^WM » ^^rzA lift] '\,'J yj- i^^t m SOCIAL WEALTH: THE Sole Fsctors and Exact Ratios in its Acquirement and Apportionment. BY J. K. INGALLS. In proceeding toward any given point, there is always one line which is shortest — The Straight; so, in the condufl of Human Affairs, there is always one course which is best — The Just. New York: SOCIAL SCIENCE PUBLISHING CO., 33 Clintox Place. 1885. Copyrighted, 1885, by J. K. Ingalls. « » • »• • * • c«. «.«-•.«,««.««< • • ft » • « • • • * • • • • • • • • • • f5 CONTENTS. 3 Prefoxx. ----- 5 CHAPTER I. Introductory. - - _ _ 7 CHAPTER II. Economic Schools. - - - - 32 A Brief Review of their Origin and Growth. CHAPTER III. Else and Growth of Capitalism. - - 40 CHAPTER IV. Unearned Increase. _ _ _ 48 Prolil.— Interest. — Rent. CHAPTER V. \ Conservation of Wealth. - - _ 76 CHAPTER VI. Tools and Improved Machinery. - 83 CHAPTER vn. The Nature of Wages. - - - 0(5 criAPTFiR vin. Private and Social Wealth. - - ■ lOO CI I. \ ITER IN. Land Ownership. - - - - Vl\ I'llAI'TKIJ X. Private Property in Land. - loo *>oom^^ IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. Capital and the Productive Factors. - - 168 Active Factor in Production.— Passive Factor in Production. CHAPTER Xn. Partnersliip and Co-operation. - - 195 CHAPTER XIII. Law of Contracts. . _ _ 205 CHAPTER XIV. Money and Credit. - - - - 216 CHAPTER XV. Of Value or Economic Ratios. - - 228 Ratios in Compensation. — Ratios in Exchange. — Values of Land and Labor under Commercial Subjection CHAPTER XVL Taxation as a Remedy. _ _ _ 255 CHAPTER XVII. Reforms, Not Remedies. - - 265 CHAPTER XVIII. Suggestions to Legislators. - - - 286 CHAPTER XIX. Conclusion. _ _ _ _ 301 APPENDIX. Summary of Definitions : Economic and Iso- nomic. _ _ - _ _ 311 PREFACE. The purpose for which these pages are offered to the public is simply to direct inquiry to questions intimately related to all human life and emplo3^ment, so that no useful member of society need remain in- different to them. We are living under a system of capitalistic aggrandizement, or commercial monarch- ism, which has no parallel in the history of the race. Our teachers in Economics do not disavow, if they do not expressly put forth, the claim that this im- poverishment of the many to enrich the few is in accordance with the orderly evolution of society, and in harmony Avith the natural laws of trade. Our political savants offer us nothing but what is most delusive and contradictory, while servilely bow- ing to the demands of a dominant plutocracy. On the other hand, we have importations of tlie thought of European Radicals, Communists, Nihilists, with suggestions of revolution, and of measures of reform ranging from Anarchism on tlie one hand, to the entire control of all social industry by the state on the otlior. In this conflict of thought and nescience, it has seemed to me tliere must be some Natural Relation between the worker and the soil from wliicli all must subsist; that there is a principle of law which will VI PKEFACE. give an equitable sliare of the products of industry to each who shares the labor, and a just principle of agreement and consent in regard to such production and division. I am persuaded there is also a development of these laws subject to "arrest," to "retardation and acceleration," and that to discover and record their growth, is the only true province of the Legislator, not the manufacture of statutory enactments. My aim has been to direct the attention of all, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, to this line of thought. If in any degree I have succeeded, my labor will not have been in vain. There are doubtless great social wrongs to be righted, great injustices to be corrected; but when with reasoning minds we read the great lessons of history, we discover that Science, or exact and sys- temized knowledge, has been the great means of progress in every field and in every age, and are as- sured that through intelligent industry Nature has provided for the satisfaction of all rational human wants. Industrial Freedom, and that only, can change the conditions which afflict the toiling poor, or give to justly acquired competence its required security and conservation. Glenoha, N. Y., July 21, 1885. SOCIAL WEALTH CHAPTEE I. INTRODUCTORY. No SYSTEMATIC attempt lias ever been made to reduce to a science the phenomena which are pre- sented in social industry and the allotment of social wealth, which embodies the normal relations of the active agent, man, to nature and to the opportunities and potencies which the earth yields to his control. Only fragmentary parts of any history of industry are known to us, and nothing but the general features of its early development can now be ascertained. Society itself is but an outgrowth of an industry which has really determined the character of social progress from stage to stage. The subjection of labor has meant, in every period, the debasement and destruction of the people. Through outrage and fraud industrial growth has been checked, and its power to elevate mankind thwarted and destroyed. The grossest ignorance and narrowest private self- seeking have alone sought to escape work and its duties, and the most brutal ambition was required to degrade and enslave it. Busied with tlie records of glorified conquest, the pomp of kings, and the displays of martial triumphs, the general historian has had but little to say of tliat 8 SOCIAL WEALTH. industrial life of the peoj)le wliicli lias sustained while it has had to suifer all the calamities of war. From the glimpses he has afforded us, however, we see clearly the subjected and enslaved condition which it has ever occupied ; a condition attempted to be justified by the casuistry of each apologist for tyranny, and even by political economists — that men will not work unless compelled to (by the lash or fear of starvation) ; thus making the unworthy desire for the product of another's labor the excuse for enslaving him, and the degradation resulting there- from the justification for its own j)erpetuation. Through every form of barbarism, feudalism, and civilism, industry has been mostly enslaved — much of the time in a gross material form ; always through force, fraud, and fictions of law and positive class- legislation. The savage, who at the same time sought excitement and sustenance in the chase, with feeble mentality left those inclined to work at liberty to perfect some product, since, whenever through lust or envy he desired, he could capture and appropriate it by taking the life of the j)roducer. Under bar- barism, compulsory servitude became well-nigh uni- versal, and remains now, as ever, the distinguishing trait of that stage of development. Here industry begins to assume some form of organization, and is directed wdth some order and sj'stem. Functions and powers were absorbed, and dominion assumed by the strong and cunning, and various castes were established to perpetuate the independence of a few and the subjugation of the industrious many. Under civilism, industry, as it became freed from the pecu- liar institution of slavery, evinces a greater tendency INTRODUCTORY. 9 to organization, and under a system of bets or bribes, commonly called wages, effects " division of labor," and a power of production unknown to tlie earlier forms. But without any intelligent or equitable sys- tem of division of products, its results are scarcely, if at all, more beneficent, often resulting in what political economists call ore/'-production, as well as in the production of things which are non-wealth, or destructive to social well-being. TJie earlier and barbaric forms of slavery extend to our own time, and up to a quite recent date have existed in the most advanced nations. Slavery, the slave trade, and privateering, or warfare for plunder, were known as late as our fathers' time, and were the foundation of most of the large fortunes which are more than a half-century old. Civilism, thus far, has hardly done more than to refine and render more subtle the subjection of la- bor to lordly will. From conquests with bludgeons, swords and spears, as in the earlier ages, it has in- augurated a war of cunning and fraud, Avhose weapons are technical terms, shrewd devices, class legislation, and forms of law recognizing no rights as supreme but those of property and " the law of the market." But an era of science has at length dawned, and in- dustry stands revealed, though not yet popularly acknowledged, as the prime agent of all growth, and of every element in social refinement and j^rogress. And in the absence of any system of economics which even recognizes the relations between liuman work and the complementary material agents, there arises a demand for an analysis of tlie elements of industry, which science shows to be the basis of all social 10 SOCIAL WEALTH. economy anil ethics. Careful investigation into all the motives to human action, the relation of man to the earth, the principle of conservation, by which accumulation is determined, as well as division, must have a place. There is required in this scientific age a systematic and thorough adjustment of the subject of industrial evolution. We have social, po- litical, and ethical systems as perfect as they can be, while our disintegrated and wholly empirical system of industry remains. We have no comprehensive, nor indeed comprehensible, explanation of the indus- trial phenomena by which the conscientious man can even guess when he has done his duty, or the moral- ist determine the simplest question thereunder. As little can the politician or civilian, however inclined, honestly decide whether certain measures will result in more good than evil, more happiness than misery, to mankind ; for the simple reason that religion, morality, and civilization are not the sources of human progress, but are the blossoms and fruitage of the social growth itself, which has its root in human industry.* Tlie industrial problem is therefore the funda- mental one. That the wealth of society is 'most unequally distributed is a fact so patent and univers- ally admitted that it is only necessary to call atten- tion to it. That the work which creates it is rewarded in no just proportion, but rather by an inverse ratio to its importance and utility, as well as to its severity and repulsiveness, is equally undenied and undeni- * " "Where industry is wanting, there can neitlier be lionesty toward men nor true worship of the Infinite Worker."— J. H. Hunt. INTRODUCTORY. 11 able. The most arduous labor under our mixed economics * is usually the poorest paid, while often the light and trivial, and even the hurtful, is fre- quently rewarded with a fabulous income.f The only qualification ever associated with the universal admission of these statements is, that all have equal opportunity, and that since some work up from poverty to wealth, and take the great prizes in the business lottery or race, all can do so, and if any fail, it is their own fault ! Economists do not attempt to deny the inequalities of present division. They merely explain in a superficial way how the inequal- ity comes about, without reference to the fundamental cause, or even suggesting any change in the system which produces it, unless it be to apjily a little more of the same thing — special legislation and class rule. But even the science of economics starts upon the * While claiming to be " aa exact physical science," it treats " values " indiscriminately, whether increased or dmiinislied by supply and de- mand, or by tlie interference of unreasoning executive or legislative will; by sc-ircity of a season, or tlie cornering of a market, or by any speculative conspiracy; by the natural laws of trade, or by the subject- ing to the rule of the market "by act of parliament" and "force of arms," things foreign t« its sway; and wliether relating to tlie com- modities which may be increased indefinitely, or to ihc Ijuyer and seller, the men tiiemselves, or to llie laud, of which no increased supply is possible. •(■ " It is inequnlUy in tlie wages of those who do the work of Iho world wliieii culls for the allenlion l)()lli of stmleiits and sUitcsmen, and incqualily in what llie wages will buy." Kuw akd Atktxson. By the lati.er ho means that tlie man wiio gels the lowest wages pays the highest, the retail prin;, for what he buys. Altenlioii is cullcil for, also, to the dispnjporlionato wages of those who do noHC of "the work of the world." 12 SOCIAL WEALTH. ground that tlie real laws of trade tend constantly to equilibrium, or to a mean ratio, i. e., to the elimina- tion of profit and the exchanging of commodities at cost of production. " Free competition," it is claimed, can alone secure, and will constantly tend to secure, equitable exchanges. Why, then, should indispens- able labor more and more be compelled to exchange itself for what itself has created, at a greater and greater disadvantage ? This- is a question it makes no effort to explain, and, so far as the prominent writers are concerned, seems to be deemed unworthy of attention. Of course no process of exchanging equivalents could have produced the disparities we notice. No fair trade could have placed the values which each of two parties contributed wholly in the hands of one. No answer is furnished by the cur- rent commonplace, that it is accounted for by the superior industry and frugality of the one, and the idleness, extravagance, and dissipation of the other, for the successful are not more industrious, as a class, than the unfortunate poor, and by far are more given to extravagance and dissipation. But there is no equality of opportunity under existing laws and cus- toms. In the race for wealth, which the economist seems as unable to define as to guide, the toiler is most heavily handicapped in the very start. It is quite true that one in a thousand or so, who has un- usual strength or cunning, distances his competitors and gets to take place with those more favored ; the disadvantages lessening as he works to the front. But why should the weak be handicapped, while the strong carry no extra weight, but are helped on? The only reply vouchsafed is that "it has always INTRODUCTORY. 13 been so, and always will be." That men are found willing to do the most repulsive work, and even that which is deleterious to health and tends greatly to shorten human life, for wages less than that which is paid a super jfluous clerk for services of trifling utility, proves that free competition has little or nothing to do with the adjustment of labor to place in the work- ing world, and that forced competitorship is only fully realized at the very bottom of the industrial scale. It is overlooked that a large proportion of the ex- changes which take place in the world are in nowise affected by tlie rule of the mar'ket, that each one shall get the most he can for what he parts with, while giving the least possible for what he requires. In- deed but a small joroportion of the transfers in social life are subject to competitive offers at all ; and be- sides, in those transfers which are so subject, one part}' must yield to the other in each transaction all the profit which is realized by the other; otherwise the exchange would be reciprocal, no matter what the nominal profit, and the benefit being mutual, no inequality could result. All services in the famil}', amounting to quite one-half of all labor, are non- competitive. In retail trade most prices will be found rustomarn rather than competitive, and whenever combination exists among dealers for reserved 2^r ices, competition ceases to operate altogether. Prof. Henry Dunning Macleod has written a book — "Elements of Economics" — mainly to prove tliat value is wholly caused by " demand and supply," and that labor is " but one of the accidents of value and of wealth." From the standpoint of the trader this 14 SOCIAL WEALTH. is very true, but from no other. It is by no means my intention to enter upon a fruitless discussion here of the origin of value, or of its true definitions, for the word has a score or more.* He suggests that a man might find a diamond worth a million dollars some lucky day, with very little labor; though he must have known that the amount of labor, or product of labor, which some one is willing to give for it after it is found is what alone makes it val- uable ; and that if responsible parties would under- take to produce diamonds of equal intrinsic merit for the price of a day's labor, this diamond would bring no more. It is not the day's labor of the lucky finder which determines the price of this particular gem, but the unsuccessful thousands of days' search which are required before another like it can be found. To show that irregularity of demand and supply are the immediate and inciting cause of the fluctuation in prices proves little, since the supply which furnishes the market, and the means which alone make the demand effective, are both supplied by labor ; and a certain ratio would exist between * Value, as defined by economists, is the ratio between two or more exchangeable commodities, and is generally hmited to cost of produc- tion, or vibrates to either side by fluctuation of market. The specific value of a particular thing at a particular time and place is approxi- mately the cost of reproducing or replacing it in the market, rather than the actual cost of that identical article, which might have been excep- tionally great or small. I pointed out to Mr. Josiah Warren, nearly forty years ago, that profits, rent, and interest entered into "cost of pro- duction," and that while they have a warranty for being in our laws and customs, the enunciation of his formula "cost the limit of price," could have no practical effect except to direct attention to these strongly in- trenched wrongs. INTRODUCTORY. 15 the two things exchanged corresponding to the amount of hibor required to reproduce them if sokl at a customary price to which there was no fluctua- tion. So that if " supply and demand " are the " sole cause of value," labor is the sole source both of the supj^Jy and of the means which makes the demand effective, or even j^ossible. The triumph which Macleod claims over Adam Smith is not over his apothegm that " labor was the original price paid for all things," but over Smith's omission to show how it occurred, if his premises were true, that all social wealth came into the j)os- session of those who do no labor. It is easy to see how this became so under a system of chattel slavery, because the laborers were owned by the capitalists, and all that was produced over and above the cost of the slaves' maintenance went to the slavelord by the custom and statutes of the times. Labor, which in this resjDect scarcely differed from the services of horses and oxen, in its economic aspect, was still the essential thing in all production and in all exchanges. Mr. Macleod is careful to point out that production "means placing any commodity in the market" at the time and place where the demand exists. The spirit of trade, or " law of the market," does not look further than this, and even contests the right of the true owner to reclaim goods when they have been once sold in open market by parties who had no title to them. But nothing can be more cer- tain than that commodities cannot be produced in market unless they have been transported and stored by labor, nor unless such other lal)()r has been ap- plied to them as will render them desirable and 16 SOCIAL WEALTH. fitted for consumption. While fully admitting that under our system of land-tenure and of commercial custom the distinctions he makes are logical if not profound, it is difficult to see the sequence of his de- ductions, or how they in any way affect the general proposition that " work is the parent of wealth ;" for although " incorporeal wealth," the " debts created by bankers with which to buy money and other debts," and the formation of knowledge, which he deems " the creation of luealth out of nothing," may be exchangeable and have price, it is only because that in the last analysis they can command labor, as a title to a slave, or of a superior cunning which can obtain labor without reward, carries with it the price of so much labor as it commands. He has elaborated his thought that wealth is constituted of a great number of things which have no connection with labor, " and that no change of labor or cost of pro- duction has any influence on value, unless tJiey pro- dicce a change in the relation of supply and deinand^ The italics are mine. Now, since this is precisely what labor always does ; that " intensity of demand," when effective, is wholly due to over-production of the thing or things offered in purchase of commodi- ties ; and since the limitation of supply is caused by the Mnc?er-production of that which is desired, he has established his " compound ratio," but which, how- ever important to a technical understanding of the fluctuations of prices, has no bearing whatever upon the more fundamental question as to the natural sequence of work and wealth. This author is equally exact and equally superficial in his statement that " wealth consists exclusively of INTRODUCTORY. 17 exchangeable rights ;" drawing no distinction between natural rights and legal rights, nor between individual and social wealth. He sajs, " Property is not a thing, but a right ; it includes all kinds of rights which can be exercised over anything, and is equivalent to absolute ownership." It is hence legitimate to infer that he recognizes no rights but those of property ; and since he says, in the same connection (see book ii., §61) that " jurisjarudence is the science of rights," we are justified in concluding that neither in eco- nomics nor jurisprudence is there any place for the rights of man, or equities other than those connected with the control of property. Now, his main as- sumptions throughout can have no logical basis except upon the theory that cdl legislation and all governmental interference, as well as all customs, in whatever country, clime, or period, are scientific ex- ponents of rights. The former slave-holding oligarchy asserted that " that was property or rights which the law made so." But that these "elements of economics" work with the same facility with chattel slavery, and under every form of despotism, shows its value (not market) as a factor in political and social science. But we must not forget that this " science of dicker," as an able exponent once denominated it in my hearing, is only applicable to the "trade" side of commerce — that which is ej6fected by competitive processes. As we have already seen, liowever, only a certain portion of exchanges are effected by that. For where combi- nation exists, as in the family or community, or among trade guilds, syndicates, or corporations, it does not operate. The highest salaried offices are 18 SOCIAL WEALTH. often awarded as favors, and among most institutions sinecures are abundant. Opportunity and place are accorded out of friendship, family relation, personal influence, etc., so that competition is the exception rather than the rule in nearly all human affairs, ex- cept in the employment of the most dependent and depressed labor, and in the practice of rack-rent. Even in trade a friend will give a friend the advan- tage over a stranger, and a dealer in stocks, or a gambler in securities or produce, will often give a personal favorite " points " that will enable him to evade the law of the market. There are " deadheads " in every train, in every conveyance, or place of social gathering. Its operation, even where most complete, among unskilled laborers, is by no means universal, and by no honest employment of language can be called/ree competition, as applied to them, since in selling his labor, the laborer, as we shall see here- after, is compelled to sell that which, on its passive side, is in the possession already of the party or class to whom he sells. As explained by Macleod, and even by Adam Smith, Kicardo, Mill, etc., economics embraces but a section or branch of social economy. It is as if a naturalist should treat of a tree, but make a thorough study of but a single branch or limb. This would give us a very good idea of the branch, but would not neces- sarily give us any knowledge of the character of the trunk, or of the root, or of their relation to the soil, from whose resources the branches had been grown and sustained through the root and trunk. It would be difficult to proceed without some reference to these, however, and so the economists of the earlier INTRODUCTORY. 19 scliool admit, in a general waj, that labor produces all wealth, but omit to follow the thought to its legitimate conclusion, and suggest a number of ways in which values arise and wealth accumulates, in which labor is but an unimportant factor, if indeed a factor at all. It is upon the law of supply and demand that the whole science is now pivoted. This law, doubt- less, "would operate as contended, provided the con- ditions existed and were all which existed or ef- fected exchange of services, commodities, or wealth. But the truth is that directly opposite conditions always exist, and that the assumed conditions could not possiblj^ exist, except under circumstances which, it may be said, never or very rarely occur. As Mr. Thornton has elaborately shown, in his work on "Labor," the only circumstance under which sup- ply and demand could have the claimed opera- tion would be where all merchantable commodities were offered daily for what they would bring at public vendue, and where there icas no reserve price. He has shown, moreover, that the great proportion of nearly ever}' form of wealth is always held in re- sfrve, onl}' the most perishable products being freely offered, and they are very often thrown into the river to remove a glut, but that labor itself is sold under wholly different conditions ; that for the laborer the law of supply and demand has a significance wliich it has and can have for no other dealer, inasmuch as v/hile tlio ordinary dealer who may not be able to sell his stock to-day will be a])le to sell it to-morrow, often for more tlian he woukl have been willing to 20 SOCIAL WEALTH. sell it for io-daj, tlie laborer must sell his labor to-day, or it is wholly lost.* From a different premise, but by a similar course of reasoning, Karl Marx arrived at a similar conclu- sion. He showed that, lacking opportunity, land, or *X()t only does this assumed law of supply and demand utterly fail in its salutary effect upon labor denied the Use of the land while exert- ing to tlie full tlie baneful elTecls of a forced competition in its operation, but upon laud treated as property or capital it has an opposite effect. Increased demand not only, as with commodities, begets a temporary rise of price, but a continuous rise. Demand does not, as with com- modities, beget an increased, or any supply whatever. Thus, while prices of commodities fluctuate and recede as much or more than they have appreciated, through a brisk demand which stimulates production, the price of land goes constantly' upward with increased demand, no production being possible or conceivable, except in regard to lands trans- ferred from a general to a specific use. Of all commodities which can be held at a reserve price, land is the chief. It may be said it is always held so, the exceptions are so few. The reason is obvious. The land yields natural productions, and while labor is excluded from possession, it will gladly purchase the privilege Oi gathering these products, or of applying itself to the cultivation of more desirable products. The land is a more safe investment, and may be held "for a rise" with less risk than any commodity. It does not, like other commodities, deteriorate in quality or shrink in quantity'. As a general thing, land is held everywhere for a rise. Where too much is attempted to be carried, it is true, parties may have to unload, and when mortgages are being foreclosed, or in business crises, there may be a break in value, but it will only last while the lands are passing into hands able to carry tliem. There is a considerable class of persons who often buy but never sell real estate. In every city, town, and village they are found, and indeed in all the country as well. Polit- ical economists insist on treating both land and labor as both capital and as commodities, yet the one, as we have seen, i^ mainly bej'ond the law of supply and demand, and the other is subject not to a free but a forced competition. Could a more valueless science be invoked to solve any industrial problem? INTRODUCTOKY. 21 capital to exert his force upon, tlie laborer could not compete, because his labor could not be freel}' applied, and that the competition to which he is subjected with others situated unfavorably as himself is not a free but & forced competition. This is also quite true, but the exact position is this : Labor, although the active factor in produc- tion, without laud and opportunity, is abstract only, and as such can neither be bought nor sold. In working for an employer, it is not the labor which the worker sells, but the thing in which the labor has become concreted by its application to the land or to some- thing grown or taken from the land. Bastiat is right in saying " services only are exchanged." In the abstract this is true, but the services which have no tangible or visible vehicle fail of any material appre- ciation. And, however nearly abstract any service may be, place and opportunity, and the presence of a party needing and willing to pay for such service, are necessary factors in the exchange. Now, private property in land, not required by the owner for his use excludes labor from place and opportunity. There is no aim or logic for its exist- ence, indeed, but to effect this very purpose. Its com- mercial value depends ivholly on its poiver to prevent ivorlc. It could not otherwise create a forced com- petition between laborers. Certainly sup])ly and demand can have no legitimate operation between two parties, one of which has full dominion over the land and the ojiportunity whicli both must improve. The one lias his labor in such relation to external nature as that it can readily be wrapped up in every- thing desired ; the other has no place to bestow it. 22 SOCIAL WEALTH. and it must lie sterile. His labor, until applied, has no purchasing poiver. It is as impossible for these two to compete as to exchange, for the thing to be acted upon and turned into a commodity is in the hands of the owner of the land and the oiDportunit}^ not of the worker. But suppose the landless man should hire or buy land of a third party and pay rent or interest to the amount say of one-half of what he could produce, how then could he compete with the other, who has no rent or interest to pay ? It will doubtless be an- swered that this rent or interest is what the owner of the land or money would obtain if he did no Avork at all, but merely let to others, and that consequently, as to the work he actually does, he stands on an equal ground with the other. This is, logically, much the same as the basis of Eicardo's theory of rent. How inadequate it is to the solution of any problem of industrial production seems not to have troubled the minds of any of the economists. It is true that the balance over that which the land-holder might have obtained as rent without labor determines the amount which, commercially, his labor realizes him ; but the utter fallacy of this assumption is seen the moment we reflect that when the laborer can get no emplojanent, or opportunity to work whatever, and starves, the man who has access to the soil can live in comfort, although he gets no more with his persistent labor than if he had rented his land and taken the rent it yielded. Ac- cording to this theory, reduced to a naked absurdity in this instance, he would have obtained nothing for his work ; it would have been unproductive. Such INTRODUCTORY. 23 induction from such premises, it seems to me, can have little interest except for those who are seeking justification for existing inequalities. Why the one should be protected by law in the ownership of thousands of acres, while the other is denied access to any, has no answer, economically, but that it is the law of trade ! The inability of political economy to grasp the problem of social industry and division of products now fully appears. It is assumed then that existing conditions and in- equalities obtain from the operation of the laws of trade. Nothing could be further from the fact. They are the results of barbaric custom, of class domination and legislation, and are upheld by no natural law of trade or natural law of any kind yet discovered ; and the wrongs of which the landless laborer so justly complains are wrongs inflicted and sustained by statutes regarding the tenure of land which have no basis in reason, and will be found to be as destitute of any foundation in the science of law as they are of any justification in the science of morals. It is worthy of note that Ricardo bases his theory of rent, and Malthus his theory of over-popu- lation, upon the same general ground, and under the shadow of a land monopoly, which keeps one-half of the soil of the British Isles uncultivated, assumes that the whole movement of society, trade, and pop- ulation, in condition as in numbers, is under the reign of natural law. Now, science can take no cog- nizance of statute law unless it be by comparing it with, and condemning it where it differs from, natural law. Yet our pseudo-economists treat all phenomena. 24 SOCIAL WEALTH. under whatever arbitrary enactment or despotic ad- ministration, as of the same scientific value. It has, therefore, been my aim to trace historically the processes by which these inequalities have arisen, been perpetuated, and are at present sustained and made to appear rational. Science makes no claim to dominate and govern society, but it is under obliga- tion to define and classify phenomena of all kinds. It may not prescribe laws for the possession of the land, hut it is hound to show ivhat the natural relation is hetiveen man and the soil, the prime elements in social industry and social progress. In the development of industrial production, which is older than any written history, there have been three great epochs, interlapping each other in time, place, and circumstance, but still sufiiciently distinct from each other to admit of general analysis and classification. Not to speak of the cruder form of production in which the individual or primitive family engaged, or was directly interested, we begin with the communistic form, when the family extended to the tribe. This is undoubtedly the earliest form which has any social or liistoric significance. In its proper place we shall see that this was the funda- mental form by which occupancy of the land was regulated and determined. Under such form of necessity the production must have been communal, and was shared, more or less equitably, according to the degree of progress the tribe had made in intelli- gence and social advancement. Such progress, how- ever, was subject to great diversity of checks, and in many cases violently turned backward by tribal wars and conquests of warlike chieftains. And where the INTRODUCTORY. 25 longest peaceful periods were enjoyed, tliere was the liability of an arrest of the natural development of social law through the attachment to custom and tradition which shows itself so often in primitive communities and among subject races. As the boundaries of tribes extended they came in contact with other tribes, upon whom they made war or who made war upon them. Mutual destruction and the possession of the domain and goods was doubtless the purpose of these conflicts. The more warlike destroyed the weaker or less warlike, and appropri' ated their wealth, as formerly our farmers destroyed the bees to obtain their accumulated honey ; but, like them, the Avarlike tribes soon learned a better way. We have seen, now, what we may class as the primitive form, both of "production and division hy usurpation." Under this most discouraging state of affairs, however, production still went on, evincing the aptitude of mankind even in a savage or semi- savage state, for productive industry, notwithstanding the word of our teachers of economics and apologists for existing usurpations ; that unless the ca2:)italist and landlord be assured of the lion's share in distri- bution they would not co-operate, and industry must cease. This form was superseded by another form, in which the lives of the conquered were saved, upon the condition that they would become the bond- slaves of the victors — they, and tlieir clildren, and their children's children. This form may be termed chri/frlism. Under it production and division were quite sim})listic probhjms. Its effect u])on tlie in- crease of wealth was, no doubt, considerable in com- 26 SOCIAL WEALTH. parison with the barbarity which it superseded, and Avhich killed the worker to obtain possession of his product. It was in some respects more considerate to the vanquished, and much more convenient for the predatory class ; but it was less favorable to pro- duction than mif^ht have been expected, for the worker before had the normal incentive to industry, the prospective possession of its fruit, and till the last the hope that he might escape the threatened doom. But as a productive worker, the slave soon sank to the lowest level known to industrial activity — so low that the lash became the resort to stimulate his flagging purpose. To this enslavement and usur- pation there was this justification, and this only. The victor could plead that he had saved the life of the vanquished, which was forfeited by the laws of barbaric war, and in consideration of which the victim gave his long-life service and also that of his posterity. This vestige of primitive " contract " appears as late even as the forming of our own Constitution, which contains the phrase " persons held to service," and under which slavery was perpetuated in our republic for nearly a century, and would doubtless have been in existence to-day but for the rebellion of the slave-power itself against the government which had so long shielded the system from the progress of modern thought and the logic of events. This is a circumstance which we should not fail to emphasize in our estimation of the forces which must inevitably disrupt or destroy our present sys- tem of capitalism unless the existing usurpations are INTRODUCTORY. 27 allowed to control wliolly our government and laws, or are in time wisely and peacefully abolished. To the slave system of production succeeded the feudal system. Successful chieftains had increased the extent of their sway by conquest, and kingdoms and empires were formed. The influence of the primitive community became weakened and modi- fied. Slavery became unwieldy, and the operation of Roman civilization became checked and hastened to dissolution, through its profligate prostitution of the civil law and of public trusts, to promote private advancement and personal dominion. With the ab- sorption of the lands by a class, it became an empire of slaves, citizenship retained no meaning, and only a debauched aristocracy remained. Under feudalism the slave became a serf, and was bound to the land and the landlord to him. He was recognized as entitled to protection under the law of the realm, and under the doctrine of the divine right of kings vassalage and villienage became the condi- tion of nearly all those who followed industrial pur- suits. This was the feudal system of production. Under this form certain kinds of industr}- flourished ; but other than a rude agriculture, they were those relating to war, or to the requirements of the church. This system gradually and silently disappeared with not so much as a notice from any historian till the time of Macaulay. To it succeeded the " competitive system," as we may call it for the want of a better name. Fourier denominates it industrial or com- mercial feudalism. Karl Marx calls it " ca])italistic production." It is uniinp(5rtaiit what we call it, if we analyze the thing itself and properly classify it. 28 SOCIAL WEALTH. As the feudal system retained many of the elements of slavery, modified by the traditions, customs, and practices of the primitive communities, so capitalism retained the essential usurpations of feudalism, though professing to guard personal freedom, and to observe equity between the owner and the occupier of the land, the employer and the employed. Like slavery and serfdom, however, it relies wholly upon the "law of contract." This law we shall be under the necessity of analyzing, after we have inquired into the principle of law which underlies the appor- tionment, occupancy, and use of the land. It is well here to call atention merely to the significant fact, that although slaves were held under contract they were incapacitated from making any contract what- ever, not even marriage ; and that the serf was vir- tually in the same condition, being allowed to marry only within certain limitations and with the sanction of his feudal lord. We shall see, by and by, that a slave, serf, nor even the landless wage-worker, has any status which can enable him to make any con- tract which will be binding with respect to the division of the products of an industry in which he is mutually engaged with others. Though we have sj)oken of the several systems of industrial production, as they were dominated by the simple law of the strongest — as under slavery, as under hereditary rule in feudalism, and in our pres- ent system of capitalism, or rule of the market — there is and has been, in reality, but one principle about production under all of them — that of the employ- ment of human labor upon the soil, and the sponta- neous offerings of nature. And in the creation of all INTRODUCTORY. 29 social wealth this has been co-operative. It is the method of division which has varied, but varied less than appears upon an ordinary presentation of the subject. For the proportion which goes to the worker has a remarkable similarity under these, to appearance, widely different systems. Nearly the same, and only the same, proportion goes to the wage-worker now as went formerly to the serf or to the slave. We have no reliable data, it is true, as to what portion of the slave's production was usually required for his support, but we have the authority of Hallam that the laborer of his generation was " much inferior in ability to support a family to his ancestors three or four centuries ago" (Middle Ages, p. 500). And he quotes Sir John Cullum as saying : " In the fourteenth century a harvest man had 4d. a day, which enabled him in a week to buy a comb of wheat; but to buy a comb of wheat now (1784) a man must work ten or twelve days." He further says: "So under Henry VII., if meat was a farthing and a half, which I suppose was about the truth, a laborer earning 3d. a day, or 18d. in the week, could buy a bushel of wheat at 9d., and 24 lbs. of meat for his family. A laborer at present (1817) earning 12s. a week can only buy a half bushel of wheat at 10s., and 12 lbs. of meat at 7d." He points out that in conse- quence of the improvements in manufactures certain commodities had become proportionally cheaper, but on the wliole concludes as above quoted. But while it is true that great progress lias been made in im])r(n'(;ments in machinery, in tlie processes of various industries, and the production of wealtli, it is also too true tliat ])()verty has extended its 30 SOCIAL WEALTH. borders in equal, if not increased, ratio. It may be said tliat "the craftsman now lodges and fares better than the feudal lord ten centuries ago, or the bar- baric king of an earlier period;" yet still the propor- tion he shares of what his labor creates is less than that which the Saxon Gurth enjoyed ; and what is worse, is denied at times the opportunity to work at all. The wealth which the lord of land or of capital now acquires from the productions of labor is pro- portionately greater than that which success ever gave to the military chieftain, to the slave-holder, or to the feudal baron. That political economy, as de- fined by the latest school, applies equally well to each of these systems of production and division should show us how inadequate it is to even treat, much less to solve, the industrial problems which are now pressing for elucidation. One of the first, if not the very first, of economists who were prominent in the public life of our nation fifty years ago — John C. Calhoun — was a slave-holder who religiously believed slavery to be not only right, but the only safe relation between " capital and la- bor." He foresaw, and correctly foretold, that the abolition of slavery would lead directly to the conflict between labor and capital which now confronts us.* We must look to a broader sphere of thought than * In 1835. under liis teachings, the Charleston Baptist Association, in Its report, said it "did not consider that the iioly scriptures had made the fact of slavery a question of morals at all. The question is one purely of political economy, viz. : Whether the operatives of a country shall be bought and sold, and themselves become property as in South Carolina, or whether they shall be hirehngs, and their labor only become property." INTRODUCTORY. 31 that of political economy, wliicli is constantly nar- rowing, before we shall find any satisfactory reason or explanation for the gigantic accumulations of wealth in the few hands, and the growing pauperism among the people whereyer the tenure of land and the law of the market coincide to multiply accumu- lations of wealth by a " duplicate geometrical ratio," while labor can onl}- increase production by " equal differences." That the tendencies which conspire to create the inequalities of condition, and utter subjection of labor to the power of capital, are traceable ultimately to priyate property in land, as at present interpreted by law and custom, there can now remain no rational doubt. Mr. George, in his "Progress and Poyerty," has shown it in his masterful way, though he does not see that it is now a tool of capitalism merely. His work has become so widel}' known, and so gen- erally read, that I may be saved the necessity of making any argument upon that head. Mr. Wallace and Mr. Clark have also directed attention to the same question, in a manner to leave the matter in no doubt, and I will not take the labor of proving at length what is so generally acknowledged to be true. To the perhaps less obvious truths respecting the modes of obtaining wealth without service, the nature of the productive factors, and the ratios involved in procuring and apportioning social wealth, we need to apply the most careful attention and bring the utmost candor. For upon tliese qualities of mind everything in the investigation of social questions depends. CHAPTEE IT. ECONOMIC SCHOOLS : A BRIEF REVIEW OF THEIR ORIGIN AND GROWTH. As A science, or branch of science, political econ- omy is little more than a century old. The term is said to have been first used by Quesnay, a French philosopher, who published a volume in 1758, no copies of which, however, are now extant. Previous to that a doctrine known as " the balance of trade " had obtained among the savants of Europe, and ex- erted a wide and powerful influence over the govern- ment and fortunes of nations for nearly two hundred years. Spain and Poland especially favored it, and by cruel laws and frequent wars sought to retain within their dominions the money of commerce — the precious metals. More than one -fourth of the whole time is said to have been spent in destructive wars, which are noticed in superficial history as dynastic and religious wars, but which were in the supposed interest of that control of commerce which would bring the money from many countries into one. The doctrine was briefly that " such commerce only was valuable which brought money into a country," and that in exchange one side necessarily gained and the other lost. During its prevalence, hoAvever, Spain sunk from the first to a fourth or fifth rank among the nations, and Poland lost its national ex- istence. ^' ECONOMIC SCHOOLS. 33 Quesnay was the first writer who combated this doctrine by anything like a systematic method. He laid it down as a maxim that " nations are interested in the prosperity, and not in the destruction, of their neighbors." A school of philosophers was immedi- ately formed who adopted in the main his teachings, and, according to Macleod, " reflecting upon the in- tolerable misery they saw around them, struck out with the idea that there must be some great natural science, some j^rincij^les of eternal truth founded in nature itself, with regard to the social relations of mankind, the yiolations of which were the causes of that hideous misery they saw in their native land. The name they gaye this science was Natural Eights, and their object was to discover and lay down an abstract science of the rights of men in all their social relations . . . toward goyernment, toward each other, and toward j)roperty " (Elements of Eco- nomics, p. 54). To wliat extent the promulgation of their views operated to change the attitude of the French people toward their government would prove an interesting inquiry, but it is not proposed here. Froedom was their ruling maxim — freedom of person, of opinion, and of trade between individuals and nations. It seems that Turgot, who was for a time the controller- general of Louis XVL, and an eminent disciple of his school, would have been able to turn back the threatened revolution, if his king had enabled him to carry out lii.s ])lans for refoi-miiig the civil and financial systems ho found onthroMcd in France more securely than monarchy itself. He was allowed to hold his position only about a year and a half, when 34: SOCIAL WEALTH. he was abandoned by the king, who at the same time expressed the opinion that the only persons who sought the welfare of the people Avere Turgot and himself. A writer of note says., in regard to this : " If the nobility and privileged classes had possessed enough of foresight and patriotism to submit to his plans of reforming France, she might have been spared the horrors and excesses of the revolution. But his pro- jects for the public good were defeated by the con- federacy formed against him by the nobles, the courtiers, farmers of the piiblic revenue, and the financiers." This first school of economists recognized that man's physical and social wants lead him to live in society of equals in a state of " peace and good will," and to recognize that others, with the same wants as himself, cannot have less rights than himself, and that he is therefore bound to respect those rights, so that he may have the same observed toward himself. They held that wealth was derived wholly from the produce of the land, and consisted of that which was in excess of the cost of production, or that which was consumed by the labor producing it. Labor employed in obtaining products from the land they considered the only productive labor, and held that the wages of all others were paid from this source. In exchange they held that neither side gains, and they excluded labor and credit from their definition of capital, although at the time chattel slavery was common among the nations. This school was estab- lished upon a half truth. They recognized the land as the basic element in economics, but failed to see ECONOillC SCHOOLS. 35 that only Avlien joined to labor it was a factor in the production of wealth. . But there soon sprang up a second school of econ- omists, holding, like the first school, to freedom of commerce, but denying that mechanic arts and trade do not contribute to enrich a nation. They con- tended, also, that there is a gain to both sides in commerce. Adam Smith, the leader of this second school, made labor the basis of all wealth, as the first school had made the land, and therefore comple- mented their main theory. This school took up the theory of value, and developed the general idea of supply and demand in its operation to promote or regulate the fiuctuations and adjustments of prices. Adopting also their idea of wealth as arising from the mutual wants of people, and as consisting of the exchangeability of things. Smith laid it down as an axiom, that "the real price of everything- — what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it — is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it, or ex- change it for something else, is the toil and trouble wliich it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. Wliat is bought with money or goods is i)urchased by labor as much as wliat we acquire by the toil of our own body, . . . and its value to those who possess it, and want to exchange it for some new ])roduction, is precisely equal to the quantity of labor which it can enable them to pur- chase or command." But neither school clearly graspful the whole truth — that it is the union of thcuc two ofjcnls or fador.i 36 SOCIAL WEALTH. ivhicJi produces all material goods. The system, of wliicli Smith gave the substantial rudiments, was widely departed from, in certain particulars, by Kicardo, Malthus, Mill, and others, without, how- ever, in any way inquiring into the natural relation between the land and the occupier, or into any equitable system of division of the products of in- dustry. If they did not assume that wages, rent, and profits were a just and equitable system of division, they ignored their obvious inequality and monstrous injustice ; and if they did not assume that the unrestricted dominion of the land as established by civil law, was true and in accordance with the natural relation, they virtually treated it as such, and were wholly silent as to any other theory of land ownership than the caj^italistic or feudalistic. From this remark must be excepted, however, the later Mill, Prof. J. E. Cairnes, and some later writers of less note. And the truth is that the strict trade economists found no practical method of evading longer this manifest tendency to the investigation of jnore fundamental questions ; but by narrowing the scope of the science to the single matter of exchange. Professor Perry, our own countryman, Macleod of England, and M. Eouher of France, are representa- tive men of this later school of economists. Macleod says : " This view has now become general among the most recent and advanced economists in Europe, who are too numerous to name — that pure economics is nothing but the science of exchanges." It is useless now to object to this limitation of a science so broad in its inception, and which embraced isonomics, or law of equal privilege, as well as econ- ECONOMIC SCHOOLS. 37 omy. But what is open to objection and severe reprehension is that when so limited it should treat all phenomena in regard to properbj and trade as natural, however determined by arbitrary domination, or by the operation of barbaric custom and unequal laws. Because, if we follow the teachings of this later or third school, in accepting the theory that supply and demand is the cause of value (although reallj- but an incident in the fluctuations of the market price) there arises all the greater necessity for dealing in an inde- pendent way with those things which the reformed science excludes, viz. : The work and the worker, and their relation to each other and to the earth, as well as to the system of division of the products of social industry. For these exist back of all trade, and of the " varying relation of economic quantities " to each other, which, according to this school, " defines and limits the inquiry." Surely if so narrow a specialty requires the appropriation of an entire science for its elucidation, the relation of the man to the elements upon which his life and labor depend, as well as the undisturbed eiijo^nnent of the products of his activity, demands an inquiry and the forming of a science of social industry ap]ilicable in every social arrangement. And certainly it will not be permitted to a science of such special scope as eco- nomics has thus become, to determine and conclude any controversy beyond tlie sphere of trade, espe- cially not to decide tlie claims oi labor adversely by simply ignoring them, or by assuming them already determined by tlie crude institutions derived from a wliolly unscientific and barbarf)us age. It is also plain, from what lias been (piotcd fi-oni a " I'nrc* 383017 38 SOCIAL WEALTH. Economist," that tLe view of tlie originators of the science, the first school, was far more broad and humanitary, and aimed at nothiiig less than " to dis- cover and lay down an abstract science of the natural rights of men in all their social relations." Now, since " Economics " has abandoned that field alto- gether, and confined itself to the treatment of a single branch of the subject, the question of value, by what logic can it assume to prejudge those broader and weightier questions which itself has positively ex- cluded ? I should notice in this connection the existence of a partially retrograde school of economists, which is mainly represented by the works of Henry C. Carey. It was in some respects a protest against the studied neglect, by the writers of the second school, of the industrial question and of the rights of labor. To a certain extent he rehabilitated the old doctrine of the " Balance of Trade," and with good reason in view of the abandonment of the whole industrial side of the equation by the other schools. Whether both parties to an exchange gained, or whether neither gained, or whether the one gained and the other lost, between nations or individuals, would depend mainly upon the equity of the exchange, rather than upon any relation of supply and demand. Not the " bal- ance of trade," but the "balance of profits," would determine the ratio in which the one would succeed to afiiuence and the other be reduced to poverty, and to which abundance of supply and intensity of demand would give no solution or even intimation. Protec- tion against such result was not only a just aim, but an imperious necessity to save industry from a con- ECONOMIC SCHOOLS. 39 stant despoliation of which neither school so much as acknowledges the existence. We can only deplore the wholly impotent remedies offered by Carey for the disease he so clearly under- stood. His elementary principles are greatly clouded by the delusive mirage which befogged his mind in regard to foreign trade, and the workings of a tariff upon the productions of other lands. The necessity of a more thorough and comprehensive system of investigation than any of these schools affords must be now apparent to the most careless reader. CHAPTER III. EISE AND GKOWTH OF CAPITALISM. The progress of tlie human race is effected by the operation of two forces which correspond in most re- spects to what in physics are often called, for want of better terms, the centripetal and centrifugal forces. These are the forces of convergence and divergence, the one tending to concentration of powers and prop- erties, and the other to their separateness or the in- dependence of parts. Socialism and Individualism are to appearance conflicting, though in reality comple- mental, in their relations to the sooietar}^ movement. Capitalism has its rise in the early and erratic stage of these movements and grows out of the irregu- lar action of these forces. By itself, Individualism seeks the private good to the neglect of society, and, uncomplemented, to its ultimate disruption. By , itself, Socialism seeks the collective good, to the neg- lect and ultimate subjection of the individual. Be- tween these two forces, and while their play is inhar- monic, the capitalistic tendency becomes developed, employing the license of the individual to sequester the social wealth, and convert the social forces into means for the subjection of other individual workers. Under the usages and regnilations of aggressive war it seizes the laborer and reduces him to the condition of a slave. By more gradual means it assumes do- 40 RISE AND GKOWTH OF CAPITALISM. 41 minion of the land by steady approaches. Anon it courts the individual and leans toward personal freedom, and, as it acquires exclusive control of the counter-element, the land, relaxes its hold of the per- son of the laborer. It now gathers to itself the social and civil powers, and, to make its dominion of the land absolute, lauds at the same time the personal freedom of the individual and the divine origin of the state. Thus unlimited freedom to extend and absorb earthly possessions, inviolability of contract, however formed or assumed, became the great w^atch- words and signs by which it conquered. And thus it has played the social force against the individual, and again the individual right against the social claim, whenever the state has attempted to limit or regulate its rapacity. It now approaches the seat of civil power, in order to enlarge its privi- lege, and converts public trusts to private ends. In modern states it purchases the courts and legislatures, and where it cannot directly accomplish this purpose, pleads for protection and exemption from the law of competition which it prescribes for the worker. While obtaining high tariffs and princely subsidies, it takes occasion to warn the government tliat noth- ing is required to benefit the condition of laboi-, but to enable capital to give employment ; that having freedom to choose his calling and power to liave en- forced his contracts, the laborer should i)e satisfied. In tlie testimony ])efore tlie Senat(n-ial Committee on Education sim\ Labor, noted (•a])italists,* in giving *Tlio tngtimnny of .Toliii Tlnsioli and .Ta}' Pionld, aa roforroil to aViovc, parliciilarly cnipliasi/i-d tlici ii(;<'cs-ily lliat ^ruvcmmciil slioiil'J favor and 42 SOCIAL WEALTH. their life experience intimated tliat all workers lia\e the " chance " to become millionaires, and perhaps this would be true if subsidies and the winnings of gamblers could have universal application. But it is for private advantage and plunder of the public that subsidies are sought or gambling is inaugurated. Caj^italism continues true to its origin and name. It seeks to bring all things to or under one head and to monopolize the sources of production. In poli- tics it is monarchy, not such as the effete institutions now siipport, but as it appears in an Alexander or a Napoleon. It employs all the military powers of the state and all civil and diplomatic trickery to reduce all men and all nations to its sway. It does not tolerate equality or the existence of equals. " The universe cannot retain two suns." No sooner have Octavius and Anthony put down the conspirators than they try issues with each other. This may be said to be the sum of military careers, the establish- ment of unlimited power in the hands of one. It is the same with capitalistic careers. In trade the instruments and maxims only are changed. The spirit is the same, and the purpose to reduce the world to the payment of tribute is protect capital, but tliat labor, under our equal laws, had everything it could reasonably ask. The latter-named gentleman, in a previous ex amination before a legislative committee of the state of New York, in 1872, speaking of his action politically, had said: '"I do not know how much I paid in helping friendly men. We had four states to look after and we had to suit our politics to circumstances. In a Demo- cratic district I was a Democrat, in a Republican district I was a Re- publican, and in a doubtful district I was doubtful ; but in every dis- trict, and at all times, I have always been an Erie man." EISE AND GEOWTH OF CAPITALISM. 43 scarcely changed in form. Our millionaires, with less personal courage, have found a safer method of subjection and pursue it with as little scruple as did the ancient chieftains. Trade, as we have it in bargain-making, is the di- rect successor of violence in warfare. To illustrate this I cannot do better than quote from Henry Sum- ner Maine : " In order to understand what a market originally was you must try to picture to yourselves a territory occupied by village communities, self-acting and as yet autonomous, each cultivating its arable land in the middle of its waste, and each, I fear I must add, at perpetual war with its neiglibor. But at several points, probably where the domains of two or three villages converged, there appear to have been spaces of what we should call neutral ground. These were the markets. They were probably the only places at which the members of the different groups met for any purpose except warfare, and the persons who first came to them were doubtless, at first, persons specially empowered to exchange the produce and manufactures of one little village community for those of another. Sir John Lubbock, in his recent volume on tlie ' Origin of Civilization,' has some in- teresting remarks on the very ancient association be- tween Markets and Neutrality (p. 205) ; nor can I help oljserving that there is a historical connection of the utmost importance to the moderns between the two, since tlie ju.s f/rnf!um of the Roman pnetor, which was in ]y.irt originally a market law, is the un- doubtf'd pai'ont of our int(>niational law. But, be- sides tlie notion of iimtrality, another idea was 44 SOCIAL WEALTH. associated witli markets. This was the idea of sharp practice and hard bargaining. Tlie three ideas seem all blended in the attributes of the god Hermes, or Mercury — at once the god of boundaries, the prince of messengers oT embassadors, and the patron of trade, of cheating, and of thieves" (Village Com- munities, pp. 192, 193). From the fact tliat in their domestic relations the primitive groups give feeble play to the principles of trade, he says : " Competition, that prodigious social force of which the action is measured by political economy, is of relatively modern origin. Just as the conceptions of human brotherhood and (in a less de- gree) of human equality appear to have passed be- yond the limits of the primitive communities and to have spread themselves in a highly diluted form over the mass of mankind, so, on the other hand, compe- tition in exchange seems to be the universal belliger- ency of the ancient world which has penetrated into the interior of the ancient groups of blood relatives. It is the regulated private war of ancient society gradually broken up into indistinguishable atoms. So far as property in land is concerned, unrestricted competition in purchase and exchange has afar more limited action even at this moment than an English- man or American would suppose. The view of land as merchantable property, exchangeable like a horse or an ox, seems to be not only modern, but even now distinctively Western" (V. C., 227, 228). Where the older forms of usurpation exist and the ruder despotism prevails there is less necessity for complete caj^italistic control of the land, but with the dying out of those forms, and as they yield to KISE AND GKOWTH OF CAPITALISM. 45 the progress of modern thought, privilege, with the instinct of self-preservation clutches at the dominion of the land, and through the reduction of that ele- ment to the status of a commodity and the competi- tive struggle for its possession, renews its waning strength and extends its endangered power. In the United States this principle is wholly unrestricted and its dicta are universally accepted in all business circles. In England an effort is being made to form into creneral law the rule of the market so as to do away with the obstacles to "free trade in the land." In continental Europe, with the exception of France, it has not yet taken on distinctive form, and is less and less defined as we approach the countries gov- erned by absolute power and the traditions of earlier times. To reduce land to the state of a commodity, so as to profit by its relation to production, and to force a competitive struggle for its use, the spirit of capital- ism has contrived to win victory from defeat. And thus the market lias brought the occupancy of the land under its rule, and developed what under no other rule could have been effected, a competitive rent, forced by the necessities of the cultivator to obtain the privilege which naturally is his. " The right to take the highest obtainable rent for the land is, as a matter of fact and as a matter of morality, a right derived from a rule of the market. Botli the explanation and the justification of the ex- ercise of the right in Enghiiid and Scotland is tliat in these countries there really is a market for land. Yet it is notorious that in England, at all events, land is not universally rack-rented. But where is it that 46 SOCIAL WEALTH. the theoretical right is not exercised ? It is sub- stantially true that where the manorial groups, sub- stituted for the old village groups, survive, there are no rack-rents. What is sometimes called the feudal feelinc; has much in common with the old feeling of brotherhood which forbade hard bargains " (Y. C, 199.) That rack-rent and the taking advantage of the necessities of others to drive unequal bargains Avas transmitted from the early times, and originated in the common antipathy to strangers or outsiders, and so inconsistent with the fraternal feelings which ob- tained in more primitive communities, there remains no doubt. In the Ancient Laws of Ireland, as quoted by this author, " the three rents are rack-rent from a person of a strange tribe — a fair rent from one of the tribe — and the stipulated rent, which is j^aid equally by the tribe and the strange tribe." Competition rents could only arise by regarding the letting and hiring of land as a purchase or sale for a period of time, with the price spread over that period. He proceeds to add that " if the writer [of treatises on political economy] had always recollected that a competition rent is, after all, nothing but price pay- able by instalments, much unnecessarily mysterious language might have been spared, and some doubtful theories as to the origin of rent might have been avoided." The motive in exacting a competitive price for rent, or any exchangeable thing, is the reverse of a fraternal or friendly impulse. It is always attempted to be justified by specious reasonings and baseless assumptions. It is antagonism, not mutualism. Be- RISE AND GROWTH OF CAPITALISM. 47 tween tlie advantage taken of another's necessities to drive a sharp bargain, there is only one step to an act which shall reduce that other to a dire neces- sity, in order to increase the advantage to be realized. This step is taken whenever, under the false assump- tion that land is a commodity, proprietorship) of it is claimed either by direct usurpation, or under the pretense of purchase, to the exclusion of those who need to occupy it. It is this step which constitutes capitalism. Free competition, indifferently em- ployed, may embrace, possibl}-, the obtaining a bet- ter price from another's distress. Capitalism is the systematic reduction of the many to want, that ad- vantage may be taken of their needs. But such result springs, as we have seen, from the erratic pla}' of the primal forces. With the harmonic and complemental action of the individual and social aims, there could be no place for capitalism, and with the advent of mutual co-operation, and recipro- cal exchange, and the disappearance of artificial capital, wealth would be more generally distributed and greatly increased. With the broadest liberty to the individual, society would exist to guard the equal rights of all, and thus secure its own stability and progress by promoting the well-being and normal development of each member. CHAPTEE ly. UNEARNED INCREASE. The sources of unearned increase or income may properly be divided into three categories from the especial sources from which they are derived : First. Profits — derived mainly in process of the exchange of commodities. Second. Interest — derived from the loan of money, or of forms of capitalized wealth other than land. Third. Rent — derived from the privilege to use the land, or to occupy dwellings and other improve- ments upon the land. Profits arise mainly in the process of exchange. When two attempt to efi'ect a transfer of two com- modities with each other, there is quite sure to arise a question as to how much of one shall be exchanged for a certain amount of the other ; and exactness as to values, even if both were desirous of dealing fairly, would be difficult to determine. But their agree- ment is supposed to fix the ratio with some approach to equity. And the accidental advantage which either might attain is very likely to be reversed in the next transaction, and consequently could hardly be classed with profit. When, however, a third party enters into the transaction, and becomes a go-between for two or more parties with commodities to dispose of for other commodities, the matter of profit first pre- 48 UNEARNED INCEEASE. 49 sents itself in a distinct form. The merchant is the representative man of profits, as the banker is of in- terest and the Lmdlord of rent. Let us take it up and analyze it carefully. We will take a most simple instance, that no confusion may arise from the introduction of lateral questions. A farmer raises jjotatoes and a shoemaker makes shoes. It is convenient^ for each to store them with the merchant of their village, who will be in a certain way the one to determine how many potatoes the farmer who wants the shoes shall give for them to the shoemaker who wants the potatoes. Even if money is used in each of the transactions, the opera- tion is the same. Taking it for granted that, as be- tween the farmer and shoemaker the exchange is a tolerably fair one, Avhat rule determines the compen- sation of the merchant ? The economist will answer that he has done to both a service, and the compen- sation is to be determined by competition, as is the price of the potatoes and of the shoes. And while all stand on an equal footing, there seems no objec- tion to this determination. By this rule the farmer is paid for his labor in raising and bringing the I)roduct to market ; the shoemaker, for his labor and material in the shoes, and the merchant for his service in the exchange. But under free competi- tion he woidd not l)e likely to receive more for his services than each of them in ])roportion to the time employed, for certainly the work is not more labori- ous or repulsive than theirs. But even if ho did, it would still 1)6 his irar/is, and not a ])rotit — for that means something l)oyo)id tlic ])aymeiit for services rendered. But would it be right that he be paid no 50 SOCIAL WEALTH. interest on his mouey emplo^-ed in business, and on the rent of the premises he requires for business? But if he parts with a portion of this compensation for interest on borrowed money, and as rent for a hired store, he still has made no profit ; and it may happen a part of even his fair wages for the service he has rendered goes the same way. Besides, the others also employ means in their business. There is evidently, then, no room for profits here. Besides, there is more or less risk in all mercantile enter- prises, and still another portion of his earnings may have gone justly for assurance. However liberally the merchant under such cir- cumstances might sometimes be paid, it is very evident that no great disparity could long exist in the compensation of these several callings, did not some other factor enter into the calculation. Under free competition the pay of each would certainly tend to equality. Besides, the merchant is placed in a position to know better than either of the others the marketable value of the articles, and of his own services, and more intelligence in these respects is rightly expected of him. Now, whatever his decision in the matter of the compensation may be, he must decide his share to be either wages or profits, or else both as wages and profits. That he cannot charge it wholly as profits, is seen from the fact that he would relinquish, then, all claim for services, and would be guilty of taking " something for nothing," and playing falsely with matters entrusted to his decision. But if he is paid for his service, by what pretense does he also charge up profits against his customers? or how, under a system of natural competition, would UNEARNED INCREASE. 51 he be able to do so and jet succeed iu being em- ployed ? In the prosecution of a business other than mere trading, where labor is employed and material worked up into new forms and new utilities result, there is a greater complexity of transactions and interests, but they all are reducible to the same terms. These are the services which the operator performs for the producer of the material, the laborer, who has his labor only to sell, the machine or tool mater, etc. In the parlance of the economists, he purchases all these and sells them in the commodities thus pro- duced and sold. Now, in all this he either performs a service to those from whom he purchases and to whom he sells, or he does not. If not, he can make no just claim to compensation whatever, and in any truly competitive struggle would be unable to receive any. If recompensed for his services, any claim for profits must be fraudulent and unjust, for no one can be paid twice for the same work and be innocent. If he has employed hired money, factories, or lands, and ])aid interest and rent for them, so may those witli whom he has dealt, and the moneys he has ab- sorbed from his business to meet those obligations are not profits; and however he may be leagued with the banker and landlord, it is not as an operator or merchant that the profit is taken, but as a banker or landlord, or as a conspirator with one or both of them. It is easy to anticipate th(^ ])r()test which will be raised against bringing morals into economics, and sucli is not my intention, fartlier than tlu^y are in- volved in civil law and social economy; but it may be 52 SOCIAL WEALTH. well to remind critics tlins captious, that tlie highest moral quality, Truth, is essential to any scientific investigation whatsoever. If we may not know the truth of any transaction we are in no position to de- cide any question in regard to it. It is evident that profits which depend upon falsehood, deception, sup- pression of facts, misrepresentation or adulteration, or upon false claims and pretenses, can have no place in any scientific inquiry. With these elements eliminated from business transactions, it is quite plain that nothing would remain to the trader but payment for his services. Exchange is a social, not a private affair, and in the transfer and distribution of commodities, the entire process is the result of attempts at mutual and reciprocal interchange. It may be to the private interest of the trader to ob- struct, as trade is now conducted, forestall and corner the concurrent tendencies to exchange. It certainly is the interest of the whole people that such private interests shall be thwarted as far, at least, as a pro- mulgation of the truth will have that effect, and here, really, the province of the scientist ends. It may be well to refer, in this connection, to the fact that this fear of moral sentiment, by writers on political econ- omy and civil law, is wholly too one-sided to be treated with the least respect ; for while it deprecates the interference, in any way, of ethics against the " law of the market," and the right to obtain all one can of advantage in a trade, it whines like a whipped school-boy about the " sacred rights of property," and " the inviolability of contract," whenever its as- sumed prerogatives are questioned. It is significant that our courts will cite with deepest unction the TTNEAENED INCREASE. 53 GoLDEX Rule, wlieu rights of property are inyolved, but wliolly ignore it when the fulfilment of a con- tract is at issue, however unjust or oppressive it may have become in operation. If a man is bound, as the judge charges in a case where another allows my property to be injured, through carelessness or negligence, by the rule that he should do by me as he would have me do by him, why is he not bound by the same law when a con- tract works to my injury and loss, and which was obtained by him for the purpose not to do right by me, but to do me wrong, such as he would not will- ingly have me do to him ? Or when the property of the people is in tlie hands of the merchant, and in a degree he has the power to fix the price, not only of his own services, but of those of his customers, why is he not bound to do to others as he does by him- self? I may as well follow here these sophistries to their just conclusion. It will be urged that advan- tage-taking should be justified in order that people may learn to beware of making unequal or one-sided contracts ; but this reason is also unilateral, so to speak, since it is not applied to the other side, where a question of property is concerned, and where the example would have been equall}^ salutary to the property holder, by teaching him to beware of trust- ing his property in careless hands. Besides, con- tracts of the nature we are treating are made under duress and in tlie interest of capitalism always. From wliat we liave seen, profits, distinct and in addition to payment of services, can have no honest existence where two parties to a transaction are equi- tably related to each other and duly informed. No 54 SOCIAL WEALTH. one -svho knows and can avoid it will pay a profit. And no one knowingly will deal at a loss when lie can deal without. If both parties can gain in a transac- tion, then the benefit is mutual, and there is no profit as of one over the other, which is the sole character- istic of capitalistic increase. i Before passing to the consideration of interest as a means of increase, we may notice the identity in character between the three forms. The definitions are interchangeable. For example : Interest is the jwofit which the money lender or capitalist derives from the employment of his capital. Again, Pkofit is the interest which the operator or mer- chant realizes from his money invested in his busi- ness. Rent is the interest which the landholder receives from the sum of money invested in land, or for that sum of money for Avhich said land would selL Still again, Peoeit is the rent of the land which had been sold to obtain the capital employed, or for which such capital would exchange ; and, Interest is the rent of so much land as was sold to raise the principal, or for which the principal would exchange. We can but consider, then, that these three forms of increase are essentially one, and rest ultimately upon the sole, logical base, the ability of the land to 'produce spontaneously. But we have elsewhere fully demonstrated that spontaneous productions have no price or exchange- able ratio, except in the degree that dominion over the UNEARNED INCREASE — INTEREST. 55 land gives dominion over man; for without the two there is, aud cau be, uo increase of social wealth. Not only nothing else produces anywhere any in- crease of wealth, but neither man nor the soil sepa- rately produces anything. It is only by their union that prodi,ictive phenomena occur. When these two factors are united, increase of wealth results legiti- ,mately; but when they are divorced, no increase or even production at all is possible. To introduce another claimant in the division is fraudulent. Pro- duction means more than placing a thing in the market. That is but one phase of it, though an im- portant one. It begins with the first application of the human energy to the raw material, and ends only where consumption begins — in the purchase for use. The whole process or circle of transportation, storage, and exchange is effected through the application of labor, and not otherwise. The merchant, by the service he renders, becomes a joint owner with the others, and is bound to account faitlifully to the other co-workers. It does, not change his social and in- dustrial rehition, because he has bought out the shares of the others ; unless lie has dealt equitaUy with them, their interest is not cancelled, and the extra in- crease he has gained for himself is the wages of deceit aud fraud, which are in no Avay lessened be- cause he has conspired with the landlord and usurer to share the profit with them. INTEREST. If we found no tenable ground for profits, still less shall we find any rational justification for interest. The man who puts his accumulated earnings into 56 SOCIAL WEALTH. some industrial or commercial enterprise, and accom- panies it with his personal service in useful over- sight, renders service and assumes risks and respon- sibilities which justly entitle him to a liberal share in the resulting production. If his compensation is unusuall}^ large in one venture, it begets competition and is liable to become unusually small in another ; but with the money-lender it is wholly different. The secured creditor does nothing of this kind, and is no more entitled to a share of the resultant pro- duction than if he had placed his gold with a safe- deposit company, for which he would have to pay storage instead of receiving a premium. In indus- trial crises, which follow interest-taking periodically, by an inexorable mathematical law, it is the means employed in business, or which has been trusted out without security, on which the whole burden of bank- ruptcies falls. The secured loan does not suffer, but is relativel}^ increased in value by the ruin wrought to all other interests. Dr. Adam Smith truly de- scribes such a capitalist as the ^^ person ivho lias a capital from ivhich he wishes to derive a revenue ivithoiit taking the trouble to employ it himself ^ In other words, one who wishes to obtain the services of others with- out rendering himself any service in return, and without risk. The increased facilities for production afforded by loans to labor is regarded by many as a sufficient reason why it should share in division. But to arrive at such a conclusion, it is necessary to leave out two essential elements of the problem , 1st. That labor is now unjustly deprived of its UNEARNED INCREASE — INTEREST. 57 natural riglit of access to " tlie raw material of the earth," and opportunity to employ itself. And, 2d. That all forms of accumulated wealth are sub- ject to inevitable decay and decrease of value ; the surplus product of agricultural labor, especially ; that all this value has constantly to be reproduced and kept good by labor, and that the capitalist has no other mode possible for the conservation of his wealth but to employ it productively. When, there- fore, he makes terms with labor, which requires more than return of service for service, and of labor for labor, he is imposing upon the ignorance or taking advantage of the unfortunate condition of the laborer. But this, however, he would be unable to do but for the enjoyment of monopolies through municipal laws, which place the laborer at such disadvantage that bis necessities compel him to accept terms which the capitalist finds no necessity to make equal. Under the operation of natural law, the person having means to conserve would find a necessity to recombine it with labor in order to prolong its ex- istence, equally as great as the person who labored would find for means to render his labor productive. But when society grants privilege to a class to con- trol the earth and raw material, it is plain that labor must accept the conditions of capital, or starve, and that the capital is not only able to throw the entire rniuH upon the laborer of maintaining his decaying property intact, but to lay all labor under an addi- tional tribute, which shall still fartlier isolate wealth and Ixiget increasing dependence of the industrial class u])on its accumulations. A false element is introduced into the question of 58 SOCIAL WEALTH. awards, wbicli bestows tlie greater share of labor's product upon those who do not labor. Whoever will think can see how impossible it is for such a system to operate, without subverting all just principles of division, and subjecting labor to the grossest in- justice. It will be seen that if one man starts with an amount of capital equal to what another can earn or produce in a period required to double the capital at compound interest, he will have absorbed just as much as the labor of one man has produced. At the end of the second period he will have quadrupled his investment, and at the end of the twelfth period he will have multiplied it 4,096 times, having accumu- lated, within the last period alone, 2,048 times the original sum invested, or the amount which the laborer can have produced in that period. If by invention, discoveries, or other favoring circum- stances, production has increased, it has at most been able only to change the difference. If in a gen- eration it should add one to what it had previously been, it would only give production two in the twelfth period to balance the 2,048 of the capitalist. Neces- sarily, by the operation of the absorptive series, labor never gets more than a moiety of what it produces. The operation cannot absorb more than labor pro- duces. But this does not prove that the accumula- tions do not proceed as the illustration shows, or are any the less oppressive to labor. The least per centage to the capitalist, not the pay for service rendered, involves accumulation by equal ratios, in periods of greater or lesser length. To this no production of industry is equal which the world ever has or can know. Such exaction is therefore UNEARNED INCREASE — INTEREST. 59 wlioUy "witliont any logical foiiudation, and is as un- scientific as it is oppressive and unjust. Its j^resence in our industrial system must therefore be referred to causes flowing from unequal conditions, usurpation and misapprehension of economic law, and not from any necessity in the development of the laws of in- dustry and reciprocal exchange. Taken in connection with our S3'stem of land tenure — without which its existence would hardly be pos- sible — this system acquires a power so fearful that no friend of his race can contemplate it without de- testation and horror. The accelerated velocity with which it enables the avaricious and unprincipled to achieve the complete monopoly of the earth, is far more dangerous and destructive of human rights than any "divine right" of kings, or any mere law of entail or right of primogeniture can j)ossibly be. It is to be understood that when I speak of the operation of tliis method of accumulation, I suppose the capitalist to have the ability to supply his own wants by his own efforts. If his income from usance merely supplies what he consumes, extravagantly or otherwise, then he is a siuecurist, quartered by this system upon society, whose industry is rendered tributary to the support of a person wholly useless to it. To show with greater distinctness the operation of the principle on whicli interest operates, let us sup- pose that the land sliould be loaned ; and that, in- stead of the annual percentage being paid in money, it was sti])ulated tf) be paid in kind ; that, as interest on money is ]):nd in moueij, so the rent or interest on land should be paid in land. Now, a man borrowing 60 SOCIAL WEALTH. land on siTch conditions would, in a dozen years or so, pay back as interest all he had borrowed, and must of necessity repudiate the princijjal — become bankrupt in land. For it is evident that in the period in which the pa3'fRents of interest would amount to a sum equal to the principal, an amount of land equal to itself, would be required to be re- turned to the owner for its own use ; and, as the amount of land in any town, state, nation, or the world, is a fixed and definite one, the operation of any such stipulation would be impossible, and be- sides producing untold embarrassment and suffering, must end at last in repudiation. A system of con- tracts like the above would be held in all courts as invalid, because they involved conditions well known to be impossible. But the operation of our credit system, and pay- ment of interest on capital to those who take no care in its employment, virtually involves the same con- sequences. By the accumulations of interest upon a given sum, the possessor can purchase a given amount of land in every period, corresponding to the amount of the principal invested. This enables the capital- istic class, as distinguished from the industrial or commercial class, to control the ownership of the land just as effectually as the titled nobility of any country ever did. Having discussed the general question of increase, the principal purpose here has been to show how in- timately the interest question is involved with the monopoly of land. It is plain, moreover, from this showing, that there is no such difference in the rate of rent and of interest as has been contended by Mr. UNEAENED INCEEASE — INTEEEST. 61 George and others. As the capitalized wealth of any community or nation increases, the nominal rate of interest goes down with wages, but its share in the annual production remains the same if it does not increase. Let the rent^f land be paid in land as rent of money is paid in money, and the rent rate will be seen to decrease in the same ratio as interest or wages. It could not possibly be otherwise. In a new country where land is plenty, money and labor scarce, wages will be high, interest will be high, and rent low. The farm renting for two hundred dollars will at most onlybe worth two thousand, and the rent will buy the owner another farm in ten years. But as the population increases, and the wages and interest decrease, it will be possible to increase the amount of rent, but the price of land will also have risen and in a still more rapid manner, so that, although the rate of rent per acre may have increased, the rate per cent, will have decreased the same as the rate per cent, of money. And it will take twelve, fifteen, twentj^ or thirty years for the rent of one farm to enable the owner to purchase another, the same as it will take one capital to beget another. So that while the wages of labor are constantly decreasing with the growth of capitalism, both the landlord and the money lord are enabled to double their capital of money or of land in equal periods corresponding to each other in every essential feature. When interest rules at 7 per cent, it is possible to double the capital in about ten years. When 6 per cent., in twelve years ; 5 per cent., in fourteen years; 4 per cent., in seventeen years, and at 3 per cent, in loss than twenty-one years. At 7 per cent, rent, the 62 SOCIAL WEALTH. farm, without any labor or contribution of his own, will have "earned" the owner in fort}' j'ears four- teen other farms of equal value. At 6 per cent., nine farms ; at 5 per cent., six farms ; at 4 per cent., five other farms, and at 3 per cent, nearly four other farms. A money-lender Avill have increased his capital in the same or even more rapid ratio, the rate being usually a little higher for money than for land, as the latter is considered safer as an invest- ment or for security, and cautious holders are willing to sacrifice the higher rate to the greater security against loss of principal. It is worthy of remark, how much has been made of the " progression of numbers " by Malthus and those economists who have availed themselves of his subtleties to show that destitution is referable to the laws of nature and the arithmetic of the case, and not to unequal laws. It is shown that population in- creases by "equal ratio," while the production of food, at most, can only be increased by " equal differences." Thus, it is said, while production of food in several periods may proceed with a differ- ence of two, it cannot possibly be more than 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16; while in the same periods the in- crease in population will be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. It is a little strange that Malthus, nor the economists who follow him, take any notice of the same law as applied to production and taking of interest. Production by labor proceeds by equal differences, interest and rent by equal ratios, and at higher ratios than the difference in production ever obtains. Yet this power of increase, which takes from the pro- UNEAENED INCREASE — INTEREST. 63 ducer and gives to tlie idler, is not a law of nature but a law of tlie state or municipality. Probably for this reason its application here has not been alluded to, although to it can be referred mainly all the famines and pauperisms which have been as- cribed to over-population. Usury and rent have been the great levers by which the homes of millions of millions have been alienated and gone to widen the domain to the sway of avarice and to the love of lordly domination. The insanity of interest is shown by considering the sources from which it is derived : (1) From the principal loaned, resulting in bank- ruptcy to the borrower, and perhaps loss to the lender. (2) From the stock of the borrower, resulting in his complete impoverishment, if continued, since the principal borrowed must be returned intact. (3) From the wages, or equitable compensation of the borrower, or from the natural wages of his employees, or from the profits he has been able to realize through unjust and irrational trade from the public with whom he has dealt. There is no other source from Avhich he could have derived tlie interest p;iid, unless the exploded notion be accepted that the laud can produce wealth with- out labor, or that goods in process of exchange, witliout labor, increase in quantity or value. To attach increased value to things which are being operated upon by the reproductive forces of nature, aside from the obvious injustice of exacting the liibor product of another for their operation, and of attempting to ox(;hange the work of nature for the 64 SOCIAL WEALTH. work of a fellow-being, is conspicuous when we con- sider that the conservation of our i:)erishable pro- duct into a durable one, is a quite sufficient induce- ment to all salutary work. Ditching for irrigation, planting trees, indeed all the things cited as proving the right of taking increase, would be done, is done, without any such motive on the part of those who do the work. The men who have built our canals, our railroads, our aqueducts, and made our numerous public improvements have not been paid, besides the wages for their labor, an annuity from the use of these works, for all time to come. The capitalist alone receives such tribute, and this, not because he would not otherwise have lent his money to promote the work, for it is proverbial that he is more ready to let money when the rate is low than when it is high. Indeed, with good security, he would always prefer to have it stored for him than to take the risk of keeping it by him, were it not that through the assist' ance of our laws, he is enabled to exact tribute in this form from the labor of the people, by charging for the " flight of time," and the action of " natural forces." It is also evident that the "reproductive forces of nature," and "the utilization of the varia- tions in the powers of nature and of man, which is effected by exchange," are present in every form of production and exchange whatever, as well as in those instanced by Mr. George; for unless these forces work with the labor of man, he produces nothing and exchanges nothing. The advantage of exchange, whatever it may be, is mutual, or no equitable exchange is made. Mr. George, when he pays his washerwoman, pays UNEAENED INCREASE — INTEREST. 65 her for her muscular exertion, and the exercise of skill in her profession. If she were, in addition to that, to charge him for the use of the sun and air which dry them, and without whose aid her labor would be of no service to him, he would justly com- plain. The boatman who sets him across a stream does not charge him for the buo^^anc}- which iloats his boat or the wind which wafts the sail. It was left to capitalism to devise the magic wand which turns everything it touches into gold, and thereby tax labor for every foot of land it occupies, and every field it seeks to cultivate, with every force of nature it attempts to utilize, because the grasp it has se- cured upon the land gives it control over all natural, including the human forces. This author makes a special plea for interest or increase, which I will let him state in his own words. He supposes an in- stance where " in one place a given amount of labor will secure 200 in vegetable or 100 in animal food. In another place these conditions are reversed, and the same amount of labor w^ll produce 100 in vege- table food or 200 in animal." But by devoting labor in one place to the procurement of vegetable food, and in the other to the procurement of animal food, and exchanging the quantit}' required, the people of each place Avill be able, by the given amount of la- bor, to procure 200 of botli, less the expenses of ex- change ; so that in each place the produce which is taken from use and devoted to exchange, brings back an increase " (Progress and Poverty, 163). And yet he admits that labor is required to effect exchange; but thinks "there is a distinguishable force co-operating with that of labor which makes it G6 SOCIAL WEALTH. impossible to measure the result solely by the labor expended ; but renders the amount of capital, and the time it is in use, integral parts in the sum of forces." Now, since the capital of trade is only that part of the product of labor seeking to be conserved, the time it is employed is chargeable, if at all, to the other side of the equation, since its owner, in permitting its incorporation with another enterprise, or productive circle, elects to treat it as present labor. Besides, what other capital is there in the transac- tion he has instanced? Only "the given amount of labor," in the procurement of the 200 of animal and the 200 of vegetable food, and the service of trans- portation and exchange. There is a surplus of 50 of vegetable and 50 of animal food which has to be awarded somewhere. It is possible that the ex- change and transportation may not absorb all this ; but there must be no protective tariff or monopolized line of transportation, which takes " all the traffic will bear " between the two places. I am unable to see any increase which goes not to the labor as natural wages for the procurement, transportation, and ex- change of these two kinds of food. It is difficult to understand how more capital is required to produce the single line of food than for each to produce both kinds. Under freedom, neither of the prodvicers would change his habit of producing both kinds till satisfied that the advantage of change was a mutual one, and not an advantage to one side alone, or to neither, but to be reaped by an intermediate or parasite. It is thought that as " the seed in the ground germinates and grows, while the farmer sleeps or . UNEARNED INCEEASE — EENT. 67 ploughs new fields," there is a good reason why a tax should be put u^Don the growth of food by the landlord or usurer. But if nature works thus with man, she nevertheless awards him compensation according to what he d^es. When the season's yield is large, in proportion to labor bestowed, the farmer ma}' get no more, except in kind, as a reduction in exchangeable value will bring it to an average with shorter crops. Nature, everywhere, repudiates the crudity, born of capitalistic assumption, that any- thing can be obtained for nothing. Only at the ex- pense of labor can this be realized. None knows better than the fruit grower and cattle raiser that constant attention and careful labor are requisite to success. Nature rewards no idler. If Shylock makes his " ducats breed as well as ewes and rams," it is not because either multiplies witliout human toil, but for reasons wholl}' outside of the laws of indus- trial production or of equitable exchange. EENT. The nature of rent we have already referred to as one with profits and interest, indeed, as the founda- tion of both. Its incompatibility with the principles of equity and economy are most apparent. But for what is called the " rent theory," it would claim but a ])assing attention. To me it is quite evident that Ilicardo, who first propounded this theory, became aware of the impossibilitj- of reconciling rent with any rational theory of the production and distribu- tion of wealth, yet felt the necessity of accounting for the phenomena in a manner which would divert G8 SOCIAL WEALTH. attention from its wholly unjustifiable nature. The " pure economists," since they have dispensed with all questions but the one of trade, find themselves under no obligation to champion the theory, and virtually ignore it, placing land in the category of things "which can be exchanged for money," and so, consistently, make no distinction between rent and other forms of increase. Macleod defines rent to be " the mere right to demand compensation for use," and the " purchase of a use for a limited period." It could, therefore, be summarily dismissed, but that Mr. George, after designating it as the main " but- tress of the Malthusian theory," and after demolish- ing that theory, has seen fit to build up a system upon the dismantled buttress, which he thinks still remaining. Instead of analyzing rent, he seems to regard it as a mysterious power which creates value independent of labor, and as something which he can tax to any degree without taking from the natural wages of labor ; whereas, it is wholly due to exclu- sive land ownership, as he himself frequently asserts. According to Ricardo, rent is not an arbitrary tribute levied upon industry by usurped rights, but merely the excess of product, of the best land over the poorest, as the latter shall come into cultivation or other use under the exigencies of increasing popu- lation. As two prices cannot prevail in the same market at the same time, so he thinks the cost of producing grain on the poorest land will determine the price of grain raised upon the best land, and thus the excess will determine the rent which will be paid for its use. There seems to me little necessity for misapprehension in regard to this theory. While UNEARNED INCREASE — RENT. 69 land is under exclusive dominion it may serve in a certain way to explain how the rent rate is determined as between particular lands. But this is by no means the limit of its use by the followers of Eicardo, among whom Mr. George must be included. The inference is always sought to be carried that it also reveals an economic law under which only rent is developed. It assumes that rent does not arise until increase of population forces the use of less pro- ductive soils. In fact, the operation is directly the reverse of this. It is rent which forces the use of less productive soils, and thus creates the necessity, the previous existence of which is represented to be the cause and justification. If the land I till will yield 40, and I have to pay 10 rent, it is evident that this will force the use of a qualit}' which will yield onh' 30. But let us test this assumed cause, and see if in the absence of it altogether the same phenomena will not occur. An island of uniform surface and fertility is divided equally among a certain number of people. And to make the illustration plain, let us suppose that all support themselves mainly by raising grain. It seems quite certain no rent would be paid, though a number of incidents might be conceived under which it were possible, even wliile the soil in every portion remained of the same fertility. One circum- stance, however, would certainlj' and permanently establish rent, and that not a varving productiveness of tlie land, but the presence of laborers who were debarred access to the soil. As soon as there arose an increase in iJie population rctpdrinf/ lanoirer of /lofderfi to (fen//, land would liave a price, rent would be offered and taken, or the laborers would 70 SOCIAL WEALTH. offer their services at a price below " the whole pro- duct of their labor ;" and the rise of rents and decrease of wages would inevitably follow every increase of such laborers, just the same as if extremes existed in the productive capability of the land. As population increased, land-holders would decrease, under a sys- tem of land-holding like ours, and a divergency of conditions would proceed till a landed aristocracy arose at one extreme, and a dependent, wretched proletariat at the other. And this would result, not at all on account of the unequal fertility of different soils, but wholly because " tJie increase of ownersldps had not kept pace ic'dh the increase of population ." The theory also assumes that poor land below the margin of cultivation can be had without rent. I am certain only exceptional cases can be found where land can be had at all without rent, and these Avill occur as often on the best as on the poorest lands. Often within the limits of our cities fertile patches are occupied without rent, while the settler taking up free land on the prairie often pays rent to his earlier neighbor for a corn o? garden j)atch. Under monopoly, often as now in Ireland, the poorest is rented, while the best lies idle, in deer- parks or sheep-farms, the tiller accepting that which he is compelled to. Labor here has to deal with privilege to which no economic principle applies, and where demand and supply have no operation, and in which one party to any transaction has the power to determine the compensation of both, and if any, a forced exchange takes place. Between " the whole product of labor " and the " wages bordering on starvation," there is a wide margin from which the UNEARNED INCREASE — RENT. 71 landlord can draw fabulous was-es without regard to any ethical or economic law. To attempt to reduce such stujDendous larcenies to a system compatible with the crudest form of equity, will forever, as it has heretofore, prove the despair of science. In connection with this theory, it must be remem- bered that land is required for other purposes than raising wheat. Indeed, the best wheat land may prove the poorest for j)ulse, garden truck, or small fruits, and land which will not answer for either may be all the better for storehouses, factories, and dwell- ings. The requirement for land is as various as human industrj^ Mr. George himself (Progress and Poverty, j). 149) recognizes that " rent, in short, is the price of monopoly, arising from the reduction to individual ownership of natural elements, which human exertion can neither produce nor increase." How he can abolish the monopoly and have the price remain is a dilemma from which I do not feel bound to extricate him. On page 219 we find this passage : " The effect of increasing population upon the distribution of wealth is to increase rent ... in two ways — 1st. By lowering the margin oi cultiva- tion (Kicardo's theory) ; and, 2d, by bringing out in land special capabilities, otherwise latent, and by attacliing special capabilities to particular lands. I am disposed to think tliat the latter mode, to which little attention has been called by political econo- mists, is really the more important." Now, since this latter mode not only di£fers from the former, but is the opposite of it, and equivalent tf) a raising of the margin of cultivation, they cannot both support the same theor}-. But the above is by 72 SOCIAL WEALTH. no means the only subject connected with this ques- tion to which the economists have called little atten- tion. No account is made of the fact that the natural capacity of land has very little to do with its actual ]n-oductiveness, which depends mainly on the supply of manures and fertilizers, rotation of crops, and skilful dressing and keeping. Little attention has been given to the great drain that has been made upon our most fertile lands by the consumption of our large cities, whose sewers are choked with the principles of fertility taken from the soil, the rent of which still rises. But the only practical test to which the theory of Ricardo was ever subjected proved it wholly value- less. On the agitation for the rq^eal of the British corn laws, it was urged that repeal would destroy the landed interest by greatl}^ reducing rents. But on their repeal in 1846, opening the markets of England to the products of all the cultivable land upon the globe accessible to British commerce, rents not did decline, but rapidly advanced ; and for more than a generation no perceptible effect has been discovered attributable to the change.* The point of greatest importance, as viewed by the liicardo school, is that " rent must exist, and cannot *T quote from Chambers's Encyclopedia, Art. "Corn Laws," pub- lished fifteen years after their repeal. The italics are mine: "The results of the repeal are well known. Every evil prognostication has been falsified. Poor lands are as much cultivated as ever, and even more so. There has been no stoppage of imports by war nor otherwise, nor are there likely to be. . . . Instead of falling, the re7it of land of all kinds has risen, and tenants and proprietors are alike satisfied. The working classes are better, instead of being worse employed." UNEARNED INCREASE — RENT. 73 be got rid of. Whoever lias land at liis command better than the worst that is cultivated, holds rent. It is in vain, therefore, to think of destroying the monopoly of land owners. It revives as naturally by an economic, as water finds its level by a physical law." It is for this reason that Mr. George concludes that the only way to establish equity is to confiscate or tax away the rent, and thus secure to each member of a state his just share of the unearned increase. It is urged that if the land were to be divided equally to-day, it would immediately begin to accumulate again in the hands of the industrious and frugal, and so become at length absorbed in a few hands, as now, and of course yield again the same rent. But such result could not be effected if land were treated, not as exchangeable goods, but as a comple- ment to labor, as it is in nature. The distinction between it and the increase of goods, relied on to establisli tliis theory, viz., That while the increase from them " arises out of the acts of the holders, the rent of land is a fund that exists through external causes, over which the holder exercises no control," proves that it cannot be equitably exchangeable with that which requires activity in its production, since there can be no equation between two things, one of which costs labor and the other does not. One might as well pay for any service by giving the priv- ilege of breathing the air as of using the land. The theory itself is therefore incapable of statement, ex- cept in terms which preclude it from exchange, and hence from the realm of economics. The inequality wliicli Mr. Cxiiorgc thiid^s lie sees in any attempt to abolish landlordism, which, does not 74 SOCIAL WEALTH. confiscate " economic rent," is mainly chimerical, and could liardly form a serious difficulty were occuj)ancy made the sole title to land. With wider acreage of an inferior quality, with more varied crops, and per- chance more careful tillage, these inequalities would be greatly reduced, if they did not wholly disappear. There are many compensations not apparent at first glance. The man with land of easier tillage, or more productive soil, will be able, doubtless, to obtain the same price for his grain or fruits as the man with poorer soil and shorter crops. Having more to ex- change, he will purchase more luxuries. This will stimulate other industries, but will not increase the. cost of actual necessaries to his poorer neighbor. Under " occupying ownership," moreover, the prin- ciple of first serving the first comer must obtain. Only as population increased, and progress in pro- duction advanced, would the less desirable places come into request. The older and feebler would thus be usually in possession of the more produc- tive, and the younger and stronger be left to attack the less favored situation. The theory absurdly proceeds, moreover, ujDon the hypothesis that the best laud will continue to pro- duce bountifully from generation to generation. Land, however fertile, when first taken up, will, unless continually manured, soon work down to a point where it will yield no more than the same quantity of manure will produce upon land of ordi- nary quality. It is the opinion of tlie best writers upon the subject of agriculture that it is the culture, not the soil, which determines the great disparities in agricultural production. Generally, then, produc- UNEARNED INCREASE — RENT. 75 tiveness of the land depends upon the labor applied, and upon the return to it of the elements of fertilitij. The original disparity in regard to soils would soon disappear under natural ajDportionmeut and intelli- gent use. In dealing with the subject of rent, as with interest and profits, it is important to distinguish between that which is actual rent and that which goes under the name, but is not rent proper. As to profits are nsuall}' added services in exchange, and to interest the assurance against risk, etc., so to rent there is usually added insurance, taxation, repairs, and the general expense of keeping up the property ; actual rent, as actual interest and actual profits, are pay- ments for that which represents no service or com- modity parted with by the claimant, and hence is not an exchange but a tribute. This distinction is so readily drawn that it only requires to be referred to here. CHAPTER V. CONSERVATION OF WEALTH. Every person who completes a truly rounded life passes through two stages where his powers of pro- duction do not equal his necessary consumption, and a single, but usually longer period, where they con- siderably exceed it. Infancy and childhood have to be sustained by the product of the labor of others. And the early education is generally a gratuity to the youth. Again, in old age, and in the decay of the physical and mental energies, support must come from other than one's own exertions at that period. The period embracing early and mature manhood, on the other hand, is usually accompanied by strength of brain and brawn, to enable the man to produce more than he is under any necessity of steadily con- suming. Taken in connection with the fact that all forms of wealth constantly decay, though some with much greater rapidity than others, there arises an inflexible necessity that some method of conserva- tion should be found which would enable the pro- ducer to store up in a durable form the values which he has created, but which will soon disappear, un- less so conserved. In consequence of the nearly in- destructible nature of gems and the precious metals, and because they possess attractions for the barbaric mind as ornaments and charms, these, at an early 76 CONSERVATION OF WEALTH. 77 period, became the great agents of conservation. Flocks and lierds, from their power to grow and mul- tiply, also became sought for to this end, as well as for their power, in connection with dominion of the land, to yield a ready increase. The only way in which the man usually can repay the cost of his early support and education is by pro\4ding for the support and education of his own offspring, though often he makes direct return in the care and supiaort of parents. But this requires ac- cumulation and conservation, which means accumu- lation in a form to retain its value undiminished as nearly as may be. There is, therefore, abundant motive to accumulation in active life, if all thoughts of increase without labor were eliminated. And when is added the desire to provide our old age with comfort and ample support, there arises a demand for such forms of value as will give guaranties of unvarying stability. The agriculturist will find, in the planting of fruit-treei^, a sure means of storing and conserving the products of his manhood's labors ; in such form, too, as can be readily combined with the lighter subsequent labor required to care for them and gather the fruit. A great variety of forms might be given in illustration, but this must suffice. The laws of equitable division or exchange will thus repay the abstinence of the frugal, not with increase, but with compensation for the labors performed, but not before completely satisfied. Of all pretexts for the justification of increase without labor, that of lime is tho most flimsy and groundless, and if it were not associated with the idea that capital is, in some sense, labor or the pro- 78 SOCIAL WEALTH. duct of labor, it could not be made to assume the least plausibilit}^ But we shall see how little inves- tigation it will bear. The man who has labored and received the natural wages of his toil, finding them subject to perish more or less rapidly, turns them into some form less perishable ; the main and nor- mal motive being to save their value from its ordi- nary tendency to decrease. That they are converted to this use, and so conserved, instead of being con- sumed productively, is proof that the holder is unable or unwilling thus to consume them, and prefers a stable value to a changing one. Without intending to introduce any discussion here as to the nature and functions of money, I may say that it is a me- dium provided by society, one of the uses, if not purposes, of which is the conservation of wealth to the producer. And this it effects well or ill, accord- ing to the wisdom displayed in its creation and the regulations which determine its character. But whatever else may be claimed as the powers of money, it will not be pretended that it has any power of increase. In placing his wealth in this form (when done for conservation, and not for convenience of exchange), the owner indubitably elects to put his property into to that from which no increase to it can be added but by joining it to other labor. He elects to treat his property, while in this form, as though it were the wages of labor just completed. It will make little difference, indeed, what the particular form of wealth in which the value of his labor is stored. The utmost that the social comity can secure to him is the undiminished value of production. Unless most wisely converted by him, and most in- CONSEKVATION OF WEALTH. 79 telligently as well as equitabh' guarded by society, it cannot keep wliole the value of the labor lie be- stowed. Only when the jDroduction be converted into cash, or some more durable form, or has been consumed productively, can society return to him " measure for measure," without suffering loss. His labor, then wrapped up in the new production, must have been but a trifle in time antecedent with the later labor, which rehabilitated it in a new commod- ity. But the labor doing this should share the entire result minus the amount of labor concreted in the things consumed, and no more could be returned than had been received, without robbing the later worker of a part of his natural wages. If it be asked whether accepting the contribution of the holder of past labor-pledges or tokens, and performing a certain number of days' work, the out- come of this work may not yield an increase over the values of the labor taken as a whole, the reply is, that under a system of mono^ioly and tax to capital sucli a thing might well happen, but even then the increase awarded to the employed capital is usually ^ taken from the wages of the employed labor, and not because the union of the past with present labor has made the present labor more productive. That union of labor, as well as division of labor (which, in the sphere of a healthy exchange, are branches of the same thing — co-operation), aids production, is not denied. That by the use of conserved wealth we can co-operate witli past labor, may be admitted, but to return to tliat past labor more than value for value involves the self-contradictory assumption that the past labor is more valuable than present labor, 80 SOCIAL WEALTH. although at the same time admitting that we use it only as present labor when we join it to present labor. But to make the thing more plain, let us suppose our unit of value to be a day's work. It will be asked, if two parties contribute the same number of days' work of the same degree of effi- ciency, why should they not receive the same com- pensation? Undoubtedly they should. Then it would seem to follow that the owner of the hundred days' labor, contributed by the holder or conservator of labor, should share equally with the present worker, who immediately contributed his hundred days' labor in producing the new material. The total production is now the wages of the two hun- dred days' labor, of which each will be entitled to an equal share. Before any deduction can be drawn from this to favor the claim of increase, however, it must be shown that the result is more than the wages of two hundred days' labor, which is an absurdity. It is vastly easy to conceive of circumstances which would make the joint product considerably more or considerably less than the usual product, or the pro- duct which the present worker would be able to produce by his individual labor continued for two hundred days ; but to admit the principle of increase anywhere is to abandon the fundamental proposition that the whole product of labor is the natural wages of labor, and admit that society may not only guar- antee the conserved values of wealth, but an increase upon them, although all forms of wealth constantly decrease, and require constant care and risk in their conservation. The only question which can arise in equity, it seems to me, would be whether the past or CONSEEVATION OF WEALTH. 81 tlie present labor sliould pay the cost of the guaranty, or whether it shoukl be borne between them ; and if so, in what proportion. If any question of risk or hazard arises, it is doubtless right that the one taking the risk of loss should take the surplus product, if there should prove to be one ; and if both shared the risk, both should share the advantage. The whole question of increase is narrowed down, then, to these dimensions, but really it originates in a wholly dif- ferent way, and rests upon a wholly different basis. The natural issue between the demand for conserved labor to combine with and aid present labor in pro- duction, and the demand for present labor to con- serve and transmit to the future the present values of past labor products, has never been allowed any fair play by the laws and customs engendered in ignorance and greed, and never can be while fraud- ulent titles are sustained by public law, or while the land and all means and opportunities of production remain under the dominion of monopol}-. In the absence of usurped rights, which are exercised under the laws and customs uj^holding capitalism, it can hardly be doubted that these mutual demands would tend to equilibrium, or complete reciprocation. If rent, interest, or profit lias any rational or eco- nomic excuse for being, it must rest on a ground wholly different from that assigned by any writer on economics, viz., upon the necessity, real or imagi- nary, of some to borrow of others — lands or products. 13ut the necessity to borrow laud is wholly due to the unequal and exclusive ownership of the land, and any rent, interest, or profits (different names merely for increase) is clearly the fruit of usurpation, and 82 SOCIAL WEALTH. not of any economic law. That sucli exclusive owner- ship also creates the only real necessity for borrow- ing goods, seems too plain to require argument. But that question may safely be deferred to the time when commercial monopoly of land shall be abol- ished, and the normal economics and industrial laws be allowed to assert themselves, uuinterfered with by municipal enactments. If the right of unearned increase is truly an economic principle, and it is made the sole one by the later economists, then in the absence of fostering legislation it will be all the more likely to make its claim good, and an oppor- tunity will be had to obtain exact data as to its operation. What is so manifestly unscientific, as well as unfair, is to treat that as a normal result of economic law which is due mainly to the direct in- terference of the civil law, and could not exist with- out it. CHAPTER VI. TOOLS JCsB IMPROVED MACHINERY. Notwithstanding tlie general admission that labor alone creates wealth, it is thought that it may be greatly assisted by the use of new and improved im- plements and methods. It is quite evident that the savage could do little in felling trees and working them into forms of use, with the stone ax, once used. A man with a fine steel ax could, doubtless, do more in one day well than the savage could do in a hun- dred days very imperfectly. Is not the ax, there- fore, productive, and as such become a factor? and should not the owner of the ax, if he permit his less fortunate neighbor to use it, be entitled to a share of the increased production? It is best to consider what does result, and the cause of it, rather than what ouglit to be. Now, in the case supposed, if the man who pos- sessed the new ax had a patent right on it by which the use of any but stone axes was prohibited to all others, lie would, doubtless, be able to derive an income from selling the use of his ax, and others like it liy niifrec holders. But the memory of tlif'.ir first estate long lived among the traditions of tlie German peasantry, and it required centurif^s bf'forfi tlie free ctjininunities, who, out of dire neces- sity, had by an act of their own surrendered their 138 SOCIAL WEALTH. liberties into the hands of the lord of the manor, sank to the level of the servile class, settled upon their demesnes proper by the lords of the soih" "In the peasants' war, which followed Luther's Reformation, he made a desperate attempt to recover his lost liberties ; and in the record of grievances upon the basis which he was ready to treat, he showed how accurate was his recollection of the past, and how well he knew the points on which the territorial lords had robbed him of his rights." The demands of the peasants were deemed " mod- erate " even by the historians of their times ; and if in the course of the struggle their unorganized bodies sometimes committed great excesses, it was generally in retaliation of the infamous cruelties practiced against them by the brutal and unprincipled Von Waldburg and less significant leaders of the aristoc- racy, who spared no age or sex, and who made treaties with the purpose of repudiating them and entrap- ping the too-confiding peasants. Their demands were substantially: " The free election of their parish clergy ; the ajDpropriation of the tithes of grain, after competent maintenance of the parish clergy, to the support of the poor and to purposes of general utility ; the abolition of serfdom, and of the exclusive hunting and fishing rights of the nobles ; the restoration to the commvmity of forests, fields, and meadows, which the secular and ecclesiastical lords had appropriated to themselves ; release from arbitrary augmentation and multiplication of services, duties, and rents, and the equal administration of justice." But all this moderation was of no avail, and after LAND OWNERSHIP. 139 great sacrifice of life in the struggle, tlie lot of the peasant became harder than ever. " The Thirty Years' War gave the final blow. With exceptions here and there the tillers of the soil be- came a half-servile caste, and were more and more estranged from the rest of the community until, with the humanitarian revival at the close of the last century, they became to philanthropists objects of the same kind of interest and inquiry which negroes have been to the same class of persons in our day." * This description may serve in a general way to portray the courses by which man's natural birth- right in the soil has been usurped in every land by a domineering class who, sooner or later, sought the cover cf pretended law to sanction unlawful acts, so that they might enjoy quiet possession of dominion obtained by A'iolence. In the Russian S5-stem, we have a later develop- ment still, corresponding in its essential features to the earlier feudal form. There the reduction of agricultural labor to bondage was effected in com- paratively modern times. It is true slaves were held at an earlier date by the Czar and the nobles of his court ; but those slaves, or their progenitors, were captives taken in war. The noblemen who owned these slaves were servants of the crown, and not land holders or even vassals owing allegiance for the tenure of land. Often they were allowed, however, an allotment of the crown-land to be tilled by their slaves, and their service to the crown was ])aid in that way. " Such nobles as did not own slaves were ♦SyHU;m8of Ij;iii(1 Tenure in Ynnnns Countries, pp. 210, 2r)0. 140 SOCIAL WEALTH. sometimes paid by the Czar's abandoning to tliem the yiekl of the taxes due to the Czar by the peas- antry of one or more villages. But such an arrange- ment did not legally impair, in the slightest degree, the liberty of these peasants. They remained the free children of the Czar, entitled legally to break off their household, and to separate from their village community and to join another whenever they liked." " The Russian peasants of those times were nobody's servants but the Czar's, like everybody else in the empire." These quotations are from " The Eussian Agrarian Legislation of 1861," by Julius Fancher, whose conclusions I must give in brief. The form of tenure and tillage of the land was that of joint husbandry of the whole village, that and not the family being the social unit, and standing under patriarchal rule. " Movable property alone was in- dividual ; immovable, the land, at least, was com- mon." Colonization was carried on, village giving birth to other villages, which in their turn became self-sustaining, and gave birth to still others. With this system of organization and extension of villages is to be considered the savage drama of political life of the Russians, the influence of a dom- inant church, and external warfare. Military gov- ernment in time having been iutroduced, and a consequent system of taxation, the same contests arose between private factions, as to who should possess the legalized prey, as constitute the political part of the history of other nations. With the growth of a petty nobility, during the struggle of Ivan III. and Ivan IV. the Terrible, to establish the empire, the nobles were rewarded with the yield LAND OWNERSHIP. 141 of taxes of such villapjes as had been allotted them. " Villages not being disposed of in sucli way seem to have remained free Tillages till the later years of Ivan TV., who seems to have commenced the prac- tice largel}^ resorted to in later times, of turning crown villages into villages belonging to the Czar, not as sovereign of the country, but as landed pro- prietor. Such villages, peopled by prisoners of war and their offspring, the slaves of the Czar, must have always existed. . . . But there can be little doubt that Ivan IV., in designating by a legislative act which villages were henceforward to be considered as state property {Liemsddiia), and which as prop- erty of the Czar {Opr if china), did so for the purpose of appropriating what was not his own." " The changes effected amounted to this, that a very great number of villages having been formerly free communities, merely paying taxes to the state, had been turned into estates of the Czar and of the nobility, on which the peasantry had to pay rent. The amount payable remaining unaltered, and the person to whom it was to be paid remaining the same, the peasantry, perhaps, did not even become aware of the change ; they may have considered their village as a little socialistic and patriarchal republic, just as the bees in the hive are not aware that they have other masters besides their queen." But they were soon made aware that their ancient liberties had departed. An imperial ulrtse was pub- lisliful forbidding the peasants to quit their village without a passport, and ordaining that every peasant found wandering about tlie country without •one properly signed sliould bo sent IkicIc in irons to his 142 SOCIAL WEALTH. . villa^^e, and punished for having left without per- mission. Though under pretense of preventing vagrancy, this ukase was to prevent a loss of the power to raise the rent, which increasing population Avould give. " The decisive blow had fallen. It did not at once bring about its final results — compulsory labor of whatever kind the master demands from his slave — but it contained it in the germ, and the development was rapid. The first and most important conse- quence was that colonization was checked for a long time. . . . The whole seventeenth century shows the heart of the Kussian peasant still palpitating. The enshrined spirit of liberty asserts itself in religious sectarian movements, in agrarian risings, in bold brigandage, under the seductive form of free Cossack life. It was reserved for the eighteenth century to consummate the work. The harmless and gentle villagers, who, for the love of wife, child, brother, sister, and neighbors, had conquered the uncongenial eastern plain of Europe for civilization, now disap- pear as working agents from the historical records of their country ; they have become mere tools to work with, mere matter to be worked upon." That in England, as well as among the other na- tions, private ownership of land owed its existence to the betrayal of public trusts may be seen from the lavish manner in which its kings distributed the public or crown lands. Macaulay says : " There can be now no doubt that the sovereign was by the old policy of the realm con3Pj3eteut to give or let the domain of the crown in such manner as seemed good to him. No statute LAND OWNERSHIP. 143 defined the length of tlie term which he might grant, or the amount of the rent which he must reserve." " For a brace of hawks to be delivered to his falconer, or a napkin of fine linen, he might part with a forest extending over a hundred square miles." He says such acts were common, not only as late as the time of the Stuarts, but that their example was followed by William of Orange. That the idea of common ownership of the land held a prominent place in the common mind of Eng- land is shown by the fact that the early emigrants to the American colonies, who were composed mostly of the class of yeomanr}', organized themselves into village communities to cultivate the soil. " The General Court granted a tract of land to a company of persons," and it was held in common. The com- pany assigned house lots, then tracts of meadow land. Pasture and woodland remained in common. In 1660 the General Court enacted a law confining "commonage for wood, timber, or herbage" to those houses " already in being, or [which] shall be erected with the consent of the town." It was this, or sim- ilar restrictions, which gave "the commoners" in New England and New York a degree of aristocratic power which extended itself far into this century, and gave color to many titles to land which were destitute of legal, as well as of moral, validity. The process of usurpation has been going on with or witliout statute law, and often in open violation of it. Our national history in regard to the disposal of our public domain has l)een scarcely more than a series of usui-j)ati()iis — grants to railroad cor]X)rati()nH; soldiers' bounty warrants ; a device to furnish the 14A SOCIAL WEALTH. market with a script for gambling in lands ; donations to the states for colleges and educational purposes, etc. But this is but a part of the system which is lead- ing our nation headlong in the path trod by ancient Rome two thousand years ago. Like her patricians, the capitalists of our time are getting control of our domain "legally, if they can,'' but getting it. By the statements furnished by Mr. Secretary Teller to the House Committee recently, million after million of acres of the public lands are being fenced in by cattle companies and "ranch com- panies " to the exclusion of those who desire to settle them under the Homestead law. We are told that some of these companies are controlled by for- eign capitalists exclusively, among which are the Arkansas Cattle Company and the Prairie Cattle Company (Scottish), each of which has fenced in more than a million of acres. Already from thirty to fifty millions of acres are said to have been thus seized. It is true that Congress has passed a law making such things " a misdemeanor ;" but such law can hardly have retroactive efiect. It will at utmost be attempted to enforce it only when parties feeling personally aggrieved shall make complaint, and then the rich companies can put off action indefinitely by the employment of learned and influential counsel. In time " possession " will give them title, and the courts, although they have violated the law, will de- fend them in their claims to the lands as vested rights, as tliey have already done in cases of tlie rail- roads against the poor and uninfluential settler. It was in ways quite analogous to what is thus going on before our eyes that the Latifundia of Eome arose LAND OWNEKSHIP. 145 and crushed the Eoman civilization through corrupt j^erversion of fundamental law. In a communication to the A^orfh American Revieio, a year or more ago, Mr. George W. Julian, who had been Chairman of House Committee on Public Lands, charged the Congress, Federal Court, and Adminis- tration with having pursued a most reckless if not corrupt course in regard to the disposal of the jDublic lands. Mr. Ex-Secretary Schurz, feeling personally aggrieved thereby, replied, attempting to show that he was free from censure, and charging back the fault upon Mr. Julian, and the Congress of which, at the time, he was a member. But they did not dis- agree as to the general tendency of the government to facilitate the alienation of the lands and to aid and protect the capitalistic monopoly of the public do- main. They only differed on the question as to which of the two was more culpable, for a state of things both acknowledged to be scandalous. Yet, under our land system, titles so obtained, or in any way obtained, are under present rulings and pur- chased interpretations destined to give dominion over the laud ''forever,'' to the exclusion and impoverish- ment of. the people in all future time. The lioman law, in regard to land, has been gen- erally supposed to favor absolute dominion, unlim- ited in extent, to the private holder. The agrarian laws of the kin^s, and of the consuls and tribunes under the repulilic, were sujjposed to be " associated with the idea of the abolition of property in land, or at least of a new distiibution of it." Tliis latter supposition long continued to furnish apparent jus- tification for the o]ir)robrium which ai)ologists of 146 SOCIAL WEALTH. class domination and even scholars songlit to cast upon that most just and patriotic measure, until Niebuhr pointed out that the purpose of the agrarian laws was not to interfere with private property in the land, but to effect an equitable distribution of the public lands among the citizens of Rome. It was the use which had been made of those lands by the military or civil rulers, or by- wealthy or influential patricians, through the oversight, connivance, or neg- lect of those rulers, that rendered the agrarian laws so difiicult to enforce, and raised up such deadly hostility to their application. Dr. Thomas Arnold, following Niebuhr, says: "It was the practice at Rome, and, doubtless, in other states in Italy, to allow individuals to occupy such lands, and to enjoy all the benefits of them, on condition of paying to the state the tithe of the produce, as an acknowledg- ment that the state was the proprietor of the land, and the individual merely the occupier. Now, al- though, the land was undoubtedly the property of the state, and although the occupiers of it were, in relation to the state, mere tenants-at-will, yet it is in human nature that a long, undisturbed possession should give a feeling of ownership ; the moj-e so as while the state's claim lay dormant, the possessor was, in fact, proprietor, and the land would thus be repeatedly passing by regular sale from one occupier to another." The idea of a citizen and that of a land holder were inseparable, and as new citizens were admitted, they had to each receive a portion of the unallotted public domain. This could be done only by dispos- sessing those who had taken possession of these LAND OWNERSHIP. 147 lands under tlie custom, which it seems was confined to the old burghers or jiatricians, no other class being allowed to occupy them. This, with the tend- ency of the larger possessions to swallow up the 'smaller ones, increased the numbers of the landless, whose destitution and degradation so greatly in- creased that some measures were necessary to be taken to prevent anarchy and the dissolution of the state. It is said that most of the kings introduced agra- rian laws; "the good king," Servius TuUius, falling a victim to the hostility of the nobles, in consequence of his introduction of one Spurius Cassius, a consul, proposed a law to give the citizen land out of the public domain, and to enforce the payment of the stipulated rent by the large land holders, or occu- piers ; but as soon as his year of consulship had ex- pired, he was falsely accused of trying to make him- self king, condemned, scourged, and beheaded, and his house razed to the ground. This has been aptly and justly termed " an atrocious judicial mur- der.'' The same law was attempted to be put in operation by the Tribunes Macilius and Metilius, but without success. Later, Marcus Manlius, a patriotic and noble patrician, made an eftbrt to promote an agrarian law, and though he had saved the capital during the Gallic siege by liis iiiti'cpidity, was hurled from the Tarpeian Ilock, on a charge like tliat against Spurius Cassius, equally groundless and base. In 3G7 B.C., after a violent contest of eleven years, an agrarian law was y)assed, through the efforts of Licinius Stolus, but though proving of great value was soon overborne. 148 SOCIAL WEALTH. Tlie story of the Gracchi is too familiar to be re- peated here. Their temporary success in preventing the social ruin of the republic hardly extended be- yond the cruel butchery which destroyed them ; and reaction, malversation, corruption, and demoraliza- tion paved the way for the introduction of the em- pire. That the pernicious system of landholding which obtained in despite of, rather than in accordance with, the Roman civil law, was the cause of the sub- version of the Roman republic, and of the ultimate decline and fall of the Roman emjDire, there appears now no question among historian or scholars. Mal- thus treated the British land system as though it had been a part of the " laws of nature," and contends that " though human institutions appear to be, and, indeed, often are, the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief to society, they are in reality light and superficial in comparison with these deeper- seated causes of evil which result from the laws of nature and the passions of mankind." Yet even he makes this statement: "When the equcditii of property which had formerly prevailed in the Roman territory had been destroyed by degrees, and the land had fallen into the hands of a few great proprietors, the citizens, who were by this means successively deprived of the means of supporting themselves, would naturally have no resource to prevent them from starving but that of selling their labor to the rich, as in modern states ;" and then adds that they were cut off from even this resource by the enormous number of slaves ULN'D OWNERSHIP. 149 wliich liad been captured in the wars, and wlio did all the asrricultural and mechanical labor. Macleod says : " Rome, which had not seen a foreign foe for seven centuries, was four times sacked by the barbarians in the fifth century. The free yeomen of the bright days of the republic had per- ished in the civil wars. The land was parceled out among a number of gigantic proprietors, and cul- tivated exclusively by slaves. Tillage had nearly ceased, and all the supplies came from the provinces. With the loss of these the supplies failed, and the population was reduced to the lowest depths of mis- en/. That it was the maladministration of the land which resulted in the enslavement and degradation of the people and the exhaustion and loss of fertility of the soil is too patent for serious discussion. But it may be well to notice that what Niebuhr and other late writers regard as a merit in the " agrarian law " con- stituted its main defect. It did not attempt to deal with all the land of the republic ; but only with that portion of which recent private appropriation had been made. If we had a history of the matter at all clear, it would doubtless appear that all private dominion of the land had arisen in Eome in the same way as that which the patricians had more recently obtained, from the sufferance of the state, over lands admitted to be public — a process similar to that which has been going on in our own countr}'' for a hundred 3'ears. A possible agrarian law Avas one which should have dealt with nil Inml alike, and thus have prevented those dangerous accumulations in the bauds of a few which gave power to tlie strong 150 SOCIAL WEALTH. to defeat any effort whatsoever to protect the pos- sessions of the weak. The system of landed property in Rome is shown to have been much the same as that in other states, and was, doubtless, developed in a similar way. Their "households," " clan villages," and " cantons " corresponded in a general way with the households, villages, and manors of later times. The earliest authentic histor}' of Rome gives us three classes : slaves, clients, and patricians, or house- holders. The first were property ; the second were persons, but without political rights ; the last were " the people." The slaves were, doubtless, captives taken in war, or their descendants ; the second class were probably aliens, who had come in as refugees, etc., but who seldom, under the Roman customs, ob- tained the privilege of citizenship. But all the burghers were on a footing of equality, and as land and political rights were inseparable, the original con- dition as between them must have been equal owner- ship. Speaking of a still earlier peojole than the Romans, Henry Sumner Maine says : " Whenever a corner is lifted up of the veil which hides from us the primi- tive condition of mankind, even such parts of it as we know to have been destined to civilization, there are two positions now very familiar to us which seem to be signally falsified by all we are permitted to see : All men are brothers, and all men are equal. The scene before us is rather that which the animal world presents to the mental eye of those who have the courage to bring home to themselves the facts an- swering to the memorable theory of natural selection. Each fierce little community is perpetually at war LAND OWNERSHIP. 151 with its neiglibor, tribe with tribe, village with vil- lage. The never-ceasiug attacks of the strong on the weak end in the manner expressed by the monoto- nons formula which so often occurs in the pages of Thucydides : 'They put the men to the sword, the women and the children they sold into slaverj'.' Yet, even amid this cruelty and carnage, we find the germs of ideas which have spread over the world. There is still a place and a sense in which men are brothers and equals. The universal belligerency is the bel- ligerency of one total group, tribe, or village with another ; but in the interior of the groups the regi- men is not one of conflict and confusion, but, rather, of ultra legality. The men who composed the primi- tive communities believed themselves to be kinsmen in the most literal sense of the word ; and surpris- ing as it may seem, there are a multitude of indica- tions that in one stage of thought they must have regarded themselves as equals. When those primi- tive bodies first make their appearance as land- owners, as claiming an exclusive enjoyment in a definite area of land, not only do their shares of the soil appear to have been originally equal, but a num- ber of contrivances survive for preserving the equal- ity, of which the most frequent is the periodical redistribution of the tribal domain. . . . Gradually, and probably under the influence of a great variety of causes, the institution familiar to us, individual property in land, has arisen from the dissolution of the ancient co-ownership " (V. C, 225-227). Emile de Laveleye, in his " Primitive Property," asserts as the conclusion of his thorongli investiga- tion of the sul)j(;(;t in all primitive societies all over 152 SOCIAL WEALTH. the globe that " the soil was the joint property of the tribes, and was subject to periodical redistribu- tion among all the families, so that all might live by their labor as nature has ordained. The comfort of each was thus proportioned to his energy and intel- ligence; no one, at any rate, was destitute of the means of subsistence ; and inequality increasing from generation to generation was provided against . . . freedom, and, as a consequence, the ownership of an individual share of the common property to which the head of every family in the clan was equallj- en- titled were in the German village essential rights." The redistribution of the land was provided for in the sacred laws of the Hebrews, and its periodic return was hailed as a religious, as well as a social, festival. The land could " not be sold forever," at the most, for forty-nine years, as on the fiftieth came the national jubilee. Thus no Israelite could be wholly deprived of his heritage in the land, for each year brought him nearer to the restoration, and re- duced, by a definite amount, the sum necessary to redeem his patrimony, if he should obtain means, before the fiftieth year returned. In the same rela- tion the laws of Lycurgus and Solon may be regarded, since, economically, the abolition of debt must be in many respects equivalent to a redistribution of the land.* The aristocracy of Eome, therefore, must * According to Plutarch, " the first of Solon's acts was that debts should be forgiven, and that no man for the future sliould take the bod}- of his debtor for security. He valued himself for having liberated the mortgaged fields and the mortgaged citizens of Athens." Julius Csesar enacted what Tacitus calls "a wise and salutary law," LAND OWNERSHIP. 153 have regarded any agrarian law as directly leading to eqnal ownership in the soil, and without sufficient patriotism to esteem the public good above the in- terest of self or class, they waged against it a relent- less war, which sacrificed, in turn, the republic, the empire, and the Boman civilization. Look at the c;^uestion of private dominion of the land in whatever light we may, we can find it to originate in usurpation only, whether of the camp, the court, or the market. Whenever such dominion excludes or deprives a single human being of his equal opportunit}', it is in violation, not only of the public right, and of the social duty, but of the very principle of law and morals upon which property it- self is based, which has been stated by John Locke to be this : " For his labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for all others." A definition which will apply to the land as well as to mere commodities. It is clear, from the history of all people who have a history, that dominion of the land, in any other sense than that of common dominion, and a limited proprietorship, such as, in accordance witli the above definition, leaves equal opportunity to all others, is incompatible with all principles of societary devel- opment, and could never have been understandingly sanctioned by any social consent, even did we not have the fullest testimony that it has been always compollirifi creditors to deduct from the priricii)al of a dubt whatever tlicy had been paid in interest, but which his successors, at tlio behests of ilonian capitaHsin, utterly disregarded. 154 SOCIAL "WEALTH. accomplished by official betrayal of trusts, or by conversion of public duties into private rights, when not, as frequently has happened, by direct and forci- ble usurpation. To say that society can have estab- lished these usurpations, by positive enactment tliat the}^ have obtained by prescription, or that individ- uals are estopped from pleading their just claim, is saying, in effect, that society may destroy itself — that it may enact that the principle of law on which prop- erty rests shall be obliterated in the name and in- terest of another kind of property, which is not propert}'' but robbery. From the hasty review we have made, it seems equally apparent that rent has originated in a wholly different way from that which economists assert; that it has arisen b}^ converting the public tax for- merly levied upon the land into a private claim or debt due to one who has perverted the public rev- enue to his private use, and then claimed dominion of the laud from whence it was derived. Surely Michael Davitt has grounds for his much-repre- hended saying, " Eent is an immoral tax. " The right to tax is the highest prerogative of sovereignty,^ and may be logically questioned as to claim from any functionary of the state, or from the state itself, ex- cept as a voluntary tribute. How, then, can the right of its enforcement inhere in any private indi- vidual? How devoid of any justification is the employment of the powers of the state to enforce this usurpation, not in the j)ublic interest, but for private emolument! CHAPTEE X. PRIVATE PEOPERTY IN LAND. Priyate property in laud, if such a tliiug cousists with public right at all, must depend upon precisely the same principle as any other right of property. As an element in human progress, the right of private property, in importance, has taken first and almost only place in the current systems of law and of polit- ical economy. While admitting its great importance, we cannot conceal the fact that the writers on those subjects have wholly failed to distinguish between its use and its abuse, or to recognize its rational and equitable limits. The nature of property, which is defined by economists to be " a bundle of rights," is now generally conceded to be "that of the individual to be protected b}' society in the quiet possession of that which his labor has produced." I quote Mr. Mill to the effect tliat the logic of property rights is " to assure to all persons what they have produced by their labor." This has been the reason on which all laws relating to property have been professedly l)ased in all ages, however im- perfect or partially executed. We now inquire how tliese princi])les become applied to the land, Avhich, as all admit, no labor had originally formed or produced. It is an easy thing to form a theory as to the first assumption of i» 156 SOCIAL WEALTH. property in, or dominion over, the land, but the mis- chief wrought by theories of this kind is that the originator, instead of using it as a theory to help on a process of elucidation, immediately assumes it as a fact, and decides the problem solved, and all existing statutes and customs justified. Says Gibbon : " The original right of property can only be justified by the accident or merit of prior occupancy. In the succes- sive states of society the hunter, the shepherd, the husbandman, may defend their possessions, by two reasons which forcibly appeal to the feelings of the human mind ; that whatever they enjoy is the fruit of their own industry ; and that every man who envies their felicity may purchase similar acquisi- tions by the exercise of similar diligence." He admits that " the common rights, the equal inheri- tance of mauhind," become usurped by the crafty and bold. " In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice, the steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reasons." It is unquestioned that monopol}^, as it exists, is di- rectly the reverse in its origin from that assumed as under the law of trade, and is derived from a system of ownership of which traces remain in every civilized country. Laws to protect and define separate ownership were made in the interests of equity, and were at first limitations to usurped dominion, rather than to protect and extend dominion by force, and so far as dictated by reason, were a restriction upon arbitrary will, and were developed by the gradual correction PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 157 of tlie mistakes and evils flowing from misdirection and ignorance. As we Lave seen, all human exertion is resolvable into motion, or movement of things. The necessary- relation between ihe mover and the moved is obvi- ously so close tnat there can be no room for any broad extension for either one without the other. There is also a definite proportion between the two — the power applied and the object eflected ; the doer and the thing acted upon. The man, strong or weak, measures his strength against matter, and nature awards to his control just so much as he can move, and no more. If he essays to move a pound more than he is able, the force he does exert fails of all effect whatever. Now let us recall the generally admitted premise that all have an original claim to the ownership of the land. Take the individual alone with nature. How much land can he move in the direction of pro- duction — in other words, cultivate and improve? In his savage state he could roam over a consider- able area, and would require it to support his exist- ence by capturing wdld game and gathering wild fruits. But as game grew scarce, nature would com- pel him to limit himself to a smaller area. Ultimately a very few acres would yield to him the greatest possible return for his effort, because proportion be- tween the force and the thing acted upon is one of the prime conditions of effectiveness in all spheres of praduction. Tliis, then, is both the normal and the economic relation between man and the soil, and one which cannot be rightfully changed by any social compact, custom, or statute law. J5y coinbiniiij^ liis 158 SOCIAL WEALTH. strength with others only can he accomplish more useful results or control a wider domain. As division of labor and increased effectiveness are attained through combination, a still less and less extent of control results proportionally. So greatly has the division of labor reduced this pro- portion that many otherwise intelligent people be- come unconscious that they need access to the earth at all. The progress of society in industry and com- merce tends to reduce constantly the necessary margin to individual control. The custom or statute, there- fore, which guarantees exclusive possession to a class, so extended that even the small amount re- quired by each person can only be obtained at a monopoly price, has no foundation in any reason, or principle of law of equity or economy. There can be no just extension of control to one person while another is deprived of all control. Besides, there can be no extension to the general control. The land of the whole globe is a fixed quantity, and so is that of every quarter — the domain of every nation, state, or township. When the whole people have no power to increase their domain, how can the indi- vidual have unlimited power of extension to his domain? Can society confer a power it does not itself possess? Individual possession of land re- quires to be defined and limited as certainly as are the boundaries of townships or states, and one man can no more rightly own the land upon which an- other lives than one state or nation can have juris- diction over its sister state or nation. Ownership of land is sovereignty over the domain, and whoever owns the land upon which a people PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 159 live and toil is their sovereign and ruler. When this dominion is subject to the commercial law, or law of the market, such sovereignty is merely that of trade, and the tribute or service becomes a royalty in the form of rent, interest, or dividend. Traffic in land, therefore, is nothing more and nothing less than a traffic in a Idrigly prerogative, and an extension of " the divine right to rule " the " earth and man " into the domain of trade ; and by which the victim of misrule gains nothing when he changes his nominal ruler from a " prince of the blood " to a president or governor, who like himself is subject to the " trade king.'^ In the evolution of civil law the right of private property prescribed limitations to the barbaric " law of the stronger." Its influence in civilization has been incalculable. Its own limitations have been slowly discovered and more tardily applied, until its abuses have become intolerable, and as obstructive of hu- man progress as was at any time the law of brute force, Avhich it so largely modified. The dominion of property over man's person has but recently been abrogated ; its dominion over his heritage is yet sur- preme ; but when discovered to be what it is, a bald usurpation, it will naturally or violently disappear, as slavery and feudalism have done, through the evolution of industrial and social laws. The indefensible nature of traffic in the land, and its reduction to a commodity, subject to increase and engrossment, is tacitly admitted by the silence of the economists who assume its accordance with nat- ure. Tlie principal writer who has taken up tlie pen on the conservative side of the land question 160 SOCIAL WEALTH. scarcely makes a passable apology for the system. Mr. W. H. Mallock, iu his review of Messrs. George, Hj'ndmau, and Marx, admits that to do away with rent might benefit the rent payer, as the release from any other debt might do. He seems to be unable to comprehend that the question has a wider scope, and that, as often happens, the immediate rent payer makes a greater profit from a high rent, since it operates, to a certain extent, to shut out competition, the same as a license tax often afi^ects a particular business. It is the social injustice which is to be deplored, and which sometimes travels far before it falls upon the unfortunate burden-bearer. He makes no effort to show how an honest debt can be formed by privilege to use the " common in- heritance," nor at all attempts to justify the mode in which the toiler has been robbed of his right to the land necessary to his support. He does not deny that the time may come when the land laws may require to be modified ; but satisfies himself with attacking what he regards as weak points in the statements and logic of the parties in review, and parries, as he best can, their arguments and reason- ings. He avoids altogether any discussion of the rise and growth of the system, or any inquiry what- ever into the origin of the titles iinder which land is held from the people. He will only entertain the fact that the present proprietor came to hold from another by purchase, and, therefore, is to be deemed honestly in possession of his land, since he paid his money for it. But, if we were to admit to be true what in large estates is notoriously untrue, even in this country, it could give no justification to the PKIYATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 161 system, since to trace any title back will yield us nothing at last but one of forceful and fraudulent taking, even were land a proper subject of traffic at all. Mr, Mallock deprecates the agitation against land ownership, and though he acknowledges it may work evils and require to be modified, thinks a remedy like "nationalization of the land," or " limitation of estates in land," would be like prohibiting the sale of knives because they were sometimes used felo- niously to take life. But, in fact, the purpose for which dominion of the land that others need is sought is to reduce labor to vassalage, ultimately to eject the laborer — murder him; first his man- hood, so as to bar to him all improvement from gen- eration to generation ; and then to destroy him. All this is not the showing of Messrs. George, Hynd- man, and Karl Marx ; but of W. H. Mallock in the very pages we are reviewing. In his arraignment of capitalism, he is almost without an equah A position more damaging to it has seldom been taken by liadi- cal or Socialist. 'He even exceeds the fact, which is bad enough. He says : "What is progressive is not the faculties of the hireling laborers, but the knowledge of the men by whom labor is directed. The laborers begin exactly Avhere their fathers be- gan. The directors of Labor begin exactly where tlieir fathers ended" (Property and Progress, p. 157). Now, although this statement is only gen(!rally true of farm and factory laborers, and largely false of mechanical and of nearly all otlier workers for wages wlio are capable of solf-em])loyment, it is due, lUKpiestiouably, tf) the extent that it is true, to the 162 SOCIAL WEALTH. capitalistic system under which " Property and Prog- ress " are discreted from " labor and arrested de- velopment," so far as it is possible, by cunning de- vice, to reverse the natural course of industry. But when Mr. Mallock comes to indorse the theory of Malthus, he makes what might have been regarded otherwise as a meek submission to the logic of events, an evident predetermination to obtain and hold do- minion of the land, not only that the future laborer might be rendered unable to begin w^here his father left off, but even to end as his father ended. It preaches to him a gospel of ejection and extinction, even before Malthus's dismal result shall be reached, and acquires and maintains ownership of the land, that this may be done the more effectually, so that his taking off may preclude and render unnecessary any unpleasant struggle he might make in the ulti- mate competitive selection. To be sure, he admits that " when the Duke of Westminster shows any desire to expel all the Bel- graviaus, when the Duke of Bedford proposes to turn Covent Garden into a game-preserve, and when it comes to be the ambition of English landlords gencraJh/ not to get their rents, but to get rid of their tenantr}^ then we may be certain that the English land laws will be altered " (p. 114). But in truth the power to eject, given by law to the landlord, is not merely a power capable of abuse, as the possession of a knife may be, but it is a power sought and given for this purpose alone, and which, no one knows bet- ter than Mr. Mallock, is not only freely exercised, without even the wretched excuse that they want to get their rents, by English and Irish and Scotch PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 163 landlords, but by those of every country where land monopoh" prevails. They have the civil and military power of the nations at their disposal to do the mur- der of their bidding, and that withcmt inquiring whether the landlords want their rent, or to estab- lish a rabbit Avarren, only they must not do it in a " general tvay, you know;" that would not be toler- ated, and so the whole system would tumble ! But while the knife is onl}' used on those who are feeble and ignorant, and could not sustain the struggle for any length of time, any way, it is all folly to make such a noise about it. It only anticipates by a triile of a thousand years, perhaps, the fulfilment of the prophecy of the " Gospel according to St. Malthus," and so, in any event, must be looked upon as the act of Providence, rather than of the capitalistic land- lords and their servile instruments ! Coupled with the Malthusian theory of population, land monopoly resolves itself into an institution to predetermine the dismal issue without awaiting the struggle and actual trial of strength and endurance, so that the " unfittest," not the " fittest," may survive, and the fittest be destroyed. Because the desire to have the means of subsistence in the hands of capi- talists alone is one to give them an unequal advan- tage, and to bring on the issue long before any natural cause for it existed, if one is possible. Now, Malthus has made a theory from all the facts in the case, or he has falsified and ignored facts which, as many contend, show the contrary theory to be true, or he has built his theory upon partially as- certained ])rf' misos, and to the neglect of tendencies and principles which counteract and render his the- 164 SOCIAL WEALTH. ory improbable as to any specific culmination, but only in a general way proving tendencies to exist, which, if uncomplemented by others, would produce the specific result, as gravity without centrifugal force could cause the earth to fall directly to the sun. I think the truth more likely, at least, to be found in the middle ground than at either extreme. But so far as this issue of the land is concerned, what essential difference can it make ? If Mr. George's position on this question is sound, then there can exist no justification for large control of the land, to be sure. If the mediate position, or any mediate position, be true, then Mr. Mallock, to justify landlordism, must prove that form of owner- ship is best calculated to delay and render less liable to occur the deplorable result, by inaugurating in- telligent and humanitary checks to population, and by refining and improving the race so as to render increase less rapid, and the catastrophe less disas- trous, if it cannot be wholly averted. He, however, does nothing of the kind ; but, on the contrary, ad- mits that the system we have intensifies and increases the tendencies against which every impulse of man- hood is aroused to resist or avert. But suppose the theory to be entirely faultless, and established as a matter ol natural science, what then is his position ? Why, that a few, at most a part of mankind, are justified in appropriating, not only the greater share of the products of the labor of the toilers, but the land itself, the source of all suste- nance and the means to all productive labor, so as to precipitate the crisis, and deprive the disinherited of any means or opj^ortunity to struggle for a sur- TEIVATE TROPERTY IN LAND. 165 vival, in -wlncli tliej would otherwise be sure to succeed against the effeminate and idle who are un- used to toil and privation. Few writers of any school have so thoroughly unmasked the tendencies and purposes of modern capitalism as he. His criticisms of the "Statistics of Agitation" are inconclusive where they do not favor the opposite for which he offers them. If, as he contends, the condition of the poor is growing better, and the relative, if not pos- itive, condition of the rich is growing Avorse, what probability can there be of a near Malthusian epoch, pray? And if Mr. Hyndman and Karl Marx have played false with statistics and history to show that once the condition of the toiler was better than now, he cannot derive the cold comfort he seeks to draw from that consideration for the ojjpressed and disin- herited who reclaim a portion of their own, become more in earnest in obtaining other portions, and arc not, as he imagines, disposed to rest content witli what they have obtained, and to trust to conservative rule to give tliem more. In his showing that capital is the greater robber of the two, we think he has successfully proved that far greater amounts are taken from the industry of a country by interest and profits than by rent. In this lie has an easy task, for tliis is Mr, George's weakest ])oint — indeed, a blunder fatal to his whole plan to remedy tlie evil. And still it may bo true, as un- questionably it is, that the making a commodity of the land coiistitut(!S the basis of the ca])italism of goods, whicli enables it to rear a superstructure over- sliadowing its own foundation, tlio monopoly of the land. The surprising thing is that one should enter- 166 SOCIAL WEALTH. tain the strange notion tliat the destruction of land- monopoly would " increase the earnings [stealings] of capital," unless, indeed, the purpose were to con- fiscate the possession of one gigantic wrong in the interest of another, in the vain expectation that it will stand after the foundation is removed. The last point I can notice is that which Mr. Mallock takes in regard to " right to land." Though he admits it in a general way, in respect to the whole earth, he denies it in regard to any specific place or portion, and thinks the time likely to come when a number of citizens more would be born than could possibly live in a place, and " who not only had no inalienable right to live in it, but whom their fellow- citizens had an inalienable right to expeL" He thence infers that some have a better right to land than others, and that institutions must determine which have better rights, and which none at all. But all this only leads over the road we have already sur- veyed, and betrays the animus of landlordism, which proposes to have the sure thing when the crisis arrives, and to not wait its coming, but keep the machine in running order by expelling and crowding out a few periodically. Indeed, I think some have a better right to land than others, viz. : those who render it productive and so remove, or at least postpone, the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence. But those are proverbially not the landlords, who, as a class, do the least, and often nothing, to promote production, unless paying their money to some one who has^ no exclusive title to the land, and taking Private property in land. 167 the rent as it becomes due, is reckoned to their credit. When a ship's company, through wreck or cir- cumstance of any kind, becomes reduced to neces- sit}^ every one is put on an " allowance," or, in ut- most extremity, lots are cast, and thus the struggle for survival is made an equitable one. A Hannibal or CiBsar, in the forced march and severe privation, shared the lot of the common soldier. Not so with capitalism and a pseudo-aristocracy. That requires all such unpleasant episodes to be at the expense of the laborer, who has furnished the feast at which there are insufficient places, and whom the lordling and "money-bag" "have an inalienable right to expel," that they may partake in peace. Under- stand the crisis you have to meet, O workers ! and ask yourselves whether such issue to existing laws and customs, made by their ablest champion, renders them longer worth your submission and respect. CHAPTER XL CAPITAL AND THE PRODUCTIVE FACTORS. What is capital, and what the things embraced therein, is a question so completely mj-stified by the accredited writers on political economy that the word would not be employed but that it is generally used to signify accumulations of wealth or goods. The latest definition of it is " any economic quantity from which a profit is derived." But the distinction of chief importance is this, whether a thing in its natiire is competent to give in- crease, or has such quality conferred by poiccrs hor- Towcd from other things, or by conventional customs and institutions. In its scientific aspect, this dis- tinction is of vital importance. What has power of increase in nature is readily determined. All organ- ized things'have growth and the power of reproducing themselves. But no inert matters have any such power, and it is only through labor or the exertion of the human powers that they can have their utility or their exchangeable value increased. Of the or- ganic things which grow and multiply, none are available to man's use without the exercise of his powers in gathering and moving them. The farmer or horticulturist who cultivates berries in prefei'ence to gathering wild ones from the fields, does it be- cause it requires less labor to procure them of equal 168 CAPITAL AXD THE PEODUCTIYE FACTORS. 1G9 quality that vraj than to gather the natural fruit. And. so it is with all kinds of production. We would not adopt the artificial if it did not yield better, or. at least, equal compensation with the mere pursuit of garnering natural productions. On careful exam- ination, we shall also find that no thing in nature multiplies or increases without human care or atten- tion which does not require the same sacrifice of time and effort to (father or capture as it would to produce kindred utilities by artificial means. The natural productions of the land, and the growth of wild animals, fowls, and other forms of animated nature which man appropriates for food or to furnish skins or fiber for clothing, are really em- braced in the simple term land, because they have no existence independent of it, and whoever controls the land appropriates them. In the earlier conceptions, which regarded cajDital as the stock or amount of money put to productive use, there was always a general acknowledgment tliat it promoted production, while at the same time it claimed to be stored labor, or produc^t of labor. But business operations usually show, not a gain to rapifah, but a stead?/ Joss, and a loss which is only made good by constant accessions from the earnings of current labor. Of all those who go into business, but a small number come out with their capital un- impaired, after a reasonable compensation has been allowed for their services for the time engaged. That a few do more than this, some realizing large fortunes, gives currency to the conco])tion that stock in trade is productive, and lends infatuation to the idea tliat money can bo junde in it, as a successful 170 SOCIAL WEALTH. l)uyer of a lottery ticket tliiuks that lotteries pay. Of land and labor only it can be said with any de- gree of accuracy they yield an increase. And of them it can be said only when they are united, or the labor is applied upon the land or upon material derived from the land. It would seem, then, that land and labor, instead of being excluded from the classification, should be regarded in economics as they are in nature, the ONLY CAPITAL. The man who owns the land to the exclusion of labor can derive an income from it through the necessity of the excluded worker, who must obtain access to it by paying rent, or sell his labor for what the land holder will pay. It is possible, therefore, by dominion over these prime factors, to effect false and wholly artificial conditions which shall give increase to other things and other activities besides those of land and useful labor. The customs and laws which justify slavery place the laborer in the category of chattels, and his person among subjects of traffic. Proj^erty, of course, becomes productive then, especially if, as usually, the slaveholder be also a land holder. As the laborer becomes a merchantable commodity, and can be bought with money, he will impart to that money or otber commodity for which he will exchange, a re- productive power. It may be mentioned as a fact, that in slave-countries the rate of interest, other things being equal, is always high. The rate in this country has fallen quite one-half since the abolition of shxvery in scarcely more than a score of years. Other circumstances have contributed to the same Capital and the productive factors. 171 end, doubtless, but that has been one of the mam causes. If the hind be reduced to the condition of a com- modity, and made a thing to be trafficked in, the money or goods for which it will exchange will have imparted to it the same power of increase which ' attaches to the land, and will have conferred uj)on it the same royalty or power to tax the production of labor. In nature land and labor are always capital, and never commodities ; and the products of these are alivays commodities, and never capital, except through subversion of normal relations, and by the reduction of capital to the category of products, thereby dis- persing a portion of its productive power, to sustain a false factor in its relation. The truth of this, how- ever, aside from the interest of the capitalistic advo- cate to disguise it, is lost sight of from the fact that most persons, using commodities in the production of other commodities and in rendering service, as merchants with their goods, and carriers with their teams or other means of transportation, join with it their personal and also hired service, and usuaJJ)/ ccdculafe these earnings qfhibor as prof t on their capitdL When the farmer joins his labor to the land he has bought with money, and employs hireling labor mainly to do the work, he regards the profits upon the labor and his entire earnings, and perhaps of his family also, as so much gain, to be credited to the profit on the money paid for the land, for wages and necessary means to prosecute his business. Tlie increase which has resulted from the union of land and labor is shared by the money lord, while the land and the labor receive between them the 172 SOCIAL WEALTH. moiety their necessities demand. Even the rent goes, not to the land, but io the landlord as a capital- ist whose money is invested in the land. The failure of Mr. George to discover this led him to treat of the monopoly of land and of caj^ital ,as two separate things, not merely distinct from, but as antagonistic to, each other ; the one as the friend, and the other as the enemy of labor. Overlooking the fact tliat land is reduced to a commodity and so brought under the reign of capitalism, and that " private property in land," is simply one of its means of subjecting labor, the principal one since chattelism is abolished, he concludes that there is an inverse tendency between the operation of land- lordism and capitalism, and between the rates of rent and of interest. Notliing could be farther from the truth. Interest and rent are not rates, but things to which rate applies. The rate per cent, of rent and the rate per cent, of interest so nearly correspond that they may be said to be the same, and from any tem- porary aberration tend constantly to return to equi- librium. The " pure economists " find no difficulty in conceiving land and labor both to be capital. I quote . " The land itself on which a city is built is wealth ; the owners of it obtain a great revenue by simply al- lowing other people to build houses upon it" (Macleod, E. E. 76). " Labor itself is a valuable commodity ; it has value, just as that of a material chattel ; it is, therefore, an exchange " (lb., 128). He goes on to instance copyrights, patents, etc., funds, shares, ad- vowson, etc., and triumphantly asks the previous school " how these are the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth." CAPITAL AND THE PEODUCTIVE FACTORS. 173 • To sliow the absurdity of treating tliese last-named tilings as '' elements of a physical science," it could be suggested to him that they are mostly the creat- ures of statute and prescfiption. Advowson in par- ticular is a feature peculiar to the union of church and state, and Avhich would necessarily disappear' with the disestablishment of the church. He could also have extended his list. A " letter of marque," a license to keep a liquor saloon, a brothel, a gambling hell, or a " fence " for stolen goods, might obtain for its owner a large " revenue by simply allowing other people " to work under them. An appointment or election to public office, which capitalists or corpora- tions may desire to influence so as to divert public interests to private use, may obtain for its owner also an appreciable sum, and it is therefore wealth and a portion of his capital and a scientific quantity ! To such results we are driven the moment we attempt to place the natural sources of wealth in the same cate- gory with conferred privilege and usurped powers. That when capitals or properties are created by law and .sanctioned by use, trade economists should treat them as economic quantities cannot well be avoided, perhaps , but that they should be instanced as demonstration of scientific principles is too ab- surd for serious treatment. We might not prevent the pretended naturalist, who had never seen horses but with blankets or trappings on them, or terrier dogs but with docked tails and croj^ped ears, from classifying thorn under heads determined by tliese distinctions ; but we need not allow liim to confuse our minds with the notion that the blanket is a part of the horse, or that tlie t(;rrier's ears and tail are 174 SOCIAL WEALTH. sliortened by a " natural instigation." As little should we be misled by the constant treatment by economists of the most artificial and arbitrary rela- tions of industry to trade as though they were the scientific exponents of natural conditions under natu- ral law. The subject of the natural means and factors of production forms the princii^al stumbling-block in the reasonings of reformers as well as of economists. Although nothing is more common among them than the phrase, " Labor produces all wealth," yet the Socialist, as well as the capitalist, will immediately begin to talk about " the ineans of production ;" the one to sliow that capital acts a part in production, and should therefore share in its results, and the other to show that machinery, tools, etc., as well as the land, should be taken possession of by the state, and production be carried on for the benefit of alL As usual, the truth lies between the extremes, cer- tainly not, as here, where they meet. Land and labor being the natural, unproduced capital, should have no artificial barriers placed between them. Land, being a natural, not a produced thing, has no exchangeable quality, and can not rightfully be held against the demands of the needy. It is the basis of life and action. With labor it is productive ; but it is the only thing which is productive. The goods of the wealthy, to which their title is undisputed, is that alone which is the result of labor. Now, if ma- chinery, tools, general plant, etc., are really means of production in the sense of contributing of them- selves to production, then a yevy curious question arises between the capitalist and the Socialist. Either CAPITAL AND THE PRODUCTIVE FACTORS. 175 the capitalist must surrender what his labor has earned, directl}- hj his individual application, and indirectly by the natural production of the goods, tools, etc., to the state to be distributed promis- cuously, by a ratio of need, not of deed ; or else the Socialist must abandon all hope and purpose of im- proving the condition of those who do the labor of the Avorld. Between these two diametrically antag- onistic claims there seems to me to be but one point where reconciliation is possible. That is by the elimination of land from the category of things pur- chasable by labor, because not producible by labor, and a return to the natural right of labor to reap the fruits of its own application. If this should leave the question unsettled as to whether goods and tools produced goods and tools, it would leave it in a fair way of settlement. At least it would no longer allow the capitalist to add to the earnings of his own labor, and of his goods and tools, the natural produce of the land, and so deprive other labor of its natural opportunity and reward. The Socialist should con- sider, also, upon what ground he makes the claim that capital ought to release its control of machinery and plant in the interests of society. If they are really productive, why should the owner be required to surrender their earnings ? If they are not produc- tive, but, on the contrar}', require to have their wear and tear and natural decay constantly replaced by labor, and are only made to appear productive by their false relation with a really productive element, the land, then indeed his protest against such capi- talistic use is reasonable and just; but, in that case, it by no moans needs that the state should take the 176 SOCIAL WEALTH. plant from tlie owners ; it only needs that it should cease to guard the false relation, and by opening to the enjoyment of labor its only j)roductive comple- ment — the land. In the one case, he would make a rational demand, which no casuistry can deny ; in the other, the inconsistent requirement that success- ful workers shall be deprived of the natural fruits of their labor, and of the peaceful enjoyment of what is a natural growth of those fruits. Nor is the dilemma of the capitalist less embar- rassing. If he takes the position that his plant is productive, and that his wealth truly represents the production of his labor, and the auxiliary earnings of such production, and that the condition of the poor and improvident is really the result of natural law, still he cannot deny the right of society to protect and support the poor, who are destitute of productive means to help themselves. And thus escaping the Scylla of " social democracy," he will fall into the Charybdis of " govermental distribution of burdens," the Communism of the state. But when capitalism will yield, or shall be shorn of its usurped dominion over the land, to which it can produce no shadow of natural or justifiable title, it may confidently appeal to the sense of justice in mankind to protect it in the * possession of all those things to which a labor title can be shown. But the assumption of the capitalist and the Social- ist in regard to the productive power of labor pro- ducts is without the least foundation in fact. There is only an accumulation of products ; no such thing as production begetting production. It is true that machinery, plant, and stock, which are only the pro- ACTIVE FACTOR IN PRODUCTION. 177 duction of labor, are consumed in new productions ; but that is only because there is demand for the new production rather than the old. The consumption of these to produce the new creates a new demand for the application of labor to their reproduction, and so the circle is constantl}' repeating itself. The cost of tools is always the labor necessary to produce or re- produce them. Their use in production is only such labor as is saved by it to the series of productions in which they are employed and consumed. In any in- dustrial or economic sense, meaihs of production are limited to labor and the raw material. ACTIVE FACTOR IN PRODUCTION. The dominating factor in production is human labor. Man, the worker, is the active and moving force in all social industry or development. He is so constituted as to require a supply of material food and also constant activity. The muscle that does not find its appro- priate nourishment withers or wastes away ; but so also does the muscle that ceases to be used. And this is correspondingly true in respect to every phys- ical or mental power of the man. Nature herein in- dicates, with a directness not to be mistaken, that human wants are to he supplied, and by human activities. No reasoning seems required upon a point so plain ; and yet so fertile is false education and idle igno- rance, that whole classes are taught to believe that all industry is a curse and a disgrace, and that to be usefull}' active is to forfeit respectable social posi- tion. This is true to a great extent of the cliildren, especially the daughters, of tlio rich, in tlie fashion- 178 SOCIAL WEALTH. able world, no matter how the riches upon which they pride themselves may have been accumulated by their immediate or remote ancestors ; whether by severe application and intense activity in laborious and vulgar avocations, or by methods now deemed predatory and criminal. And thus the mind of the thoughtless becomes inflated with the idea that to leave one-half of the man, his activity, without use ennobles and distinguishes him. To the enlightened mind, on the contrary, to appro- priate the goods of life without serving is the most childish and ignoble of all things. To desire a con- dition for self or oifsjjring, such as will relieve from the necessity of exercising the activities of our nat- ure, is to desire deterioration and effeminacy. "We shall see, at length, that it is only under misdirection and the usurpation of the elements essen"'^ial to hu- man life and happiness, by a few, that slothful ease appears preferable to that depth of deprivation to which such usurpation dooms the worker, whose ex- cessive labor dwarfs his mind, while it fails to supply the required nutriment to sustain his body in health.* Activity is the normal condition of all the human faculties. Man needs no following with a lash to induce " Since wherever a mouth and a back are created a pah- of hands also is provided, the inference is unavoidable that the liands are to be used to supply the needs of the mouth and the back. Now, as there is one mouth to each pair of hands, and each mouth must be filled, it fol- lows, quite naturally, that if a single pair of hands refuse to do its work, then the mouth goes hungry or, what is worse, the work is done by other liands. In the one pase the supply failing, an inconvenience is suffered and the man dies; in the other case, he eats and wears tlie earnest of another man's work, and so infiicls a wrong " (Thoughts ou Labor : Theodore Parker). ACTIVE FACTOR IN PRODUCTION. 179 him to work. Labor only becomes irksome and re- pulsive when a few by shirking their share can throw burdensome proportions upon others, or when, ex- cluded from the laboratory Avhich nature has provided him, the laborer has to beg the privilege to toil from his fellow, who slanders their common nature by as- suming that it is laziness, and not a sense of injustice and despair, which makes hireling labor distasteful. As the very nature of the two factors in industry requires their equal proportion to each other, so ex- ercise of the functions of production and assimila- tion retain a definite ratio to one another. In igno- rajice of these laws, the child whose need of food is first felt becomes liable, through mere habit, to develop his appetite more rapidly than his love of motion. Such become gluttonous and indolent, or intemperate ; but usually the attraction " to do " is early manifested, and it is often more difficult to suppress this tendency than any other, or to govern it without directing it into the channel of some use- ful industry. The terrible cmun with which all idle people, however cultured, are afflicted, is but an ear- nest remonstrance of our nature against the depart- ure from her economics. Correlative to this are the results at the other extreme, where overaction and insufficient or unsuited nutriment develops the muscuhir at the expense of the mental forces. Cult- ure, refinement, and manly intellection are impossi- ble! to tli(! many in such condition ; and yet tlie law of com])ensation often asserts itself by retaining in the ovrice relatively proportioned to their usefulness in effecting shelter and ininist(U-ing to the comforts and onjoymeiits of life. The Ratio of Sekvice, as determined by its util- 242 SOCIAL WEALTH. ity, is, therefore, the mean ratio of exchange, and to- wards which it coiistautly teuds as to a point in equilihrio iu all its fluctuatious, from above or from below, caused by whatever disturbing forces. Other things being equal, these Huctuatious rise or fall to the greatest extremes in things where a single or limited use is served. Articles of mere taste, fancy, or fashion are subject to great inflation, and to be reduced to a valueless condition by a change in pop- ular whim. Thus grain is maintained from extreme depression, even in very abundant years, because it can be turned to a number of uses, and, by being fed to cattle, sheep, and swine, can be converted into beef, mutton, and pork, and thus have its value con- served for other years. If some commodity could be found which would serve every requirement of hu- man need, it would have an unvarying rate. No such commodity being found, it is still conclu- sive of the princii:»le, since every additional or extended use to which a thing can be put reduces, in a posi- tive degree, the extent of the fluctuations in its ratio or price from the mean. And labor or service, being the parent of all commodities and exchangeable in its varied forms, becomes the controlling element in ex- change, commands a stable price, and forms the only stable ratio. Our laws regarding money tend, in a high degree, to subvert or obscure this well-established principle. They take one commodity, gold, the least useful of all the metals, except for ornament, of a scarce and very irregular production, and whose relative value fluctu- ates in a series of years, more than that of any staple commodity, and under our economic system, which RATIO IN EXCHANGE. 243 regards all values as constantly variable quantities, assume that tins one value is invariable. With the ad- dition of silver to the standard, the great injustice to labor is oul}- divided, not removed, and capitalism is constantly trying to demonetize that. Now, the only invariable ratio is the ratio of use, and labor, since it alone is able to supply all useful things not existing in nature, and is the sole agent in gathering and con- veying those naturalh^ existing or Avhich are sponta- neously produced, constitutes the only thing which can have stability in exchange corresponding in any respect to the ratio of utility. It is hardly necessary to point out that, for many generations, gold or gold and silver has been a mere basis and standard of value in the commercial world, while ihe promise to pay these has constituted mainly the currency and medium of exchange of most na- tions. It is foreign to the purpose of this inquiry to show how the method of issuing this credit money is productive of great evil to the interests of industry. Our business with it here relates to its assumption of a claim to which it is not entitled, and to the ex- tension of its usurpation, indefinitely, by means of multiplying promises to pay, promises which must be li([uiduted, if at all, in a commodity subject to every fluctuation known to trade. It is unnecessary to con- do ran or justify credit money, or to intimate as to who should be autliorized to issue it, but simply to point out that if it be used at all it should be made redeem- able in labor or in sndi commodities as can be most readily produced by tlio greatest numbers of the peo- ple, and should be exi)r(!SS(Hl in days' or hours' ser- vice. Wo thus see tlio unstable basis upon Avhich 2M SOCIAL WEALTH. any system of finance or of exchange must rest whicli denies the chiims of labor, discrowns it and sets up a golden idol in its stead. The trade which it seeks to explain and justify is a subject not admitting of any scientific explanation. It is without reciprocation, a mere contest of cunning and false pretenses. It is a commercial duel in which the one party triumphs at the expense of the other. Professor Perry prides himself upon having discovered that two minds have to meet in determining price, or. in other words, that "it takes two to make a bargain," a proverb, I think, as old as modern English literature, at least. Some one may yet discover that it takes two to make a bet, to fight a duel, or to engage in a prize fight. Our science of trade, it seems to me, under these teachers, ap- proaches as near to true economics as the results of abet, duel, or prize fight does to a principle of juris- prudence, because such contests were sometimes held to settle differences between iudi\dviduals or com- munities. To have the minds of two men meet, though one or both be ignorant and prejudiced, would be a singular method of deciding some question in as- tronomy or of proportion in chemistry, and should not be thought conclusive in economics. KATIO OF MATEELy:. TO SERVICE. The ratio of exchange equitably relates, not only to service, but also to the proportion of earth in which such service is incorporated and conveyed. This applies not only to trade between nations, but also to that between sections of the same country, ajid between cities and the acfricultural districts more RATIO OF MATERIAL TO SERVICE. 245 nearly related. A disregard of this principle inevi- tably impoverishes a people parting with a greater proportion of fertilizing matter from their land than is returned to it. The best lands are soon wasted in productive power by such a process, no matter how equitable or advantageous the trade in all other re- spects may appear. The economist must deal with proportions as they exist in nature, and not as they are ignorautlj'^ ac- cepted by the weak and dependent, through perverse circumstances or under duress ; except, indeed, he seeks to defend and perpetuate such ignorance, de- pendence, and subjection, or the abuses which spring from such misestimation. Our railroad system and great modern facilities for transportion, become but a vast means to advance the transfer of the crops, freighted with the fertile portion of the earth from the interior to the seaboard, or to large manufacturing or commercial centers. They, indeed, take back articles of use, some of which contain elements Avhich, in their consumption, will go to increase the fertility of the soil, and als(^ some commercial fertilizers, but, in the main, the balance is greatly against the country. If the " Balance of Trade " theory had embraced the fertilizers instead of the precious metals, as the basis of exclusion from exchange, it would have had some scientific importance. And if " Protection " meant an investigation into the proportional residue of fertilizing properties after consumption of ex- changeable conimcjdities, and a careful adjustment of their application to the soils from which the su])ply is drawn, there would bo some logical justification for 246 SOCIAL WEALTH. the use of that term in economies ; but a high or prohibitory tariff may keep out of a country the very elements required to restore fertility, or reduce the amount or proportion received for our products. Besides, the most dangerous tendencies which re- quire to be guarded against are also active between sections of the same country where commerce is un- impeded by state interference, and where every fa- cility exists for the carrying on of the unequal traffic. So that if a tariff exerted any influence to prevent the transfer of earthy properties from one country to another, it could affect little in preventing, but much in promoting, the impoverishment of the land through such transfer to the business and manufacturing cen- ters and their wasteful discharge into the sewers. But what renders this exhaustive process most de- structive of all is the taking away from the land that portion of its produce which goes to the payment of rent, of interest on purchase money of the land, or on borrowed means to carry on the farm, and of profits to the dealer and speculator. For all these are a dead loss to the land or to the labor. The only ex- ception is where the landlord, banker, or profit- monger resides upon the estate or land cultivated, so that the products of consumption get replaced. In that case the labor suffers all. But even under the most favorable circumstances, the far greater portion of the produce which goes to these channels is exchanged by the holder for goods and manufac- tures which, in consumption, afford little or no fer- tilizing product. A tariff can have no possible power to check these drafts upon the land and labor of a country. Indeed, under the highest tariff this country VALUES OF LAND AND LABOR. 2-17 has ever imposed, this exhaustive process has been going on in a constantly increasing ratio. The inter- est on our government, state, and corporation bonds, raih'oad bonds and interest paying stocks, liekl abroad, and rent for our own lands paid to aliens, has enor- mously increased during the last twenty-live years, and has proved wholly an exhaustive tax levied upon our soil and upon the remuneration of our labor. For all this vast drain on our land and on the ener- gies and life of our people, we have received abso- lutely nothing. It has all been paid for in privilege, in concession of private rights and other imponder- able and intangible forms of incorporeal and fictitious wealth. Nothing whatever which improves the land, or feeds, clothes, or shelters labor, has been returned for all the amounts thus drawn. VALUES OF LAND AND LABOR UNDER COM^IERCLiL SUB- JECTION. Commercial ownership of land or of labor operates U) produce very remarkable transpositions of value, and of the meaning and application of terms. This has been noticed by the later economists, thougli they have failed to give it other attention than to illustrate their theory that value has no necessary dependence on labor. Macleod remarks that "so long as the science of economics was limited to the viaierial produrtH of the carl/i (and of labor), the phrase 'production and consumption' was perfectly intelli- gible and unobjectionable. But when the term wealth and the science of economics were extended to include labor and rkjIilH (dominion over the land 248 SOCIAL WEALTH. particularly — the italics and parenthesis are mine) great awkwardness arises. Eor even though it is carefully explained that production means nothing but offering for sale, and consumption means noth- ing but purchase, it is very awkward to speak of the production and consumption of labor." It would be equally awkward to speak of the production and consumption of land. "Who," he asks, "would understand the production and consumption of debts, shares, the funds, copyrights, patent rights, etc. ?" It would indeed be awkward, but it is the awkwardness which always attends the attaching of properties to things in theoretical assumption, which they do not possess — an awkwardness which has brought untold misfortune upon the workers of the world, and perverted the whole business and indus- try of society, and which renders the reduction of the science of social wealth to a mere matter of trade between sharpers. Otherwise the impossibility of classifying land and labor with commodities would become so apparent that the most pedantic econo- mist could not fail to observe it. Coupled with the definition of the land value, that it is the present value of the " right to the series of future products forever,'' we see what has been demonstrated in regard to rent and interest, that such value proceeds by a duplicate geometric ratio, while the actual production of wealth only increases by an arithmetical ratio, thus not only covering the entire product of the associated industry of the world, but also the potential ability to gather an in- finite series of productions, which would absorb the universe and dethrone omnipotence. VALUES OF LAND AND LABOR. 249 There is but one method by which an increase can be obtained — for one to exchange his goods, if possi- ble, for a man or for hind. If by brute force, supe- rior cunning, or the rights of usurpation, enforced by custom or man-made law, he is enabled to buy a laborer, he could then make his surplus productive ; or under commercial monopoly of the soil he might buy a certain amount of land, when precisely the same results would arise. It will be observed that this absorptive process, whether carried on by the subjection of labor directly or through capitalistic appropriation of the land, de- pends altogether upon the numbers of workers who are brought under tribute. With one slave the owner could only command an increase or income which the labor of one could furnish. To realize the pro- gressive income he must, by the same ratio, reduce increasing numbers to bondage. And so the land- owner must, in the same ratio, multiply his farms and increase his tenants. And as these basic relations attach themselves to other businesses, and as the at- tempts to obtain annunities from these sources pre- vail, the subjection of labor must proceed in the same ratio in every field of industry. 80 that, indeed, capi- talistic increase has and can have nowhere logical basis or aim, but in the progressive subjection of the land and of the labor of a people. And one must be over-credulous to suppose that economists wdio jus- tify or ignore these systems of industrial inversion will ever give logical consideration to the equities of tlie present system of labor compensation or of positive; rocipr(;cation in exchange. Now, where one or both of these usurpations exist, 250 SOCIAL WEALTH. and land or labor, or land alone, is made a marketable commodity and can be bought and sold as a basis of trade, of course the money or goods which will ex- change for these fictitious rights will necessarily command the same service from the work of society as the rights themselves, and hence will tax the earn- ings of labor in the same degree. To realize this tax by any device whatever is to recur to one of these forms of usurpations over the man, or over the land he must cultivate to produce the things so taxed. And this so clearly appears in comparing the values of commodities with the values of these assumed rights over land and labor, that only the bare state- ment is required. The value of the laborer, when a chattel, depends wholly on the right to command his labor, and the amount of labor he can be made to perform. It con- sists of the present value of such labors as the slave shall ever perform, and if hereditary, of the possible labors of children and children's children to all time. Here is not only a producing but a multiplying factor, which, under the Malthusian idea of population, be- comes a progressive series, like capitalistic increase, by a duplicate ratio. Having by " a mere fiat of the human will produced " a commodity which contains this power of increase, the value can be readily im- parted to other commodities, exchangeable with it, however inert. Outside of such a system the value of such goods has a definitely determined measure, and is exchangeable with commodities of equally de- terminate and positive computation. But the value of the slave consists alone in his capacity to go on producing VALUES OF LAND AND LABOK. 251 commodities indefniidy for all time and multipljing himself in his posterit3^ All commodities, pi^ojjer, have vahies consumable and specific. These values begin and determine in use. The value of labor, on the other hand, under its treatment as a commodity, is not a thing to be consumed, and, as Mr, Macleod says, it becomes " very awkward " to speak of it in that con- nection. It is for what it dues that it is valuable, and this value attaches not only to what it will do to-day but for all time. The value of the land is the same in this respect, that it is accumulative, yet depending wholly upon the earnings of labor upon it, or the ex- haustion of its productive powers. It is the characteristic of all incomes without labor that their values depend wholly upon the increase per cent., which proceeds by equal ratios, while labor can only produce by equal differences. Thus values or properties may be multiplied to any extent, by any forceful or fraudulent device, begetting a rate of profit, rent, or interest upon it. Watered stock has the same value as original stock, and original stock becomes valueless when the two no longer yield an income. Here the distinction between value in use and value in capitalistic investment is drawn, and ap- pears where increase witliout work ceases, and where real and useful things are sought and mutually ex- changed for coiisum])tiou. And the same distinction we drew between private and social wealth applies here also. Those tilings whicli are required for consum])ti()ii by the individ- ual, which make uj) tlie pennan(;nt interest in family and social life, retain a stable value, though they 252 SOCLVL WEALTH. are never employed to earn income. Those other rights and " incorporeal property " which infringe social right and absorb the fruits of social industry without return, are confined wholly to rights over labor direct or through control of the land, which place values not in their utility to serve human needs, but in their power to lay the industry of society under a perpetually multiplying tribute. When a man buys a coat or a dinner, he regards it as of sufficient value to pay its fair price, without any consideration as to whether it will enable him to earn an income without work. And this is true of nearly everything consumed by individual men and their families, or by the world generally. It is only the trader, the banker, or landlord who measures price by the profit, interest, or rent it will exploit. The laborer, for his day's work, anticii3ates the means to furnish food, shelter, and raiment for himself, his wife and children. So it is with the mechanic, artisan, or professional. Profit from the land can only arise from taking the award of nature from him who tills it, and profit from other property or stocks can only spring from the earnings of labor, since money or goods put into any enterprise have no power to increase or multiply themselves. Thus the worker is required to earn his own and all other incomes whatever by the devices of " pro- prietary rights," labor " contracts," and " legal ten- ders." In order to make him equal, or give him an equitable opportunity under deprivation of land, it would be necessary that the wages for his day's work should be paid in notes bearing compound interest, VALUES OF LAND AND LABOR. 253 or calculating the thing in days' work, instead of dol- lars, for his year's labor of three hundred days, he should be paid a year and fifteen or eighteen days' labor of some one else ; and for his second year's labor he should be paid three hundred and thirty- seven days' labor, and thus increase for the third to the tenth in same proportion, when it would be five hundred for the last three hundred days' work, and for the second, third, and fourth decades in the same progressive proportion. Now, if the capitalistic formula had any possible equitable relation to industry and the exchange of services or commodities, it would require that the three hundred days' labor in his fortieth year should be paid in about two thousand days of the equally efficient and serviceable labor of some one else. To apply any such principle to the award of labor is seen to be too absurd to be stated. Thus it is seen that the increase of goods in whatever form without labor is not only logically but mathematicall}^ im- possible ; and that all those values which are cre- ated by usurious taking are fraudulent, and not entitled to any social or economic recognition, except in so far as it becomes necessary to denounce and expose them. We thus see that the artificial capitalization of the land or of the labor begets a system of values, which are subject to no classification with values of utility or service, and are impossible to be exchanged with them, or to form any equation whatever in any prob- lem in which labor or its compensation is involved. And it is eut the parallel, to be of any force, would require that the land holders should re- bel against tlie government which ]irf)tocts thorn in their property in land, as the slave-holders did 276 SOCIAL WEALTH. against the government to wliich their " institution " owed its privilege to exist all. It was the desire of a number of antislavery men, among whom was Ger- ritt Smith, to initiate measures for the abolition of slavery by purchase, on the ground that the whole country was responsible for its existence, the North as well as the South, since the former had profited by the slave trade, in which it had built ujd many, at the time, colossal fortunes, and also had largely shared in the commerce and manufactures of the staple pro- duction of slave labor. He assisted Judge Grimke, of South Carolina, to emancipate his slaves, and would have largely contributed to effect so noble a work, but his purpose was frowned upon by Abo- litionists generally, and was met with resentful de- nunciations by the political agitators who claimed to rejDresent the South. Had his advice been taken, it would have saved the destruction of billions of prop- erty and a million of lives, however open to objection it might have been in some respects. "We have another institution valued at say $30,000,- 000,000, exclusive of improvements, which the stroke of a pen could render valueless, without taking a dollar from the wealth of our country. Yet, if by some compromise which should effectively abolish it, bloodshed and years of strife and suffering could be avoided, it would be wise to adopt it. I do not deem it essential to indorse any particular plan to effect the object, as I think it inexpedient to invoke legislation to do anything but take itself out of the way of social progress ; but I foresee that many at- tempts at legislation will be made, in the professed interest of reform, and I can express a hope that such NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 277 action will accord with rational policy as well as with natural right. For England, then, the nationalization of the land seems the orderly thing to be done, if the state is to continue and government be saved from anarchy. The original advocates of this theory favored com- pensation of the land holders by the government. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, whose "laud nationaliza- tion" I deeply regret my inability to justly commend, or extensively quote as I should desire, advocates the retention of the incomes by the landlords for their lives, or for two or more lives of persons now li\dng. If fault can be found with his plan or reason- ing, it is in that he goes too far in the spirit of for- bearance and conciliation. Certainly no objection can be raised that his proposition is unjust to the landlords, or in any way inconsistent with legal tra- dition, or wanting in any practical feature. But when the land has been assumed by the nation, a most important question arises as by what method it shall be apportioned or redistributed. Mr. Wallace does not propose that the government shall l)ecome a superintendent of cultivation and use. He says that " no state managcmenf will be required, with its inevitable evils of patronage, waste, and favoritism." He has adopted a phrase, if not invented it, which expresses to me the true relation of man to the soil. It is " occupying ownershi])," and Avhich I will allow him to define in his own words : " Ownership of land must not be the same as that of other property, as, if so, occupying ownershi}) (which alone is beneficial) would not be universally secured. A person must own land only so long as he occupies it personally ; 278 SOCIAL WEALTH. that is, lie must be a perpetual holder of the land, not its absolute owner ; and this implies some supe- rior of whom he holds it. We thus come back to that feudal principle (which in theory still exists) that everyone must hold, his land from the state, subject to whatever general laws and regulations are made for all land so held " (p. 193). I can only give place farther to his summary of the "necessary requirements of a complete solution of the land problem as enunciated in these pages." (1) " Landlordism must be replaced by occupying ownership." (2) " Tenure of the holder of the land must be secure and permanent, and nothing must be per- mitted to interfere with his free use of the land, or his certainty of his reaping all the fruits of any labor he may bestow upon it." (3) " Every British subject may secure a portion of land for personal occupation." (4) " All suitable tracts of uninclosed and waste lands must (under certain limitations) be open to cultivation by occupying owners." (5) " The freest sale and transfer of every holder's interest in his land must be secured." (6) " Subletting must be absolutely prohibited, and mortgages strictly limited " (p. 192). Mr. Wallace distinguishes between the value of land which is made up of what he terms " the in- herent value," and the additions to such value made " by the labor or outlay of the owners or occupiers." The inherent value, he thinks, " may conveniently be- come the property of the state, which may be remu- nerated by payment of a perpetual quit rent'' NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 279 Greatly as I am disposed to follow up these quo- tations by other extracts, it is diverging from the purpose of this essay to do so; for the reader must have discovered that in his remedy Mr. Wallace has laid aside the mantle of the patient investigator, which he usually wears, and assumed the garb of the legislator ; and instead of stating what is in the nat- ural relation of "man and the soil," dogmatizes of what )nust be. This is the more unfortunate since, in most instances, there seems no need of it. His plan for legislating occupying ownership is wliolly unnec- essary, as, in the absence of statutory enactments, that is necessarily the extent of ownership, and the enunciation of a natural principle of ownership is far better than any advocacy of a law regarding it can be. In this phrase and plan, however, Mr. Wallace has embodied fully the idea put forth a half a century ago by Spence, Douglas, Evans, YaniVmriiige, Hunt, Hine, Duganne, AVindt, ]Masquerier, Devyr, and others, viz. : Limitation to Property in Laud. It is true that the}', like Mr. Wallace and Mr. George, de- pended on legislation to make good their just and humanitary conceptions, and it seemed an arbitrary- thing to do to "make a law " restricting oue iu thcj extent he should follow his inclination to " occupy the land." But in the light of more recent investi- gations into the rise and origin of property in land, and its essenti;il nature, it is seen that it has its nat- ural limitations, andtliatit is only necessary for legis- lation to und(j what it has done to bestow false rights and to subject men and things to unnatural and therefore unscientific categories to promote distribu- tive justice. 280 SOCIAL WEALTH. The tendency of advanced thought for many years has been to the scientific method, and to place less re- liance upon the empiricism which finds its way into political platforms or becomes petrified in legal form and enactments. The land and labor reformers have, to an extent, shared in this advancement, and although many still fruitlessly follow the ignis-fatuus which holds out the hope of legislating justice into human relations and rectifying wrong by use of the ballot, the more thoughtful see that only by exact knowledge of the elements of industrial economy can they even be prepared to ask, much less to enforce, the sim- plest equities. To nationalize the land in the sense of Mr. Wallace would be a very different thing in its effect ujDon labor from that advocated by Mr. George and the other and earlier English reformers. Without the principle of occupation in ownership, a system of leases from the government, open to competition, and unlimited in extent, would result no way differ- ent from the present system of deeds allodial or in fee simple. In fact, it would greatly enhance the power of capitalism to engross the control of the land, since it would relieve it of the necessity of ap- plying large amounts in purchasing the land which it could secure the same control of by lease. In reviewing land nationalization, the author of "Progress and Povert}^" cannot be overlooked, for we should not be justified in refusing to pay tribute to his genius and the wonderfully lucid diagnosis of the social disorder he has- given us, however we may question the efficacy of the specific nostrum he has compounded for a remedy. He has, I think, indu- NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 281 bitably proved that " the ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the social, the political, and consequently the intel- lectual and moral condition of a people." But his remedy is the English idea of nationaliza- tion, plus the confiscation of rent, minus the fixity of tenure, and limitation by " occup3'ing ownership," so happily blended in Mr, Wallace's proposition.* Mankind have no experience which justifies the * Although Mr. George has justly placed land ownership at the base of tlie social and industrial fabric, he has utterly failed to apprchoiid its relative magnitude as compared with the other forms of usurpation which have grown out of it, and he is wholly mistaken as to its increas- ing power of absorption over capitalistic increase, as we have seen in comparing rent and interest. Their rate is the same, or nearly so. But th« amounts drawn from the wages of labor are constantly increasing on the side of capitalism. Indeed, all the rent of the land is often ta.\ed away by tiie man of money who has a mortgage upon the premises. A considerable part of the tribute paid ostensibly for the use of the laud is merely for the use of the money to purchase with or to carry on the farm. In times long gone by the great incomes were nearly all from the land. Now, and the proportion is constantly increasing, they are more largely derived from trade, manufactures, and transportation. M. de Lavcleye notes this error, and says: "The value of capital en- gaged in industrial enterprises exceeds that of land itself, and its power of accumulation is far greater than that of ground rents. The irnmonso fortunes amassed so rapidly in the United Slates, like those of Mr. < !nuld and Mr. Vanderbilt, were the results of railway speculation, and not of the greater value of land. We see, then, that the increase of profits and of interest takes a much larger proportion of the total value of labor, and is a more general and powerful cause ot inequality than the incrca.so of rent." And yet the moriopf>Iy of the land is the principal liasis on which all of tiinsn schcmr-.H to derive profits depend. Without a power to monop- olize the coal latnls, our coal monopolies could not exist as now. And neither could the tratisporUttion monopolies thrive without private con- trol of the road-bed and of the termini. The power of the landlord, the 282 SOCIAL WEALTH. conclusion that taxing back land values will reduce them, or work any such result as Mr. George as- sumes. The value of land depends wholly upon the power to monopolize it, and when such monopoly is complete, its value embraces the entire product of the labor applied to it, minus the necessary amount reqidred to keep the stock of labor supplied ; and until this limit is reached no taxation can destroy it or seriously weaken the monopoly. It would tend to discourage rather than promote the general desire to possess land, while the increased hazard of retaining it would render the success of the bold and unscruplous more certain. The history of taxation in all times shows that speculation follows the channels of trade most beset with obstructions, and avoids those which are most open to free competition. The very opposite, therefore, of the assumed result, would most proba- bly take place, and the Avealthy and adventurous would continue to absorb the possession of the land and have all the more exclusive control from the magnitude of the taxes they paid, and to which the poor or timid worker could offer no serious competi- tion. The successful capitalist would then, as now, be able to shift the tax to shoulders of toil, plus the profits upon the capital necessary to meet his dues to the government, until the utmost limit of endur- ance on the part of labor had been reached. It would greatly augment and promote the reign capitalist, and the state to tax and oppress labor coincide in aim, and generally in measures, and though tliey may sometimes wrangle with each other as to the division of the .spoils and the responsibility for his ruin, they are united in regarding the laborer as a just subject to be de- luded and plundered. NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 283 of capitalism and displace the iiidepeudent worker who now cultivates bis own acres, but who would be then unable to compete with organized capital, em- ploying machinery and every facility which ready means Avould yield, and would be compelled to give up his holding and sink into the ranks of the prole- tariat. And yet he might survive long enough to greatly exhaust the soil, make bare the forests, and reduce the productive power of the land, driven by his necessities for immediate returns to meet the competition rent, which the bid ling of the well-fixed capitalist would cause to be steadily raised, and to pay interest on means to prolong the hopeless strug- gle. With us, land holding is but the fulcrum of the capitalistic lever, which is applied against minor land holders as well as against labor and every pro- fession and pursuit. Mr. George's plan is really the one in vogue to-day, which taxes through govern- ment rates and interest to capital the whole value of the land as he proposes. Thus, if a man have a house and lot, it is taxed by the state or county, the corporation if in a city or corporate village, so that if he is owing a considerable part of its value on bond and mortgage, he will really have about the same rent to pay as if he hired from the principal Lmdlord of the place, who generally has things "fixed" with the assessors. And having no mortgage on liis premises, he is satisfied witli ii moderate interest on his investment. Thus, in our cities, the small pro- prietors are constantly being sold out for taxes and for foreclosures. Sale of land for taxes is of (piite an ordinary occurrence in the most populous^citios, us 284 SOCIAL WEALTH. in the uninhabited districts not occasionally, but con- stantly from year to year. In some cities, as notably in Jersey City and Elizabeth in New Jersey, and in many others all over the country, taxes have so in- creased as to leave the holder no recourse but to give up his land whenever pressed for payment of mort- gages of small amounts. As an illustration of the above points, I refer to a communication in the Democrat and Chrojiide, of Eochester, N. Y., of Feb. 11, 1885. The owner, who claims to have been a working man and to have laid the basis for his possessions by hard work, attempts to combat the idea that rents are too higli and that taxes are paid by labor, to prove wliicli he makes the statement of particulars below : TAXES AND NECESSARY OUTLAYS FOR 1884. County Tax $101 74 City " 447 64 Sprinkling? Streets 15 00 Central Bridge Tax 12 86 Water Tax 16 74 No. av. Iniprovein"t 378 00 Sidewalks 18 00 Sewer 3 77 Repairs 74 13 Insurance 119 00 Privies Cleaning. . 22 20 Total, $1,209 08 COST. $11,326 41 5,153 32 2,337 29 7.000 00 2,363 93 Total, $28,180 95 RENTS. 170 & 172 Ex- change St.. .$365 00 1 68 Exchange St 372 00 171 " 203 00 168 North av. 500 00 172 & 174 Onta- rio St 300 00 To'al, 1,745 00 Less Taxes and Expenses $1,209 00 Leav'g net rent $535 92 This is considerably less than two per cent, for money invested and nothing for time and trouble of owner, and, as he says, he may sometimes fail to col- KATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 285 lect a portion of bis rent. Now, if on this more than twenty-eight thousand dollars' worth of property he had had a mortgage of ten thousand, which is a mod- erate average proportion on mortgaged premises in general, at six per cent, interest, he would be unable to pay the interest from his rent by more than sixty dollars, and thus become indebted to the capitalist, whom Mr. George supposes is equally wronged with the laborer, by private property in land. How is it possible not to see that property in land is so far from interfering with the power of capital to lay labor under tribute that it is but its chief instrument in effecting the spoil of industry ? Although this owner fails to make good his asser- tion that somebody besides the laborer pays the taxes, since, if they had not paid his rent, he would have had to pay the taxes out of his capital, which he claims he produced by his labor, he justly, as well as naturally, complains that his property is being confiscated by the "taxing power." He avers what is also declared in almost all locali- ties, even by our legislative reports, that small prop- erty holders are assessed much higher in proportion than large estates, and tliinks " if the system of tax- ation continues, all small freeliolders will be made paupers, since they will be sold out to pay taxes." In fact, this process is, and always has been, going on. At certain timos and places it becomes more conspicuous, as in those to which we liave referred, but that is its normal, not its exceptional, manifesta- tion which steadily extends the power of taxing la- bor, both by the government and by the capitalist. CHAPTER XYin. SUGGESTIONS TO LEGISLATOES. Although occupying radical ground in respect to the origin and functions of government, I neverthe- less foresee that in the condition of the popular mind, uneducated and unthinking as it is on the great vital questions of social and civil science, it is likely in most civilized countries to remain without radical change for some time to come. Mere forms, indeed, may change, but without any essential im- provement. France, under a republic, is scarcely less the victim of a capitalistic rule than when under the monarchy or empire. In the United States there are many respects in which human rights and interests are more exposed to legalized spoliation than in England. Our tenure of land has wrought as great disparities in a century with all our vast domain, as a thousand years of feudal and monarch- ical institutions in thickly populated Europe. But it will be long ere our people will outgrow the child- ish civil and legal superstitions through which the rule of mammon is sustained and kept dominant. In pointing out some of the ways and means in which government may aid the cause of science and of justice, if I have not the hope that it will be directly effective to the desired end, I do hope that by sug- gesting to the people what the government might do, 286 SUGGESTIONS TO LEGISLATORS. 287 it will call their attention to what it actually is doing to keej) them in ignorant dependence and want, and have the effect to weaken the bonds by which thej are held in thraldom, and prepare them to dispense wdth such expensive luxuries as are the systems which can do nothing for the worker, while providing every facility to the Shylocks, the gamblers, and pub- lic plunderers to ply their trade. It may serve the purpose, at any rate, of indicating in a popular way the course in which industrial re- form is likely to be developed, with or without the aid of ordinary legislation : First. By repealing all laws in regard to laud ownership, leaving " occupanc}' and use " as it was originally, the only title to land.* To do this while laws are still in some degree respected, will have a tendency to assure the common mind in its reliance upon "statutory provisions ;" but it will at the same time greatly encourage self-reliance and self-help, and tend to the equalization of possessions and the more exact remuneration of labor. Being a peaceful and civil reparation, it would doubtless take a com- promising or graduated form, something like that recommended by Mr. Wallace in his scheme of na- tionalization ; that is, by a prospective application * II liiis been said that "possession is nine points of tlic law." Now, if all etatiits laws in regard to land were abroijnted, possession or occupation would constitute the ten points, and the natural law of proimrty liecoruf the only one. To dispossess or evict one from his home and the soil he has improved and enriched, would then eca.HO to Ik- a privatti rijilit and heconu- a crime, beejiusc a forceful assault and outrage, as well as tlie fraudulent ami wninj^ful taknig which it now is. 288 SOCIAL WEALTH. in its operation — those in present legal possession of land to remain so during life or for a certain term of years ; but no titles created or derived subsequent to such change to extend beyond strict occupancy and use. Tliis would work no summary change, only a gradual one, and to which no reasonable objection could be made, since no one would be dispossessed of any right he now enjoys, but be only denied the privilege of acquiring rights hereafter which are- detrimental to the enjoyment of the natural rights of others, and to the public welfare. If anyone would be justified in complaining, it would be the disin- herited worker who, having all his life been kept out of his inheritance, should have it returned to him, not only without delay, but with restitution for past wrong. But the truth is, that he or his class are to a certain extent responsible for this wrong, for to submit to injustice is wrong as well as to inflict it. Moreover, if the disinherited class were informed of their rights, and disposed to enforce them, each dis- inherited person could at once have his proper allot- ment of land, abundant for the exercise of his labor and the sustenance of himself and family. But nothing seems more certain than that, if at present a part of the workers should assert their natural right to " occupy the land," they would be evicted, or driven off at the point of the bayonet by the other part — tlte landless, homeless hirelings of a gov- ernment, run in the interest of the landlord and cap- italist. The instances where settlers upon the public lands, in good faith and in accordance with the statutory provisions, have been thus evicted at the instance of railroad corporations or other magnates CONCLUSION. 305 yet, so infatuated are men witli the idea of reforming things by legislation, and so superstitious are tliey in their respect for anything " enacted into law," that they give no thought to the study of nature's laws, and have no respect for her silent, yet constant, in- timations. Not daring to trust themselves in a discussion of the question of land ownership, our prominent econ- omists adopt the convenient expedient of ignoring it, 3-et still assuming that our laws of tenure are but a rescript of nature or of the Divine Being, and that all proceedings thereunder must necessarily conform to the law of supply and demand, although well knowing that land traffic is a modern innovation. This seemed to make it necessary to inquire into the origin of wealth, and into the nature of the factors engaged in its production, also to inquire into the relation of the active agents in production to each other. We have endeavored to show that land and labor are tlie only factors in production, and that men en- gaging in associative enterprises are co-partners. In doing this, we found it necessary to expose the falla- cies so common in the thoughts of business and even Avorking men, tliat goods, tools, animals, seeds, or commodities of any kind, or under any circumstances, are agents in production, or have any power in them- selves to increase their economic values. HfMi('(^ T had to considor the ratios of exchange, service, and utility. And fcom tin's it a])pf';irs tliat land and labor can havo no (xcliMngcibli' 7;itio to their own ])rofln('tH; that lab< II-, divorced fiom, or disinherited, of the l.md, is only an abstraction without productive power, and 306 SOCIAL WEALTH. that land witlioiit the application of labor is unpro- ductive of economic values. We have seen that the whole device of income without work is fraudulent and without the least justification in ethics or eco- nomics ; that it vitiates all exchanges with which it is connected, since what is produced by labor cannot be brought into any exchangeable relation whatever with that which it requires no labor to produce ; that all exchanges which involve pure profit, rent, and interest, to the extent that they involve them are no economic exchanges whatever, but the fraudulent or hazardous obtaining of something for nothinfr. And o o o I do not flatter myself, I think, in supposing I have made these points tolerably plain. What alone causes me anxiety is that the world, sunk in its worship of the power which large fortunes give, and in the unfraternal struggle which is begot- ten of the operation of the very injustices exposed, shall give little consideration to those showings, and little attention to the facts which must be as apparent to all as to me. But reflections of this kind have not deterred me from the work which seemed necessary to be done. Many questions which appear urgent and of im- portance to the time, as the question of the currency, etc., I have barely noticed, not because they are of little account, or because their solution can safely be deferred, but because they have their special cham- pions, and have already been treated at length, if not exhaustively. Even the evils of our land system I have not dwelt upon, as they have beeii set forth with much force by the early reformers, and as well by Mr. George and Mr. Wallace in a most impres- CONCLUSION. 307 sive manner. Tliey are apparent enougli everywhere, if people will think, and their deleterious influence surrounds every city, town, or hamlet of our land, and presses with fearful weight upon the child of toil. To sympathy and sentiment I have made no appeal, Imt to the cool judgment and clear sense of riglit which cannot be wholly wanting among mankind. I have sought to avoid denunciation of persons or of classes. Mankind are much the same in all relations and conditions, and if the position of the individual, master, and slave were reversed, it would not im- prove the real character of the institution. The wage worker of yesterday becomes the foreman, boss, or employer of to-day, and carries the same heavy hand upon those beneath his authority as he has experienced from those in authority over him. The victim of usmy, or the tenant impoverished by rent, no sooner changes position than he becomes a usurer or rent-taker, and thinks the system a ver}'- good one which enables him to receive the wages for which another works ; and thus a moral support is given to these customs and institutions which alone contin- ues them in power. What requires to be done, then, is not the inven- tion of some patent scheme or sovereign remedy, but the diftusion of truth upon thes.' fundamental prin- cijjles among both ricli and ])oo7-, tlio intellectual professor and the plodding toiler. Our system of education is deo])ly in fault. To be educated in re- spect to one's lif(» pursuit is one's first need, since to provide for the wants of 11 f(^ is the ])rimary duty of each. Ilndci' ])rivate conliol cf natiiiv in lier iields, forests, and stvcjinis, nnd the nnccpial division result- 308 SOCIAL WEALTH. inf; therefrom, the children of the poor are kept in drudgery or tanght worse than useless lessons, wholly removed, as they mainly are, from any appli- cation to industrial life. For practically, by exam- ple, they are taught to despise and shirk honest labor, and to think that riches and enjoyment flow from a great variety of circumstances rather than from patient toil. The quick-witted child thus early becomes a very " prince of economists." To get something for nothing becomes a habit and a cultus, which, as he grows in years, he tries to reduce to an art. If by shrewd device or subtle pretense he can wholly escape work, and saddle the expense of life upon others, he learns that under the teachings of our " exact economy " and " reformed theology " he will be entitled to social distinction and resjDect, and to have his position defended by learned jDrofessor and titled dignitary, both secular and religious. Tlius, while the natural wants of men are few, and could readily be supplied by a moderate application of labor, the desire to obtain artificial gratifications is without end, and the sheerest caprice dominates the natural appetites where cost of production no longer serves as a check to inordinate desire ; and so unremitting toil is thrown upon others. " Thus, by the treachery of one part of society in avoiding their share of the work, by their tyranny in increasing the burthen of the world, an evil is produced quite un- known in simpler states of life, and a man of but common capacities, not born to wealth, in order to secure a subsistence for himself and family, must work with his hands so large a part of his time that CONCLUSION. 309 nothing is left for intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and religious improvement." — Theodore Paeker. The first requisite of education is to teach the child practically, as well as theoretically, that the supply of human wants are supplied never otherwise than by human toil ; that labor is to be honored and followed, as a means of enjoyment as well as duty, and that to endeavor to shirk our proper share of it is the most childish and mean thing one can possibly do, and is the one weakness we should seek to cor- rect in ourselves, or discourage in others. For even if labor were a curse instead of the prime source of all intelligent enjoyment, how unmanly and uncultured is that desire which would seek to escape it and let it fall on those more feeble and already overbur- dened ! No system of teaching, it seems to me, has ever been so well calculated to arrest the develop- ment of the child, in its stage of childish imbecility and selfishness, as the comfortable theory that every- thing is right in trade, and that "the law of the market" cancels all moral and humanitary consider- ations. It is quite plain to me that popular educa- tion is doing little to remedy the wrongs under Avhich mankind are suffering. Its text-books are emascu- lated of all manly thought upon the great question of work and its awards. No references to the " pecu- liar institution " in the days of chattel slavery Avere more studiously shunned, nor was its nature more sys- tematically misrepresented, than is now practiced in our institutions of learning, our pulpits, and puldic press, upon tiiis ([uostion of labor and man's riglit to the land and to the products begotten of liis toil. Exactness and honesty, without which advancement 310 SOCUL WEALTH. in any science is impossible, are the main needs in the requisite social edncation. Lacking these, there is little hope of attaining personal security or social development. Of the criticisms of the j)aid or truckling advocate I have no fear or care. Even the toilers whose just claims onl}^ I have endeavored to present are perchance as likely to censure as to praise, and to the self-seeker there will be found little in these pages to interest or entertain. Entering on my seventieth year, I have no ambition for place or public recognition. Neither expectation of gain or popular applause has stimulated me to this work, but simply a desire to arrive at truth upon a subject of the highest importance to human well- being which can engage the scientific mind. That I have been unable " to complete the science of eco- nomics " should not be a matter of surprise, since no true science is ever completed. Precisely the nature and extent of my contribution will only be generally seen when that science shall have become other than the empirical thing it now is, and be pursued for nobler aims than the buttressing of class preroga- tives, or the forming of a base for partisan supremacy or the application of doubtful remedies. Let the truth be sought. It only can make free, and liberty is the very life of human progress. APPENDIX. SUMMARY OF DEFINITIONS. To enable the ovdinaiy reader to draw ready com- parisons between the hitest school of economists and thelsonomic conclusions arrived at in Social AVealtii, I give a summary of each. The first, by Mr. Mac- leod, from his " Elements of Economics," pp. 220, 221, 222 ; the second, as they are shown in our pres- ent investigation. Economics, or the Science of Wealth, is the science which treats of tlie laws which govern the relations of Exchangeable Quantities. We.vlth is anything whatever whose value can be measured in Money ; consists exclusively of Ex- changeable Rights. Pkopehty is not a thing, but a Right — is (Mjuivah-iit to Al)solute Ownership. JuiiisruuDENCE is the Science of Rights. Economics is the science of the Exchange of Rights. Economic Quantities are : 1. Rights to Material Things ; 2. Rights to Labor or Service ; 3. Rights to things io he acquired at a future time — incorporeal ])roperty. Value. — Any other economic quantity for wliic^h a thin'' will exchange. Money is anything whatever wliich a debtor can compel a creditor tilalistiu division, 20.'{. Cullom, Sir John, on wages in fourteenth century, 29. 8'7 318 INDEX. Daguerre, the inventor, 86; his discovery not patented by him, 88. Division, system of, pnictically the same under slavery, serfdom, and capitidism, 29, 30. Economics, abraneh of social econ- omy, 18; now pivoted on "sup- ply and demand," 19; the sphere of, constantly narrowing, 31; definition of. by latest school, oG. Enclosure acts, 131. Exchange, as social, not a private interest, 52; ratio in, 235; of material elements, 244. Faxcher, Julius, on Russian agra- rian legislation, 140, 142. Fencing of public lands, 144. Feudal system the successor of chattclism ; its effect on indus- trv, 27, 28; growth, 134; change, 135. George, Hexry, mistaken as to rent and interest, 61, 64, 65 ; special plea for interest, 65, 66, 67 ; builds on a buttress dis- mantled by himself, 68 ; attacks an obsolete view of the wages fund, 98; instance of San Joa- quin Valley, 100; confusion in regard to productive factors, 191- 193; reduces his own scheme to an absurdity, 261 ; opposes re- nunicration to land holders, 274. Golden Rule quoted to favor prop- erty, but not man, by economists and jurists, 53. Gibbon, Edward, on private prop- erty and growth of monopoly, 156. H.VLLAii, on comparative wages under feudalism and capitalism, 28; note to, 302. Hunt, John U., industry the base of true honesty and worship, note to, 10; on law of u.se, 209; note ; one of tlie early reformers, 299; on working of the feudal system, note to, 302. Individualism as a divergent force, 40; compatible with Socialism, ib. Industry, tendency to organize under civil rule, 8; analysis of its elements demanded, 9; the fundamental social problem, 10; an exact science of, 237. Interest, how derived, 48 ; synony- mous with rent and profit, 54; unjust and irrational, 56, 57, 58; relation to land tenure and pay- ment in kind, 60; a geometrical ratio, 62 sources from which onty it is paid, 63; however shifted, falls on labor only, 225. Isonomics, the basis of the French school, 36. Julian, Geo. "W., on corruption of Department of the Interior, 145. Jubilee, Hebrew, set men and the land free, 152. Kellogg, Edward, his valuable analysis, but futile remedy, 266. Labor, early subjection of, 8 ; ardu- ous, the poorest paid, 1 1 ; always produces a change in supply and demand, 16; not sold, but only the thing in which it is con- creted, 21; with land the oidy capital, 171 ; the only stable ra- tio in exchange, 241, 243. Land, what the term embraces, 124; and labor alwaj's capital, never commodities, 171; traffic in, a sale of kingly prerogatives, 159j^ return to the land, 238 ; "Treel trade in, 267-270; not a proper | subject of sale, 272: nationaliza- I tion, 273-280; suited to tradi-!/ tions of Eii<>lish law, 277; need-/ ed by all, 291. Land Ownership, importance of the question of, and original right, i, 1 24. Land Reformers, the early, 279. ^'i INDEX. 319 Laveleye. Emile, original tenure of land, 151; compares profits and interest with rent, note to, 281. Locke, Jolin, riglit to laud, 125; right of property, 153. Mac.\ulat, on crown grants, 142. Macleod, H. D., purpose of his book, 13; diamond instance, 14; triumph over Adam Sniitli. 15; crejites wealth out of nothing, 16; defines property, 17; leader of the later school, 36; unilat- eral contract, and change from feudalism. 125; on land system of Kome. 149 : absurd classifica- tion, 173; on satisfaction. 208; three sources of wealth, 189; economic prestidigitation, 190 ; on absolute property in land, 274. Maine, Henry Simmer, origin of the market, 43, 44; trade in land, 45 ; theories of rent, 46 ; origin of property in land, 126. Mallock, W. H., cliampions the ob- solete theory of the wages fund, 96; lectures Mr. George, 97; lame defen.se of landlordi.