ity. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they
toil not, neither do they spin." I believe that in a really
Christian community, in a society that honoured not with
the lips but with the act, the doctrines of Jesus, no one
would have occasion to worry about physical needs any
more than do the lilies of the field. There is enough and
to spare. The trouble is that, in this mad struggle, we
trample in the mire what has been provided in sufficiency
for us all; trample it in the mire while we tear and rend
each other.
There is a cause for this poverty; and, if you trace it
down, you will find its root in a primary injustice. Look
over the world to-day poverty everywhere. The cause
must be a common one. You cannot attribute it to the
tariff, or to the form of government, or to this thing or to
that in which nations differ; because, as deep poverty is
common to them all the cause that produces it must be a
common cause. What is that common cause? There is
one sufficient cause that is common to all nations; and
that is the appropriation as the property of some of that
natural element on which and from which all must live.
Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact
198 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
that, even now, it is harder to live than it was in the
ages dark and rude five centuries ago how do you ex-
plain it? There is no difficulty in finding the cause.
Whoever reads the history of England, or the history of
any other civilised nation (but I speak of the history of
England because that is the history with which we are
best acquainted) will see the reason. For century after
century a parliament composed of aristocrats and em-
ployers passed laws endeavouring to reduce wages, but in
vain. Men could not be crowded down to wages that gave
a mere living because the bounty of nature was not wholly
shut up from them; because some remains of the recogni-
tion of the truth that all men have equal rights on the
earth still existed; because the land of that country, that
which was held in private possession, was only held on a
tenure derived from the nation, and for a rent payable
back to the nation. The church lands supported the ex-
penses of public worship, of the maintenance of seminaries
and the care of the poor; the crown lands defrayed the
expenses of the civil list; and from a third portion of the
lands, those held under the military tenures, the army
was provided for. There was no national debt in Eng-
land at that time. They carried on wars for hundreds of
years, but at the charge of the landowners. And more
important still, there remained everywhere, and you can
see in every old English town their traces to this day, the
common lands to which any of the neighbourhood was
free. It was as those lands were inclosed; it was as the
commons were gradually monopolised, as the church lands
were made the prey of greedy courtiers, as the crown lands
were given away as absolute property to the favourites of
the king, as the military tenants shirked their rents and
laid the expenses they had agreed to defray, upon the na-
tion, in taxation that bore upon industry and upon thrift
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 199
it was then that poverty began to deepen, and the tramp
appeared in England; just as to-day he is appearing in
our new States.
Now, think of it is not land monopolisation a suffi-
cient reason for poverty? What is man? In the first
place, he is an animal, a land animal who cannot live with-
out land. All that man produces comes from land; all
productive labour, in the final analysis, consists in work-
ing up land; or materials drawn from land, into such
forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human wants and
desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the land.
Children of the soil, we come from the land, and to the
land we must return. Take away from man all that be-
longs to the land, and what have you but a disembodied
spirit? Therefore he who holds the land on which and
from which another man must live, is that man's master;
and the man is his slave. The man who holds the land
on which I must live can command me to life or to death
just as absolutely as though I were his chattel. Talk
about abolishing slavery we have not abolished slavery;
we have only abolished one rude form of it, chattel slavery..
There is a deeper and a more insidious form, a more
cursed form yet before us to abolish, in this industrial
slavery that makes a man a virtual slave, while taunting
him and mocking him with the name of freedom. Pov-
erty ! want ! they will sting as much as the lash. Slavery !
God knows there are horrors enough in slavery; but there
are deeper horrors in our civilised society to-day. Bad as
chattel slavery was, it did not drive slave mothers to kill
their children, yet you may read in official reports that the
system of child insurance which has taken root so strongly
in England, and which is now spreading over our Eastern
States, has perceptibly and largely increased the rate of
child mortality ! What does that mean ?
200 THE CRIME OP POVERTY
Eobinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued Friday
from the cannibals, made him his slave. Friday had to
serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe had said, "0 man
and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I welcome
you to this island, and you/ shall be a free and independent
citizen, with just as much to say as I have except that
this island is mine, and of course, as I can do as I please
with my own property, you must not use it save upon my
terms." Friday would have been just as much Crusoe's
slave as though he had called him one. Friday was not
a fish, he could not swim off through the sea; he was not
a bird, and could not fly off through the air ; if he lived at
all, he had to live on that island. And if that island was
Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master through life to death.
A friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this ques-
tion, was talking a while ago with another friend of mine
who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid much atten-
tion to the land question. Our greenback friend said,
"Yes, yes, the land question is an important question; oh,
I admit the land question is a very important question;
but then there are other important questions. There is
this question and that question, and the other question;
and there is the money question. The money question is a
very important question; it is a more important question
than the land question. You give me all the money, and
you can take all the land." My friend said, "Well, sup-
pose you had all the money in the world and I had all
the land in the world. What would you do if I were to
give you notice to quit?"
Do you know that I do not think that the average man
realises what land is? I know a little girl who has been
going to school for some time, studying geography, and
all that sort of thing ; and one day she said to me : "Here
is something about the surface of the earth. I wonder
KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 201
what the surface of the earth looks like ?" "Well," I said,
"look out into the yard there. That is the surface of the
earth." She said, "That the surface of the earth? Our
yard the surface of the earth? Why, I never thought of
it !" That is very much the case not only with grown men,
but with such wise beings as newspaper editors. They
seem to think,' when you talk of land, that you always refer
to farms; to think that the land question is a question
that relates entirely to farmers, as though land had no
other use than growing crops. Now, I should like to know
how a man could even edit a newspaper without having
the use of some land. He might swing himself by straps
and go up in a balloon, but he could not even then get
along without land. What supports the balloon in the
air ? Land ; the surface of the earth. Let the earth drop,
and what would become of the balloon ? The air that sup-
ports the balloon is supported in turn by land. So it is
with everything else men can do. Whether a man is work-
ing away three thousand feet under the surface of the
earth, or whether he is working up in the top of one of
those immense buildings that they have in New York;
whether he is ploughing the soil or sailing across the
ocean, he is still using land.
Land ! Why, in owning a piece of ground, what do you
own? The lawyers will tell you that you own from the
centre of the earth right up to heaven; and, so far as all
human purposes go, you do. In New York they are
building houses thirteen and fourteen stories high. What
are men, living in those upper stories, paying for ? There
is a friend of mine who has an office in one of them, and
he estimates that he pays by the cubic foot for air. Well,
the man who owns the surface of the land has the renting
of the air up there, and would have if the buildings were
carried up for miles.
202 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
This land question is the bottom question. Man is a
land animal. Suppose you want to build a house; can
you build it without a place to put it? What is it built
of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron they all come
from the earth. Think of any article of wealth you choose,
any of those things which men struggle for, where do
they come from ? From the land. It is the bottom ques-
tion. The land question is simply the labour question;
and when some men own that element from which all
wealth must be drawn, and upon which all must live,
then they have the power of living without work, and,
therefore, those who do work get less of the products of
work.
Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and strange-
ness of the fact that, all over the civilised world, the work-
ing classes are the poor classes? Go into any city in the
world, and get into a cab and ask the man to drive you
where the working people live. He won't take you to
where the fine houses are. He will take you, on the con-
trary, into the squalid quarters, the poorer quarters. Did
you ever think how curious that is ? Think for a moment
how it would strike a rational being who had never been
on the earth before, if such an intelligence could come
down, and you were to explain to him how we live on
earth, how houses and food and clothing, and all the
many things we need were all produced by work, would
he not think that the working people would be the people
who lived in the finest houses and had most of everything
that work produces? Yet, whether you took him to Lon-
don or Paris or New York, or even to Burlington, he
would find that those called the working people were the
people who live in the poorest houses.
All this is strange just think of it. We naturally de-
spise poverty; and it is reasonable that we should. I do
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 203
not say I distinctly repudiate it that the people who
are poor are poor always from their own fault, or even in
most cases; but it ought to be so. If any good man or
woman could create a world, it would be a sort of a world
in which no onr would be poor unless he was lazy or
vicious. But that is just precisely the kind of a world
this is; that is just precisely the kind of a world the Cre-
ator has made. Nature gives to labour, and to labour
alone; there must be human work before any article of
wealth can be produced ; and in the natural state of things
the man who toiled honestly and well would be the rich
man, and he who did not work would be poor. We have
so reversed the order of nature that we are accustomed
to think of the workingman as a poor man.
And if you trace it out I believe you will see that the
primary cause of this is that we compel those who work
to pay others for permission to do so. You may buy a
coat, a horse, a house; there you are paying the seller for
labour exerted, for something that he has produced, or
that he has got from the man who did produce it; but
when you pay a man for land, what are you paying him
for? You are paying for something that no man has
produced ; you pay him for something that was here before
man was, or for a value that was created, not by him indi-
vidually, but by the community of which you are a part.
What is the reason that the land here, where we stand to-
night, is worth more than it was twenty-five years ago?
What is the reason that land in the centre of New York,
that once could be bought by the mile for a jug of whiskey,
is now worth so much that, though you were to cover it
with gold, you would not have its value ? Is it not because
of the increase of population? Take away that popula-
tion, and where would the value of the land be ? Look at
it in any way you please.
204 THE CRIME OP POVERTY
We talk about over-production. How can there be such
a thing as over-production while people want? All these
things that are said to be over-produced are desired by
many people. Why do they not get them ? They do not get
them because they have not the means to buy them; not
that they do not want them. Why have not they the means
to buy them? They earn too little. When the great
masses of men have to work for an average of $1.40 a day,
it is no wonder that great quantities of goods cannot
be sold.
Now why is it that men have to work for such low
wages? Because if they were to demand higher wages
there are plenty of unemployed men ready to step into
their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who
compel that fierce competition that drives wages down to
the point of bare subsistence. Why is it that there are
men who cannot get employment? Did you ever think
what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employ-
ment? Adam had no difficulty in finding employment;
neither had Eobinson Crusoe; the finding of employment
was the last thing that troubled them.
If men cannot find an employer, why cannot they em-
ploy themselves? Simply because they are shut out from
the element on which human labour can alone be exerted.
Men are compelled to compete with each other for the
wages of an employer, because they have been robbed of
the natural opportunities of employing themselves ; because
they cannot find a piece of God's world on which to work
without paying some other human creature for the privi-
lege.
I do not mean to say that even after you had set right
this fundamental injustice, there would not be many things
to do; but this I do mean to say, that our treatment of
land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This I do
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 205
mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you may,
you never can get rid of wide-spread poverty so long as the
element on which and from which all men must live is
made the private property of some men. It is utterly im-
possible. Eeform government get taxes down to the
minimum build railroads; institute co-operative stores;
divide profits, if you choose, between employers and em-
ployed and what will be the result? The result will be
that the land will increase in value that will be the re-
sult that and nothing else. Experience shows this. Do
not all improvements simply increase the value of land
the price that some must pay others for the privilege of
living ?
^Consider the matter, I say it with all reverence, and I
merely say it because I wish to impress a truth upon your
minds it is utterly impossible, so long as His laws are
what they are, that God himself could relieve poverty
utterly impossible. Think of it and you will see. Men
pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty
conies not from God's laws it is blasphemy of the worst
kind to say that; it comes from man's injustice to his
fellows"1 Supposing the Almighty were to hear the prayer,
how^fould He carry out the request so long as His laws
are what they are ? [Consider the Almighty gives us
nothing of the things that constitute wealth; He merely
gives us the rawmaterial, which must be utilised by man
to produce wealth! Does He not give us enough of that
now? How could He relieve poverty even if He were to
give us more? Supposing in answer to these prayers He
were to increase the power of the sun ; or the virtue of the
soil? Supposing He were to make plants more prolific,
or animals to produce after their kind more abundantly?
Who would get the benefit of it? Take a country where
land is completely monopolised, as it is in most of the
206 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
civilised countries who would get the benefit of it ? Sim-
ply the landowners. And even if God in answer to prayer
were to send down out of the heavens those things that men
require, who would get the benefit ?
In the Old Testament we are told that when the Israelites
journeyed through the desert, they were hungered, and
that God sent manna down out of the heavens. There
was enough for all of them, and they all took it and were
relieved. But supposing that desert had been held as pri-
vate property, as the soil of Great Britain is held, as the
soil even of our new States is being held; suppose that
one of the Israelites had a square mile, and another one
had twenty square miles, and another one had a hundred
square miles, and the great majority of the Israelites did
not have enough to set the soles of their feet upon, which
they could call their own what would become of the
manna? What good would it have done to the major-
ity? Not a whit. Though God had sent down manna
enough for all, that manna would have been the prop-
erty of the landholders; they would have employed some
of the others perhaps, to gather it up into heaps for them,
and would have sold it to their hungry brethren. Con-
sider it; this purchase and sale of manna might have gone
on until the majority of Israelites had given all they had,
even to the clothes off their backs. What then? Then
they would not have had anything left to buy manna with,
and the consequences would have been that while they
went hungry the manna would have lain in great heaps,
and the landowners would have been complaining of the
over-production of manna. There would have been a great
harvest of manna and hungry people, just precisely the
phenomenon that we see to-day.
I cannot go over all the points I would like to try, but
I wish to call your attention to the utter absurdity of pri-
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 207
vate property in land! Why, consider it, the idea of a
man's selling the earth the earth, our common mother.
A man selling that which no man produced a man pass-
ing title from one generation to another. Why, it is the
most absurd thing in the world. Why, did you ever think
of it? What right has a dead man to land? For whom
was this earth created ? It was created for the living, cer-
tainly, not for the dead. Well, now we treat it as though
it was created for the dead. Where do our land titles
come from ? They come from men who for the most part
are past and gone. Here in this new country you get a
little nearer the original source; but go to the Eastern
States and go back over the Atlantic. There you may
clearly see the power that comes from landownership.
As I say, the man that owns the land is the master of
those who must live on it. Here is a modern instance:
you who are familiar with the history of the Scottish
Church know that in the forties there was a disruption in
the church. You who have read Hugh Miller's work on
"The Cruise of the Betsey" know something about it; how
a great body, led by Dr. Chalmers, came out from the
Established Church and said they would set up a Free
Church. In the Established Church were a great many
of the landowners. Some of them, like the Duke of Buc-
cleugh, owning miles and miles of land on which no com-
mon Scotsman had a right to put his foot, save by the
Duke of Buccleugh's permission. These landowners re-
fused not only to allow these Free Churchmen to have
ground upon which to erect a church, but they would not
let them stand on their land and worship God. You who
have read "The Cruise of the Betsey" know that it is the
story of a clergyman who was obliged to make his home
in a boat on that wild sea because he was not allowed
to have land enough to live on. In many places the people
208 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
had to take the sacrament with the tide coming to their
knees many a man lost his life worshipping on the roads
in rain and snow. They were not permitted to go on
Mr. Landlord's land and worship God, and had to take
to the roads. The Duke of Buccleugh stood out for seven
years compelling people to worship in the roads, until
finally relenting a little, he allowed them to worship God
in a gravel pit; whereupon they passed a resolution of
thanks to His Grace.
But that is not what I wanted to tell you. The thing
that struck me was this significant fact: As soon as the
disruption occurred, the Free Church, composed of a great
many able men, at once sent a delegation to the land-
lords to ask permission for Scotsmen to worship God in
Scotland and in their own way. This delegation set out
for London they had to go to London, England, to get
permission for Scotsmen to worship God in Scotland, and
in their own native home !
But that is not the most absurd thing. In one place where
they were refused land upon which to stand and worship
God, the late landowner had died and his estate was in the
hands of the trustees, and the answer of the trustees was,
that so far as they were concerned they would exceedingly
like to allow them to have a place to put up a church to
worship God, but they could not conscientiously do it
because they knew that such a course would be very dis-
pleasing to the late Mr. Monaltie! Now this dead man
had gone to heaven, let us hope; at any rate he had gone
away from this world, but lest it might displease him men
yet living could not worship God. Is it possible for ab-
surdity to go any further ?
You may say that those Scotch people are very absurd
people, but they are not a whit more so than we are. I
read only a little while ago of some Long Island fisher-
KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 209
men who had been paying as rent for the privilege of fish-
ing there, a certain part of the catch. They paid it be-
cause they believed that James II., a dead man centuries
ago, a man who never put his foot in America, a king who
was kicked off the English throne, had said they had to
pay it, and they got up a committee, went to the county
town and searched the records. They could not find any-
thing in the records to show that James II. had ever or-
dered that they should give any of their fish to anybody,
and so they refused to pay any longer. But if they had
found that James II. had really said they should they
would have gone on paying. Can anything be more
absurd ?
There is a square in New York Stuyvesant Square
that is locked up at six o'clock every evening, even on the
long summer evenings. Why is it locked up? Why are
the children not allowed to play there? Why because old
Mr. Stuyvesant, dead and gone I don't know how many
years ago, so willed it. Now can anything be more
absurd ? *
Yet that is not any more absurd than our land titles.
From whom do they come? Dead man after dead man.
Suppose you get on the cars here going to Council Bluffs
or Chicago. You find a passenger with his baggage strewn
over the seats. You say : "Will you give me a seat, if you
please, sir?" He replies: "No; I bought this seat."
"Bought this seat? From whom did you buy it?" "I
bought it from the man who got out at the last station."
That is the way we manage this earth of ours.
Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson said,
that "the land belongs in usufruct to the living," and
1 After a popular agitation, the park authorities since decided to leave
the gatea open later than six o'clock.
210 THE CRIME OP POVERTY
that they who have died have left it, and have no power to
\ say how it shall be disposed of? Title to land! Where
can a man get any title which makes the earth his prop-
erty? There is a sacred right to property sacred be-
cause ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by
the laws of God, and necessary to social order and civili-
sation. That is the right of property in things pro-
duced by labour; it rests on the right of a man to him-
self. That which a man produces, that is his against all
the world, to give or to keep, to lend, to sell or to be-
queath; but how can he get such a right to land when
it was here before he came? Individual claims to land
rest only on appropriation. I read in a recent number
of the "Nineteenth Century," possibly some of you may
have read it, an article by an ex-prime minister of Aus-
tralia in which there was a little story that attracted my
attention. It was of a man named Galahard, who in the
early days got up to the top of a high hill in one of the
finest parts of western Australia. He got up there, looked
all around, and made this proclamation: "All the land
that is in my sight from the top of this hill I claim for
myself; and all the land that is out of sight I claim for
my son John."
That story is of universal application. Land titles
everywhere come from just such appropriations. Now,
under certain circumstances, appropriation can give a
right. You invite a company of gentlemen to dinner and
you say to them: "Be seated, gentlemen," and I get into
this chair. Well, that seat for the time being is mine by
the right of appropriation. It would be very ungentle-
manly, it would be very wrong for any one of the other
guests to come up and say : "Get out of that chair ; I want
to sit there !" But that right of possession, which is good
so far as the chair is concerned, for the time, does not
KNIGHTS OF LABOUE SPEECH 211
give me a right to appropriate all there is on the table
before me. Grant that a man has a right to appropriate
such natural elements as he can use, has he any right to
appropriate more than he can use? Has a guest in such
a case as I have supposed a right to appropriate more
than he needs and make other people stand up? That is
what is done.
Why, look all over this country look at this town or
any other town. If men only took what they wanted to
use we should all have enough; but they take what they
do not want to use at all. Here are a lot of Englishmen
coming over here and getting titles to our land in vast
tracts; what do they want with our land? They do not
want it at all; it is not the land they want; they have
no use for American land. What they want is the income
that they know they can in a little while get from it.
Where does that income come from? It comes from
labour, from the labour of American citizens. What we
are selling to these people is our children, not land.
Poverty ! Can there be any doubt of its cause ? Go
into the old countries go into western Ireland, into the
highlands of Scotland these are purely primitive commu-
nities. There you will find people as poor as poor can
be living year after year on oatmeal or on potatoes, and
often going hungry. I could tell you many a pathetic
story. Speaking to a Scottish physician who was telling
me how this diet was inducing among these people a dis-
ease similar to that which from the same cause is ravag-
ing Italy (the Pellagra), I said to him: "There is plenty
of fish; why don't they catch fish? There is plenty of
game; I know the laws are against it, but cannot they
take it on the sly?" "That," he said, "never enters their
heads. Why, if a man was even suspected of having a
taste for trout or grouse he would have to leave at once."
212 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
There is no difficulty in discovering what makes those
people poor. They have no right to anything that nature
gives them. All they can make above a living they must
pay to the landlord. They not only have to pay for the
land that they use, but they have to pay for the seaweed
that comes ashore and for the turf they dig from the
bogs. They dare not improve, for any improvements they
make are made an excuse for putting up the rent. These
people who work hard live in hovels, and the landlords,
who do not work at all oh ! they live in luxury in London
or Paris. If they have hunting boxes there, why they are
magnificent castles as compared with the hovels in which
the men live who do the work. Is there any question as
to the cause of poverty there?
Now go into the cities and what do you see ! Why, you
see even a lower depth of poverty; aye, if I would point
out the worst of the evils of land monopoly I would not
take you to Connemara; I would not take you to Skye or
Kintire I would take you to Dublin or Glasgow or Lon-
don. There is something worse than physical deprivation,
something worse than starvation ; and that is the degrada-
tion of the mind, the death of the soul. That is what you
will find in those cities.
Now, what is the cause of that? Why, it is plainly to
be seen; the people driven off the land in the country are
driven into the slums of the cities. For every man that
is driven off the land the demand for the produce of the
workmen of the cities is lessened; and the man himself
with his wife and children, is forced among those work-
men to compete upon any terms for a bare living and force
wages down. Get work he must or starve get work he
must or do that which those people, so long as they main-
tain their manly feelings, dread more than death, go to
the alms-houses. That is the reason, here as in Great
213
Britain, that the cities are overcrowded. Open the land
that is locked up, that is held by dogs in the manger, who
will not use it themselves and will not allow anybody else
to use it, and you would see no more of tramps and hear
no more of over-production.
The utter absurdity of this thing of private property in
land ! I defy any one to show me any good from it, look
where you please. Go out in the new lands, where my
attention was first called to it, or go to the heart of the
capital of the world London. Everywhere, when your
eyes are once opened, you will see its inequality and you
will see its absurdity. You do not have to go farther than
Burlington. You have here a most beautiful site for a
city, but the city itself as compared with what it might
be is a miserable, straggling town. A gentleman showed
me to-day a big hole alongside one of your streets. The
place has been filled up all around it and this hole is left.
It is neither pretty nor useful. Why does that hole stay
there? Well, it stays there because somebody claims it as
his private property. There is a man, this gentleman told
me, who wished to grade another lot and wanted some-
where to put the dirt he took off it, and he offered to buy
this hole so that he might fill it up. Now it would have
been a good thing for Burlington to have it filled up, a
good thing for you all your town would look better, and
you yourself would be in no danger of tumbling into it
some dark night. Why, my friend pointed out to me
another similar hole in which water had collected and told
me that two children had been drowned there. And he
likewise told me that a drunken man some years ago had
fallen into such a hole and had brought suit against the
city which cost you taxpayers some $11,000. Clearly it
is to the interest of you all to have that particular hole I
am talking of filled up. The man who wanted to fill it
214 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
up offered the hole owner $300. But the hole owner re-
fused the offer and declared that he would hold out until
he could get $1000; and in the meanwhile that unsightly
and dangerous hole must remain. This is but an illus-
tration of private property in land.
You may see the same thing all over this country. See
how injuriously in the agricultural districts this thing of
private property in land affects the roads and the distances
between the people. A man does not take what land he
wants, what he can use, but he takes all he can get, and
the consequence is that his next neighbour has to go fur-
ther along, people are separated from each other further
than they ought to be, to the increased difficulty of pro-
duction, to the loss of neighbourhood and companionship.
They have more roads to maintain than they can decently
maintain ; they must do more work to get the same result,
and life is in every way harder and drearier.
When you come to the cities it is just the other way.
In the country the people are too much scattered; in the
great cities they are too crowded. Go to a city like New
York and there they are jammed together like sardines
in a box, living family upon family, one above the other.
It is an unnatural and unwholesome life. How can you
have anything like a home in a tenement room, or two or
three rooms? How can children be brought up healthily
with no place to play? Two or three weeks ago I read of
a New York judge who fined two little boys five dollars
for playing hop-scotch on the street where else could
they play? Private property in land had robbed them of
all place to play. Even a temperance man, who had in-
vestigated the subject, said that in his opinion the gin
palaces of London were a positive good in this, that they
enabled the people whose abodes were dark and squalid
rooms to see a little brightness and thus prevent them from
going wholly mad.
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 215
What is the reason for this overcrowding of cities?
There is no natural reason. Take New York, one half its
area is not built upon. Why, then, must people crowd
together as they do there? Simply because of private
ownership of land. There is plenty of room to build
houses and plenty of people who want to build houses, but
before anybody can build a house a blackmail price must
be paid to some dog in the manger. It costs in many
cases more to get vacant ground upon which to build a
house than it does to build the house. And then what
happens to the man who pays this blackmail and builds a
house? Down comes the tax-gatherer and fines him for
building the house.
It is so all over the United States the men who im-
prove, the men who turn the prairie into farms and the
desert into gardens, the men who beautify your cities, are
taxed and fined for having done these things. Now, noth-
ing is clearer than that the people of New York want
more houses; and I think that even here in Burlington
you could get along with more houses. Why, then, should
you fine a man who builds one ? Look all over this coun-
try the bulk of the taxation rests upon the improver; the
man who puts up a building, or establishes a factory, or
cultivates a farm, he is taxed for it; and not merely taxed
for it, but I think in nine cases out of ten the land which
he uses, the bare land, is taxed more than the adjoining
lot or the adjoining 160 acres that some speculator is
holding as a mere dog in the manger, not using it himself
and not allowing anybody else to use it.
I am talking too long; but let me in a few words point
out the way of getting rid of land monopoly, securing the
right of all to the elements which are necessary for life.
We could not divide the land. In a rude state of society,
as among the ancient Hebrews, giving each family its lot
216 THE CRIME OP POVERTY
and making it inalienable we might secure something like
equality. But in a complex civilisation that will not suf-
fice. It is not, however, necessary to divide up the land.
All that is necessary is to divide up the income that comes
from the land. In that way we can secure absolute equal-
ity; nor could the adoption of this principle involve any
rude shock or violent change. It can be brought about
gradually and easily by abolishing taxes that now rest
upon capital, labour and improvements, and raising all our
public revenues by the taxation of land values; and the
longer you think of it the clearer you will see that in
every possible way will it be a benefit.
Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes direct
and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon land values,
what would be the effect? In the first place it would be
to kill speculative values. It would be to remove from
the newer parts of the country the bulk of the taxation
and put it on the richer parts. It would be to exempt
the pioneer from taxation and make the larger cities pay
more of it. It would be to relieve energy and enterprise,
capital and labour, from all those burdens that now bear
upon them. What a start that would give to production !
In the second place we could, from the value of the land,
not merely pay all the present expenses of the government,
but we could do infinitely more. In the city of San
Francisco James Lick left a few blocks of ground to be
used for public purposes there, and the rent amounts to so
much, that out of it will be built the largest telescope in
the world, large public baths and other public buildings,
and various costly works. If, instead of these few blocks,
the whole value of the land upon which the city is built
had accrued to San Francisco what could she not do ?
So in this little town, where land values are very low
as compared with such cities as Chicago and San Fran-
KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 217
cisco, you could do many things for mutual benefit and
public improvement did you appropriate to public pur-
poses the land values that now go to individuals. You
could have a great free library; you could have an art
gallery; you could get yourselves a public park, a mag-
nificent public park, too. You have here one of the finest
natural sites for a beautiful town I know of, and I have
travelled much. You might make on this site a city that
it would be a pleasure to live in. You will not as you
go now oh, no! Why, the very fact that you have a
magnificent view here will cause somebody to hold on all
the more tightly to the land that commands this view
and charge higher prices for it. The State of New York
wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable the people to
see Niagara, but what a price she must pay for it ! Look
at all the great cities; in Philadelphia, for instance, in
order to build their great city hall they had to block up
the only two wide streets they had in the city. Every-
where you go you may see how private property in land
prevents public as well as private improvement.
But I have not time to enter into further details. I
can only ask you to think upon this thing, and the more
you will see its desirability. As an English friend of
mine puts it: "No taxes and a pension for everybody;"
and why should it not be? To take land values for pub-
lic purposes is not really to impose a tax, but to take for
public purposes a value created by the community. And
out of the fund which would thus accrue from the com-
mon property, we might, without degradation to anybody,
provide enough to actually secure from want all who were
deprived of their natural protectors or met with accident,
or any man who should grow so old that he could not work.
All prating that is heard from some quarters about its
hurting the common people to give them what they do not
218 THE CRIME OF POVERTY
work for is humbug. The truth is, that anything that
injures self-respect, degrades, does harm; but if you give
it as a right, as something to which every citizen is en-
titled to, it does not degrade. Charity schools do degrade
children that are sent to them, but public schools do not.
But all such benefits as these, while great, would be inci-
dental. The great thing would be that the reform I pro-
pose would tend to open opportunities to labour and enable
men to provide employment for themselves. That is the
great advantage. We should gain the enormous produc-
tive power that is going to waste all over the country, the
power of idle hands that would gladly be at work. And
that removed, then you would see wages begin to mount.
It is not that everyone would turn farmer, or everyone
would build himself a house if he had an opportunity for
doing so, but so many could and would, as to relieve the
pressure on the labour market and provide employment
for all others. And as wages mounted to the higher levels,
then you would see the productive power increased. The
country where wages are high is the country of greatest
productive powers. Where wages are highest, there will
invention be most active ; there will labour be most intelli-
gent; there will be the greatest yield for the expenditure
of exertion. The more you think of it the more clearly
you will see that what I say is true. I cannot hope to
convince you in an hour or two, but I shall be content
if I shall put you upon inquiry. Think for yourselves;
ask yourselves whether this wide-spread fact of poverty is
not a crime, and a crime for which every one of us, man
and woman, who does not do what he or she can do to
call attention to it and do away with it, is responsible.
LAND AND TAXATION: A CONVER-
SATION BETWEEN DAVID DUDLEY
FIELD AND HENKY GEORGE
LAND AND TAXATION: A CONVERSATION
BETWEEN DAVID DUDLEY FIELD
AND HENRY GEORGE.
[Published in the "North American Review," July, 1885, and circu-
lated in tract form in the United States, Canada and Great Britain.]
MR. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. Will you explain to me how
you expect to develop, in practice, your theory of the con-
fiscation of land to the use of the State?
Mr. HENRY GEORGE. By abolishing all other taxes and
concentrating taxation upon land values.
F. Then suppose A to. be the proprietor of a thousand
acres of land on the Hudson, chiefly farming land, but at
the same time having on it houses, barns, cattle, horses,
carriages, furniture ; how is he to be dealt with under your
theory ?
G. He would be taxed upon the value of his land, and
not upon the value of his improvements and stock.
F. Whether the value of his land has been increased by
his cultivation or not ?
G. The value of land is not really increased by cultiva-
tion. The value that cultivation adds is a value of im-
provement, which I would exempt. I would tax the land
at its present value, excluding improvements; so that such
a proprietor would have no more taxes to pay than the
221
222 LAND AND TAXATION
proprietors of one thousand acres of land, equal in capa-
bilities, situation, etc., that remained in a state of nature.
F. But suppose the proprietor of such land to have let
it lie waste for many years while the farmer that I speak
of has devoted his time and money to increasing the value
of his thousand acres, would you tax them exactly alike?
G. Exactly.
F. Let us suppose B, an adjoining proprietor, has land
that has never yielded a blade of grass, or any other
product than weeds; and that A, a farmer, took his in
the same condition when he purchased, and by his own
thrift and expenditure has improved his land, so that now,
without buildings, furniture, or stock, it is worth five
times as much as B's thousand acres; B is taxed at the
rate of a dime an acre; would you tax A at the rate of a
dime an acre?
G. I would certainly tax him no more than B, for by
the additional value that A has created he has added that
much . to the common stock of wealth, and he ought to
profit by it. The effect of our present system, which taxes
a man for values created by his labour and capital, is to
put a fine upon industry, and repress improvement. The
more houses, the more crops, the more buildings in the
country, the better for us all, and we are doing ourselves
an injury by imposing taxes upon the production of such
things.
F. How are you to ascertain the value of land considered
as waste land?
G. By its selling price. The value of land is more
easily and certainly ascertained than any other value.
Land lies out of doors, everybody can see it, and in every
neighbourhood a close idea of its value can be had.
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 223
F. Take the case of the owner of a thousand acres in
the Adirondack wilderness that have been denuded of
trees, and an adjoining thousand acres that have a fine
growth of timber. How would you value them?
G. Natural timber is a part of the land; when it has
value it adds to the value of the land.
F. The land denuded of timber would then be taxed
less than land that has timber?
G. On general principles it would, where the value of
the land was therefore lessened. But where, as in the
Adirondacks, public policy forbids anything that would
hasten the cutting of timber, natural timber might be con-
sidered an improvement, like planted timber, which should
not add to taxable value.
F. Then suppose a man to have a thousand acres of
wild timber land, and to have cut off the timber, and
planted the land, and set up buildings, and generally im-
proved it, would you tax him less than the man that has
retained his land with the timber still on it ?
G. I would tax the value of his land irrespective of the
improvements made by him, whether they consisted in
clearing, in ploughing, or in building. In other words, I
would tax that value which is created by the growth of
the community, not that created by individual effort.
Land has no value on account of improvements made upon
it, or on account of its natural capabilities. It is as
population increases, and society develops, that land values
appear, and they rise in proportion to the growth of popu-
lation and social development. For instance, the value of
the land upon which this building stands is now enor-
mously greater than it was years ago, not because of what
its owner has done, but because of the growth of New York.
224 LAND AND TAXATION
F. I am not speaking of New York City in particular;
I am speaking of land generally.
G. The same principle is generally true. Where a set-
tler takes up a quarter section on a western prairie, and
improves it, his land has no value so long as other land
of the same quality can be had for nothing. The value
he creates is merely the value of improvement. But when
population comes, then arises a value that attaches to the
land itself. That is the value I would tax.
F. Suppose the condition of the surrounding commu-
nity in the West remained the same; two men go together
and purchase two pieces of land of a thousand acres each;
one leaves his with a valuable growth of timber, the other
cuts off the timber, cultivates the land, and makes a well
ordered farm. Would you tax the man that has left the
timber upon his land more than you would tax the other
man, provided that the surrounding country remained the
same?
G. I would tax them both upon the value of the land
at the time of taxation. At first, I take it, the clearing
of the land would be a valuable improvement. On this,
as on the value of his other improvements, I would not
have the settler taxed. Thus taxation upon the two would
be the same. In course of time the growth of population
might give value to the uncut timber, which, being in-
cluded in the value of land, would make the taxation upon
the man that had left his land in a state of nature heavier
than upon the man that had converted his land into a
farm.
F. A man that goes into the western country and takes
up land, paying the government price, and does nothing
to the land; how is he to be taxed?
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 225
G. As heavily as the man that has taken a like amount
of land and improved it. Our present system is unjust
and injurious in taxing the improver and letting the mere
proprietor go. Settlers take up land, clear it, build houses,
and cultivate crops, and for thus adding to the general
wealth are immediately punished by taxation upon their
improvements. This taxation is escaped by the man that
lets his land lie idle, and, in addition to that, he is gen-
erally taxed less upon the value of his land than are those
who have made their land valuable. All over the country,
land in use is taxed more heavily than unused land. This
is wrong. The man that holds land and neglects to im-
prove it keeps away somebody that would, and he ought
to pay as much for the opportunity he wastes as the man
that improves a like opportunity.
F. Then you would tax the farmer whose farm is worth
$1000 as heavily as you would tax the adjoining proprietor,
who, with the same quantity of land, has added improve-
ments worth $100,000; is that your idea?
G. It is. The improvements made by the capitalist
would do no harm to the farmer, and would benefit the
whole community, and I would do nothing to discourage
them.
F. In whom would you have the title to land vested in
the State, or in the individuals, as now ?
G. I would leave the land titles as at present.
F. Your theory does not touch the title to land, nor the
mode of transferring the title, nor the enjoyment of it;
but it is a theory confined altogether to the taxing of it?
G. In form. Its effect, however, if carried as far as I
would like to carry it, would be to make the community
226 LAND AND TAXATION
the real owner of land, and the various nominal owners
virtually tenants, paying ground rent in the shape of taxes.
F. Before we go to the method by which you would
effect that result, let me ask you this question : A, a large
landlord in New York, owns a hundred houses, each worth
say $25,000 (scattered in different parts of the city) ; at
what rate of valuation would you tax him?
G. On his houses, nothing. I would tax him on the
value of the lots.
F. As vacant lots?
G. As if each particular lot were vacant, surrounding
improvements remaining the same.
F. If you would have titles as now, then A, who owns a
ten thousand dollar house and lot in the city, would still
continue to he the owner, as he is at present ?
G. He would still continue to he the owner, but as taxes
were increased upon land values he would, while still con-
tinuing to enjoy the full ownership of the house, derive
less and less of the pecuniary benefits of the ownership of
the lot, which would go in larger and larger proportions
to the State, until, if the taxation of land values were
carried to the point of appropriating them entirely the
State would derive all those benefits, and, though nomi-
nally still the owner, he would become in reality a tenant
with assured possession, so long as he continued to pay
the tax, which might then become in form, as it would be
in essence, a ground rent.
F. Now, suppose A to be the owner of a city lot and
building, valued at $500,000; who would give a deed to
it to B?
G. A would give the deed.
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 227
F. Then supposing A to own twenty lots, with twenty
buildings on them, the lots being, as vacant lots, worth
each $1000, and the buildings being worth $49,000 each;
and B to own twenty lots of the same value, as vacant lots,
without any buildings ; would you tax A and B alike ?
G. I would.
F. Suppose that B, to .buy the twenty lots, had borrowed
the price and mortgaged them for it; would you have the
tax in that case apportioned?
G. I would hold the land for it. In cases in which it
became necessary to consider the relations of mortgagee
and mortgager, I would treat them as joint owners.
F. If A, the owner of a city lot with a house upon it,
should sell it to B, do you suppose that the price would be
graduated by the value of the improvements alone?
G. When the tax upon the land had reached the point
of taking the full annual value, it would.
F. To illustrate: Suppose A has a city lot, which, as a
vacant lot, is worth annually $10,000, and there is a build-
ing upon it worth $100,000, and he sells them to B; you
think the price would be graduated according to the value
of the building; that is to say, $100,000, after the taxa-
tion had reached the annual value of $10,000?
G. Precisely.
F. To what purpose do you contemplate that the money
raised by your scheme of taxation should be applied?
G. To the ordinary expenses of government, and such
purposes as the supplying of water, of light, of power, the
running of railways, the maintenance of public parks,
libraries, colleges, and kindred institutions, and such other
beneficial objects as may from time to time suggest them-
228 LAND AND TAXATION
selves; to the care of the sick and needy, the support of
widows and orphans, and, I am inclined to think, to the
payment of a fixed sum to every citizen when he came to
a certain age.
F. Do you contemplate that money raised by taxation
should be expended for the support of the citizen?
G. I see no reason why it should not be.
F. Would you have him fed and clothed at the public
expense ?
G. Not necessarily; but I think a payment might well
be maae to the citizen when he came to the age at which
active powers decline that would enable him to feed and
clothe himself for the remainder of his life.
F. Let us come to practical results. The rate of taxa-
tion now in the city of New York, we will suppose, is 2.30
upon the assessed value. The assessed value is understood
to be about sixty per cent, of the real value of property.
Land assessed at $60,000 is really worth $100,000, and
being assessed at 2.30 when valued at $60,000, should be
assessed at about 1.40 on the real value; you would in-
crease that amount indefinitely, if I understand you, up
to the annual rental value of the land?
G. I would.
F. Which we will suppose to be five per cent. ; is that it ?
G. Let us suppose so.
F. Then your scheme contemplates the raising of five
per cent, on the true value of all real estate as vacant land,
to be used for the purposes you have mentioned. Have
you thought of the increase in the army of office-holders
that would be required for the collection and disburse-
ment of this enormous sum of money?
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 229
G. I have.
F. What do you say to that?
G. That as to collection, it would greatly reduce the
present army of office-holders. A tax upon land values can
be levied and collected with a much smaller force than is
now required for our multiplicity of taxes; and I am in-
clined to think, that, directly and indirectly, the plan I
propose would permit the dismissal of three fifths of the
officials needed for the present purposes of government.
This simplification of government would do very much to
purify our politics; and I rely largely upon the improve-
ment that the change I contemplate would make in social
life, by lessening the intensity of the struggle for wealth, to
permit the growth of such habits of thought and conduct as
would enable us to get for the management of public af-
fairs as much intelligence and as strict integrity as can now
be obtained for the management of great private affairs.
F. Supposing it to be true that you would reduce the
expense of collection, would you not, for the disbursement
of these vast funds, require a much larger number of
efficient men than are now required?
G. Not necessarily. But, whether this be so or not,
the full scheme I propose can only be attained gradually.
Until, at least, the total amount needed for what are now
considered purely governmental purposes were obtained by
taxation on land values, there would be a large reduction
of office-holders, and no increase.
F. How do you propose to divide the taxation between
the State and the municipalities?
G. As taxes are now divided. As to questions that
might arise, there will be time enough to determine them
when the principle has been accepted.
230 LAND AND TAXATION
F. Your theory contemplates the raising of nearly four
times as much revenue in the State of New York as is now
raised ; how many office-holders would it require to disburse
this enormous sum of money among the various objects
that you have mentioned?
G. My theory does not require that it should be dis-
bursed among the objects I have mentioned, but simply
that it should be used for public benefit.
F. Do you not think that the present rate of taxation is
more than sufficient for all purposes of government?
G. Under the state of society that I believe would ensue,
it would be much more than sufficient for present purposes
of government. We should need far less for expenses of
revenue collection, police, penitentiaries, courts, alms-
houses, etc.
F. Then, to bring the matter down to a point, you pro-
pose for the present no change whatever in anything, ex-
cept that the amount now raised by all methods of taxation
should be imposed upon real estate considered as vacant?
G. For a beginning, yes.
F. Well, what do you contemplate as the ending of such
a scheme?
G. The taking of the full annual value of land for the
benefit of the whole people. I hold that land belongs
equally to all, that land values arise from the presence of
all, and should be shared among all.
F. And this result you propose to bring about by a tax
upon land values, leaving the title, the privilege of sale,
of rent, of testament, the same as at present?
G. Yes.
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 231
F. Your theory appears to be impracticable. I think
that the raising of such an enormous sum of money, plac-
ing it in the coffers of the State, to be disbursed by the
State in the manner you contemplate, would tend to the
corruption of the government beyond all former precedent.
The end you contemplate of bettering the condition of
the people is a worthy one. I believe that we you and
I who are well to do in the world, and others in our
condition, do neglect and have neglected our duty to those
in a less fortunate condition, and that it is our highest
duty to endeavour to relieve, so far as we can, the burdens
of those who are now suffering from poverty and want.
Therefore, far from deriding or scouting your theory, I
examine it with respect and attention, desirous of getting
from it whatever I can that may be good, while rejecting
what I conceive to be erroneous. Taken altogether, as
you have explained it, I do not see that it is a practicable
scheme.
G. But your objections to it as impracticable only arise
at the point, yet a long distance off, at which the revenues
raised from land values would be greater than those now
raised. Is there anything impracticable in substituting
for the present corrupt, demoralising, and repressive
methods of taxation a single tax upon land values?
F. I think it possible to concentrate all taxation upon
land, if that should be thought the best method. Many
economists are of opinion that taxes should be raised from
land alone, conceiving that rent is really paid by every
consumer, but they include in land everything placed upon
it out of which rent comes.
G. Then we could go together for a long while; and
when the point was reached at which we would differ, we
might be able to see that a purer government than any we
232 LAND AND TAXATION
have yet Had might be possible. Certainly here is the gist
of the whole problem. If men are too selfish, too corrupt,
to co-operate for mutual benefit, there must always be
poverty and suffering.
F. My theory of government is that its chief function
is to keep the peace between individuals and allow each
to develop his own nature for his own happiness. I would
never raise a dollar from the people except for necessary
purposes of government. I believe that the demoralisation
of our politics comes from the notion that public offices are
spoils for partisans. A large class of men has grown up
among us whose living is obtained from the State that is
to say, out of the people. We must get rid of those men,
and instead of creating offices we must lessen their number.
G. I agree with you as to government in its repressive
feature; and in no way could we so lessen the number of
office-holders and take the temptation of private profit out
of public affairs as by raising all public revenues by the
tax upon land values, which, easily assessed and collected,
does not offer opportunities for evasion or add to prices.
Though in form a tax, this would be in reality a rent;
not a taking from the people, but a collecting of their
legitimate revenues. The first and most important func-
tion of government is to secure the full and equal liberty
of individuals; but the growing complexity of civilised
life and the growth of great corporations and combina-
tions, before which the individual is powerless, convince
me that government must undertake more than to keep
the peace between man and man must carry on, when it
cannot regulate, businesses that involve monopoly, and in
larger and larger degree assume co-operative functions.
If I could see any other means of doing away with the
injustice involved in growing monopolies, of which the
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 233
railroad is a type, than by extension of governmental func-
tions, I should not favour that ; for all my earlier thought
was in the direction you have indicated the position occu-
pied by the democratic party of the last generation. But
I see none. However, if it were to appear that further
extension of the functions of government would involve
demoralisation, then the surplus revenue might be divided
per capita. But it seems to me that there must be in
human nature the possibility of a reasonably pure govern-
ment, when the ends of that government are felt by all to
be the promotion of the general good.
F. I do not believe in spoliation, and I conceive that
that would be spoliation which would take from one man
his property and give it to another. The scheme of the
communists, as I understand it, appears to me to be not
only unsound, but destructive of society. I do not mean
to intimate that you are one of the communists; on the
contrary, I do not believe you are.
G. As to the sacredness of property, I thoroughly agree
with you. As you say in your recent article on industrial
co-operation in the "North American Keview," "To take
from one against his will that which he owns and give it
to another, would be a violation of that instinct of justice
which God has implanted in the heart of every human
being ; a violation, in short, of the supreme law of the Most
High"; and my objection to the present system is that it
does this. I hold that that which a man produces is right-
fully his, and his alone ; that it should not be taken from
him for any purpose, even for public uses, so long as there
is any public property that might be employed for that
purpose; and therefore I would exempt from taxation
everything in the nature of capital, personal property, or
improvements in short, that property which is the result
234 LAND AND TAXATION
of man's exertion. But I hold that land is not the right-
ful property of any individual. As you say again, "No
one can have private property in privilege," and if the
land belongs, as I hold it does belong, to all the people, the
holding of any part of it is a privilege for which the indi-
vidual holder should compensate the general owner accord-
ing to the pecuniary value of the privilege. To exact this
would not be to despoil any one of his rightful property, but
to put an end to spoliation that now goes on. Your article
in the "Review" shows that you see the same difficulties
I see, and would seek the same end the amelioration of
the condition of labour, and the formation of society upon
a basis of justice. Does it not seem to you that some-
thing more is required than any such scheme of co-opera-
tion as that which you propose, which at best could be only
very limited in its application, and which is necessarily
artificial in its nature ?
F. Undoubtedly. The hints that I have given in the
article to which you refer, would affect a certain number of
persons, not by any means the whole body politic. I con-
ceive that a great deal more is necessary. There should
be more sympathy, more mutual help. I think, as I have
said, that we are greatly wanting in our duty to all the
people around us, and I would do everything in my power
to aid them and their children. I do not think that we
have arrived at the true conception of our duty of the
duty of every American citizen to all other American
citizens.
G. I think you are right in that; but does it not seem
as though it were out of the power of mere sympathy, mere
charity, to accomplish any real good? Is it not evident
that there is at the bottom of all social evils an injustice,
and until that injustice is replaced by justice, charity and
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 235
sympathy will do their best in vain? The fact that there
are among us strong, willing men unable to find work by
which to get an honest living for their families is a most
portentous one. It speaks to us of an injustice that, if
not remedied, must wreck society. It springs, I believe,
from the fact that, while we secure to the citizen equal
political rights, we do not secure to him that natural right
more important still, the equal right to the land on which
and from which he must live. To me it seems clear, as
our Declaration of Independence asserts, that all men are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
and that the first of these rights that which, in fact, in-
volves all the rest, that without which none of the others
can be exercised is the equal right to land. Here are
children coming into life to-day in New York; are they
not endowed with the right to more than struggle along
as they best can in a country where they can neither eat,
sleep, work, nor lie down without buying the privilege
from some of certain human creatures like themselves, who
claim to own, as their private property, this part of the
physical universe, from the earth's centre to the zenith?
F. I was not speaking of charity, but of sympathy lead-
ing to help helping one to help himself that is the help
I mean, and not the charity that humbles him.
G. Then I cordially agree with you, and I look upon
such sympathy as the most powerful agency for social im-
provement. But sympathy is little better than mockery
until it is willing to do justice, and justice requires that
all men shall be placed upon an equality so far as natural
opportunities are concerned.
P. How would you secure that equality ? Take the case
of a child born to-day in a tenement house, in one of those
rooms that are said to be occupied by several families, and
236 LAND AND TAXATION
another child born at the same time in one of the most
comfortable homes in our city. The parents of the first
child are wasteful, intemperate, filthy: the parents of the
second are thrifty, temperate, cleanly; how would you
secure equality in opportunities of the first child with the
second ?
G. Equality in all opportunities could not be secured;
virtuous parents are always an advantage, vicious parents
a disadvantage ; but equality of natural opportunities could
be secured in the way I have proposed. And in a civili-
sation where the equal rights of all to the bounty of their
Creator were recognised, I do not believe there would be
any tenement houses, and very few, if any, parents such as
those of whom you speak. The vice and crime and degra-
dation that so fester in our great cities are the effects,
rather than the causes, of poverty.
F. The principle announced in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence to which you have referred, is one of the cardinal
principles of the American government the unalienable
right of all men to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap-
piness." That, however, does not mean that all men are
equal in opportunities or in positions. A child born to-
day is entitled to the labours of its parents, or rather to
the products of their labour, just as much as they are en-
titled to it until he is able to take care of himself. One of
the incentives to labour is to provide for the children of the
labourer. The aim of our American civilisation ought to
be to furnish, so far as can be done rightfully, to every
child born into the world, an equal opportunity with every
other child, to work out his own good. This, however, is
the theoretical proposition. It is impossible in practice
to give to every child the same opportunity; what we
should aim at is, to approximate to that state of things:
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 237
that is the work of the philanthropist and Christian. In
short, my belief is that the truest statement of political
ethics and political economy is to he found in the doc-
trines of the Christian religion.
G. In that I thoroughly agree with you. But Chris-
tianity that does not assert the natural rights of man, that
has no protest when the earth, which it declares was cre-
ated by the Almighty as a dwelling-place for all his chil-
dren, is made the exclusive property of some of them,
while others are denied their birthright seems to me a
travesty. A Christian has something to do as a citizen
and lawmaker. We must rest our social adjustments upon
Christian principles if we would have a really Christian
society. But to return to the Declaration of Indepen-
dence; the equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, does it not necessarily involve the equal right to
land, without which neither life, liberty, nor the freedom
to pursue happiness is possible?
F. You do not propose to give to every child a piece of
land-; you only propose to secure its right, if I understand
you, by taxing land as vacant land in the mode you
propose.
G. That is all, but it is enough. In the complex civili-
sation we have now attained it would be impossible to se-
cure equality by giving to each a separate piece of land,
or to maintain that equality, even if once secured ; but by
treating all land as the property of the whole people, we
would make the whole people the landlords, and the indi-
vidual users the tenants of all, thus securing to each his
equal right.
F. In how long a time, if you were to have such legisla-
tion as you would wish, do you think we should arrive at
the condition that you have mentioned?
238 LAND AND TAXATION
G. I think immediately a substantial equality would be
arrived at, such an equality as would do away with the
spectacle of a man unable to find work, and would secure
to all a good and easy living, with a mere modicum of the
hard labour and worriment now undergone by most of us.
The great benefit would not be in the appropriation to
public use of the unearned revenues now going to indi-
viduals, but in the opening of opportunities to labour, and
the stimulus that would be given to improvement and
production by the throwing open of unused land and the
removal of taxation that now weighs down productive
powers. And with the land made the property of the whole
people, all social progress would be a progress towards
equality. While other values tend to decline as civilisa-
tion progresses, the value of land steadily advances. Such
a great fact bespeaks some creative intent ; and what that
intent may be, it seems to me we can see when we reflect
that if this value a value created not by the individual,
but by the whole community were appropriated to the
common benefit, the progress of society would constantly
tend to make less important the difference between the
strong and the weak, and thus, instead of those monstrous
extremes towards which civilisation is now hastening,
bring about conditions of greater and greater equality.
F. As a conclusion of the whole matter, if I understand
this explanation of your scheme, it is this, that the State
should tax the soil, and the soil only; that in doing so it
should consider the soil as it came from the hands of the
Creator, without anything that man has put upon it; that
all other property in short, everything that man has
made is to be acquired, enjoyed, and transmitted as at
present; that the rate of annual taxation should equal the
rate of annual rental, and that the proceeds of the tax
CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 239
should be applied, not only to purposes of government,
but to any other purpose that the legislature from time
to time may think desirable, even to dividing them among
the people at so much a head.
G. That is substantially correct.
F. I am glad to hear your explanation, though I do not
agree with you, except as I have expressed myself.
"THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
"THOU SHALT NOT STEAL."
[An address at the second public meeting of the Anti-Poverty Society,
in the Academy of Music, New York, Sunday evening, May 8, 1887.]
DK. McGLYNN in Chickering Hall last Sunday night
said it was an historic occasion. He was right. That
a priest of Christ, standing on Sunday night on a public
platform and addressing a great audience an audience
embracing men and women of all creeds and beliefs
should proclaim a crusade for the abolition of poverty, and
call on men to join together and work together to
bring the kingdom of God on earth, did mark a most im-
portant event. Great social transformations, said Maz-
zini, never have been and never will be other than the
application of great religious movements. The day on
which democracy shall elevate itself to the position of a
religious party, that day will its victory begin. And the
deep significance of the meeting last Sunday night, the
meaning of this Anti-Poverty Society that we have joined
together to inaugurate, is the bringing into the struggle
of democracy the religious sentiment, the sentiment alone
of all sentiments powerful enough to regenerate the world.
The comments made on that meeting and on the insti-
tution of this society are suggestive. We are told, in the
first place by the newspapers, that you cannot abolish
poverty because there is not wealth enough to go around.
We are told that if all the wealth of the United States
243
244 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
were divided up there would only be some eight hundred
dollars apiece. Well, if that is the case, all the more mon-
strous then is the injustice which to-day gives single men
millions and tens of millions, and even hundreds of mil-
lions. If there really is so little, then the more injustice
in these great fortunes. But we do not propose to abolish
poverty by dividing up what wealth there is, so much as
by creating more wealth. We propose to abolish poverty
by setting at work that vast army of men, estimated last
year to amount in this country alone to one million, that
vast army of men only anxious to create wealth, but who
are now, by a system which permits dogs in the manger to
monopolise God's bounty, deprived of the opportunity to
toil.
Then again, they tell us, you cannot abolish poverty
because poverty always has existed. Well, if poverty al-
ways has existed, all the more need for our moving for its
abolition. It has existed long enough. We ought to be
tired of it; let us get rid of it.
But I deny that poverty such poverty as we see on
earth to-day always has existed. Never before in the
history of the world was there such an abundance of
wealth, such power of producing wealth. So marked is
this that the very people who tell us that we cannot abol-
ish poverty, attribute it in almost the next breath to over-
production. They virtually tell us it is because mankind
produces so much wealth that so many are poor ; that it is
because there is so much of the things that satisfy human
desires already produced;, that men cannot find work, and
that women must stint and strain. Poverty attributed to
over-production; poverty in the midst of wealth; poverty
in the midst of enlightenment; poverty when steam and
electricity and a thousand labour-saving inventions have
been called to the aid of man, never existed in the world
ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 246
before. There is manifestly no good reason for its ex-
istence, and it is time that we should do something to
abolish it.
There are not charitable institutions enough to supply the
demands for charity; that seems incapable of being sup-
plied. But there are enough, at least, to show every thinking
woman and every thinking man that it is utterly impossible
to eradicate poverty by charity, to show everyone who will
trace to its root the cause of the disease that what is needed
is not charity, but justice the conforming of human insti-
tutions to the eternal laws of right. But when we propose
this, when we say that poverty exists because of the viola-
tion of God's laws, we are taunted with pretending to
know more than men ought to know about the designs of
Omnipotence. They have set up for themselves a God who
rather likes poverty, since it affords the rich a chance to
show their goodness and benevolence; and they point to
the existence of poverty as a proof that God wills it. Our
reply is that poverty exists not because of God's will, but
because of man's disobedience. We say that we do know
that it is God's will that there should be no poverty on
earth, and that we know it as we may know any other
natural fact. TThe laws of this universe are the laws of
v
God, the social laws as well as the physical laws, and He,
the Creator^)! all, has given us room for all, work for all,
plenty for all.\ If to-day people are in places so crowded
that it seems as though there were too many people in the
world ; if to-day thousands of men who would gladly be at
work do not find the opportunity to go to work; if to-day
the competition for employment crowds wages down to
starvation rates; if to-day, amid abounding wealth, there
are in the centres of our civilisation human beings who
are worse off than savages in any normal times, it is not
because the Creator has been niggardly; it is simply be-
246 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
cause of our own injustice simply because we have not
carried the idea of doing to others as we would have them
do unto us into the making of our statutes.
This Anti-Poverty Society has no patent remedy for
poverty. We propose no new thing. What we propose
is simply to do justice. The principle that we propose to
carry into our laws is neither more nor less than the prin-
ciple of the golden rule. We propose to abolish poverty
by the sovereign remedy of doing to others as we would
have others do to us; by giving to all their just rights.
And we propose to begin by assuring to every child of God
who, in our country, comes into this world, his full and
equal share of the common heritage.
Crowded! Is it any wonder that men are crowded to-
gether as they are in this city, when we see men taking
up far more land than they can by any possibility use,
and holding it for enormous prices? Why, what would
have happened if, when these doors were opened, the first
people who came in had claimed all the seats around them,
and demanded a price of others who afterward came in by
the same equal right? Yet that is precisely the way we
are treating this continent. That is the reason why people
are huddled together in tenement houses; that is the rea-
son why work is difficult to get; the reason that there
seems, even in good times, a surplus of labour, and that
in those times that we call bad, the times of industrial de-
pression, there are all over the country thousands and hun-
dreds of thousands of men tramping from place to place,
unable to find employment.
Not work enough! Why, what is work? Productive
work is simply the application of human labour to land;
it is simply the transforming into shapes adapted to gratify
human desires, the raw material that the Creator has
placed here. Is there not opportunity enough for work in
ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 247
this country? Supposing that, when thousands of men
are unemployed and there are hard times everywhere, we
could send a committee up to the high court of heaven to
represent the misery and the poverty of the people here, con-
sequent on their not being able to find employment. What
answer would we get? "Are your lands all in use? Are
your mines all worked out? Are there no natural oppor-
tunities for the employment of labour?" What could we
ask the Creator to furnish us with that is not already
here in abundance? He has given us the globe, amply
stocked with raw material for our needs. He has given
us the power of working up this raw material. If there
seems scarcity, if there is want, if there are men who can-
not find employment, if there are people starving in the
midst of plenty, is it not simply because what the Creator
intended for all has been made the property of the few?
In moving against this giant wrong, which denies to
labour access to the natural opportunities for the employ-
ment of labour, we move against the cause of poverty. We
propose to abolish it, to tear it up by the roots, to open
free and abundant employment for every man. We pro-
pose to disturb no just right of property. As Dr. McGlynn
said last Sunday night, we are defenders and upholders of
the sacred right of property that right of property which
justly attaches to everything that is produced by labour;
that right which gives to everyone a just right of property
in what he has produced that makes it his to give, to sell,
to bequeath, to do whatever he pleases with, so long as in
using it he does not injure anyone else. That right of
property we insist upon, that we would uphold against all
the world. To a house, a coat, a book anything pro-
duced by labour there is a clear individual title, which
goes back to the man who made it. That is the founda-
tion of the just, the sacred right of property. It rests
248 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
on the right of the individual to the use of his own
powers, on his right to profit by the exertion of his own
labour; but who can carry the right of property in land
that far? Who can claim a title of absolute ownership
in land coming from the man who made it? And until
the man who claims the exclusive ownership of a piece of
this planet can show a title originating with the Maker
of this planet; until he can produce a decree from the
Creator declaring that this city lot or that great tract of
agricultural land, or that coal mine, or that gas-well, was
made for him until then we have a right to hold that
land was intended for all of us.
Natural religion and revealed religion alike tell us that
God is no respecter of persons ; that He did not make this
planet for a few individuals; that He did not give it to
one generation in preference to other generations, but that
He made it for the use during their lives of all the people
that His providence brings into the world. If this be
true, the child that is born to-night in the humblest tene-
ment in the most squalid quarter of New York, comes into
life seized with as good a title to the land of this city as
any Astor or Khinelander.
How do we know that the Almighty is against poverty ?
That it is not in accordance with His decree that poverty
exists? We know it because we know this, that the Al-
mighty has declared, "Thou shalt not steal." And we
know for a truth that the poverty that exists to-day in
the midst of abounding wealth is the result of a system
that legalises theft.
The women who by the thousands are bending over their
needles or sewing-machines, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen
hours a day; these widows straining and striving to bring
up the little ones deprived of their natural bread-winner;
the children that are growing up in squalor and wretched-
ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 249
ness, underclothed, underfed, undereducated even, in this
city without any place to play growing up under condi-
tions in which only a miracle can keep them pure under
conditions which condemn them in advance to the peni-
tentiary or the brothel they suffer, they die, because we
permit them to be robbed, robbed of their birthright,
robbed by a system which disinherits the vast majority
of the children that come into the world. There is enough
and to spare for them. Had they the equal rights in the es-
tate which their Creator has given them, there would be
no young girls forced to unwomanly toil to eke out a mere
existence, no widows finding it such a bitter, bitter strug-
gle to put bread in the mouths of their little children; no
such misery and squalor as we may see here in the great-
est of American cities, misery and squalor that are deepest
in the largest and richest centres of our civilisation to-day.
These things are the results of legalised theft, the fruits
of a denial of that commandment that says, "Thou shalt
not steal." How is this great commandment interpreted
to-day, even b,y the men who pretend to preach the gos-
pel ? "Thou shalt not steal." Well, according to them, it
means: "Thou shalt not get into the penitentiary." Not
much more than that with any of them. You may steal,
provided you steal enough, and you do not get caught, and
you may have a front seat in the churches. Do not steal
a few dollars that may be dangerous; but if you steal
millions and get away with it, you become one of our first
citizens.
"Thou shalt not steal"; that is the law of God. What
does it mean? Well, it does not merely mean that you
shall not pick pockets ! It does not merely mean that you
shall not commit burglary or highway robbery ! There are
other forms of stealing which it prohibits as well. It cer-
tainly means (if it has any meaning) that we shall not
250 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
take that to which we are not entitled, to the detriment
of others.
Now, here is a desert. Here is a caravan going along
over the desert. Here are a gang of robbers. They say,
"Look! There is a rich caravan; let us go and rob it,
kill the men if necessary, take their goods from them, their
camels and horses, and walk off." But one of the robbers
says, "Oh, no; that is dangerous; besides, that would be
stealing ! Let us, instead of doing that, go ahead to where
there is a spring, the only spring at which this caravan
can get water in this desert. Let us put a wall around
it and call it ours, and when they come up we won't let
them have any water until they have given us all the
goods they have." That would be more gentlemanly, more
polite and more respectable; but would it not be theft all
the same?
And is it not theft of the same kind when men go ahead
in advance of population and get land they have no use
whatever for, and then, as people come into the world and
population increases, will not let this increasing popula-
tion use the land until they pay an exorbitant price ? That
is the sort of theft on which our first families are founded.
Do that under the false code of morality which exists here
to-day and people will praise your forethought and your
enterprise, and will say you have made money because you
are a very superior man, and that anybody can make
money if he will only work and be industrious! But is
it not as clearly a violation of the command, "Thou shalt
not steal," as taking the money out of a man's pocket ?
"Thou shalt not steal." That means, of course, that
we ourselves must not steal. But does it not also mean
that we must not suffer anybody else to steal if we can
help it? "Thou shalt not steal." Does it not also mean,
"Thou shalt not suffer thyself or anybody else to be stolen
ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 251
irom ?" If it does, then we, all of us, rich and poor alike,
are responsible for this social crime that produces pov-
erty. Not merely the men who monopolise land they
are not to blame above any one else, but we who permit
them to monopolise land are also parties to the theft.
The Christianity that ignores this social responsibility
has really forgotten the teachings of Christ. Where He
in the gospels speaks of the judgment, the question which
is put to men is never, "Did you praise me?" "Did you
pray to me?" "Did you believe this or did you believe
that?" It is only this: "What did you do to relieve dis-
tress ; to abolish poverty ?" To those who are condemned,
the judge is represented as saying : "I was ahungered and
ye gave me not meat, I was athirst and ye gave me not
drink, I was sick and in prison and ye visited me not."
Then they say, "Lord, Lord, when did we fail to do these
things to you?" The answer is, "Inasmuch as ye failed
to do it to the least of these, so also did you fail to do it
unto me; depart into the place prepared for the devil and
his angels." On the other hand, what is said to the
blessed is, "I was ahungered and ye gave me meat, I was
thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was naked and ye clothed
me, I was sick and in prison and ye visited me." And
when they say, "Lord, Lord, when did we do these things
to thee ?" the answer is, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto
the least of these ye have done it unto me."
Here is the essential spirit of Christianity. The essence
of its teaching is not, "Provide for your own body and
save your own soul !" but, "Do what you can to make this
a better world for all !" It was a protest against the doc-
trine of "each for himself and devil take the hindermost !"
It was the proclamation of a common fatherhood of God
and a common brotherhood of men. This was why the rich
and the powerful, the high priests and the rulers, persecuted
252 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
Christianity with fire and sword. It was not what in so
many of our churches to-day is called religion that pagan
Borne sought to tear out it was what in too many of the
churches of to-day is called "socialism and communism/'
the doctrine of the equality of human rights !
Now imagine when we men and women of to-day go
before that awful bar that there we should behold the
spirits of those who in our time under this accursed social
system were driven into crime, of those who were starved
in body and mind, of those little children that in this city
of New York are being sent out of the world by thousands
when they have scarcely entered it because they did not
get food enough, nor air enough, nor light enough, because
they are crowded together in these tenement districts under
conditions in which all diseases rage and destroy. Sup-
posing we are confronted with those souls, what will it
avail us to say that we individually were not responsible
for their earthly conditions? What, in the spirit of the
parable of Matthew, would be the reply from the judg-
ment seat? Would it not be, "I provided for them all.
The earth that I made was broad enough to give them
room. The materials that are placed in it were abundant
enough for all their needs. Did you or did you not lift
up your voice against the wrong that robbed them of their
fair share in what I provided for all?"
"Thou shalt not steal!" It is theft, it is robbery that
is producing poverty and disease and vice and crime among
us. It is by virtue of laws that we uphold; and he who
does not raise his voice against that crime, he is an ac-
cessory. The standard has now been raised, the cross of
the new crusade at last is lifted. Some of us, aye, many
of us, have sworn in our hearts that we will never rest so
long as we have life and strength until we expose and
abolish that wrong. We have declared war upon it. Those
ANTI-POVERTY ADDEESS 263
who are not with us, let us count them against us. For
us there will be no faltering, no compromise, no turning
back until the end.
There is no need for poverty in this world, and in our
civilisation. There is a provision made by the laws of
the Creator which would secure to the helpless all that they
require, which would give enough and more than enough
for all social purposes. These little children that are
dying in our crowded districts for want of room and fresh
air, they are the disinherited heirs of a great estate.
Did you ever consider the full meaning of the signifi-
cant fact that as progress goes on, as population increases
and civilisation develops, the one thing that ever increases
in value is land? Speculators all over the country appre-
ciate that. Wherever there is a chance for population com-
ing; wherever railroads meet or a great city seems des-
tined to grow; wherever some new evidence of the bounty
of the Creator is discovered, in a rich coal or iron mine,
or an oil well, or a gas deposit, there the speculator jumps
in, land rises in value and a great boom takes place, and
men find themselves enormously rich without ever having
done a single thing to produce wealth.
Now, it is by virtue of a natural law that land steadily
increases in value, that population adds to it, that inven-
tion adds to it; that the discovery of every fresh evidence
of the Creator's goodness in the stores that He has im-
planted in the earth for our use adds to the value of land,
not to the value of anything else. This natural fact is by
virtue of a natural law a law that is as much a law of the
Creator as the law of gravitation. What is the intent of
this law? Is there not in it a provision for social needs?
That land values grow greater and greater as the com-
munity grows and common needs increase, is there not a
manifest provision for social needs a fund belonging to
254 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
society as a whole, with which we may take care of tHe
widow and the orphan and those who fall by the wayside
with which we may provide for public education, meet
public expenses, and do all the things that an advancing
civilisation makes more and more necessary for society to
do on behalf of its members ?
To-day the value of the land in New York City is over
a hundred millions annually. Who has created that value ?
Is it because a few landowners are here that that land is
worth a hundred millions a year? Is it not because the
whole population of New York is here ? Is it not because
this great city is the centre of exchanges for a large por-
tion of the continent? Does not every child that is born,
everyone that comes to settle in New York, does he not
add to the value of this land? Ought he not, therefore,
to get some portion of the benefit ? And is he not wronged
when, instead of being used for that purpose, certain fa-
voured individuals are allowed to appropriate it?
We might take this vast fund for common needs, we
might with it make a city here such as the world has never
seen before a city spacious, clean, wholesome, beautiful
a city that should be full of parks; a city without tene-
ment houses; a city that should own its own means of
communication, railways that should carry people thirty or
forty miles from the city hall in a half hour, and that
could be run free, just as are the elevators in our large
buildings ; a city with great museums, and public libraries,
and gymnasiums, and public halls, paid for out of this
common fund, and not from the donations of rich citizens.
We could out of this vast fund provide as a matter
of right for the widow and the orphan, and assure to
every citizen of this great city that if he happened to
die his wife and his children should not come to want,
should not be degraded with charity, but as a matter
ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 255
of right, as citizens of a rich community, as coheirs
to a vast estate, should have enough to live on. And
we could do all this, not merely without imposing any
tax upon production; not merely without interfering
with the just rights of property, but while at the same time
securing far better than they are now the rights of prop-
erty and abolishing the taxes that now weigh on produc-
tion. We have but to throw off our taxes upon things of
human production; to cease to fine a man that puts up a
house or makes anything that adds to the wealth of the
community; to cease collecting taxes from people who
bring goods from abroad or make goods at home, and put
all our taxes upon the value of land to collect that enor-
mous revenue due to the growth of the community for the
benefit of the community that produced it.
Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath, has said in a letter ad-
dressed to the clergy and laity of his diocese that it is this
provision of the Creator, the provision by which the value
of land increases as the community grows, that seems to
him the most beautiful of all the social adjustments; and
it is to me that which most clearly shows the beneficence
as well as the intelligence of the creative mind; for here
is a provision by virtue of which the advance of civilisa-
tion would, under the law of equal justice, be an advance
towards equality, instead, as it now is, an advance towards
a more and more monstrous inequality. The same good
Catholic bishop in the same letter says: "Now, therefore,
the land of every country is the common property of the
people of that country, because its real owner, the Cre-
ator, who made it, hath given it as a voluntary gift unto
them. 'The earth has He given to the children of men.'
And as every human being is a creature and a child of
God, and as all His creatures are equal in His sight, any
settlement of the land of this or any other country that
256 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
would exclude the humblest from his equal share in the
common heritage is not only an injury and a wrong done
to that man, but an impious violation of the benevolent
intention of his Creator." And then Bishop Nulty goes
on to show that the way to secure equal rights to land is
not by cutting land up into equal pieces, but by taking for
public use the values attaching to land. That is the
method this society proposes. I wish we could get that
through the heads of the editors of this city. We do not
propose to divide up land. What we propose to do is to
divide up the rent that comes from land; and that is a
very easy thing.
We need not disturb anybody in possession, we need not
interfere with anybody's building or anybody's improve-
ment. We only need to remit taxes on all improvements,
on all forms of wealth, and put the tax on the value of the
land, exclusive of the improvements, so that the dog in
the manger who is holding a piece of vacant land will
have to pay the same for it as though there was a build-
ing upon it. In that way we would treat the whole land
of such a community as this as the common estate of the
whole people of the community. And as the Sailors' Snug
Harbour, for instance, out of the revenues of comparatively
a little piece of land in New York can maintain that fine
establishment on Staten Island, keeping in comfort a num-
ber of old seamen, so we might make a greater Snug Har-
bour of the whole of New York.
The people of New York could manage their estate just
as well as any corporation, or any private family, for that
matter. But for the people of New York to resume their
estate and to treat it as their own, it is not necessary for
them to go to any bother of management. It is not neces-
sary for them to say to any landholder, this particular
piece of land is ours, and no longer yours. We can leave
ANTI-POVERTY ADDBESS 267
land titles just as they are. We can leave the owners of
the land to call themselves its owners; all we want is the
annual value of the land. Not, mark you, that value
which the owner has created, that value which has been
given to it by improvements, but simply that value which
is given to the bare land by the fact that we are all here
that has attached to the land because of the growth of
this great community. And, when we take that, then all
inducement to monopolise the land will be gone; then
these very worthy gentlemen who are holding one half of
the area of this city idle and vacant will find the taxes upon
them so high that they either will have to go to work
and build houses or sell the land, or, if they cannot sell it,
give it away to somebody who will build houses.
And so all over the country. Go into Pennsylvania
and there you will see great stretches of land, containing
enormous deposits of the finest coal held by corporations
and individuals who are working but little part of it. On
these great estates the common American citizens, who
mine the coal, are not allowed even to rent a piece of land,
let alone buy it. They can only live in company houses;
and they are permitted to stay in them only on condition
(and they have to sign a paper to that effect) that they
can be evicted at any time on five days' notice. The com-
panies combine, and make coal artificially dear here and
make employment artificially scarce in Pennsylvania.
Now, why should not those miners, who work on it half
the time, why shouldn't they dig down in the earth and
get up coal for themselves ? Who made that coal ? There
is only one answer God made that coal. Whom did he
make it for? Any child or any fool would say that God
made it for the people that would be one day called into
being on this earth. But the laws of Pennsylvania, like
the laws of New York, say God made it for this corpora-
258 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
tion and that individual; and thus a few men are per-
mitted to deprive miners of work and make coal artifi-
cially dear.
A few weeks ago, when I was travelling in Illinois, a
young fellow got in the car at one of the mining towns,
and I entered into conversation with him. He said he was
going to another place to try and get work. He told me
of the condition of the miners, that they could scarcely
make a living, getting very small wages and only working
about half the time. I said to him, "There is plenty of
coal in the ground; why don't you employ yourselves in
digging coal." He replied, "We did get up a co-operative
company, and we went to see the owner of the land to
ask what he would let us sink a shaft and get out some
coal for. He wanted $7500 a year. We could not raise
that much." Tax land up to its full value and how long
can such dogs-in-the-manger afford to hold that coal land
away from these men? And when any man who wants
work can go and employ himself, then there will be no
million or no thousand unemployed men in all the United
States.
The relation of employer and employed is a relation of
convenience. It is not one imposed by the natural order.
Men are brought into the world with the power to employ
themselves, and they can employ themselves wherever the
natural opportunities for employment are not shut up
from them. No man has a natural right to demand em-
ployment of another, but each man has a natural right, an
inalienable right, a right given by his Creator, to demand
opportunity to employ himself. And whenever that right
is acknowledged, whenever the men who want to go to
work can find natural opportunities to work upon, then
there will be as much competition among employers who
are anxious to get men to work for them as there will be
ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 269
among men who are anxious to get work. Wages will rise
in every vocation to the true rate of wages, the full, honest
earnings of labour. That done, with this ever-increasing
social fund to draw upon, poverty will be abolished, and
in a little while will come to be looked upon as we are now
beginning to look upon slavery as the relic of a darker
and more ignorant age.
I remember this man here remembers (turning to Mr.
James Redpath) even better than I, for he was one of the
men who brought the atrocities of human slavery home to
the heart and conscience of the North I well remember,
as he well knows, and all the older men and women in
this audience will remember, how property in human flesh
and blood was defended just as private property in land
is now defended; how the same charges were hurled upon
the men who protested against human slavery as are now
made against the men who are intending to abolish indus-
trial slavery. We remember how the dignitaries of the
churches, and the opinion of the rich members of the
churches branded as a disturber, almost as a reviler of
religion, any priest or any minister who dared to get up
and assert God's truth that there never was and there
never could be rightful property in human flesh and
blood.
So it is now said that men who protest against this sys-
tem, which is simply another form of slavery, are men who
propose robbery. Thus the commandment, "Thou shalt
not steal/' they have made, "Thou shalt not object to
stealing." When we propose to resume our own again,
when we propose to secure its natural right to every child
that comes into being, such people talk of us advocating
confiscation charge us with being deniers of the rights
of property. The real truth is that we wish to assert the
just rights of property, that we wish to prevent theft.
260 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
Chattel slavery was incarnate theft of the worst kind.
That system, which made property of human beings, which
allowed one man to sell another, which allowed one man to
take away the proceeds of another's toil, which permitted
the tearing of the child from the mother, and which per-
mitted the so-called owner to hunt with blood-hounds the
man who escaped from his tyranny that form of slavery
is abolished.
So far as that goes the command, "Thou shalt not
steal," has been vindicated. But there is another form
of slavery.
We are selling land now in large quantities to certain
English lords and capitalists who are coming over here
and buying greater estates than the greatest in Great
Britain or Ireland; we are selling them land, they are
buying land. Did it ever occur to you that they do not
want that land? They have no use whatever for Ameri-
can land; they do not propose to come over here and live
on it. They cannot carry it over there where they do
live. It is not the land that they want. What they want
is the income from it. They are buying it not that they
themselves want to use it, but because by-and-by, as popu-
lation increases, numbers of American citizens will want
to use it, and then they can say to these American citi-
zens, "You can use this land provided you pay us one half
of all you make upon it." What we are selling those
foreign lords and capitalists is not really land ; we are sell-
ing them the labour of American citizens; we are sell-
ing them the privilege of taking, without giving any return
for it, the proceeds of the toil of our children.
So here in New York you will read in the papers every
day that the price of land is going up. John Jones or
Robert Brown has made a hundred thousand dollars within
a year in the increase in the value of land in New York.
ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 261
What does that mean ? It means he has the power of get-
ting so many more coats, so many more cigars, so much
more wine, dry-goods, horses and carriages, houses or food.
He has gained the power of taking for his own so much
more of these products of human labour. But what has he
done? He has not done anything. He may have been
off in Europe or out West, or he may have been sitting
at home taking it easy. If he has done nothing to get
this increased income, where does it come from? The
things I speak of are all products of human labour
some one has to work for them. When the man who
does no work can get them, necessarily the men who do
work to produce them must have less than they ought
to have.
This is the system that the Anti-Poverty Society has
banded together to war against, and it invites you to come
and swell its ranks. It is the noblest cause in which any
human being can possibly engage. What, after all, is
there in life as compared with a struggle like this? One
thing and only one thing is absolutely certain for every
man and woman in this hall, as it is to all else of human
kind that is death. What will it profit us in a few years
how much we have left? Is not the noblest and the best
use we can make of life to do something to make better
and happier the condition of those who come after us
by warring against injustice, by the enlightenment of pub-
lic opinion, by the doing all that we possibly can do to
break up the accursed system that degrades and embitters
the lot of so many ?
We have a long fight and a hard fight before us. Pos-
sibly, probably, for many of us, we may never see it come
to success. But what of that? It is a privilege to be
engaged in such a struggle. This we may know, that it
is but a part of that great, world-wide, long-continued
262 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
struggle in which the just and the good of every age have
been engaged ; and that we, in taking part in it, are doing
something in our humble way to bring on earth the king-
dom of God, to make the conditions of life for those who
come afterward, those which we trust will prevail in
heaven.
TO WOKKINGMEN
TO WOKKINGMEN.
[Article in "Belford's Magazine," New York, June, 1888, and repub-
lished in "The Standard," New York, June 16, 1888.]
I AM one of those who believe that it is possible for
workingmen to raise wages by an intelligent use of their
votes ; that this is the only way in which wages can be gen-
erally and permanently raised the only way labour can
obtain that share of wealth which is justly its due. And
I am one of those who believe that this is the supreme
object that workingmen should seek in politics. In seek-
ing to raise wages, to improve the conditions of labour,
we are seeking, not the good of a class, but the good of
the whole. The number of those who can live on the
labour of others is and can be but small as compared with
the number who must labour to live. And where labour
yields the largest results to the labourer, where the produc-
tion of wealth is greatest and its distribution most equi-
table, where the man who has nothing but his labour is
surest of making the most comfortable living and best
provide for those whom nature has made dependent upon
him, there, I believe, will be the best conditions of life for
all there will the general standard of intelligence and
virtue be highest, and there will all that makes a nation
truly great and strong and glorious most abound.
Believing this, I am glad that the presidential campaign
this year is to turn, not upon sectional issues or matters
265
266 TO WOEKINGMEN
of party or personal character, but upon a great question
of national policy the question of protection or free
trade; and that this is to be discussed, as it is most impor-
tant that it should be discussed, in its relation to wages.
What is thus entering our politics is more than a question
of higher or lower duties, or no duties at all it is the
most important of all questions, the great labour question.
And what is really involved in the decision that will be
asked of you as to whether protection or free trade is best
for the interests of labour, is whether the emancipation of
labour is to be sought by imposing restrictions or by se-
curing freedom. Until the men who would raise wages
and emancipate labour settle that for themselves, they can-
not unite to carry out any large measure.
In the coming campaign the most frantic appeals will
be made to workingmen to vote for protection. You will
be told that "protection" means "protection to American
labour"; that that is what it was instituted for, and that
is why it is maintained; that it is protection that makes
this country so prosperous and your wages so high, and
that if it is abolished, or even interfered with, mills must
close, mines shut down, and poor labour stand idle and
starve until American workmen are forced to work for the
lowest wages that are paid in Europe.
Don't accept what any one tells you least of all what
is told you by and on behalf of those who have an enor-
mous pecuniary interest in maintaining what is styled
"protection." Hear what they say, but make up your
minds for yourselves. There is nothing in the tariff ques-
tion that cannot readily be mastered by any one of ordi-
nary intelligence, and the great question whether what is
called "protection" does or does not benefit the labourer
can be settled for himself by any one who will ask himself
what protection really is, and how it benefits labour.
AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 267
Now what is "protection"? It is a system of taxes
levied on imports for the purpose of increasing the price
of certain commodities in our own country so that the
home producers of such commodities can get higher prices
for what they sell to their own fellow-countrymen.
This is all there is to "protection." Protection can't
enable any American producer to get higher prices for
what he sells to people of other countries, and no duty
is protective unless it so increases prices as to enable some-
one to get more from his fellow-citizens than he could
without protection. How "protection" may thus benefit
some people is perfectly clear. But how can it benefit the
whole people? That it may increase the profits of the
manufacturer, or the income of the owner of timber or
mineral land, is plain. But how can it increase wages?
"Protection" raises the price of commodities. That may
be to the advantage of those who buy labour and sell com-
modities. But how can it be to the advantage of those
who sell labour and buy commodities?
Never mind the confused and confusing claims that are
put forth for protection until you can see how it can do
what is claimed for it.
Ask yourselves what protection is and how it operates,
and you will see that the only way it can benefit any one, or
by "encouraging" him give him power to encourage or
benefit any one else, is by enabling him to get from his
fellow-citizens more than he could otherwise get. This is
the essence of protection; and if it has any stimulating or
beneficial effect it must be through this. The protective
effect of any protective duty is precisely that of a subsidy
paid by the government to some people out of taxes levied
on the whole people. The only difference is, that in what
is called the subsidy system the government tax-gatherers
would collect the tax from the whole people and pay it over
268 TO WORKINGMEN
to some people, while in what is called the protective sys-
tem the government tax-gatherers collect a tax on foreign
goods so as to "protect" the favoured people, while they
for themselves collect taxes on their fellow-citizens in in-
creased prices.
Now if workmen get any benefit from what is thus
called protection, it can only be through the protected em-
ployers and by their favour. The protective system gives
nothing whatever to labour. It gives only to the employ-
ers of labour, and only to some of them. And these some
are necessarily comparatively few. It is utterly impos-
sible that any protective tariff can "protect" the largest
industries of any country, for a duty can only have a pro-
tective effect when levied upon goods some of which are
produced in the country and some of which are imported
or would be imported if it were not for the duty. Import
duties cannot be levied upon things of which we produce
enough for ourselves and consequently do not import, or
of which we produce more than enough for ourselves and
consequently export; and if levied upon things we do not
produce and must import or go without, they can have no
protective effect. In every country, therefore, the pro-
tected industries can only be those in which but a small
part of the labour of that country is employed. In this
country, out of over seventeen millions of labourers of
one sort or another, those employed in the protected indus-
tries do not amount to more than 900,000, and these in-
dustries, it is to be observed, are those in which large
capital is required and in which it is impossible for the
mere labourer to employ himself.
Now, would it be possible by levying a general tax (espe-
cially a tax which, like all protective taxes, bears on the
poor far more heavily than on the rich, on the labourer
far more heavily than on the capitalist), and paying out
AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 269
the proceeds directly to the labourers engaged in certain
industries, to raise wages, or even to raise wages in those
industries ? Everyone who thinks a moment will say no !
If we were to levy such a tax and pay out the proceeds
directly to glass workers or iron-ore miners or the hands
in cotton or woollen factories, in addition to what they
get from their employers, the consequence would simply be
that labour would be attracted from the unsubsidised to
the subsidised employments, and wages would go down to
a point that would give the subsidised labourers no more
than they got without the subsidy !
But if such a plan of raising wages is utterly hopeless,
what should we say of a plan to raise wages by levying a
tax upon all labourers and giving the proceeds, not to all
labourers, or even to some labourers, but only to some em-
ployers? This is the plan of protection. If protection
can increase or maintain wages, it must be in this way.
What protective duties actually do is to increase the profits
of certain employers to allow them to collect a tax from
their fellow-citizens without any stipulation as to how they
shall spend it. To suppose that wages can be increased
in this way is to suppose, in the first place, that these pro-
tected employers voluntarily give up their increased profits
to their workmen, and to suppose, in the second place, that
the increase of wages which the benevolence of the pro-
tected employers thus causes in industries which at the
best employ not more than 1,500,000 people can raise
wages in occupations that employ 20,000,000 people !
Observe also that the first step in this precious scheme
of plunder which is called protection to American labour
is really to reduce wages. Wages do not really consist of
money. Money is the mere flux and counter of exchanges.
What the man who works for wages really works for are
commodities and services for which he pays with the money
270 TO WOEKINGMEN
he receives in wages. Necessarily, therefore, to increase
the price of the commodities he buys with his money-
wages is to decrease his real wages. For instance, a good
many of the highly protected American labourers in the
state of Pennsylvania (as in some other States) are com-
pelled by their benevolent protectionist employers to make
their purchases in what the highly protected American
labourers call "pluck-me stores." In fact, it is through
these pluck-me stores that these highly protected Ameri-
can workingmen get their wages, as the pluck-me bill is
deducted before any money is turned over to them on pay
days; and many of them being kept constantly in debt,
hardly see a dollar from one year's end to another. Now,
it is evident that if one of these employers adds a dollar
to the prices his men have to pay for the goods they must
buy in his "pluck-me," he just as effectually cuts down their
real earnings as though he reduced their wages by a dollar.
And so it is evident that the protective taxes which we
impose for the purpose of increasing the prices of com-
modities must in the same way operate to reduce the real
wages of labour. Therefore the protective scheme for
raising wages fully stated is simply this : Wages generally
are in the first place reduced by taxes which increase the
price of certain commodities, in order (1) that a com-
paratively few employers who profit by this increase in
the price of what they have to sell may voluntarily increase
the wages of their employees, and (2) that this benevolent
raising of wages in some occupations may cause the rais-
ing of wages in all occupations !
Is it not time that American workingmen were done
with such a preposterous scheme as this? There is one
sense, and one sense alone, in which protection may raise
wages. When real wages are low enough, it may to some
extent raise nominal wages. If the protected Pennsyl-
AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 271
vania employer were to keep on raising the prices in his
workmen's "protected home market/' the pluck-me store,
he would come to a point where their nominal wages would '
not enable them to get enough food and clothing to sup-
port life, and where, consequently, he would be forced to
increase their nominal wages in order to prevent their re-
moval or starvation. In this way protection, like a depre-
ciation of currency, may sometimes increase nominal
wages. But it can never increase real wages. Whomso-
ever protection may benefit and analysis will show that
it cannot even benefit the employing capitalists whom it
assumes to benefit, unless they are also protected from
home competition by some sort of a monopoly it cannot
benefit the labourer. It is to the labourer a delusion and
a fraud a scheme of barefaced plunder that adds insult
to injury; that first robs him, and then tells him to get
down on his knees and thank his robber !
The impudent pretence that what is called protection is
protection to labour is peculiar to the United States, and is
an afterthought here. When this utterly un-American
system of robbing the many for the benefit of the few was
introduced into this country, it was not pretended that it
was to protect labour or to compensate for high wages. It
was asked for the protection of capital to give capitalists
a bonus so that here, where interest was high, they could
engage in the same sort of manufacturing businesses as in
Europe, where interest was low. It was asked for the
"protection of infant industries" to give them artificial
support for a few years, when, it was then claimed, they
could stand alone without any more protection.
But men who once secure the enactment of laws to
enable them to take the earnings of others never want an
excuse for demanding the continuance of the privilege.
Now that United States three per cent, bonds are at a
272 TO WOBKINGMEN
premium, it would be preposterous to talk of protecting
American capital against the cheaper capital of Europe,
and now that the great protected industries have become
very industrial giants, it would be only ridiculous to talk
of protecting "infant industries/' So we are now told
that protection is "protection for labour," and is made
necessary by our higher wages. In fact, we are now told
that it is because of protection that wages are so high and
the country so prosperous.
The pretence is as hollow and insulting as the pretence
of the slave-owners that slavery was for the protection of
the slave. Special privilege needs protection, and monop-
oly needs protection, and all legalised systems of robbery
that enable men who do no labour to grow rich by appro-
priating the earnings of those who do labour, need pro-
tection. But what is labour, that it should need protec-
tion ? What is labour, that votes should have to be bought
and coerced, and lobbyists maintained, and congressmen
interested, and newspapers subsidised, and our coasts and
borders lined with seizers and searchers and spies and
informers and tax-gatherers, to keep it from falling to
pauperism ? Is not labour the producer of all wealth ? Is
it not labour that feeds all, clothes all, shelters all, and
pays for all? Is not labour the one thing that can take
care of itself ; that requires but access to the raw materials
of nature to bring forth all that man's needs require?
What benevolent capitalist drew a tariff wall around Adam
to enable him to get a living and bring up a family?
Whatever else may need protection, labour needs no pro-
tection. What labour needs is freedom ! Not the keeping
up of restrictions and the perpetuation of monopolies, but
the tearing of them down.
Who are these benevolent individuals, so anxious to pro-
tect the poor, helpless workingman, so fearful lest Ameri-
AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 273
can labour may fall to the level of "the pauper labour of
Europe"? The coal barons and the factory lords, the
iron and steel combinations, the lumber ring, and the thou-
sand trusts that, having secured the imposition of duties
to keep out foreign productions, band themselves together
to limit home production and to screw down the wages of
their workmen. And are not these men who are so anx-
ious, as they say, to protect you from the competition of
"foreign pauper labour" the very men who are most ready
to avail themselves of foreign labour?
Do you know of any protected employer, no matter how
many millions he may have made out of the tariff, who
pays any higher wages to labour than he has to ? Is it not
true that in all the protected industries wages are, if any-
thing, lower than in the unprotected industries? Is it
not true that in all the protected industries workmen have
been compelled to band themselves together to protect
themselves; and that these protected industries are the in-
dustries notable above all others for their strikes and
lock-outs the bitter and oft-times disastrous industrial
wars that labour is compelled to wage to prevent being
crowded to starvation rates? Are these the men whose
protection you need ?
It is impossible for me in a brief article like this to go
over all the claims and expose all the fallacies of protec-
tion. That I have already done, in anticipation of the
coming before the people of this question, in a little book
entitled "Protection or Free Trade?" in which I have
shown the full relations of the tariff question to the labour
question. All I want here to do is to urge every Ameri-
can workingman to think over the matter for himself, and
to decide whether what is called "protection" is or is not
in the interests of the men who earn their daily bread by
their daily labour.
274 TO WORKINGMEN
For if, as protectionists tell us, our country is so pros-
perous and wages are so high because of the protection
we already have, then we certainly ought to bend all our
efforts to get more protection. However prosperous this
country may be when viewed through the rose-coloured
spectacles of the millionaire, and however high wages may
be from the standpoint of those who think that the natural
wages of labour are only enough to keep soul and body
together, there will be no dispute among workingmen that
this country is not prosperous enough and wages not high
enough. Whoever may be satisfied with things as they
are, the great mass of American citizens who work for a
living are not satisfied and ought not to be satisfied. Mon-
strous fortunes are rolling up here faster than they ever did
in the world before; but the great body of the American
people get but a poor hand-to-mouth living, and find year
after year passing without anything laid by for a rainy
day. Our rich men astonish the rich men of Europe by
their lavish expenditure, and the daughters of our million-
aires are sought in marriage by European aristocrats of
the bluest blood; but the tramp is known from the At-
lantic to the Pacific ; the proportion of our people who are
maintained by charity, the proportion who are confined
in prisons and lunatic asylums, the proportion of our
women and children who must go to work, is steadily in-
creasing. And the proportion of men who, starting with
nothing but their ability to labour, can become their own
employers, or can hope out of the earnings of their labour
to maintain a family and put by a competence for old age,
is steadily diminishing. "Statisticians" may pile up fig-
ures to prove to the American workingman how much
better off he is than he used to be, and the editors of
protection papers may picture the poverty of European
workingmen in the darkest colours to show him how proud
AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 276
and happy and contented he ought to be. But the labour
organisations, the strikes, the bitter unrest with which the
whole industrial mass is seething, show that he is not con-
tented. If protection gives prosperity, if protection raises
wages, then in heaven's name let us demand more protec-
tion, even though we utterly destroy all foreign commerce,
put a line of custom-houses between every State, and shut
in our rich men so that they cannot go to Europe and
spend their money on foreign paupers, as Mr. Elaine is
doing. But if it does not then let us sweep away what
protection we have. Let us raise the banner of equal
rights, and try the way of freedom !
It is not protection that has made wages higher here
than in Europe. If protection could make wages high,
why has it not made wages high in Germany and Italy and
Spain and Mexico? Why did it not make wages high in
England when it was in full force there? Wages were
higher in the United States than in Europe before we had
any protection; and if they have on the whole remained
higher, it is in spite of protection. Our higher wages are
because of our cheaper land because labour can more
readily obtain access to the natural materials and oppor-
tunities of labour. The secret of our prosperity, of our
rapid growth, of our better conditions of labour, is simply
that we have had the temperate zone of a vast and virgin
continent to overrun, and that it has taken a long while
for monopoly to fence it in. As it is gradually fenced
in, as the tribute that labour must pay to monopoly for the
use of land becomes higher and higher, so must our social
conditions, tariff or no tariff, approximate to the social
conditions of Europe.
To give labour full freedom; to make wages what they
ought to be, the full earnings of labour; to secure work
for all, and leisure for all, and abundance for all; to
276 TO WOBKINGMEN
enable all to enjoy the advantages and blessings of an ad-
vancing civilisation we must break down all monopolies
and destroy all special privileges.
The rejection of protection and the abolition of the
tariff will not of itself accomplish this, but it will be a
long step towards it a step that must necessarily be taken
if labour is to be emancipated and industrial slavery abol-
ished. Until the workingmen of the United States get
over the degrading superstition of protection they must
be divided and helpless. But when they once realise the
true dignity of labour, once see that the good of all can
only be gained by securing the equal rights of each, then
they can unite, and then they will be irresistible.
And this is the question that you will be asked this year
to answer by your votes. Are you for restriction or are
you for freedom? Are you in favour of taxing the whole
people for the benefit of a few capitalists, in the hope that
they will give to their workmen some of the crumbs? or
are you against all special privileges and in favour of
equal rights to all?
To the man who thinks the matter over there can be
no question as to what answer best accords with the in-
terests of workingmen. It is possible for the few to be-
come rich by taxing the many. But it is not possible for
the many to become rich by taxing themselves to put the
proceeds in the hands of the few.
Labour cannot be hurt by freedom. The only thing
that can be hurt by freedom is monopoly. And monopoly
means the robbery of labour. What labour needs is free-
dom, not protection; justice, not charity; equal rights for
all, not special privileges for some.
"THY KINGDOM COME."
"THY KINGDOM COME/'
[A sermon delivered in the City Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday,
April 28, 1889, under the auspices of the Henry George Institute, and
afterwards circulated extensively in tract form by the Scottish Land Res-
toration League.]
WE have just joined in the most solemn, the most
sacred, the most catholic of all prayers: "Our
Father which art in Heaven!" To all of us who have
learned it in our infancy, it oft calls up the sweetest and
most tender emotions. Sometimes with feeling, sometimes
as a matter of course, how often have we repeated it ! For
centuries, daily, hourly, has that prayer gone up. "Thy
kingdom come!" Has it come? Let this Christian city
of Glasgow answer Glasgow, that was to "Flourish by the
preaching of the Word." "Thy kingdom come!" Day
after day, Sunday after Sunday, week after week, century
after century, has that prayer gone up ; and to-day, in this
so-called Christian city of Glasgow, 125,000 human beings
so your medical officer says 125,000 children of God
are living whole families in a single room. "Thy king-
dom come!" We have been praying for it and praying
for it, yet it has not come. So long has it tarried that
many think it never will come. Here is the vital point in
which what we are accustomed to call the Christianity of
the present day differs so much from that Christianity
which overran the ancient world that Christianity which,
279
280 THY KINGDOM COME
beneath a rotten old civilisation, planted the seeds of a
newer and a higher. We have become accustomed to think
that God's kingdom is not intended for this world; that,
virtually, this is the devil's world, and that God's kingdom
is in some other sphere, to which He is to take good
people when they die as good Americans are said when
they die to go to Paris. If that be so, what is the use
of praying for the coming of the kingdom? Is God the
Christian's God, the Almighty, the loving Father of whom
Christ told is He such a monster as a god of that kind
would be ; a god who looks on this world, sees its sufferings
and its miseries, sees high faculties aborted, lives stunted,
innocence turned to vice and crime, and heart-strings
strained and broken, yet, having it in his power, will not
bring that kingdom of peace, and love, and plenty, and
happiness? Is God, indeed, a self-willed despot, whom
we must coax to do the good He might ?
But, think of it. The Almighty and I say it with rev-
erence the Almighty could not bring that kingdom of
Himself. For, what is the kingdom of God; the kingdom
that Christ taught us to pray for? Is it not in the doing
of God's will, not by automata, not by animals who are
compelled, but by intelligent beings made in His image;
intelligent beings clothed with free will, intelligent beings
knowing good from evil. Swedenborg never said a deeper
nor a truer thing, nor a thing more compatible with the
philosophy of Christianity, than when he said God had
never put any one into hell; that the devils went to hell
because they would rather go to hell than go to heaven.
The spirits of evil would be unhappy in a place where
the spirit of good reigned : wedded to injustice, and loving
injustice, they would be miserable where justice was the
law. And, correlatively, God could not put intelligent
beings having free will into conditions where they must
SEEMON IN GLASGOW 281
do right without destroying that free will. Nay! Nay!
"Thy kingdom come!" when Christ taught that prayer
He meant, not merely that men must idly phrase these
words, but that for the coming of that kingdom they must
work as well as pray !
Prayer! Consider what prayer is. How true is the
old fable! The wagoner, whose wagon was stuck in the
rut, knelt down and prayed to Jove to get it out. He
might have prayed till the crack of doom, and the wagon
would have stood there. This world God's world is not
that kind of a world in which the repeating of words will
get wagons out of mire or poverty out of slums. He who
would pray with effect must work !
"Our Father which art in Heaven." Not a despot,
ruling by his arbitrary fiats, but a father, a loving father,
our father; a father for us all that was Christ's mes-
sage. He is our Father and we are His children. But
there are men, who, looking around on the suffering and
injustice with which, even in so-called Christian countries,
human life is full, say there is no Father in heaven, there
can be no God, or He would not permit this. How super-
ficial is that thought! What would we as fathers do for
our children ? Is there any man, who, having a knowledge
of the world and the laws of human life, would so sur-
round his boy with safeguards that he could do no evil
and could suffer no pain? What could he make by that
course of education? A pampered animal, not a self-
reliant man ! We are, indeed, His children. Yet let one
of God's children fall into the water, and if he has not
learned to swim he will drown. And if he is a good dis-
tance from land and near no boat or anything on which
he may get, he will drown anyhow, whether he can swim
or not. God the Creator might have made men so that they
could swim like the fishes, but how could He have made
282 THY KINGDOM COME
them so that they could swim like the fishes and yet Have
adapted this wonderful frame of ours to all the purposes
which the intelligence that is lodged within it requires to
use it for? God can make a fish; He can make a bird;
but could He, His laws being what they are, make an
animal that might at once swim as well as a fish and fly
as well as a bird? That the intelligence which we must
recognise behind nature is almighty does not mean that it
can contradict itself and stultify its own laws. No; we
are the children of God. IWhat God is, who shall say?
But every man is conscious of this, that behind what he
sees there must have been a Power to bring that forth;
that behind what he knows there is an intelligence far
greater than that which is lodged in the human mind, but
which human intelligence does in some infinitely less de-
gree resemble!)
Yes; we are IKs children. We in some sort have that
power of adapting things which we know must have been
exerted to bring this universe into being. Consider those
great ships for which this port of Glasgow is famous all
over the world ; consider one of those great ocean steamers,
such as the Umbria, or the Etruria, or the City of New
York, or the City of Paris. There, in the ocean which
such ships cleave, are the porpoises, there are the whales,
there are the dolphins, there are all manner of fish. They
are to-day just as they were when Caesar crossed to this
island, just as they were before the first ancient Briton
launched his leather-covered boat. Man to-day can swim
no better than man could swim then, but consider how
by his intelligence he has advanced higher and higher,
how his power of making things has developed, until now
he crosses the great ocean quicker than any fish. Consider
one of those great steamers forcing her way across the
Atlantic Ocean, four hundred miles a day, against a living
SERMON IN GLASGOW 283
gale. Is she not in some sort a product of a godlike
power a machine in some sort like the very fishes that
swim underneath? Here is the distinguishing thing be-
tween man and the animals; here is the broad and im-
passable gulf. Man among all the animals is the only
maker. Man among all the animals is the only one that
possesses that godlike power of adapting means to ends.
And is it possible that man possesses the power of so
adapting means to ends that he can cross the Atlantic in
six days, and yet does not possess the power of abolishing
the conditions that crowd thousands of families into one
room? When we consider the achievements of man and
then look upon the misery that exists to-day in the very
centres of wealth, upon the ignorance, the weakness, the
injustice, that characterise our highest civilisation, we may
know of a surety that it is not the fault of God; it is the
fault of man. May we not know that in that very power
God has given to His children here, in that power of ris-
ing higher, there is involved and necessarily involved
the power of falling lower?
"Our Father!" "Our Father!" Whose? Not my Fa-
ther that is not the prayer. "Our Father" not the
father of any sect, of any class, bat the Father of all men.
The All-Father, the equal Father, the loving Father. He
it is we ask to bring the kingdom. Aye, we ask it with our
lips! We call him "Our Father," the All, the Universal
Father, when we kneel down to pray to Him. But that
He is the All-Father that He is all men's Father we
deny by our institutions. The All-Father who made the
world, the All-Father who created man in His image, and
put him upon the earth to draw his subsistence from its
bosom; to find in the earth all the materials that satisfy
his wants, waiting only to be worked up by his labour!
If He is the All-Father, then are not all human beings,
284 THY KINGDOM COME
all children of the Creator, equally entitled fo tEe use of
His bounty? And, yet, our laws say that this God's
earth is not here for the use of all His children, but only
for the use of a privileged few! There was a little dia-
logue published in the United States, in the West, some
time ago. Possibly you may have seen it. It is between
a boy and his father, when visiting a brick-yard. The
boy looks at the men making bricks, and he asks who those
dirty men are, why they are making up the clay, and what
they are doing it for. He learns, and then he asks about
the owner of the brick-yard. "He does not make any
bricks; he gets his income from letting the other men
make bricks." Then the boy asks about what title there
is to the bricks, and is told that it comes from the men
having made them. Then he wants to know how the man
who owns the brick-yard gets his title to the brick-yard
whether he made it ? "No, he did not make it," the father
replies, "God made it." The boy asks, "Did God make it
for him?" Whereat his father tells him that he must
not ask questions such as that, but that anyhow it is all
right, and it is all in accordance with God's law. Then
the boy, who of course was a Sunday-school boy, and had
been to church, goes off mumbling to himself that God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to
die for all men; but that He so loved the owner of this
brick-yard that he gave him not merely his only begotten
Son but the brick-yard too.
This has a blasphemous sound. But I do not refer to it
lightly. I do not like to speak lightly of sacred subjects.
Yet it is well sometimes that we should be fairly shocked
into thinking. Think of what Christianity teaches us;
think of the life and death of Him who came to die for
men! Think of His teachings, that we are all the equal
children of an Almighty Father, who is no respecter of
SERMON IN GLASGOW 285
persons, and then think of this legalised injustice this
denial of the most important, most fundamental rights of
the children of God, which so many of the very men who
teach Christianity uphold; nay, which they blasphemously
assert is the design and the intent of the Creator himself.
Better to me, higher to me, is the atheist, who says there
is no God, than the professed Christian, who, prating of
the goodness and the Fatherhood of God, tells us in words
as some do, or tells us indirectly as others do, that mil-
lions and millions of human creatures [at this point a
child was heard crying] don't take the little thing out
that millions and millions of human beings, like that little
baby, are being brought into the world daily by the crea-
tive fiat, and no place in this world provided for them.
Aye! tells us that, by the laws of God, the poor are cre-
ated in order that the rich may have the unctuous satis-
faction of dealing out charity to them tells us that a
state of things like that which exists in this city of Glas-
gow, as in other great cities on both sides of the Atlantic,
where little children are dying every day, dying by hun-
dreds of thousands, because, having come into this world
those children of God, with His fiat, by His decree
they find that there is not space on the earth sufficient for
them to live; and are driven out of God's world because
they cannot get room enough, cannot get air enough, can-
not get sustenance enough. I believe in no such god.
If I did, though I might bend before him in fear, I would
hate him in my heart. Not room enough for the little
children here! Look around any country in the civilised
world; is there not room enough and to spare? Not food
enough ? Look at the unemployed labour, look at the idle
acres, look through every country and see natural oppor-
tunities going to waste. Aye ! that Christianity that puts
on the Creator the evil, the injustice, the suffering, the
286 THY KINGDOM COME
degradation that are due to man's injustice, is worse, far
worse, than atheism. That is the blasphemy, and if
there be a sin against the Holy Ghost, that is the unpar-
donable sin!
Why, consider "Give us this day our daily bread." I
stopped in a hotel last week a hydropathic establishment.
A hundred or more guests sat down to table together.
Before they ate anything, a man stood up, and, thanking
God, asked Him to make us all grateful for His bounty.
So at every meal-time such an acknowledgment is made
over well-filled boards. What do men mean by it? Is it
mockery, or what?
If Adam, when he got out of Eden, had sat down and
commenced to pray, he might have prayed till this time
without getting anything to eat unless he went to work for
it. Yet food is God's bounty. He does not bring meat
all cooked, nor vegetables all prepared, nor lay the plates,
nor spread the cloth. What He gives are the opportuni-
ties of producing these things of bringing them forth
by labour. His mandate is it is written in the Holy
Word, it is graven on every fact in nature that by labour
we shall bring forth these things. Nature gives to labour
and to nothing else. What God gives are the natural ele-
ments that are indispensable to labour. He gives them,
not to one, not to some, not to one generation, but to all.
They are His gifts, His bounty to the whole human race.
And yet in all our civilised countries what do we see?
That a few men have appropriated these bounties, claim-
ing them as theirs alone, while the great majority have no
legal right to apply their labour to the reservoirs of nature
and draw from the Creator's bounty. And thus it comes
that all over the civilised world that class that is called
peculiarly the "labouring class" is the poor class, and
that men who do no labour, who pride themselves on never
SERMON IN GLASGOW 287
having done honest labour and on being descended from
fathers and grandfathers who never did a stroke of honest
labour in their lives, revel in a superabundance of all the
things that labour brings forth.
Mr. Abner Thomas, of New York, a strict orthodox
Presbyterian and the son of that Dr. Thomas, famous in
America if not here, the pastor of a Presbyterian church
in Philadelphia, and the author of a commentary on the
Bible that is still a standard work wrote a little while
ago an allegory, called "A Dream." Dozing off in his
chair, he imagined that he was ferried over the Eiver of
Death, and, taking the straight and narrow way, came at
last within sight of the Golden City. A fine-looking old-
gentleman angel opened the wicket, inquired his name,
and let him in; warning him, at the same time, that it
would be better if he chose his company in heaven, and
did not associate with disreputable angels.
"What !" said the new-comer, "is not this heaven ?"
"Yes," said the warden, "but there are a lot of tramp
angels here now."
"How can that be?" said Mr. Thomas, in his dream.
"I thought everybody had plenty in heaven."
"It used to be that way some time ago," said the war-
den ; "and if you wanted to get your harp polished or your
wings combed, you had to do it yourself. But matters
have changed since we adopted the same kind of property
regulations in heaven as you have in civilised countries on
earth, and we find it a great improvement, at least for
the better class."
Then the warden told the new-comer that he had better
decide where he was going to board.
"I don't want to board anywhere," said Thomas; "I
would much rather go over to that beautiful green knoll
and lie down."
288 THY KINGDOM COME
"I would not advise you to do so," said the warden ; "the
angel who owns that knoll does not like to encourage tres-
passing. Some centuries ago, as I told you, we intro-
duced the system of private property in the soil of heaven.
So we divided the land up. It is all private property
now."
"I hope I was considered in that division ?" said Thomas.
"No," said the warden, "you were not ; but if you go to
work, and are saving, you can easily earn enough in a
couple of centuries to buy yourself a nice piece. You get
a pair of wings free as you come in, and you will have
no difficulty in hypothecating them for a few days' board
until you find work. But I would advise you to be quick
about it, as our population is constantly increasing, and
there is a great surplus of labour. Tramp angels are, in
fact, becoming quite a nuisance."
"What shall I go to work at?" said Thomas.
"Our principal industries," responded the warden, "are
the making of harps and crowns and the growing of flow-
ers; but there are many opportunities for employment in
personal service."
"I love flowers," said Thomas, "and I will go to work
growing them. There is a beautiful piece of land over
there that nobody seems to be using. I will go to work
on that."
"You can't do that," said the warden. "That property
belongs to one of our most far-sighted angels, who has got
very rich by the advance of land values, and who is holding
that piece for a rise. You will have to buy it or feu it
before you can work on it, and you can't do that yet."
And so the story goes on to describe how the roads of
heaven, the streets of the New Jerusalem, were filled with
disconsolate tramp angels, who had pawned their wings,
and were outcasts in heaven itself.
SERMON IN GLASGOW 289
You laugh, and it is ridiculous. But there is a moral
in it that is worth serious thought. Is not the ridiculous-
ness in our imagining the application to God's heaven of
the same rules of division that we apply to God's earth,
even while we pray that His will may be done on earth
as it is done in heaven ?
Really, if you come to think of it, it is impossible to
imagine heaven treated as we treat this earth, without
seeing that, no matter how salubrious were its air, no
matter how bright the light that filled it, no matter how
magnificent its vegetable growth, there would be poverty,
and suffering, and a division of classes in heaven itself,
if heaven were parcelled out as we have parcelled out the
earth. And, conversely, if men in this life were to act
towards each other as we must suppose the inhabitants of
heaven to do, would not this earth be a very heaven ? "Thy
kingdom come." No one can think of the kingdom for
which the prayer asks without feeling that it must be a
kingdom of justice and equality not necessarily of equal-
ity in condition, but of equality in opportunity. And no
one can think of it without seeing that a very kingdom
of God might be brought on this earth if men would but
seek to do justice if men would but acknowledge the
essential principle of Christianity, that of doing to others
as we would have others do to us, and of recognising that
we are all here equally the children of the one Father,
equally entitled to share His bounty, equally entitled to
live our lives and develop our faculties, and to apply our
labour to the raw material that He has provided. Aye!
and when a man sees that, then there arises that hope of
the coming of the kingdom that carried the Gospel through
the streets of Rome, that carried it into pagan lands, that
made it, against the most ferocious persecution, the domi-
nant religion of the world. Early Christianity did not
290 THY KINGDOM COME
mean, in its prayer for the coming of Christ's kingdom,
a kingdom in heaven, but a kingdom on earth. If Christ
had simply preached of the other world, the high priests
and the Pharisees would not have persecuted Him, the
Roman soldiery would not have nailed His hands to the
cross. Why was Christianity persecuted? Why were its
first professors thrown to wild beasts, burned to light a
tyrant's gardens, hounded, tortured, put to death, by all
the cruel devices that a devilish ingenuity could suggest?
Not that it was a new religion, referring only to the
future. Rome was tolerant of all religions. It was the
boast of Rome that all gods were sheltered in her Pan-
theon; it was the boast of Rome that she made no inter-
ference with the religions of peoples she conquered. What
was persecuted was a great movement for social reform
the Gospel of Justice heard by common fishermen with
gladness, carried by labourers and slaves into the Imperial
City. The Christian revelation was the doctrine of human
equality, of the fatherhood of God, of the brotherhood of
man. It struck at the very basis of that monstrous tyr-
anny that then oppressed the civilised world; it struck at
the fetters of the captive, at the bonds of the slave, at
that monstrous injustice which allowed a class to revel
on the proceeds of labour, while those who did the labour
fared scantily. That is the reason why early Christianity
was persecuted. And when they could no longer hold it
down, then the privileged classes adopted and perverted the
new faith, and it became, in its very triumph, not the
pure Christianity of the early days, but a Christianity that,
to a very great extent, was the servitor of the privileged
classes. And, instead of preaching the essential father-
hood of God, the essential brotherhood of man, its high
priests engrafted on the pure truths of the Gospel the
blasphemous doctrine that the All-Father is a respecter of
SERMON IN GLASGOW 291
persons, and that by His will and on His mandate is
founded that monstrous injustice which condemns the
great mass of humanity to unrequited hard toil. There
has been no failure of Christianity. The failure has been
in the sort of Christianity that has been preached.
Nothing is clearer than that if we are all children of the
universal Father, we are all entitled to the use of His
bounty. No one dare deny that proposition. But the
men who set their faces against its carrying out say, virtu-
ally: "Oh, yes! that is true; but it is impracticable to
carry it into effect!" Just think of what this means:
This is God's world, and yet such men say that it is a
world in which God's justice, God's will, cannot be car-
ried into effect. What a monstrous absurdity, what a
monstrous blasphemy! If the loving God does reign, if
His laws are the laws not merely of the physical but of the
moral universe, there must be a way of carrying His will
into effect, there must be a way of doing equal justice to
all His creatures.
And so there is. The men who deny that there is any
practical way of carrying into effect the perception that
all human beings are equally children of the Creator, shut
their eyes to the plain and obvious way. It is of course
impossible in a civilisation like this of ours to divide land
up into equal pieces. Such a system might have done in
a primitive state of society, among a people such as that
for whom the Mosaic code was framed. It would not do
in this state of society. We have progressed in civilisation
beyond such rude devices, but we have not, nor can we, pro-
gress beyond God's providence. There is a way of securing
the equal rights of all, not by dividing land up into equal
pieces, but by taking for the use of all that value which
attaches to land, not as the result of individual labour
upon it, but as the result of the increase of population,
292 THY KINGDOM COME
and the improvement of society. In that way everyone
would be equally interested in the land of his native coun-
try. If he used a more valuable piece than his neighbour
he would pay a heavier tax. If he made no direct use
of any land he would still be an equal sharer in the reve-
nue. Here is the simple way. Aye ! and it is a way that
impresses the man who really sees its beauty with a more
vivid idea of the beneficence of the providence of the
All-Father than it seems to me anything else. One can-
not look, it seems to me, through nature; whether he look
at the stars through a telescope, or have the microscope
reveal to him those worlds that we find in drops of water,
whether he consider the human frame, the adjustments of
the animal kingdom, or of any department of physical
nature, he must see that there has been a contriver and
adjuster, that there has been an intent. So strong is that
feeling, so natural is it to our minds, that even men who
deny the creative intelligence are forced, in spite of them-
selves, to talk of intent. The claws of one animal were
intended, we say, to climb with; the fins of another to
propel it through the water. Yet, while in looking through
the laws of physical nature, we find intelligence, we do not
so clearly find beneficence. But in the great social fact
that as population increases, and improvements are made,
and men progress in civilisation, the one thing that rises
everywhere in value is land, we may see a proof of the
beneficence of the Creator.
Why, consider what it means ! It means that the social
laws are adapted to progressive man! In a rude state of
society where there is no need for common expenditure,
there is no value attaching to land. The only value which
attaches there is to things produced by labour. But as
civilisation goes on, as a division of labour takes place, as
men come into centres, so do the common wants increase
SEEMON IN GLASGOW 293
and so does the necessity for public revenue arise. And
so in that value which attaches to land, not by reason of
anything the individual does, but by reason of the growth
of the community, is a provision, intended we may safely
say intended to meet that social want. Just as society
grows, so do the common needs grow, and so grows this
value attaching to land the provided fund from which
they can be supplied. Here is a value that may be taken,
without impairing the right of property, without taking
anything from the producer, without lessening the natu-
ral rewards of industry and thrift. Nay, here is a value
that must be taken if we would prevent the most mon-
strous of all monopolies. What does all this mean? It
means that in the creative plan, the natural advance in
civilisation is an advance to a greater and greater equality
instead of to a more and more monstrous inequality.
"Thy kingdom come!" It may be that we shall never
see it. But to the man who realises that it may come, to
the man who realises that it is given to him to work for
the coming of God's kingdom on earth, there is for him,
though he never see that kingdom here, an exceeding great
reward the reward of feeling that he, little and insig-
nificant though he may be, is doing something to help the
coming of that kingdom, doing something on the side of
that good power that shows all through the universe, doing
something to tear this world from the devil's grasp, and
make it the kingdom of righteousness. Aye, and though it
should never come, yet those who struggle for it know in
the depths of their hearts that it must exist somewhere
they know that somewhere, some time, those who strive
their best for the coming of the kingdom, will be welcomed
into the kingdom, and that to them, even to them, some
time, somewhere, the King shall say : "Well done, thou good
and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
JUSTICE THE OBJECT TAXATION
THE MEANS
JUSTICE THE OBJECT TAXATION
THE MEANS.
[Address in Metropolitan Hall, San Francisco, February 4, 1890, on
the way to the Australian lecture tour.]
Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
AS ! rise on this stage the past comes back to me.
JLJL Twelve years ago it seems so far and yet so near
twelve years ago, when I was halt of speech, when to face
an audience, it seemed to me, required as much courage
as it would to face a battery I stood on this platform to
speak my first word in the cause for which I stand now.
I stood on this platform to see, instead of the audience
that greets me to-night, a beggarly array of empty benches.
It.is a long time. Many times, in this country and in the
dear old world, I have stood before far greater audiences
than this ; I have been greeted by thousands who never saw
me before, as they would greet a friend long known and
well loved ; but I don't think it ever gave me such pleasure
to stand before an audience as it does here to-night.
For years and years I have been promising myself to
come back to San Francisco. I have crossed the Atlantic
five times before I could fulfil that desire. I am here
now to go in a few days to the antipodes ; perhaps I may
never return who knows? If I live I shall try to. But
San Francisco, though I never again can be a citizen of
297
298 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
California though my path in life seems away so far
that California seems but a ridge on the horizon my heart
has always turned, and always will turn, to the home of
my youth, to the city in which I grew up, to the city
in which I have found so many warm friends to the
country in which I married, and in which my children
were born. Always it will seem to me home; and it is
sweet to the man long absent to be welcomed home.
Aye, and you men, old friends tried and true you men
who rallied in the early times to our movement, when we
could count each other almost upon one's fingers I come
back to you to say that at last our triumph is but a matter
of time; to say that never in the history of thought has
a movement come forward so fast and so well.
Ten years ago, when I left, I was anything but hopeful ;
ten years ago I would not have dared to say that in any
time to which I might live, we should see the beginning of
this great struggle. Nor have I cared. My part (and I
think I can speak for every man who is enlisted in this
movement) my part has never been to predict results.
Our feeling is the feeling of the great stoic emperor, "that
is the business of Jupiter; not ours." Ours to do the
work as we may; ours to plant the seed which is to give
the results. But now, so well forward is this cause, so
many strong advocates has it in every land, so far has it
won its way, that now it makes no difference who lives or
who dies, who goes forward or who hangs back. Now the
currents of the time are setting in our favour. At last
at last we can say with certainty that it will only be a little
while before all over the English speaking world, and
then, not long after, over the rest of the civilised world,
the great truth will be acknowledged that no human child
comes into this world without coming into his equal right
to all.
TAXATION THE MEANS 299
I am talking to-night to my friends; I am talking to-
night to those who are as earnest and well informed in
this cause as I am; but I am also probably talking to
many who have but vague ideas concerning it. Let me,
since I am in San Francisco, speak of the genesis of my
own thought. I came out here at an early age, and knew
nothing whatever of political economy. I had never
thought upon any social problem. The first time I ever
recollect talking on such a subject was one day, when I
was about eighteen, after I had first come to this country,
sitting on the deck of a topsail schooner with a lot of
miners on the way to the Frazer Kiver; and we got talk-
ing about the Chinese, and I ventured to say ventured
to ask what harm the Chinese were doing here, if, as these
miners said, they were only working the cheap diggings?
And one old miner turned to me, and said, "No harm
now; but it will not be always that wages are as high as
they are to-day in California. As the country grows, as
people come in, wages will go down, and some day or other
white men will be glad to get these diggings that the
Chinamen are now working." And I well remember how
it impressed me, the idea that as the country grew in all
that we are hoping that it might grow, the condition of
those who had to work for their living must grow, not
better, but worse.
And I remember, after having come down from the
country, sitting one Christmas eve in the gallery of the old
American Theatre, among the gods, when a new drop cur-
tain fell, and we all sprang to our feet, for on that curtain
was painted what was then a dream of the far future, the
overland train coming into San Francisco; and after we
had shouted ourselves hoarse, I began to think what good
is it going to be to men like me ? those who have nothing
but their labour? I saw that thought grow and growj
300 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
we were all all of us, rich and poor hoping for the
development of California, proud of her future greatness,
looking forward to the time when San Francisco was to
be one of the great capitals of the world ; looking forward
to the time when this great empire of the West was to
count her population by millions, and underneath it all
came to me what that miner told. What about the masses
of the people?
When, after growing up here, I went across the conti-
nent, before the continental railway was completed, and in
the streets of New York for the first time realised the
contrasts of wealth and want that are to be found in a
great city; saw those sights that, to the man who comes
from the West, affright and appal, the problem grew upon
me. I said to myself there must be some reason for this;
there must be some remedy for this, and I will not rest
until I have found the one and discovered the other. At
last it came clear as the stars of a bright midnight. I saw
what was the cause ; I saw what was the cure. I saw noth-
ing that was new. Truth is never new.
When I lectured for the first time in Oxford, a pro-
fessor of political economy in that great university met
and opposed me, and he said, "I have read Mr. George's
book from one end to the other; what I have to say is
this: there is nothing in it both new and true; what is
true is not new, and what is new is not true." I an-
swered him: "I accept your statement. It is a correct
criticism ; social truth never is, never can be new ; and the
truth for which we stand is an old truth; a truth seen by
men everywhere, recognised by the first perceptions of all
men; only overclouded, only obscured in our modern times
by force and fraud."
So it is. I notice that one of our papers gives to me the
character of an apostle and speaks of my comrades as my
TAXATION THE MEANS 301
disciples. It is not so. I have done no more to any man
than point out God's stars. They were there for him to
see. Millions and millions of years have seen them pre-
cisely as I saw them ; every man may see them who will look.
When I first went to Ireland I got a note from the most
venerable of the Irish bishops, Dr. Dougan, bishop of
Waterford, asking me to come and have a private talk with
him. I went, and the old man white haired, ruddy
cheeked, like Willegis, Wagner's son the man who under
the mitre of the bishop still keeps the fresh true heart of
the Irish peasant commenced, with the privilege of age,
catechising me. He said: "What is this new doctrine
that your name is associated with ? You say that all men
have equal rights to land ; but all men can't use land ; how
do you propose to divide up ?" And then he went on from
one question to another, bringing all the arguments, all
the objections that spring up in the minds of men, just as
they probably sprung up in the minds of many who are
here just as they spring up in the mind of any man
all the objections that are so current ; and I answered them
all. Finally rising, without saying anything, the old man
stretched out his hand. "God bless you, my son; I have
asked you to come here and answer my questions, because
I wanted to see if you could defend your faith. Go on;
go on. What you say to me is nothing new; it is the
old truth that through persecution and against force,
though trodden down, our people have always held. What
you say is not new to me. When a little boy, sitting by
the peat fire in the west of Ireland, I have heard the same
truths from the lips of men who could not speak a word
of English. Go on; the time has come; I, an old man,
tell you that there is no earthly power that can stop this
movement." And the years have shown that the venerable
bishop was right.
302 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
What is the cause of this dark shadow that seems to
accompany modern civilisation of this existence of bitter
want in the very centres of life of the failure of all our
modern advances of all the wonderful discoveries and
inventions that have made this wonderful nineteenth cen-
tury, now drawing to a close, so prominent among all
the centuries? What is the reason, that as we add to
productive power that is, invention after invention
multiplying by the hundredfold and the thousandfold the
power of human hands to supply human wants; that
all over the civilised world, and especially in this great
country, pauperism is increasing, and insanity is in-
creasing, and criminality is increasing; that marriages are
decreasing; that the struggle for existence seems not less,
but more and more intense what is the reason? There
must be but one of two answers. Either it is in accord-
ance with the will of God, either it is the result of natural
law, or it is because of our ignorance and selfishness of
our faith that we evade the natural law. We single taxers
point to the one sufficient cause. Wherever these phe-
nomena are to be seen the natural element on which and
from which all men must live, if they are to live at all, is
the property, not of the whole people, but of the few. We
point to the adequate cure; the restoration to all men of
their natural rights in the soil the assurance to every
child, as it comes into the world, of the enjoyment of
its natural heritage the right to live, the right to work,
the right to enjoy the fruits of its work ; rights necessarily
conditioned upon the equal right to that element which is
the basis of production; that element which is indispen-
sable to human life; that element which is the standing
place, the storehouse, the reservoir of men; that element
from which all that is physical in man is drawn. For
our bodies, themselves, they come from the land, and to
TAXATION THE MEANS 303
the land they return again; we, ourselves, are as much
children of the soil as are the flowers or the trees.
We call ourselves to-day single-tax men. It is only
recently, within a few years, that we have adopted that
title. It is not a new title ; over a hundred years ago there
arose in France a school of philosophers and patriots
Quesnay, Turgot, Condorcet, Dupont the most illustrious
men of their time, who advocated, as the cure for all so-
cial ills, the impot unique, the single tax.
We here, on this western continent, as the nineteenth
century draws to a close, have revived the same name, and
we find enormous advantages in it.
We used to be confronted constantly by the question:
"Well, after you have divided the land up, how do you
propose to keep it divided?" We don't meet that ques-
tion now. The single tax has, at least, this great merit:
it suggests our method; it shows the way we would travel
the simple way of abolishing all taxes, save one tax upon
land values.
Now mark, one tax upon land values. We do not pro-
pose a tax upon land, as people who misapprehend us con-
stantly say. We do not propose a tax upon land; we pro-
pose a tax upon land values, or what in the terminology
of political economy is termed rent; that is to say, the
value which attaches to land irrespective of any improve-
ments in or on it; that value which attaches to land, not
by reasen of anything that the user or improver of land
does not by reason of any individual exertion of labour,
but by reason of the growth and improvement of the com-
munity. A tax that will take up what John Stuart Mill
called the unearned increment; that is to say, that incre-
ment of wealth which comes to the owner of land, not as a
user; that comes whether he be a resident or an absentee;
whether he be engaged in the active business of life;
304 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
whether he be an idiot and whether he be a child; that
growth of value that we have seen in our own times so
astonishingly great in this city; that has made sand lots,
lying in the same condition that they were thousands of
years ago, worth enormous sums, without any one putting
any exertion of labour or any expenditure of capital upon
them. Now, the distinction between a tax on land and a
tax on land values may at first seem an idle one, but it is
a most important one. A tax on land that is to say, a
tax upon all land would ultimately become a condition
to the use of land ; would therefore fall upon labour, would
increase prices, and be borne by the general community.
But a tax on land values cannot fall on all land, because
all land is not of value; it can only fall on valuable land,
and on valuable land in proportion to its value ; therefore,
it can no more become a tax on labour than can a tax upon
income or a tax upon the value of special privileges of any
kind. It can merely take from the individual, not the
earnings of the individual, but that premium which, as
society grows and improves, attaches to the use of land of
superior quality.
Now see, take it in its lowest aspect take it as a mere
fiscal change, and see how in accord with every dictate of
expediency, with every principle of justice, is the single
tax. We have invented and invented, improved and im-
proved, yet the great fact is, that to-day we have not wealth
enough. There are in the United States some few men
richer than it is wholesome for men to be. But the great
masses of our people are not rich as civilised Americans at
the close of the nineteenth century ought to be. The
great mass of our people only manage by hard work to live.
The great mass of our people don't get the comforts, the
refinements, the luxuries that in the present age of the
world everyone ought to have. All over this country there
TAXATION THE MEANS 305
is a fierce struggle for existence. Only as I came to the
door of this building, a beggar stopped me on the street
a young man; he said he could not find work. I don't
know, perhaps he lied. I do know that when a man once
commences upon that course there is rapid demorali-
sation. I do know that indiscriminate charity is apt to
injure far more than it can help; yet I gave him some-
thing, for I did not know but that his story might be true.
This is the shore of the Pacific. This is the Golden
Gate. The westward march of our race is terminated by
the ocean, which has the ancient East on its further shore ;
no further can we go. And yet here, in this new country,
in this golden State, there are men ready to work, anxious
to work, and yet who, for longer or shorter periods, can-
not get the opportunity to work. The further east you
go, the worse it grows. To the man from San Francisco,
who has never realised it before, there are sights in New
York that are appalling. Cross the ocean to the greater
city the metropolis of the civilised world and there pov-
erty is deeper and darker yet. What is the reason? If
there were more wealth wanted, why don't they get more?
We cannot cure this evil of poverty by dividing up wealth,
monstrous as are some of the fortunes that have arisen;
and fortunes are concentrating in this country faster than
ever before in the history of the world. But divide them
and still there would not be enough. But if men want
more wealth, why don't they get more wealth? If we, as
people, want more wealth (and certainly ninety-nine out
of every hundred Americans do want more wealth), why
are some suffering for the opportunities of employment?
Others are at work without making a living. But ninety-
nine out of a hundred have some legitimate desire that
they would like to gratify. Well, in the first place, if we
want more wealth if we call that country prosperous
306 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
which is increasing in wealth is it not a piece of stupidity
that we should tax men for producing wealth?
Yet that is what we are doing to-day. Bring almost
any article of wealth to this country from a foreign coun-
try, and you are confronted at once with a tax. Is it not
from a common-sense standpoint a stupid thing, if we
want more wealth if the prosperous country is the coun-
try that increases in wealth, why in Heaven's name should
we put up a barrier against the men who want to bring
wealth into this country? We want more dry-goods (if
you don't know, your wives surely will tell you) . We want
more clothing; more sugar; more of all sorts of the good
things that are called "goods"; and yet by this system of
taxation we virtually put up a high fence around the coun-
try to keep out these very things. We tax that convenient
man who brings any goods into the country.
If wealth be a good thing; if the country be a pros-
perous country that is, increasing in wealth well, surely,
if we propose to restrict trade at all, the wise thing would
be to put the taxes on the men who are taking goods out
of the country, not upon those who are bringing goods
into the country. We single-tax men would sweep away
all these barriers. We would try to keep out small-pox
and cholera and vermin and plagues. But we would wel-
come all the goods that anybody wanted to send us, that
anybody wanted to bring home. We say it is stupid, if
we want more wealth, to prevent people from bringing
wealth to the country. We say, also, that it is just as
stupid to tax the men who produce wealth within the
country.
Here we say we want more manufactures. The Ameri-
can people submit to enormous taxes for the purpose of
building up factories; yet when a man builds a factory,
what do we do ? Why, we come down and tax him for it.
TAXATION THE MEANS 307
We certainly want more houses. There are a few people
who have bigger houses than any one reasonable family
can occupy; but the great mass of the American people
are underhoused. There, in the city of New York, the
plight to which all American cities are tending, you will
find that sixty-five per cent, of the population are living
two families or more to the single floor. Yet let a man
put up a house in any part of the United States, and
down comes the tax-gatherer to demand a fine for having
put up a house.
We say that industry is a good thing, and that thrift is
a good thing; and there are some people who say that if
a man be industrious, and if a man be thrifty, he can
easily accumulate wealth. Whether that be true or not,
industry is certainly a good thing, and thrift is certainly
a good thing. But what do we do if a man be industrious ?
If he produces wealth enough and by thrift accumulates
wealth at all, down comes the tax-gatherer to demand a
part of it. We say that that is stupid; that we ought not
by our taxes to repress the production of wealth ; that when
a farmer reclaims a strip of the desert and turns it into
an orchard and a vineyard, or on the prairie produces crops
and feeds fine cattle, that, so far from being taxed and
fined for having done these things, we ought to be glad
that he has done it; that we ought to welcome all en-
ergy; that no man can produce wealth for himself with-
out augmenting the general stock, without making the
whole country richer.
We impose some taxes for the purpose of getting rid of
things, for the purpose of having fewer of the things that
we tax. In most of our counties and States when dogs
become too numerous, there is imposed a dog tax to get
rid of dogs. Well, we impose a dog tax to get rid of dogs,
and why should we impose a house tax unless we want
308 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
to get rid of houses? Why should we impose a farm tax
unless we want fewer farms? Why should we tax any
man for having exerted industry or energy in the pro-
duction of wealth? Tax houses and there will certainly
be fewer houses.
If you go east to the city of Brooklyn, you may see that
demonstrated to the eye. What first surprised me in the
city of churches was to see long rows of buildings, of
brown-stone houses, two stories in front and three stories
behind; or three stories in front and four stories behind;
and I thought for a moment what foolish idea ever entered
the brains of those men, to have left out half an upper
story in that way? I found out by inquiring that it was
all on account of the tax. In the city of Brooklyn, the
assessor is only supposed to look in front, and so by mak-
ing the house in that way, you can get a three-story build-
ing behind with only a two-story front.
So in England, in the old houses, there you may see the
result of the window tax. The window tax is in force
in France to-day, and in France there are two hundred
thousand houses, according to the census, that have no
window at all in order to escape the tax.
So if you tax ships there will be fewer ships. What
old San Franciscan cannot remember the day when in
this harbour might be seen the graceful forms and lofty
spars of so many American ships, the fleetest and best in
the world? I well remember the day that no American,
who crossed to Europe, thought of crossing on any other
than an American ship. To-day, if you wish to cross the
Atlantic, you must cross on a British steamer, unless you
choose to cross on a German or French steamer. On the
high seas of the world the American ship is becoming al-
most as rare as a Chinese junk. Why? Simply because
we have taxed our ships out of existence. There is the
TAXATION THE MEANS 309
proof. Tax buildings, and you will have fewer or poorer
buildings; tax farms, and you will have fewer farms and
more wilderness; tax ships, there will be fewer and poorer
ships; and tax capital, and there will be less capital; but
you may tax land values all you please and there will not
be a square inch the less land. Tax land values all you
please up to the point of taking the full annual value
up to the point of making mere ownership in land utterly
unprofitable, so that no one will want merely to own land
what will be the result? Simply that land will be the
easier had by the user. Simply that the land will be-
come valueless to the mere speculator to the dog in the
manger, who wants merely to hold and not to use; to the
forestaller, who wants merely to reap where others have
sown, to gather to himself the products of labour, without
doing labour. Tax land values, and you leave to produc-
tion its full rewards, and you open to producers natural
opportunities.
Take it from any aspect you please, take it on its polit-
ical side (and surely that is a side that we ought to
consider clearly and plainly), while we boast of our demo-
cratic republicanism, democratic republicanism is passing
away. I need not say that to you, men of San Francisco
San Francisco ruled by a boss; to you men of Cali-
fornia, where you send to the Senate the citizen who domi-
nates the State as no duke could rule. Look at the corrup-
tion that is tearing the heart out of our institutions ; where
does it come from ? Whence this demoralisation? Largely
from our system of taxation. What does our present sys-
tem of taxation do? Why, it is a tax upon conscience; a
tax upon truth; a tax upon respect to law; it offers a
premium for lying and perjury and evasion; it fosters
and stimulates bribery and corruption.
Go over to Europe ; travel around for a while among the
310 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
effete monarchies of the old world, and what you see will
make you appreciate democracy; then come home. At
length you take a pilot. There is the low-lying land upon
the horizon the land of the free and the home of the
brave and if you are entering the port of New York,
as most Americans do, finally you will see that great statue,
presented by a citizen of the French republic the statue
of Liberty holding aloft a light that talks to the world.
Just as you get to see that statue clearly, Liberty enlight-
ening the world, you will be called down by a custom-house
officer to form in line, men and women, and to call on
God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, to bear witness
that you have nothing dutiable in your trunks or in your
carpet sacks, or rolled up in your shawl straps; and you
take that oath; the United States of America compels
you to. But the United States of America don't leave you
there; the very next thing, another official steps up to de-
mand your keys and to open your box or package and to
look through it for things dutiable, unless, as may be, his
eyes are stopped by a greenback. Well, now, everyone
who has made that visit does know that most passengers
have things dutiable; and I notice that the protectionists
have them fully as often as the free traders. I have never
yet seen a consistent protectionist. There may be pro-
tectionists who would not smuggle when they get a chance ;
but I think they must be very, very few. Go right
through that daily stream from the very institution of
laws down to the very lobby that gathers at Washington
when it is proposed to repeal a tax, bullying, bragging,
stealing to keep that particular tax on the American peo-
ple, so patriotic are they; very much interested in protect-
ing the poor workingman.
See the private interests that are enlisted in merely the
petty evasions of law that go on by passengers; but the
TAXATION THE MEANS 311
gigantic smuggling, the under-valuation frauds of all
kinds; the private interests that are enlisted in class; that
enter the primaries ; that surround our national legislature
with lobbyists that in every presidential election put their
millions into the corruption fund. Does not the whole
system reek with fraud and corruption? Is it not a dis-
crimination against honesty, against conscience, a pre-
mium on evasion and fraud? Come into our States and
look at their taxes, or look, if you please, by the way, on
the internal revenue. You remember how, when it was
proposed to abolish that stamp tax on matches, that was
in force during the war, how the match combination fought
hard and fought long against the repeal of that tax. You
remember how the whiskey ring spent its money to pre-
vent the reduction of the whiskey tax; how to-day it
stands ready to spend money to keep up the present tax.
Go then into our States; take our system of direct taxa-
tion; what do you find? We pretend to tax all property;
many of our taxes are especially framed to get at rich
men ; what is the result ? Why, all over the United States
the very rich men simply walk from under those taxes.
All over the United States the attempt to tax men upon
their wealth is a farce and a fraud. If there were no
other reason, this would be a sufficient reason why all such
taxes should be abolished. In their very nature they per-
mit evasion, law breaking, perjury, bribery and corrup-
tion ; but the tax on land values, it has at least this advan-
tage: land cannot be hid; it cannot be carried off; it
always remains, so to speak, out of doors. If you don't
see the land you know that it is there; and of all values
the value which attaches to land is the most definite, the
most easily ascertained. Why, I may go into San Fran-
cisco, into Denver, into New York, into Boston, into any
city where I am totally unacquainted, and if one offers
312 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
to sell me a lot, I can go to any real-estate dealer and say :
"Here is a lot of such a frontage and such a depth, and
on such a street; what is it worth?" He will tell me
closely. How can he tell me the value of the house that
is upon it? Not without a close examination; still less,
how can any one tell me, without the examination of ex-
perts, what is the value of the things contained in that
house, if it be a large and fine house; and still less, how
can any one tell me the value of the various things that
the man who lives in that house may own. But land
there it is. You can put up a simple little sign on every
lot, or upon every piece of agricultural land, saying that
this tract is of such a frontage and of such a depth, hav-
ing such an area, and it belongs to such a person, and is
assessed at so much, and you have published information
checking the assessment; you have the assessment on a
value that can be ascertained more definitely, more cer-
tainly than any other value; substitute that tax for all
the many taxes that we now impose. See the gain in
morals ; see the gain in economy ! With what a horde of
tax-gathering and tax-assessing officials could we dispense ;
what swearing and examination and nosing around to find
out what men have or what they are worth !
Now take the matter of justice. We single-tax men are
not deniers of the rights of property ; but, on the contrary,
we are the upholders and defenders of the rights of prop-
erty. We say that the great French convention was right
when it asserted the sacred right of property; that there
is a right of property, that comes from no human law,
which antedates all human enactments; that is a clear
genesis; that which a man produces, that which by his
exertion he brings from the reservoir of nature and adapts
to forms suited to gratify the wants of man that is his;
his as against all the world. If I by my labour catch a
TAXATION THE MEANS 313
fish, that fish is and ought to be mine; if I make a ma-
chine, that machine belongs to me ; that is the sacred right
of property. There is a clear title from the producer,
resting upon the right of the individual to himself, to
the use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of the results
of his exertion; the right that he may give, that he may
sell, that he may bequeath.
What do we do when we tax a building? When a man
puts up a building by his own exertion, or it comes to him
through the transfer of the right that others have to
their exertion down comes the community and says, vir-
tually, you must give us a portion of that building. For
where a man honestly earns and accumulates wealth, down
come the tax-gatherers and demand every year a portion
of those earnings. Now, is it not as much an impairment
of the right of property to take a lamb as to take a sheep ?
To take five per cent, or twenty per cent., as to take a
hundred per cent.? We should leave the whole of the
value produced by individual exertion to the individual.
We should respect the rights of property not to any lim-
ited extent, but fully. We should leave to him who pro-
duces wealth, to him to whom the title of the producer
passed, all that wealth. No matter what be its form, it
belongs to the individual. We should take for the uses
of the community the value of land for the same reason.
It belongs to the community because the growth of the
community produces it.
What is the reason that land in San Francisco to-day
is worth so much more than it was in 1860 or 1850 ? Why
is it that barren sand, then worth nothing, has now be-
come so enormously valuable? On account of what the
owners have done? No. It is because of the growth of
the whole people. It is because San Francisco is a larger
city; it is because you all are here. Every child that is
314 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
born; every family that comes and settles; every man tHat
does anything to improve the city, adds to the value of
land. It is a value that springs from the growth of the
community. Therefore, for the very same reason of jus-
tice, the very same respect for the rights of property which
induces us to leave to the individual all that individual
effort produces, we should take for the community that
value which arises by the growth and improvement of the
community.
What would be the direct result? Take this city, this
State or the whole country; abolish all taxes on the pro-
duction of wealth; let every man be free to plough, to
sow, to build, in any way add to the common stock with-
out being fined one penny. Say to every man who would
improve, who would in any way add to the production of
wealth: Go ahead, go ahead; produce, accumulate all you
please; add to the common stock in any way you choose;
you shall have it all; we shall not fine or tax you one
penny. What would be the result of abolishing all these
taxes that now depress industry; that now fall on labour;
that now lessen the profits of those who are adding to the
general wealth? Evidently to stimulate production; to
increase wealth; to bring new life into every vocation of
industry. And mark the results.
On the other side what would be the effect when abolish-
ing all these taxes that now fall on labour or the products
of labour, if we were to resort for public revenue to a
tax upon land values; a tax that would fall on the owner
of a vacant lot just as heavily as upon the man who has
improved a lot by putting up a house; that would fall on
the speculator who is holding 160 acres of agricultural
land idle, waiting for a tenant or a purchaser, as heavily
as it would fall upon the farmer who had made the 160
acres bloom? Why, the result would be everywhere that
TAXATION THE MEANS 315
the dog in the manger would be checked; for the result
everywhere would be that the men who are holding natural
opportunities, not for use but simply for profit, by de-
manding a price of those who must use them, would have
either to use their land or give way to somebody who
would.
Everywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the
lakes to the gulf, opportunities would be opened to labour ;
there would come into the labour market that demand for
the products of labour that never can be satisfied the de-
mands of labour itself. We should cease to hear of the
labour question. The notion of a man ready to work,
anxious to work, and yet not able to find work, would be
forgotten, would be a story of the misty past.
Why, look at it here to-day, in this new country, where
there are as yet only sixty-five millions of us scattered over
a territory that in the present stage of the arts is suffi-
cient to support in comfort a thousand millions; yet we
are actually thinking and talking as if there were too
many people in the country. We want more wealth. Why
don't we get it ? Is any factor of production short ? What
are the factors of production? Labour, capital and land;
but to put them in the order of their importance: land,
labour, capital. We want more wealth ; what is the result ?
Is it in labour; is there not enough labour? No. From
all parts of the United States we hear of what seems like
a surplus of labour. We have actually got to thinking
that the man who gives another employment is giving
him a boon. Is there any scarcity of capital? Why, so
abundant is capital to-day that United States bonds,
bought at the current rate, will only yield a fraction over
two per cent, per annum. So abundant is capital that there
can be no doubt that a government loan could be floated
to-day at two per cent., and little doubt but that it would
316 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
soon command a premium. So abundant is capital that
all over the country it is pressing for remunerative em-
ployment. If the limitation is not in labour and not in
capital, it must be in land.
But there is no scarcity of land from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, for there you will find unused or only half-
used land. Aye, even where population is densest. Have
you not land enough in San Francisco ? Go to that great
city of New York, where people are crowded together so
closely, the great majority of them, that physical health
and moral health are in many cases alike impossible;
where, in spite of the fact that the rich men of the whole
country gravitate there, only four per cent, of the fami-
lies live in separate houses of their own, and sixty-five
per cent, of the families are crowded two or more to the
single floor crowded together layer on layer, in many
places, like sardines in a box. Yet, why are there not
more houses there ? Not because there is not enough capi-
tal to build more houses, and yet not because there is not
land enough on which to build more houses. To-day one
half of the area of New York City is unbuilt upon is ab-
solutely unused. When there is such a pressure, why don't
people go to these vacant lots and build there? Because,
though unused, the land is owned; because, speculating
upon the future growth of the city, the owners of those
vacant lots demand thousands of dollars before they will
permit any one to put a house upon them.
What you see in New York, you may see everywhere.
Come into the coal fields of Pennsylvania; there you will
frequently find thousands and thousands of miners unable
to work, either locked out by their employers, or striking
as a last resource against their pitiful wages being cut
down a little more.
Why should there be such a struggle ? Why don't these
TAXATION THE MEANS 317
men go to work and take coal for themselves? Not be-
cause there is not coal land enough in those mining dis-
tricts. The parts that are worked are small as compared
to her whole coal deposits. The land is not all used, but
it is all owned, and before the men who would like to go
to work can get the opportunity to work the raw material,
they must pay thousands of dollars per acre for land that
is only nominally taxed to its owner.
Go west, find people filing along, crowding around every
Indian reservation that is about to be opened; travelling
through unused and half-used land in order to get an
opportunity to settle like men swimming a river in order
to get a drink. Come to this State, ride through your
great valleys, see those vast expanses, only dotted here
and there by a house, without a tree; those great ranches,
cultivated as they are cultivated by blanket men, who have
a little work in ploughing time, and some more work in
reaping time, and who then, after being fed almost like
animals, and sheltered worse than valuable animals are
sheltered, are enforced to tramp through the State. It is
the artificial scarcity of natural opportunities.
Is there any wonder that under this treatment of the
land all over the civilised world there should be want and
destitution? Aye, and suffering degradation worse in
many cases than anything known among savages, among
the great masses of the people ?
How could it be otherwise in a world like this world,
tenanted by land animals, such as men are? How could
the Creator, so long as our laws are what they are how
could He Himself relieve it? Suppose that in answer to
the prayers that ascend for the relief of poverty, the
Almighty were to rain down wealth from heaven or cause
it to spout up from the bowels of the earth, who, under our
system, would own it ? The landowner. There would be
318 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
no benefit to labour. Consider, conceive any kind of a
world your imagination will permit. Conceive of heaven
itself, which, from the very necessities of our minds, we
cannot otherwise think of than as having an expansion of
space what would be the result in heaven itself, if the
people who should first get to heaven were to parcel it out
in big tracts among themselves? Oh, the wickedness of
it; oh, the blasphemy of it! Worse than atheists are
those so-called Christians, who by implication, if not by
direct statement, attribute to the God they call on us to
worship, the God that they say with their lips is all love
and mercy, this bitter suffering which to-day exists in the
very centres of our civilisation. Good heavens! When I
was last in London, the first morning that I spent there,
I rose early and walked out, as I always like to walk when
I go to London, through streets whose names I do not
know; I came to a sign a great big brass plate, "Office
of the Missionary Society for Central Africa." I walked
half a block, and right by the side of the Horse Guards,
where you may see the pomp and glare of the colour
mounting, there went a man and a woman and two little
children that seemed the very embodiment of hard and
hopeless despair.
A while ago I was in Edinburgh, the modern Athens,
the glorious capital (for such it is in some parts) the
glorious capital of Scotland; aye, and I went into those
tall houses, monstrous they seemed, those relics of the old
time, and there, right in the shadow, in the centre of such
intellectual activity, such wealth, such patriotism, such
public spirit, were sights that would appal the veriest sav-
age. I saw there the hardest thing a man can look at.
They took me to an institution where little children are
taken in and cared for, whose mothers are at work, and
here I saw the bitterest of all sights little children
TAXATION THE MEANS 319
shrunken and sickly from want of food; and the superin-
tendent told me a story. He pointed out a little girl, and
said that little thing was brought in there almost starving,
and when they set food before her, before she touched it
or tasted it, she folded her hands and raised her eyes, and
thanked ker heavenly Father for His bounty. Good God !
Men and women, think of the blasphemy of it! To say
that the bounty of that little child's heavenly Father was
conceded so. No, no, no. He has given enough and to
spare for all that His providence brings into this world.
It is the injustice that disinherits God's children; it is
the wrong that takes from those children their heritage,
not the Almighty.
Aye, years ago, I said on this platform that the seed
had been set. Now the grand truth is beginning to ap-
pear. From one end of Great Britain to the other, all
through this country, into the antipodes to which I am
going wherever our English tongue is spoken aye, and
beyond, on the continent of Europe the truths for which
we stand are making their way. The giant Want is
doomed. But I tell you, and I call upon my comrades to
bear me witness, whether there is not a reward in this
belief, in this work, which is utterly independent of results.
In London, on one of my visits, a clergyman of the
Established Church asked a private interview with me.
He said: "I want to talk with you frankly. Something
I have seen of your sayings has made me think that you
could give me an answer. Let me tell you my story. I
was educated for the church; graduated at one of the uni-
versities; took orders; was sent to a foreign country as a
missionary. After a while I became a chaplain in the
navy; finally, a few years since, I took a curacy in Lon-
don, and settled here. I have been, up till recently, a be-
lieving Christian. I have believed the Bible to be the
820 JUSTICE THE OBJECT
word of God, and I have rested implicitly on its promises;
and one promise I have often thought of: 'Once I was
young, and now I am old, yet never have I seen the right-
eous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread/ I be-
lieved that till I came to my own country. I believed that
until I undertook the ministerial work in London. I be-
lieved it was true. Now I know it is not true; I have
seen the righteous forsaken and his seed begging their
bread." He said: "My faith is gone; and I am holding
on here, but I feel like a hypocrite. I want to ask you
how it seems to you." And I told him in my poor way, as
I have been trying to tell you to-night, how it is, simply
because of our violation of natural justice; how it is,
simply because we will not take the appointed way.
Aye, in our own hearts we all know. To the man who
appreciates this truth, to the man who enters this work,
it makes little difference this thing of results. This at
least he knows, that it is not because of the power that
created this world and brought men upon it that these
dark shades exist in our civilisation to-day; that it is not
because of the niggardliness of the Creator.
And there arises in me a feeling of what the world might
be. The prayer that the Master taught His disciples:
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is
in heaven," was no mere form of words. It is given to
men to struggle for the kingdom of justice and righteous-
ness. It is given to men to work and to hope for and to
bring on that day of which the prophets have told and
the seers have dreamed; that day in which involuntary
poverty shall be utterly abolished ; that day in which there
shall be work for all, leisure for all, abundance for all;
that day in which even the humblest shall have his share,
not merely of the necessities and comforts, but of the rea-
sonable luxuries of life ; that day in which every child born
TAXATION THE MEANS 321
among us may hope to develop all that is highest and
noblest in its nature; that day in which in the midst of
abundance the fear of want shall be gone. This greed
for wealth that leads men to turn their backs upon every-
thing that is just and true, and to trample upon their fel-
lows lest they be trampled upon; to search and to strive,
and to strain every faculty of their natures to accumulate
what they cannot take away, will be gone, and in that day
the higher qualities of man shall have their opportunity
and claim their reward.
We cannot change human nature; we are not so foolish
as to dream that human nature can be changed. What we
mean to do is to give the good in human nature its oppor-
tunity to develop.
Try our remedy by any test. The test of justice, the
test of expediency. Try it by any dictum of political
economy; by any maxim of good morals, by any maxim
of good government. It will stand every test. What I
ask you to do is not to take what I or any other man may
say, but to think for yourselves.
CAUSES OF THE BUSINESS
DEPRESSION
CAUSES OF THE BUSINESS DEPRESSION.
[A contribution to " Once a Week," New York, March 6, 1894.]
I AM asked by "Once a Week" to state what, in my
opinion, are the causes of the existing business de-
pression. It should be possible to do more. For the
method that has fixed with certainty the causes of natural
phenomena once left to varying opinion or wild fancy,
ought to enable us to bring into the region of ascertained
fact the causes of social phenomena so clearly marked and
so entirely within observation.
To ascertain the cause of failure or abnormal action in
that complex machine, the human body, the first effort of
the surgeon is to locate the difficulty. So the first step
towards determining the causes of business depression is
to see what business depression really is.
By business depression we mean a lessening in rapidity
and volume of the exchanges by which, in our highly spe-
cialised industrial system, commodities pass into the hands
of consumers. This lessening of exchanges which, from
the side of the merchant or manufacturer, we call busi-
ness depression, is evidently not due to any scarcity of the
things that merchants or manufacturers have to exchange.
From that point of view there seems, indeed, a plethora of
such things. Nor is it due to any lessening in the desire
of consumers for them. On the contrary, seasons of busi-
ness depression are seasons of bitter want on the part of
325
328 BUSINESS DEPRESSION
large numbers of want so intense and general that char-
ity is called on to prevent actual starvation from need of
things that manufacturers and merchants have to sell.
It may seem, on first view, as if this lessening of ex-
changes came from some impediment in the machinery of
exchange. Since tariffs have for their object the checking
of certain exchanges, there is a superficial plausibility in
looking to them for the cause. While, as money is the
common measure of value and a common medium of ex-
change, in terms of which most exchanges are made, it is,
perhaps, even more plausible to look to monetary regu-
lations. But however important any tariff question or
any money question may be, neither has sufficient impor-
tance to account for the phenomena. Protection carried
to its furthest could only shut us off from the advantage
of exchanging what we produce for what other countries
produce; free trade carried to its furthest could only give
us with the rest of the world that freedom of exchange
that we already enjoy between our several States; while
money, important as may be its office as a measure and
flux of exchanges, is still but a mere counter. Seasons of
business depression come and go without change in tariffs
and monetary regulations, and exist in different countries
under widely varying tariffs and monetary systems. The
real cause must lie deeper.
That it does lie deeper is directly evident. The les-
sening of the exchanges by which commodities pass into
the hands of consumers is clearly due, not so much to
increased difficulty in transferring these commodities as
to decreased ability to pay for them. Every busi-
ness man sees that business depression comes from lack
of purchasing power on the part of would-be consum-
ers, or, as our colloquial phrase is, from their lack of
money. But money is only an intermediary, perform-
CAUSES AND CUBE 327
ing in exchanges the same office that poker-chips do in a
game. In the last analysis it is a labour certificate. The
great mass of consumers obtain money by exchanging their
labour, or the proceeds of their labour, for money, and with
it purchasing commodities. Thus what they really pay
for commodities with is labour. It is not merely true in
the sense he meant it that, as Adam Smith says, "Labour
was the first price, the original purchase money that was
paid for all things." It is the final price that is paid for
all things.
The lessening of "effective demand/' which is the proxi-
mate cause of business depression, means, therefore, a
lessening of the ability to convert labour into exchange-
able forms means what we call scarcity of employment.
These two phrases are, in fact, but different names for
different aspects of one thing. What from the side of the
business man is "business depression," is, from the side
of the workman, "scarcity of employment/' The one al-
ways comes with the other and passes away with the other.
They act on each other, and again react, as when the mer-
chant or manufacturer discharges his employees on ac-
count of business depression, and thus adds to scarcity of
employment. But in the primary causal relation scarcity
of employment comes first. That is to say, scarcity of
employment does not come from business depression, as
is sometimes assumed, but business depression comes from
the scarcity of employment. For it is the effective de-
mand for consumption that determines the extent and di-
rection in which labour will be expended in producing
commodities not the supply of commodities that deter-
mines the demand.
What is employment? It is the expenditure of exer-
tion in the production of commodities or satisfactions. It
is what, in a phrase having clearer connotations, we term
328 BUSINESS DEPRESSION
work. For the term employment is, for economic use,
somewhat confused by our habitual distinction between
employers and employees. This distinction only arises
from the division of labour, and disappears when we con-
sider first principles. I employ a man to black my boots.
He expends his labour to give me the satisfaction of pol-
ished boots. What is the five cents I give him in return?
It is a counter or chip through which he may obtain at will
the expenditure of labour to that equivalent in any of
various forms food, shelter, newspapers, a street-car ride,
and so on. In final analysis the transaction is the same
as if I had employed him to black my boots and he had
employed me to render to him some of these other services ;
or as if I had blacked my own boots and he had performed
these other services for himself. Even in a narrow view
there are only three ways by which men can live by work,
by beggary and by theft; for the man who obtains work
without giving work is, economically, only a beggar or a
thief. But on a larger view these three come down to
one, for beggars and thieves can only live on workers. It
is human labour that supplies all the wants of human
life as truly now, in all the complexities of modern civil-
isation, as in the beginning, when the first man and first
woman were the only human beings on the globe.
Now, employment, or work, is the expenditure of labour
in the production of commodities or satisfactions. But
on what? Manifestly on land, for land is to man the
whole physical universe. Take any country as a whole,
or the world as a whole. On what and from what does its
whole population live ? Despite our millions and our com-
plex civilisation, our extensions of exchanges and our in-
ventions of machines, are we not all living as the first man
did and the last man must, by the application of labour
to land ? Try a mental experiment : Picture, in imagina-
CAUSES AND CUBE 329
tion, the fanner at the plough, the miner in the ore vein,
the railroad train on its rushing way, the steamer cross-
ing the ocean, the great factory with its whirring wheels
and thousand operatives, builders erecting a house, line-
men strii%mg a telegraph wire, a salesman selling goods,
a bookkeeper casting up accounts, a bootblack polishing
the boots of a customer. Make any such picture in ima-
gination, and then by mental exclusion withdraw from it,
item by item, all that belongs to land. What will be left ?
Land is the source of all employment, the natural ele-
ment indispensable to all work. Land and labour these
are the two primary factors that, by their union, produce
all wealth and bring about all material satisfactions.
Given labour that is to say, the ability to work and the
willingness to work and there never has and never can
be any scarcity of employment so long as labour can obtain
access to land. Were Adam and Eve bothered by "scar-
city of employment"? Did the first settlers in this coun-
try or the men who afterwards settled those parts of the
country where land was still easily had know anything of
it? That the monopoly of land the exclusion of labour
from land by the high price demanded for it is the cause
of scarcity of employment and business depressions is as
clear as the sun at noonday. Wherever you may be that
scarcity of employment is felt whether in city or village,
or mining district or agricultural section how far will
you have to go to find land that labour is anxious to use
(for land has no value until labour will pay a price for
the privilege of using it), but from which labour is de-
barred by the high price demanded by some non-user ? In
the very heart of New York City, two minutes' walk from
Union Square will bring you to three vacant lots. For
permission to use the smallest and least valuable of these
a rental of $40,000 a year has been offered and refused.
330 BUSINESS DEPRESSION
This is but an example of what may everywhere be seen,
from the heart of the metropolis to the Cherokee Strip.
Where labour is shut out from land it wastes. Desire
may remain, but "effective demand" is gone. Is there
any mystery in the cause of business depression t Let the
whole earth be treated as these lots are treated, and who
of its teeming millions could find employment?
At the close of the last great depression I made "An
Examination of the Cause of Industrial Depression" in a
book better known by its main title, "Progress and Pov-
erty," to which I would refer the reader who would see
the genesis and course of business depressions fully ex-
plained. But their cause is clear. Idle acres mean idle
hands, and idle hands mean a lessening of purchasing
power on the part of the great body of consumers that
must bring depression to all business. Every great period
of land speculation that has taken place in our history
has been followed by a period of business depression, and
it always must be so. Socialists, Populists and charity-
mongers the people who would apply little remedies for
a great evil are all "barking up the wrong tree." The
upas of our civilisation is our treatment of land. It is
that which is converting even the march of invention into
a blight.
Charity and the giving of "charity work" may do a
little to alleviate suffering, but they cannot cure business
depression. For they merely transfer existing purchasing
power. They do not increase the sum of "effective de-
mand." There is but one cure for recurring business de-
pression. There is no other. That is the single tax the
abolition of all taxes on the employment and products of
labour and the taking of economic or ground rent for the
use of the community by taxes levied on the value of land,
irrespective of improvement. For that would make land
CAUSES AND CUBE 331
speculation unprofitable, land monopoly impossible, and
so open to the possessors of the power to labour the ability
of converting it by exertion into wealth or purchasing
power that the very idea of a man able to work, and yet
suffering from want of the things that work produces,
would seem as preposterous on earth as it must seem in
heaven.
PEACE BY STANDING ARMY
PEACE BY STANDING ARMY.
[Speech at the labour meeting, Cooper Union, New York, July 12,
1894, called to protest against President Cleveland's sending Federal
troops to Chicago during the great railroad strike. Contrary to the rule
of omission followed in the preceding addresses, the interruptions of the
audience are here inserted, as being needed to show the full nature of the
speech.]
Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens:
I COME here to-night, at considerable personal incon-
venience, to discharge what I believe to be a duty. I
come here to talk to you, as I have always talked, frankly
and plainly. In some things I do not agree with the men
who have invited me to come here. In some things I prob-
ably differ from the majority of this audience. I do not
believe in strikes. (Hisses and faint cheers.) I am not
disposed to denounce George M. Pullman. (Prolonged
hisses and groans.) I come here as a citizen, as a Demo-
crat (Slight applause, followed by hisses and groans, con-
tinuing for several minutes)
I come as a Democrat who, from his great tariff mes-
sage in 1887, has earnestly and with all his strength and
ability supported Grover Cleveland (more hisses and
groans), to protest against his action. (Great cheers.)
I come here to say what no daily paper in New York
City has dared to say that the action of Grover Cleveland
(hisses and cries of "Order!") in throwing the standing
335
336 PEACE BY STANDING ARMY
army, without call from local authority, into the struggle
between the railroads and their workmen, was in viola-
tion of. the fundamental principles of our Government,
and dangerous to the Eepublic. Governor Altgeld (loud
cheering) has spoken the true Democratic doctrine. (Re-
newed hisses.) You men who are hissing the name of
Democracy know no more about that doctrine than do the
so-called Democrats who rule and rob this city. The De-
mocracy that I am talking about, the Democracy to which
I belong and as a representative of which I stand here, is
not that Democracy ; it is the Democracy of Thomas Jeffer-
son ! It is not the false Democracy of to-day, but it is the
true Democracy; the Democracy that believes in equal
rights to all and special privilege to none; the Democracy
that would crush monopolies under its foot. (Cheers.) It
is not the Democracy which now rules, but the Democracy
that I trust soon will. (Long cheers.)
I am not a lawyer. I have had no time to make a
special study of the matter from a legal standpoint. I
cannot say how far, if at all, the President has violated
the written law of the land. But this I do say positively :
he has violated that law more important than the written
law; he has violated the fundamental principles of our
polity. (Cheers.)
The doctrine that the Federal power should be slow to
interfere in that in which it is not directly concerned is
a foundation stone of our Republic. Governor Altgeld and
Governor Waite are right. (Cheers.) If the standing
army is to be sent into the States of this nation as it has
been sent into the State of Illinois and other States, if
the Federal Executive of its own motion is to undertake
to keep the peace between citizens throughout the land,
what shall the end be? We shall need a standing army
of hundreds of thousands of men. The moment this prin-
CHICAGO RAILROAD STRIKE 337
ciple is acknowledged, there is an end to local self-govern-
ment, the Republic dies, and in all but name and heredi-
tary succession the Empire has come. It is the lesson of
the history of the world peace kept by a standing army
is incompatible with a true republic. (Loud cheering.)
This is a time for every sober man who loves his coun-
try and wishes to see it exist in peace and plenty to redeem
its promise and fulfil its high destiny, to enter his pro-
test against this Presidential action, temperately, firmly,
unequivocally. (Cheers.)
But it is said that the President's action has been to
maintain law and order. Let that be granted. Does the
end always justify the means? I yield to nobody in my
respect for law and order and my hatred of disorder, but
there is something more important even than law and order,
and that is the principle of liberty. I yield to nobody in
my respect for the rights of property, yet I would rather
see every locomotive in this land ditched, every car and
every depot burned and every rail torn up, than to have
them preserved by means of a Federal standing army.
That is the order that reigned in Warsaw. (Long ap-
plause.) That is the order in the keeping of which every
democratic republic before ours has fallen. I love the
American Republic better than I love such order. (Long
cheering.)
What is the pretence that is made a justification for the
action of the President? It is that the running of the
mail trains of the United States has been interfered with.
Debs has been indicted and arrested, charged with con-
spiracy to interfere with the mails of the United States.
(Groans and hisses.) Is that charge a true or a fair one?
(Shouts of "No !") I do not believe that there is an hon-
est man to-day who will say that he believes in his heart
that there is any basis for this charge. Debs from the
338 PEACE BY STANDING ARMY
first declared that he and those who were following him
were anxious to carry the mail trains of the United States.
But the railroads used the United States mail as a tool
to crush labour organisation. (Cheers.) The railroads
were the real conspirators so far as conspiracy to interfere
with the transportation of the mails is concerned. (Loud
cheers.) They did not carry nor attempt to carry the
mails on the regular mail trains as usual. If they had,
Debs and his men would have seen to it that the mail cars
went through. What they did do was to change the posi-
tion of the mail cars, and to scatter the mails among all
their trains, and demand then that all trains should be run
through because there was mail matter on them. (Cries
of "Shame V and long hissing. )
The conspiracy was by the millionaire monopolists.
They deliberately conspired to use the mails so as to call
upon the Federal Government to send its troops to crush
down their employees. (Cries of "That is right!")
Look at California, where this struggle has been fiercest.
I know something of that State. Citizen of New York
as I now am, yet the greater part of my life has been
spent in California. The people of that State are an
orderly and law-abiding people. Do you suppose that they
would look easily upon any movement that contemplated
an interference with the mail service, which means so
much to them ? I know that they would not. I have not
been in California for years, yet to-night I would stake
my life that the great majority of the people of that
State are in sympathy with the employees as against the
railroad monopolies. Can there be stronger proof that if
law is on one side, justice and liberty are on the other
side? When a law-loving people sympathise with viola-
tions of law, there must be injustice behind the law.
(Applause.)
CHICAGO RAILROAD STRIKE 339
The masses of California hate the railroad power, and
there is reason why they should. It has been the railroad
power that has utterly demoralised California politics and
debauched its public service. It is the railroad power that
has given the control of that great State into the hands of
a few railroad magnates such a control as no prince ever
exercised over his principality.
I stood by when the first spadeful of earth was turned
in Sacramento for the Pacific roads. The men who were
then back of that enterprise were but moderately wealthy
men the richest of them worth perhaps $100,000. To-
day those men, or those who have succeeded them, are
multi-millionaires. How did they get their great for-
tunes? Not as C. P. Huntington says in a newspaper
paragraph this evening by industry and frugality.
(Laughter.) They got those fortunes by robbery by rob-
bery that is worse than highway robbery because it has
been coupled with the bribery of those whom the people
elected to serve them in high office, even on the benches
of their courts. (Cheers.)
These men have used what they got in trust from the
Nation and the State, to corrupt the Government of Na-
tion and State. They have bought their way from pri-
mary elections to the United States Senate; they have
made the managers of both parties their henchmen, put
their friends on the bench, controlled newspapers, and
kept lawyers under fee to take no case against them; they
have throttled enterprise and held the State in a bond of
iron. Over and over the people of California have re-
belled at the ballot only to find after election was over that
the railroad was still in control. (Cheering.)
What is true of California is true of other Western
States, and true in large degree all over the country. And
this great corrupt power, not content with legislative
340 PEACE BY STANDING ARMY
control, has been looking forward to the use of the Fed-
eral courts and of the standing army. We have been
building ships of war that are of no use unless for the
purpose of furnishing some pleasant gentlemen with plea-
sure trips and of furnishing the Carnegies with money.
(Cheers and laughter.) We now have a standing army
of 25,000 men, and there are demands that it shall be in-
creased to 50,000 men. In the days when our Govern-
ment was weaker, when we had hostile savages on our fron-
tier lines, and had real fighting to do, we had an army of
only 10,000 men and a navy in proportion.
What is the reason that we are building ships of war
and increasing the size of our army? It is because the
millionaire monopolists are becoming afraid of a poverty-
stricken people which their oppressive trusts and combi-
nations are creating. It is because great wealth, unjustly
acquired, always wants the security of standing armies
and navies. (Long cheering.)
I want to speak with the utmost respect of Mr. Cleve-
land. (Prolonged hissing and groaning.) No man has
been given such high honour from the American people.
They made him President once, and then after a four
years lapse showed their confidence in him by making him
President again, a compliment never paid to any man be-
fore. He has received higher honour from the American
people than even did George Washington, Thomas Jeffer-
son, Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant.
(A voice, "Why did you support him?")
Why I supported him why against politicians and pow-
ers he was elected was because I believed, and the people
believed, he had sounded the key-note against monopoly.
I am slow to attribute to Mr. Cleveland anything but the
best motives, but the facts are plain. Not only has he
left undone that which he had asked the warrant and re-
CHICAGO RAILROAD STRIKE 341
ceived the command of the people to do, but from the
very first, I am sorry to say, he seems to have taken the
side, wantonly taken the side, of those very monstrous
monopolies that have oppressed the people and which they
believed he would begin to break down. (Loud cheering.)
It is at least the fact that his Federal appointments in
California have been such as the railroad magnates them-
selves would have dictated had they been allowed to dic-
tate, and I am not so sure that they were not. To the
most important Federal office in California Mr. Cleveland
appointed a man who was denounced at a Democratic State
Convention as a traitor to his party because he had sold
out to the railroad companies. Mr. Cleveland did this in
spite of the fact that these things were formally presented
to him by representative men of California. (Hisses.)
And his other California appointments, so far as I have
learned, are of the same character.
With Democratic lawyers of national reputation to
choose from, one of Mr. Cleveland's first steps was to take
as his Attorney-General a corporation attorney, a man
whom I, and I think most of you, never had heard of. I
refer to Mr. Olney. (Groans.)
It is from such capturing by great corporate interests of
the legal machinery and law courts of the Federal Govern-
ment that we get injunctions that look to the punishing
of a man for not going to work when he did not choose
to go to work, and I fear it is from the same power that
the order comes which sends the standing army into States
where the State authority has not asked for it, and even
protests against its presence. (Groans.)
You have heard of the Senate sugar investigation, an
investigation designed to do anything except to find out
facts. (Laughter.) When in Washington, before that in-
vestigation was ordered, or the newspaper charges which
342 PEACE BY STANDING ARMY
compelled it had been made, I was told by reliable author-
ity that a Democratic United States senator, who has been
once, and if I mistake not, twice, Chairman of the National
Democratic Executive Committee and consequently in a
position to know, was declaring that the Sugar Trust in-
terests must be taken care of in the tariff revision because
it had contributed $200,000 to Mr. Cleveland's election.
Whether the railroads made any such contributions I do
not know. (Laughter and cries of "Certainly they did!"
"Sure !"and "You bet!")
I said in beginning that I came here to say what our
daily papers in New York dared not say. That is true as
far as my knowledge goes. But it has only been true since
last Saturday. On last Friday, the 6th, the greatest of
our Democratic papers, the "New York World," came out
in a long and ringing article denouncing the use by Presi-
dent Cleveland of the standing army. On Saturday it ate
its words of the day before and applauded the President,
and has continued to do so ever since. What brought
about such a change? If telegrams could be dragged out
as the telegrams of the strike managers have been, we
might find out ; but it certainly was not a change of heart,
a change of conviction. It is ominous to find the entire
press applauding action which violates so grossly Ameri-
can principles and American tradition; but it is even
more ominous still, it seems to me, to see the ease with
which a power that has bent courts and executive to its
will can between sunrise and sunset wheel around a great
paper a paper that in so many things has stood as the
exponent of true Democratic principles. (Great applause.)
But I must stop. (Cries of "No, no; go on!" from all
parts of the hall.) I would, indeed, like to go on, but
I have exceeded my time, and others are to follow. Still,
something yet I must say, but I must be brief. The pur-
CHICAGO RAILROAD STRIKE 343
pose of this meeting is not only to express opinion on the
action of the President, but to consider the industrial
situation.
Well, what are we going to do about it? (Cries of "Im-
peach Cleveland !" "We have the ballot I" "Let us have
political action!")
There is no royal road to relief. It cannot be found in
electing this man or that man, or in merely changing from
this party to that party. Political action amounts to noth-
ing unless it is the expression of thought, not impulse.
This is a time which calls for our best and most sober
thought. Consider what is proposed. On the one side
there are calls for a general strike. Can anything be ac-
complished by a general strike? A strike unaccompanied
by violence is simply a test of endurance a trial of who
can live longest when the exertion of labour is stopped.
Now, as a matter of fact, who can live longest when the
earnings of labour are stopped the men who have wealth
in store or the men who are dependent on their daily earn-
ings for their daily bread? the rich man or the poor man?
(Applause, and cries of "The rich!") Yes; the rich man
every time. (Continued applause.)
Again, we are told that arbitration is the sovereign
remedy that we must have compulsory arbitration. This
is as idle and more dangerous than the cry we used to hear
for bureaus of labour statistics. Compulsory arbitration!
That must mean, if it means anything, that behind the
arbitrators there must be power to enforce their decree.
Have you considered what compulsory arbitration means?
Arbitrators must be appointed. In the long run who will
get the arbitrators, the rich men or the poor men? (Cries
of "The rich!" "The rich every time!") Yes; judging
from experience, the rich. Are you willing, then, to submit
your wrongs to arbitration? (Cries of "No!") To call
344 PEACE BY STANDING ARMY
for the establishment of courts which, if they amount to
anything at all, are to have power to compel you to work
when you do not want to work? ("No, no!" and ap-
plause.)
Then there is a third proposition. The "Morning Jour-
nal" of this city is the proposer. It concedes and declares
the impolicy and weakness of strikes. It proposes instead
of striking that the men in sympathy with the Pullman
strikers should keep at work, save their money, and raise
a fund which should enable every Pullman striker to
leave Pullman ! Well, supposing you did. Where are you
to take them? (Laughter.) Is there a city, a town, a
hamlet in this country where their trades are carried on,
that there are not to-day three idle men in those trades
for one at work? (Applause.) Suppose you did raise
money to take these Pullman strikers out of Pullman,
could anything better please Mr. Pullman? Poor as are
the wages he pays, would he have any difficulty in filling
his works were the strikers removed? (Applause.)
I speak of this proposition because it brings us to the
heart of the labour question. Strikes, labour troubles,
low wages, all the bitter injustice which the masses are
feeling, come at bottom from the fact that there are more
men seeking work than can find opportunities to work.
(Applause and cries of "That is it!") Yet the country
abounds in opportunities. Its natural resources are so
great as to seem without limit. The trouble is that the
natural resources have been monopolised. (Much ap-
plause.)
Let me tell you what I have told you many times before.
It is something I must tell you, or I should be dishonest.
This whole great organised labour movement is on a wrong
line a line on which no large and permanent success can
possibly be won. Trades-unions, with their necessary
CHICAGO RAILROAD STRIKE 345
weapon, tHe strike, have accomplished something and may
accomplish something, but it is very little and at great
cost. The necessary endeavour of the strike to induce
or compel others to stop work is in its nature war, and
furthermore it is war that must necessarily deny a funda-
mental principle of personal liberty the right of every
man to work when, where, for whom and for what he
pleases. Those who denounce labour organisations and
their works use this moral principle against you. Stated
alone, it is their strength and your weakness. ("That is
true!")
But above the wrongs which strikes involve, there is a
deeper, wider wrong, which must be recognised and as-
serted if the labour movement is to obtain the moral
strength that is its due. It is the great denial of liberty
to work which provokes these small denials of liberty to
work. It is the shutting up by monopolisation of the natu-
ral, God-given opportunities for work that compels men
to struggle and fight for the opportunity to work, as
though the very chance of employment were a prize and a
boon. (Applause.)
The key to the labour question is the land question.
The giant of monopolies is the monopoly of the land.
That which no man made, that which the Almighty Father
gives us, that which must be used in all production, that
which is the first material essential of life itself, must be
made free to all. In the single tax alone can labour find
relief. (Great and long continued applause.)
9 RSurn this material to the library
from which it was borrowed.
LOS ANGELES
RARY
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