UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 PROGRESS AND POVEETY
 
 Make for thyself a definition or description of 
 the thing which is presented to thee, so as to see 
 distinctly what kind of a thing it is, in its sub- 
 stance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and 
 tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the 
 things of which it has been compounded, and into 
 which it will be resolved. For nothing is so pro- 
 ductive of elevation of mind as to be able to ex- 
 amine methodically and truly every object which 
 is presented to thee in life, and always to look at 
 things so as to see at the same time what kind of 
 universe this is, and what kind of use everything 
 performs in it, and what value everything has 
 with reference to the whole, and what with refer- 
 ence to man, who is a citizen of the highest city, 
 of which all other cities are like families ; what 
 each thing is, and of what it is composed, and 
 how long it is the nature of this thing to endure. 
 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
 
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 THE COMPLETE WORKS 
 OF HENRY GEORGE 
 
 PROGRESS AND 
 POVERTY 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSE OF 
 INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS AND OF 
 INCREASE OF WANT WITH IN- 
 CREASE OF WEALTH 
 
 THE REMEDY 
 
 NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY 
 PAGE & COMPANY 3 1904
 
 Copyright, 1891, by 
 HENRY GEORGE 
 
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 TO THOSE WHO, 
 SEEING THE VICE AND MISERY THAT SPRING FROM 
 
 TTTTC 
 
 SAN FBANCISCO, March, 1878. 
 
 OF WEALTH AND 
 to FEEL THE POSSIKQJTJ O^ HIGHER SOCIAL STATE 
 
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 There must be refuge ! Men 
 Perished in winter winds till one smote fire 
 Prom flint stones coldly hiding what they held, 
 The red spark treasured from the kindling sun ; 
 They gorged on flesh like wolves, till one sowed corn, 
 Which grew a weed, yet makes the life of man ; 
 They mowed and babbled till some tongue struck speech, 
 And patient fingers framed the lettered sound. 
 What good gift have my brothers, but it came 
 From search and strife and loving sacrifice f 
 
 Edwin Arnold. 
 
 Never yet 
 
 Share of Truth was vainly set 
 
 In the world's wide fallow; 
 
 After hands shall sow the seed, 
 
 After hands, from hill and mead, 
 Reap the harvests yellow. 
 
 Whittier.
 
 PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 THE views herein set forth were in the main briefly stated in a 
 pamphlet entitled " Our Land and Land Policy," published in San 
 Francisco in 1871. I then intended, as soon as I could, to present 
 them more fully, but the opportunity did not for a long time occur. 
 In the meanwhile I became even more firmly convinced of their 
 truth, and saw more completely and clearly their relations; and I 
 also saw how many false ideas and erroneous habits of thought 
 stood in the way of their recognition, and how necessary it was to go 
 over the whole ground. 
 
 This I have here tried to do, as thoroughly as space would permit. 
 It has been necessary for me to clear away before I could build up, 
 and to write at once for those who have made no previous study of 
 such subjects, and for those who are familiar with economic reason- 
 ings; and, so great is the scope of the argument that it has been 
 impossible to treat with the fullness they deserve many of the ques- 
 tions raised. What I have most endeavored to do is to establish 
 general principles, trusting to my readers to carry further their 
 applications where this is needed. 
 
 In certain respects this book will be best appreciated by those who 
 have some knowledge of economic literature; but no previous read- 
 ing is necessary to the understanding of the argument or the passing 
 of judgment upon its conclusions. The facts upon which I have 
 relied are not facts which can be verified only by a search through 
 libraries. They are facts of common observation and common 
 knowledge, which every reader can verify for himself, just as he can 
 decide whether the reasoning from them is or is not valid. 
 
 Beginning with a brief statement of facts which suggest this in- 
 quiry, I proceed to examine the explanation currently given in the 
 name of political economy of the reason why, in spite of the increase 
 of productive power, wages tend to the minimum of a bare living. 
 This examination shows that the current doctrine of wages is founded 
 upon a misconception; that, in truth, wages are produced by the 
 labor for which they are paid, and should, other things being equal, 
 increase with the number of laborers. Here the inquiry meets a
 
 Ylll PREFACE. 
 
 doctrine which Is the foundation and center of most important 
 economic theories, and which has powerfully influenced thought in 
 all directions the Malthusian doctrine, that population tends to 
 increase faster than subsistence. Examination, however, shows that 
 - this doctrine has no real support either in fact or in analogy, and that 
 when brought to a decisive test it is utterly disproved. 
 
 Thus far the results of the inquiry, though extremely important, 
 are mainly negative. They show that current theories do not satis- 
 factorily explain the connection of poverty with material progress, 
 but throw no light upon the problem itself, beyond showing that its 
 solution must be sought in the laws which govern the distribution of 
 wealth. It therefore becomes necessary to carry the inquiry into 
 this field. A preliminary review shows that the three laws of dis- 
 tribution must necessarily correlate with each other, which as laid 
 down by the current political economy they fail to do, and an ex- 
 amination of the terminology in use reveals the confusion of thought 
 by which this discrepancy has been slurred over. Proceeding then 
 to work out the laws of distribution, I first take up the law of rent. 
 This, it is readily seen, is correctly apprehended by the current 
 political economy. But it is also seen that the full scope of this law 
 has not been appreciated, and that it involves as corollaries the laws 
 of wages and interest the cause which determines what part of the 
 produce shall go to the land owner necessarily determining what 
 part shall be left for labor and capital. Without resting here, I pro- 
 ceed to an independent deduction of the laws of interest and wages. 
 I have stopped to determine the real cause and justification of in- 
 terest, and to point out a source of much misconception the con- 
 founding of what are really the profits of monopoly with the legiti- 
 mate earnings of capital. Then returning to the main inquiry, 
 investigation shows that interest must rise and fall with wages, and 
 depends ultimately upon the same thing as rent the margin of 
 cultivation or point in production where rent begins. A similar but 
 independent investigation of the law of wages yields similar har- 
 monious results. Thus the three laws of distribution are brought 
 into mutual support and harmony, and the fact that with material 
 progress rent everywhere advances is seen to explain the fact that 
 wages and interest do not advance. 
 
 What causes this advance of rent is the next question that arises, 
 and it necessitates an examination of the effect of material progress 
 upon the distribution of wealth. Separating the factors of material 
 progress Into increase of population and improvements In the arts, it 
 is first seen that increase In population tends constantly! not merely
 
 PREFACE. UC 
 
 by reducing the margin of cultivation, but by localizing the econ- 
 omies and powers which come with increased population, to increase 
 the proportion of the aggregate produce which is taken in rent, and 
 to reduce that which goes as wages and interest. Then eliminating 
 increase of population, it is seen that improvement in the methods 
 and powers of production tends in the same direction, and, land being 
 held as private property, would produce in a stationary population 
 all the effects attributed by the Malthusian doctrine to pressure of 
 population. And then a consideration of the effects of the continuous 
 increase in land values which thus spring from material progress 
 reveals in the speculative advance inevitably begotten when land is 
 private property a derivative but most powerful cause of the increase 
 of rent and the crowding down of wages. Deduction shows that 
 this cause must necessarily produce periodical industrial depressions, 
 and induction proves the conclusion; while from the analysis which 
 has thus been made it is seen that the necessary result of material 
 progress, land being private property, is, no matter what the in- 
 crease in population, to force laborers to wages which give but a 
 bare living. 
 
 This identification of the cause that associates poverty with prog- 
 ress points to the remedy, but it is to so radical a remedy that I have 
 next deemed it necessary to inquire whether there is any other 
 remedy. Beginning the investigation again from another starting 
 point, I have passed in examination the measures and tendencies 
 currently advocated or trusted in for the improvement of the condi- 
 tion of the laboring masses. The result of this investigation is to 
 prove the preceding one, as it shows that nothing short of making 
 land common property can permanently relieve poverty and check 
 the tendency of wages to the starvation point. 
 
 The question of justice now naturally arises, and the inquiry 
 passes into the field of ethics. An investigation of the nature and 
 basis of property shows that there is a fundamental and irreconcil- 
 able difference between property in things which are the product of 
 labor and property in land; that the one has a natural basis and 
 sanction while the other has none, and that the recognition of ex- 
 clusive property in land is necessarily a denial of the right of prop- 
 erty in the products of labor. Further investigation shows that 
 private property in land always has, and always must, as develop- 
 ment proceeds, lead to the enslavement of the laboring class; that 
 land owners can make no just claim to compensation if society choose 
 to resume its right; that so far from private property in land being 
 in accordance with the natural perceptions of men, the very reverse
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 is true, and that in the United States we are already beginning to 
 feel the effects of having admitted this erroneous and destructive 
 principle. 
 
 The inquiry then passes to the field of practical statesmanship. 
 It is seen that private property in land, instead of being necessary to 
 its improvement and use, stands in the way of improvement and use, 
 and entails an enormous waste of productive forces; that the recog- 
 nition of the common right to land involves no shock or dispossession, 
 but is to be reached by the simple and easy method of abolishing 
 &11 taxation save that upon land values. And this an inquiry into 
 the principles of taxation shows to be, in all respects, the best subject 
 of taxation. 
 
 A consideration of the effects of the change proposed then shows 
 that it would enormously increase production; would secure justice 
 in distribution; would benefit all classes; and would make possible 
 an advance to a higher and nobler civilization. 
 
 The inquiry now rises to a wider field, and recommences from 
 another starting point. For not only do the hopes which have been 
 raised come into collision with the widespread idea that social prog- 
 ress is possible only by slow race improvement, but the conclusions 
 we have arrived at assert certain laws which, if they are really nat- 
 ural laws, must be manifest in universal history. As a final test, it 
 therefore becomes necessary to work out the law of human progress, 
 for certain great facts which force themselves on our attention, as 
 soon as we begin to consider this subject, seem utterly inconsistent 
 with what is now the current theory. This inquiry shows that dif- 
 ferences in civilization are not due to differences hi individuals, but 
 rather to differences in social organization ; that progress, always 
 kindled by association, always passes into retrogression as inequality 
 is developed; and that even now, in modern civilization, the causes 
 which have destroyed all previous civilizations are beginning to 
 manifest themselves, and that mere political democracy is running 
 its course toward anarchy and despotism. But it also identifies the 
 law of social life with the great moral law of justice, and, proving 
 previous conclusions, shows how retrogression may be prevented 
 and a grander advance begun. This ends the inquiry. The final 
 chapter will explain itself. 
 
 The great importance of this inquiry will be obvious. If it has 
 been carefully and logically pursued, its conclusions completely 
 change the character of political economy, give it the coherence and 
 certitude of a true science, and bring it into full sympathy with the 
 aspirations of the masses of men, from which it has long been es-
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 tranged. What I have done In this book, if I have correctly solved 
 the great problem I have sought to investigate, is, to unite the truth 
 perceived by the school of Smith and Ricardo to the truth perceived 
 by the schools of Proudhon and Lasalle; to show that laissez faire 
 (in its full true meaning) opens the way to a realization of the noble 
 dreams of socialism; to identify social law with moral law, and to 
 disprove ideas which in the minds of many cloud grand and elevat- 
 ing perceptions. 
 
 This work was written between August, 1877, and March, 1879, 
 and the plates finished by September of that year. Since that tune 
 new illustrations have been given of the correctness of the views 
 herein advanced, and the march of events and especially that great 
 movement which has begun in Great Britain hi the Irish land agita- 
 tion shows still more clearly the pressing nature of the problem 
 I have endeavored to solve. But there has been nothing in the 
 criticisms they have received to induce the change or modification 
 of these views in fact, I have yet to see an objection not answered 
 in advance in the book itself. And except that some verbal errors 
 have been corrected and a preface added, this edition is the same aa 
 previous ones. 
 
 HENRY GEOBGE. 
 
 NEW YORK, November, 1880.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 PAGE 
 The Problem 3 
 
 BOOK I. WAGES AND CAPITAL. 
 
 Chapter I. The current doctrine of wages its insufficiency 17 
 
 IL The meaning of the terms 80 
 
 IIL Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by the labor 49 
 
 IV. The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital 70 
 
 V. The real functions of capital 79 
 
 BOOK II. POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. 
 
 Chapter L The Malthusian theory, its genesis and support 91 
 
 II. Inferences from facts 103 
 
 IIL Inferences from analogy 129 
 
 IV. Disproof of the Malthusian theory 140 
 
 BOOK in. THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. 
 Chapter I. The inquiry narrowed to the laws of distribution necessary 
 
 relation of these laws 153 
 
 n. Rent and the law of rent 165 
 
 III. Interest and the cause of interest 173 
 
 IV. Of spurious capital and of profits often mistaken for interest. . 189 
 
 V. The law of interest 195 
 
 VI. Wages and the law of wages 904 
 
 VII. Correlation and co-ordination of these laws 217 
 
 VIII. The statics of the problem thus explained 219 
 
 BOOK IV. EFFECT OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 Chapter I. The dynamics of the problem yet to seek 225 
 
 II. Effect of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth 228 
 in. Effect of improvements in the arts upon the distribution of 
 
 wealth 242 
 
 IV. Effect of the expectation raised by material progress 253 
 
 BOOK V. THE PROBLEM SOLVED. 
 Chapter I. The primary cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial 
 
 depression 261 
 
 II. The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth. . . . , 280
 
 xiy CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK VI. THE REMEDY. 
 
 Chapter I. Insufficiency of remedies currently advocated MT 
 
 II. The true remedy. 890 
 
 BOOK VII. JUSTICE OF TRX REMEDY. 
 
 Chapter I. Injustice of private property In land 381 
 
 n. Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property 
 
 inland 845 
 
 HI. Claim of land owners to compensation 356 
 
 IV. Property in land historically considered 366 
 
 V. Property in land in the United States 883 
 
 BOOK VIII.- APPLICATION or TBS REMEDY. 
 Chapter I. Private property in land inconsistent with the best use of land. 895 
 
 n. How equal rights to the land may be asserted and secured 401 
 
 III. The proposition tried by the canons of taxation 406 
 
 IV. Indorsements and objections 420 
 
 BOOK IX. EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. 
 
 Chapter I. Of the effect upon the production of wealth 431 
 
 n. Of the effect upon distribution and thence upon production. ... 438 
 
 III. Of the effect upon individuals and classes 445 
 
 IV. Of the changes that would be wrought in social organization 
 
 and social life 452 
 
 BOOK X. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 
 
 Chapter I. The current theory of human progress Ita insufficiency 478 
 
 II. Differences in civilization to what due 487 
 
 m. The law of human progress 508 
 
 IV. How modern civilization may decline 524 
 
 V. The central truth 541 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 The problem of individual life 658
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE PKOBLEM.
 
 Ye build! ye build! but ye enter not in, 
 
 Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin; 
 
 From the land of promise ye fade and die, 
 
 Ere its verdure gleams forth on your wearied eye. 
 
 Mrs. Sigourney.
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE PEOBLEM. 
 
 The present century has been marked by a prodigious 
 increase in wealth-producing power. The utilization of 
 steam and electricity, the introduction of improved proc- 
 esses and labor-saving machinery, the greater subdivision 
 and grander scale of production, the wonderful facilita- 
 tion of exchanges, have multiplied enormously the effect- 
 iveness of labor. 
 
 At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural 
 to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inven- 
 tions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of 
 the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of 
 producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the 
 past. Could a man of the last century a Franklin or a 
 Priestley have seen, in a vision of the future, the 
 steamship taking the place of the sailing vessel, the rail- 
 road train of the wagon, the reaping machine of the 
 scythe, the threshing machine of the flail; could he have 
 heard the throb of the engines that in obedience to 
 human will, and for the satisfaction of human desire, 
 exert a power greater than that of all the men and all 
 the beasts of burden of the earth combined; could he 
 have seen the forest tree transformed into finished 
 lumber into doors, sashes, blinds, boxes or barrels, 
 with hardly the touch of a human hand; the great work- 
 shops where boots and shoes are turned out by the case 
 with less labor than the old-fashioned cobbler could have
 
 4 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 put on a sole; the factories where, under the eye of a 
 girl, cotton becomes cloth faster than hundreds of stal- 
 wart weavers could have turned it out with their hand- 
 looms; could he have seen steam hammers shaping mam- 
 moth shafts and mighty anchors, and delicate machinery 
 making tiny watches; the diamond drill cutting through 
 the heart of the rocks, and coal oil sparing the whale; 
 could he have realized the enormous saving of labor 
 resulting from improved facilities of exchange and com- 
 munication sheep killed in Australia eaten fresh in 
 England, and the order given by the London banker in 
 the afternoon executed in San Francisco in the morning 
 of the same day; could he have conceived of the hundred 
 thousand improvements which these only suggest, what 
 would he have inferred as to the social condition of man- 
 kind? 
 
 It would not have seemed like an inference; further 
 than the vision went it would have seemed as though he 
 saw; and his heart would have leaped and his nerves 
 would have thrilled, as one who from a height beholds 
 just ahead of the thirst-stricken caravan the living gleam 
 of rustling woods and the glint of laughing waters. 
 Plainly, in the sight of the imagination, he would have 
 beheld these new forces elevating society from its very 
 foundations, lifting the very poorest above the possibility 
 of want, exempting the very lowest from anxiety for the 
 material needs of life; he would have seen these slaves of 
 the lamp of knowledge taking on themselves the tradi- 
 tional curse, these muscles of iron and sinews of steel 
 making the poorest laborer's life a holiday, in which 
 every high quality and noble impulse could have scope to 
 grow. 
 
 And out of these bounteous material conditions he 
 would have seen arising, as necessary sequences, moral 
 conditions realizing the golden age of which mankind 
 have always dreamed. Youth no longer stunted and
 
 THE PKOBLEM. 5 
 
 starved; age no longer harried by avarice; the child at 
 play with the tiger; the man with the muck-rake drink- 
 ing in the glory of the stars: Foul things fled, fierce 
 things tame; discord turned to harmony! For how could 
 there be greed where all had enough ? How could the 
 vice, the crime, the ignorance, the brutality, that spring 
 from poverty and the fear of poverty, exist where pov- 
 erty had vanished? Who should crouch where all were 
 freemen; who oppress where all were peers? 
 
 More or less vague or clear, these have been the hopes, 
 these the dreams born of the improvements which give 
 this wonderful century its preeminence. They have sunk 
 so deeply into the popular mind as radically to change 
 the currents of thought, to recast creeds and displace the 
 most fundamental conceptions. The haunting visions of 
 higher possibilities have not merely gathered splendor 
 and vividness, but their direction has changed instead 
 of seeing behind the faint tinges of an expiring sunset, 
 all the glory of the daybreak has decked the skies before. 
 
 It is true that disappointment has followed disappoint- 
 ment, and that discovery upon discovery, and invention 
 after invention, have neither lessened the toil of those 
 who most need respite, nor brought plenty to the poor. 
 But there have been so many things to which it seemed 
 this failure could be laid, that up to our time the new 
 faith has hardly weakened. We have better appreciated 
 the difficulties to be overcome; but not the less trusted 
 that the tendency of the times was to overcome them. 
 
 Now, however, we are coming into collision with facts 
 which there can be no mistaking. From all parts of the 
 civilized world come complaints of industrial depression; 
 of labor condemned to involuntary idleness; of capital 
 massed and wasting; of pecuniary distress among busi- 
 ness men; of want and suffering and anxiety among the 
 working classes. All the dull, deadening pain, all the 
 keen, maddening anguish, that to great masses of men
 
 6 IHTBODCCTOBT. 
 
 re involved in the words <e hard times," afflict the world 
 to-day. This state of things, common to communities 
 differing so widely in situation, in political institutions, 
 in fiscal and financial systems, in density of population 
 and in social organization, can hardly be accounted for 
 by local causes. There is distress where large standing 
 armies are maintained, but there is also distress -where 
 the standing armies are nominal; there is distress where 
 prulectiye tariffs stupidly and wastefully hamper trade, 
 but there is also distress where trade is nearly free; there 
 is distress where autocratic government yet prevails, but 
 there* is also distress where political power is wholly in 
 the hands of the people; in countries where paper is 
 money, and in countries where gold and silver are the 
 only currency. Evidently, beneath all such things as 
 these, we must infer a common cause. 
 
 That there is a common cause, and that it is either 
 what we call material progress or something closely con- 
 nected with material progress, becomes more than an 
 inference when it is noted that the phenomena we class 
 together and speak of as industrial depression are but 
 intensifications of phenomena which always accompany 
 material progress, and which show themselves more 
 clearly and strongly as material progress goes on. Where 
 the conditions to which material progress everywhere 
 tends are most fully realized that is to say, where popu- 
 lation is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of 
 production and exchange most highly developed we find 
 the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, 
 and the most of enforced idleness. 
 
 It is to the newer countries that is, to the countries 
 where material progress is yet in its earlier stages that 
 laborers emigrate in search of higher wages, and capital 
 flows in search of higher interest. It is in the older 
 countries that is to say, the countries where material 
 progress has reached later stages that widespread desti-
 
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 8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ress tends proves that the social difficulties existing 
 wherever a certain stage of progress has been reached, do 
 not arise from local circumstances, but are, in some way 
 or another, engendered by progress itself. 
 
 And, unpleasant as it may be to admit it, it is at last 
 becoming evident that the enormous increase in produc- 
 tive power which has marked the present century and is 
 still going on with accelerating ratio, has no tendency 
 to extirpate poverty or to lighten the burdens of those 
 compelled to toil. It simply widens the gulf between 
 Dives and Lazarus, and makes the struggle for existence 
 more intense. The march of invention has clothed 
 mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest 
 imagination could not have dreamed. But in factories 
 where labor-saving machinery has reached its most won- 
 derful development, little children are at work; wherever 
 the new forces are anything like fully utilized, large 
 classes are maintained by charity or live on the verge of 
 recourse to it; amid the greatest accumulations of wealth, 
 men die of starvation, and puny infants suckle dry 
 breasts; while everywhere the greed of gain, the worship 
 of wealth, shows the force of the fear of want. The 
 promised land flies before us like the mirage. The fruits 
 of the tree of knowledge turn as we grasp them to 
 apples of Sodom that crumble at the touch. 
 
 It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and 
 that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has 
 been raised; but these gains are not general. In them 
 the lowest class do not share.* I do not mean that the 
 
 * It Is true that the poorest may now in certain ways enjoy what 
 the richest a century ago could not have commanded, but this does 
 not show improvement of condition so long as the ability to obtain 
 the necessaries of life is not increased. The beggar in a great city 
 may enjoy many things from which the backwoods farmer is de- 
 barred, but that does not prove the condition of the city beggar 
 better than that of the independent farmer.
 
 THE PROBLEM. 9 
 
 condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything 
 been improved; but that there is nowhere any improve- 
 ment which can be credited to increased productive power. 
 I mean that the tendency of what we call material prog- 
 ress is in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest 
 class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. 
 Nay, more, that it is still further to depress the condition 
 of the lowest class. The new forces, elevating in their 
 nature though they be, do not act upon the social fabric 
 from underneath, as was for a long time hoped and be- 
 lieved, but strike it at a point intermediate between top 
 and bottom. It is as though an immense wedge were 
 being forced, not underneath society, but through soci- 
 ety. Those who are above the point of separation are 
 elevated, but those who are below are crushed down. 
 
 This depressing effect is not generally realized, for it 
 is not apparent where there has long existed a class just 
 able to live. Where the lowest class barely lives, as has 
 been the case for a long time in many parts of Europe, 
 it is impossible for it to get any lower, for the next low- 
 est step is out of existence, and no tendency to further 
 depression can readily show itself. But in the progress 
 of new settlements to the conditions of older communi- 
 ties it may clearly be seen that material progress does not 
 merely fail to relieve poverty it actually produces it. 
 In the United States it is clear that squalor and misery, 
 and the vices and crimes that spring from them, every- 
 where increase as the village grows to the city, and the 
 march of development brings the advantages of the im- 
 proved methods of production and exchange. It is in 
 the older and richer sections of the Union that pauperism 
 and distress among the working classes are becoming 
 most painfully apparent. If there is less deep poverty in 
 San Francisco than in New York, is it not because San 
 Francisco is yet behind New York in all that both cities 
 are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point
 
 10 IHTBODUCTOBT. 
 
 where New York now is, who can doubt that there will 
 also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets? 
 
 This association of poverty with progress is the great 
 enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which 
 spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that 
 perplex the world, and with which statesmanship and 
 philanthropy and education grapple in vain. From it 
 come the clouds that overhang the future of the most 
 progressive and self-reliant nations. It is the riddle 
 which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and 
 which not to answer is to be destroyed. So long as all 
 the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes 
 but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and 
 make sharper the contrast between the House of Have 
 and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot 
 be permanent. The reaction must come. The tower 
 leans from its foundations, and every new story but 
 hastens the final catastrophe. To educate men who 
 must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them 
 restive; to base on a state of most glaring social in- 
 equality political institutions under which men are 
 theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex. 
 
 All-important as this question is, pressing itself from 
 every quarter painfully upon attention, it has not yet re- 
 ceived a solution which accounts for all the facts and 
 points to any clear and simple remedy. This is shown 
 by the widely varying attempts to account for the pre- 
 vailing depression. They exhibit not merely a diver- 
 gence between vulgar notions and scientific theories, but 
 also show that the concurrence which should exist be- 
 tween those who avow the same general theories breaks 
 up upon practical questions into an anarchy of opinion. 
 Upon high economic authority we have been told that 
 the prevailing depression is due to over-consumption; 
 upon equally high authority, that it is due to over-pro- 
 duction; while the wastes of war, the extension of rail-
 
 THE PBOBLEM. 11 
 
 roads, the attempts of workmen to keep up wages, the 
 demonetization of silver, the issues of paper money, the 
 increase of labor-saving machinery, the opening of 
 shorter avenues to trade, etc., are separately pointed 
 out as the cause, by writers of reputation. 
 
 And while professors thus disagree, the ideas that 
 there is a necessary conflict between capital and labor, 
 that machinery is an evil, that competition must be re- 
 strained and interest abolished, that wealth may be 
 created by the issue of money, that it is the duty of gov- 
 ernment to furnish capital or to furnish work, are 
 rapidly making way among the great body of the people, 
 who keenly feel a hurt and are sharply conscious of a 
 wrong. Such ideas, which bring great masses of men, 
 the repositories of ultimate political power, under the 
 leadership of charlatans and demagogues, are fraught 
 with danger; but they cannot be successfully combated 
 until political economy shall give some answer to the 
 great question which shall be consistent with all her 
 teachings, and which shall commend itself to the per- 
 ceptions of the great masses of men. 
 
 It must be within the province of political economy to 
 give such an answer. For political economy is not a set 
 of dogmas. It is the explanation of a certain set of 
 facts. It is the science which, in the sequence of certain 
 phenomena, seeks to trace mutual relations and to iden- 
 tify cause and effect, just as the physical sciences seek to 
 do in other sets of phenomena. It lays its foundations 
 upon firm ground. The premises from which it makes 
 its deductions are truths which have the highest sanc- 
 tion; axioms which we all recognize; upon which we 
 safely base the reasoning and actions of every-day life, 
 and which may be reduced to the metaphysical expres- 
 sion of the physical law that motion seeks the line of 
 least resistance viz., that men seek to gratify their de- 
 sires with the least exertion. Proceeding from a basis
 
 12 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 thus assured, its processes, which consist simply in 
 identification and separation, have the same certainty. 
 In this sense it is as exact a science as geometry, which, 
 from similar truths relative to space, obtains its conclu- 
 sions by similar means, and its conclusions when valid 
 should be as self-apparent. And although in the domain 
 of political economy we cannot test our theories by arti- 
 ficially produced combinations or conditions, as may be 
 done in some of the other sciences, yet* we can apply 
 tests no less conclusive, by comparing societies in which 
 different conditions exist, or by, in imagination, separat- 
 ing, combining, adding or eliminating forces or factors 
 of known direction. 
 
 I propose in the following pages to attempt to solve by 
 the methods of political economy the great problem I 
 have outlined. I propose to seek the law which associ- 
 ates poverty with progress, and increases want with 
 advancing wealth; and I believe that in the explanation 
 of this paradox we shall find the explanation of those 
 recurring seasons of industrial and commercial paralysis 
 which, viewed independently of their relations to more 
 general phenomena, seem so inexplicable. Properly 
 commenced and carefully pursued, such an investigation 
 must yield a conclusion that will stand every test, and as 
 truth, will correlate with all other truth. For in the 
 sequence of phenomena there is no accident. Every 
 effect has a cause, and every fact implies a preceding 
 fact. 
 
 That political economy, as at present taught, does not 
 explain the persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth 
 in a manner which accords with the deep-seated percep- 
 tions of men; that the unquestionable truths which it 
 does teach are unrelated and disjointed; that it has failed 
 to make the progress in popular thought that truth, 
 even when unpleasant, must make; that, on the con- 
 trary, after a century of cultivation, during which it has
 
 THE PBOBLEM. 13 
 
 engrossed the attention of some of the most subtle and 
 powerful intellects, it should be spurned by the statsman, 
 scouted by the masses, and relegated in the opinion of 
 many educated and thinking men to the rank of a 
 pseudo-science in which nothing is fixed or can be fixed 
 must, it seems to me, be due not to any inability of the 
 science when properly pursued, but to some false step 
 in its premises, or overlooked factor in its estimates. 
 And as such mistakes are generally concealed by the re- 
 spect paid to authority, I propose in this inquiry to take 
 nothing for granted, but to bring even accepted theories 
 to the test of first principles, and should they not stand 
 the test, freshly to interrogate facts in the endeavor to 
 discover their law. 
 
 I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no con- 
 clusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon 
 us is the responsibility of seeking the law, for in the very 
 heart of our civilization to-day women faint and little 
 children moan. But what that law may prove to be is 
 not our affair. If the conclusions that we reach run 
 counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch; if they chal- 
 lenge institutions that have long been deemed wise and 
 natural, let us not turn back.
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 WAGES AND CAPITAL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE ITS 
 
 FICIENCY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 
 CHAPTER III. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL, BT 
 
 PRODUCED BY THE LABOB. 
 CHAPTER IV. THE MAINTENANCE OF LABORERS NOT 
 
 DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 
 CHAPTER V. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL.
 
 He that is to follow philosophy must be a freeman in mind. 
 
 Ptolemy,
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CI7KRENT DOCTRINE OF WAGES ITS INSUFFICIENCY. 
 
 Seducing to its most compact form the problem we 
 have set out to investigate, let ns examine, step by step, 
 the explanation which political economy, as now accepted 
 by the best authority, gives of it. 
 
 The cause which produces poverty in the midst of ad- 
 vancing wealth is evidently the cause which exhibits it- 
 self in the tendency, everywhere recognized, of wages to 
 a minimum. Let us, therefore, put our inquiry into this 
 compact form: 
 
 Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages 
 tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living t 
 
 The answer of the current political economy is, that 
 wages are fixed by the ratio between the number of 
 laborers and the amount of capital devoted to the em- 
 ployment of labor, and constantly tend to the lowest 
 amount on which laborers will consent to live and repro- 
 duce, because the increase in the number of laborers 
 tends naturally to follow and overtake any increase in 
 capital. The increase of the divisor being thus held in 
 check only by the possibilities of the quotient, the divi- 
 dend may be increased to infinity without greater result. 
 
 In current thought this doctrine holds all but undis- 
 puted sway. It bears the indorsement of the very high- 
 est names among the cultivators of political economy, 
 and though there have been attacks upon it, they are
 
 18 WAGE8 AND CAPITAL* Book I. 
 
 generally more formal than real.* It is assumed by 
 Buckle as the basis of his generalizations of universal 
 history. It is taught in all, or nearly all, the great Eng- 
 lish and American universities, and is laid down in text- 
 books which aim at leading the masses to reason correctly 
 upon practical affairs, while it seems to harmonize with 
 the new philosophy, which, having in a few years all but 
 conquered the scientific world, is now rapidly permeating 
 the general mind. 
 
 Thus entrenched in the upper regions of thought, it is 
 in cruder form even more firmly rooted in what may be 
 styled the lower. What gives to the fallacies of protec- 
 tion such a tenacious hold, in spite of their evident in- 
 consistencies and absurdities, is the idea that the sum to 
 be distributed in wages is in each community a fixed one, 
 which the competition of "foreign labor" must still 
 further subdivide. The same idea underlies most of the 
 theories which aim at the abolition of interest and the 
 restriction of competition, as the means whereby the 
 share of the laborer in the general wealth can be in- 
 creased; and it crops out in every direction among those 
 who are not thoughtful enough to have any theories, as 
 may be seen in the columns of newspapers and the 
 debates of legislative bodies. 
 
 * This seems to me true of Mr. Thornton's objections, for while 
 he denies the existence of a predetermined wage fund, consisting of 
 a portion of capital set apart for the purchase of labor, he yet holds 
 (which is the essential thing) that wages are drawn from capital, 
 and that increase or decrease of capital is increase or decrease of the 
 fund available for the payment of wages. The most vital attack 
 upon the wage fund doctrine of which I know is that of Professor 
 Francis A. Walker (The Wages Question: New York, 1876), yet he 
 admits that wages are in large part advanced from capital which, 
 so far as it goes, is all that the stanchest supporter of the wage 
 fund theory could claim while he fully accepts the Malthusian 
 theory. Thus his practical conclusions in nowise differ from those 
 reached by expounders of the current theory.
 
 Chap. L THE CUBEENT DOCTRINE. 19 
 
 And yet, widely accepted and deeply rooted as it is, it 
 seems to me that this theory does not tally with obvious 
 facts. For, if wages depend upon the ratio between the 
 amount of labor seeking employment and the amount of 
 capital devoted to its employment, the relative scarcity 
 or abundance of one factor must mean the relative 
 abundance or scarcity of the other. Thus, capital must 
 be relatively abundant where wages are high, and rela- 
 tively scarce where wages are low. Now, as the capital 
 used in paying wages must largely consist of the capital 
 constantly seeking investment, the current rate of inter- 
 est must be the measure of its relative abundance or scar- 
 city. So, if it be true that wages depend upon the ratio 
 between the amount of labor seeking employment and 
 the capital devoted to its employment, then high wages, 
 the mark of the relative scarcity of labor, must 'be ac- 
 companied by low interest, the mark of the relative 
 abundance of capital, and reversely, low wages must be 
 accompanied by high interest. 
 
 This is not the fact, but the contrary. Eliminating 
 from interest the element of insurance, and regarding 
 only interest proper, or the return for the use of capital, 
 is it not a general truth that interest is high where and 
 when wages are high, and low where and when wages are 
 low? Both wages and interest have been higher in the 
 United States than in England, in the Pacific than in 
 the Atlantic States. Is it not a notorious fact that where 
 labor flows for higher wages, capital also flows for higher 
 interest? Is it not true that wherever there has been a 
 general rise or fall in wages there has been at the same 
 time a similar rise or fall in interest? In California, for 
 instance, when wages were higher than anywhere else in 
 the world, so also was interest higher. Wages and inter- 
 est have in California gone down together. When com- 
 mon wages were $5 a day, the ordinary bank rate of in- 
 terest was twenty-four per cent, per annum. Now that
 
 20 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book L 
 
 common wages are $2 or $2.50 a day, the ordinary bank 
 rate is from ten to twelve per cent. 
 
 Now, this broad, general fact, that wages are higher in 
 new countries, where capital is relatively scarce, than in 
 old countries, where capital is relatively abundant, is too 
 glaring to be ignored. And although very lightly 
 touched upon, it is noticed by the expounders of the cur- 
 rent political economy. The manner in which it is 
 noticed proves what I say, that it is utterly inconsistent 
 with the accepted theory of wages. For in explaining it 
 such writers as Mill, Fawcett, and Price virtually give up 
 the theory of wages upon which, in the same treatises, 
 they formally insist. Though they declare that wages 
 are fixed by the ratio between capital and laborers, they 
 explain the higher wages and interest of new countries 
 by thf .greater relative production of wealth. I shall 
 hereafter show that this is not the fact, but that, on the 
 contrary, the production of wealth is relatively larger in 
 old and densely populated countries than in new and 
 sparsely populated countries. But at present I merely 
 wish to point out the inconsistency. For to say that the 
 higher wages of new countries are due to greater propor- 
 tionate production, is clearly to make the ratio with pro- 
 duction, and not the ratio with capital, the determinator 
 of wages. 
 
 Though this inconsistency does not seem to have been 
 perceived by the class of writers to whom I refer, it has 
 been noticed by one of the most logical of the expounders 
 of the current political economy. Professor Cairnes* 
 endeavors in a very ingenious way to reconcile the fact 
 with the theory, by assuming that in new countries, 
 where industry is generally directed to the production of 
 food and what in manufactures is called raw material, a 
 
 * Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Ex- 
 pounded, Chapter 1, Part 2.
 
 Chap. 1. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. 21 
 
 much larger proportion of the capital used in production 
 is devoted to the payment of wages than in older coun- 
 tries where a greater part must be expended in machinery 
 and material, and thus, in the new country, though cap- 
 ital is scarcer, and interest is higher, the amount deter- 
 mined to the payment of wages is really larger, and 
 wages are also higher. For instance, of $100,000 devoted 
 in an old country to manufactures, $80,000 would prob- 
 ably be expended for buildings, machinery and the pur- 
 chase of materials, leaving but 820,000 to be paid out in 
 wages; whereas in a new country, of $30,000 devoted to 
 agriculture, etc., not more than $5,000 would be required 
 for tools, etc., leaving $25,000 to be distributed in wages. 
 In this way it is explained that the wage fund may be 
 comparatively large where capital is comparatively scarce, 
 and high wages and high interest accompany each other. 
 In what follows I think I shall be able to show that 
 this explanation is based upon a total misapprehension 
 of the relations of labor to capital a fundamental error 
 as to the fund from which wages are drawn; but at pres- 
 ent it is necessary only to point out that the connection 
 in the fluctuation of wages and interest in the same 
 countries and in the same branches of industry cannot 
 thus be explained. In those alternations known as "good 
 times" and "hard times" a brisk demand for labor and 
 good wages is always accompanied by a brisk demand for 
 capital and stiff rates of interest. While, when laborers 
 cannot find employment and wages droop, there is always 
 an accumulation of capital seeking investment at low 
 rates.* The present depression has been no less marked 
 by want of employment and distress among the working 
 classes than by the accumulation of unemployed capital 
 in all the great centers, and by nominal rates of interest 
 
 * Times of commercial panic are marked by high rates of dis- 
 count, but this is evidently not a high rate of interest, properly so- 
 called, but a high rate of insurance against risk.
 
 22 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Boole L 
 
 on undoubted security. .Thus, under conditions which 
 admit of no explanation consistent with the current 
 theory, do we find high interest coinciding with high 
 wages, and low interest with low wages capital seemingly 
 scarce when labor is scarce, and abundant when labor is 
 abundant. 
 
 All these well known facts, which coincide with each 
 other, point to a relation between wages and interest, 
 but it is to a relation of conjunction, not of opposition. 
 Evidently they are utterly inconsistent with the theory 
 that wages are determined by the ratio between labor and 
 capital, or any part of capital. 
 
 How, then, it will be asked, could such a theory arise? 
 How is it that it has been accepted by a succession of 
 economists, from the time of Adam Smith to the present 
 day? 
 
 If we examine the reasoning by which in current 
 treatises this theory of wages is supported, we see at once 
 that it is not an induction from observed facts, but a de- 
 duction from a previously assumed theory viz., that 
 wages are drawn from capital. It being assumed that 
 capital is the source of wages, it necessarily follows that 
 the gross amount of wages must be limited by the 
 amount of capital devoted to the employment of labor, 
 and hence that the amount individual laborers can re- 
 ceive must be determined by the ratio between their 
 number and the amount of capital existing for their rec- 
 ompense.* This reasoning is valid, but the conclusion, 
 
 * For instance McCulloch (Note VI to Wealth of Nations) says: 
 " That portion of the capital or wealth of a country which the em 
 ployers of labor intend to or are willing to pay out in the purchase 
 of labor, may be much larger at one time than another. But what- 
 ever may be its absolute magnitude, it obviously forms the only 
 source from which any portion of the wages of labor can be derived. 
 No other fund is in existence from which the laborer, as such, can 
 draw a single shilling. And hence it follows that the average rate
 
 Chap. I. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. 23 
 
 as we have seen, does not correspond with the facts. 
 The fault, therefore, must be in the premises. Let us 
 see. 
 
 I am aware that the theorem that wages are drawn 
 from capital is one of the most fundamental and appar- 
 ently best settled of current political economy, and that 
 it has been accepted as axiomatic by all the great think- 
 ers who have devoted their powers to the elucidation of 
 the science. Nevertheless, I think it can be demon- 
 strated to be a fundamental error the fruitful parent of 
 a long series of errors, which vitiate most important prac- 
 tical conclusions. This demonstration I am about to 
 attempt. It is necessary that it should be clear and con- 
 clusive, for a doctrine upon which so much important 
 reasoning is based, which is supported by such a weight 
 of authority, which is so plausible in itself, and is so lia- 
 ble to recur in different forms, cannot be safely brushed 
 aside in a paragraph. 
 
 The proposition I shall endeavor to prove, is: 
 
 That wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are in 
 reality drawn from the product of the labor for which 
 they are paid.* 
 
 Now, inasmuch as the current theory that wages are 
 drawn from capital also holds that capital is reimbursed 
 from production, this at first glance may seem a distinc- 
 tion without a difference a mere change in terminology, 
 
 of wages, or the share of the national capital appropriated to the 
 employment of labor falling, at an average, to each laborer, must 
 entirely depend on its amount as compared with the number of 
 those amongst whom it has to be divided." Similar citations might 
 be made from all the standard economists. 
 
 * "We are speaking of labor expended in production, to which it is 
 best for the sake of simplicity to confine the inquiry. Any question 
 which may arise in the reader's mind as to wages for unproductive 
 services had best therefore be deferred.
 
 24 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 to discuss which would be but to add to those unprofit- 
 able disputes that render so much that has been written 
 upon politico-economic subjects as barren and worthless 
 as the controversies of the various learned societies about 
 the true reading of the inscription on the stone that Mr. 
 Pickwick found. But that it is much more than a 
 formal distinction will be apparent when it is considered 
 that upon the difference between the two propositions 
 are built up all the current theories as to the relations of 
 capital and labor; that from it are deduced doctrines 
 that, themselves regarded as axiomatic, bound, direct, 
 and govern the ablest minds in the discussion of the most 
 momentous questions. For, upon the assumption that 
 wages are drawn directly from capital, and not from the 
 product of the labor, is based, not only the doctrine that 
 wages depend upon the ratio between capital and labor, 
 but the doctrine that industry is limited by capital that 
 capital must be accumulated before labor is employed, 
 and labor cannot be employed except as capital is accu- 
 mulated; the doctrine that every increase of capital gives 
 or is capable of giving additional employment to indus- 
 try; the doctrine that the conversion of circulating cap 
 ital into fixed capital lessens the fund applicable to th.. 
 maintenance of labor; the doctrine that more laborevs 
 can be employed at low than at high wages; the doctrine 
 that capital applied to agriculture will maintain more 
 laborers than if applied to manufactures ; the doctrine 
 that profits are high or low as wages are low or high, or 
 that they depend upon the cost of the subsistence of 
 laborers; together with such paradoxes as that a demand 
 for commodities is not a demand for labor, or that cer- 
 tain commodities may be increased in cost by a reduction 
 in wages or diminished in cost by an increase in wages. 
 
 In short, all the teachings of the current political 
 economy, in the widest and most important part of its 
 domain, are based more or less directly upon the assump-
 
 Chap. L THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. 25 
 
 tion that labor is maintained and paid out of existing 
 capital before the product which constitutes the ultimate 
 object is secured. If it be shown that this is an error, 
 and that on the contrary the maintenance and payment 
 of labor do not even temporarily trench on capital, but 
 are directly drawn from the product of the labor, then all 
 this vast superstructure is left without support and must 
 fall. And so likewise must fall the vulgar theories which 
 also have their base in the belief that the sum to be dis- 
 tributed in wages is a fixed one, the individual shares in 
 which must necessarily be decreased by an increase in 
 the number of laborers. 
 
 The difference between the current theory and the one 
 I advance is, in fact, similar to that between the mercan- 
 tile theory of international exchanges and that with 
 which Adam Smith supplanted it. Between the theory 
 that commerce is the exchange of commodities for 
 money, and the theory that it is the exchange of commod- 
 ities for commodities, there may seem no real difference 
 when it is remembered that the adherents of the mercan- 
 tile theory did not assume that money had any other use 
 than as it could be exchanged for commodities. Yet, in 
 the practical application of these two theories, there 
 arises all the difference between rigid governmental pro- 
 tection and free trade. 
 
 If I have said enough to show the reader the ultimate 
 importance of the reasoning through which I am about 
 to ask him to follow me, it will not be necessary to 
 apologize in advance either for simplicity or prolixity. 
 In arraigning a doctrine of such importance a doctrine 
 supported by such a weight of authority, it is necessary 
 to be both clear and thorough. 
 
 Were it not for this I should be tempted to dismiss 
 with a sentence the assumption that wages are drawn 
 from capital. For all the vast superstructure which the 
 current political economy builds upon this doctrine is
 
 26 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book L 
 
 in truth based upon a foundation which has been merely 
 taken for granted, without the slightest attempt to dis- 
 tinguish the apparent from the real. Because wages are 
 generally paid in money, and in many of the operations 
 of production are paid before the product is fully com- 
 pleted, or can be utilized, it is inferred that wages are 
 drawn from pre-existing capital, and, therefore, that in- 
 dustry is limited by capital that is to say that labor can- 
 not be employed until capital has been accumulated, and 
 can only be employed to the extent that capital has been 
 accumulated. 
 
 Yet in the very treatises in which the limitation of in- 
 dustry by capital is laid down without reservation and 
 made the basis for the most important reasonings and 
 elaborate theories, we are told that capital is stored-up 
 or accumulated labor "that part of wealth which is 
 saved to assist future production." If we substitute for 
 the word "capital" this definition of the word, the propo- 
 sition carries its own refutation, for that labor cannot be 
 employed until the results of labor are saved becomes too 
 absurd for discussion. 
 
 Should we, however, with this reductio ad absurdum, 
 attempt to close the argument, we should probably be 
 met with the explanation, not that the first laborers were 
 supplied by Providence with the capital necessary to set 
 them to work, but that the proposition merely refers to a 
 state of society in which production has become a com- 
 plex operation. 
 
 But the fundamental truth, that in all economic rea- 
 soning must be firmly grasped, and never let go, is that 
 society in its most highly developed form is but an elab- 
 oration of society in its rudest beginnings, and that prin- 
 ciples obvious in the simpler relations of men are merely 
 disguised and not abrogated or reversed by the more 
 intricate relations that result from the division of labor 
 and the use of complex tools and methods. The steam
 
 Chap. I. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. 27 
 
 grist mill, with its complicated machinery exhibiting 
 every diversity of motion, is simply what the rude stone 
 mortar dug up from an ancient river bed was in its day 
 an instrument for grinding corn. And every man 
 engaged in it, whether tossing wood into the furnace, 
 running the engine, dressing stones, printing sacks or 
 keeping books, is really devoting his labor to the same 
 purpose that the pre-historic savage did when he used 
 his mortar the preparation of grain for human food. 
 
 And so, if we reduce to their lowest terms all the com- 
 plex operations of modern production, we see that each 
 individual who takes part in this infinitely subdivided 
 and intricate network of production and exchange is 
 really doing what the primeval man did when he climbed 
 the trees for fruit or followed the receding tide for shell- 
 fish endeavoring to obtain from nature by the exertion 
 of his powers the satisfaction of his desires. If we keep 
 this firmly in mind, if we look upon production as a 
 whole as the co-operation of all embraced in any of its 
 great groups to satisfy the various desires of each, we 
 plainly see that the reward each obtains for his exertions 
 comes as truly and as directly from nature as the result 
 of that exertion, as did that of the first man. 
 
 To illustrate: In the simplest state of which we can 
 conceive, each man digs his own bait and catches his own 
 fish. The advantages of the division of labor soon be- 
 come apparent, and one digs bait while the others fish. 
 Yet evidently the one who digs bait is in reality doing 
 as much toward the catching of fish as any of those who 
 actually take the fish. So when the advantages of canoes 
 are discovered, and instead of all going a-fishing, one 
 stays behind and makes and repairs canoes, the canoe- 
 maker is in reality devoting his labor to the taking of 
 fish as much as the actual fishermen, and the fish which 
 he eats at night when the fishermen come home are as 
 truly the product of his labor as of theirs. And thus
 
 28 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 when the division of labor is fairly inaugurated, and in- 
 stead of each attempting to satisfy all of his wants by 
 direct resort to nature, one fishes, another hunts, a third 
 picks berries, a fourth gathers fruit, a fifth makes tools, 
 a sixth builds huts, and a seventh prepares clothing 
 each one is to the extent he exchanges the direct product 
 of his own labor for the direct product of the labor of 
 others really applying his own labor to the production 
 of the things he uses is in effect satisfying his particular 
 desires by the exertion of his particular powers; that is 
 to say, what he receives he in reality produces. If he 
 digs roots and exchanges them for venison, he is in 
 effect as truly the procurer of the venison as though he 
 had gone in chase of the deer and left the huntsman to dig 
 his own roots. The common expression, "I made so and 
 so," signifying "I earned so and so," or "I earned money 
 with which I purchased so and so," is, economically 
 speaking, not metaphorically but literally true. Earning 
 is making. 
 
 Now, if we follow these principles, obvious enough in 
 a simpler state of society, through the complexities of 
 the state we call civilized, we shall see clearly that in 
 every case in which labor is exchanged for commodities, 
 production really precedes enjoyment; that wages are 
 the earnings that is to say, the makings of labor not 
 the advances of capital, and that the laborer who receives 
 his wages in money (coined or printed, it may be, before 
 his labor commenced) really receives in return for the 
 addition his labor has made to the general stock of 
 wealth, a draft upon that general stock, which he may 
 utilize in any particular form of wealth that will best 
 satisfy his desires; and that neither the money, which is 
 but the draft, nor the particular form of wealth which 
 he uses it to call for, represents advances of capital for 
 his maintenance, but on the contrary represents the 
 wealth, or a portion of the wealth, his labor has already 
 added to the general stock.
 
 Chap. 1. THE CUKEENT DOCTRINE. 29 
 
 Keeping these principles in view we see that the 
 draughtsman, who, shut up in some dingy office on the 
 banks of the Thames, is drawing the plans for a great 
 marine engine, is in reality devoting his labor to the pro- 
 duction of bread and meat as truly as though he were 
 garnering the grain in California or swinging a lariat on 
 a La Plata pampa; that he is as truly making his own 
 clothing as though he were shearing sheep in Australia 
 or weaving cloth in Paisley, and just as effectually pro- 
 ducing the claret he drinks at dinner as though he 
 gathered the grapes on the banks of the Garonne. The 
 miner who, two thousand feet under ground in the heart 
 of the Comstock, is digging out silver ore, is, in effect, 
 by virtue of a thousand exchanges, harvesting crops in 
 valleys five thousand feet nearer the earth's center; chas- 
 ing the whale through Arctic icefields; plucking tobacco 
 leaves in Virginia; picking coffee berries in Honduras; 
 cutting sugar cane on the Hawaiian Islands; gathering 
 cotton in Georgia or weaving it in Manchester or Lowell; 
 making quaint wooden toys for his children in the 
 Hartz Mountains; or plucking amid the green and gold 
 of Los Angeles orchards the oranges which, when his 
 shift is relieved, he will take home to his sick wife. The 
 wages which he receives on Saturday night at the mouth 
 of the shaft, what are they but the certificate to all the 
 world that he has done these things the primary ex- 
 change in the long series which transmutes his labor into 
 the things he has really been laboring for? 
 
 All this is clear when looked at in this way; but to 
 meet this fallacy in all its strongholds and lurking places 
 we must change our investigation from the deductive to 
 the inductive form. Let us now see, if, beginning with 
 facts and tracing their relations, we arrive at the same 
 conclusions as are thus obvious when, beginning with 
 first principles, we trace their exemplification in complex 
 facts.
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 THE MEANING OP THE TEEMS. 
 
 Before proceeding further in our inquiry, let us make 
 sure of the meaning of our terms, for indistinctness in 
 their use must inevitably produce ambiguity and inde- 
 terminateness in reasoning. Not only is it requisite in 
 economic reasoning to give to such words as "wealth," 
 "capital," "rent," "wages," and the like, a much more 
 definite sense than they bear in common discourse, but, 
 unfortunately, even in political economy there is, as to 
 some of these terms, no certain meaning assigned by 
 common consent, different writers giving to the same 
 term different meanings, and the same writers often 
 using a term in different senses. Nothing can add to the 
 force of what has been said by so many eminent authors 
 as to the importance of clear and precise definitions, save 
 the example, not an infrequent one, of the same authors 
 falling into grave errors from the very cause they warned 
 against. And nothing so shows the importance of lan- 
 guage in thought as the spectacle of even acute thinkers 
 basing important conclusions upon the use of the same 
 word in varying senses. I shall endeavor to avoid these 
 dangers. It will be my effort throughout, as any term 
 becomes of importance, to state clearly what I mean by 
 it, and to use it in that sense and in no other. Let me 
 ask the reader to note and to bear in mind the definitions 
 thus given, as otherwise I cannot hope to make myself 
 properly understood. I shall not attempt to attach 
 arbitrary meanings to words, or to coin terms, even when
 
 Chap.n. THE MEANING OF THE TEEMS. 31 
 
 it would be convenient to do so, but shall conform to 
 usage as closely as is possible, only endeavoring so to fix 
 the meaning of words that they may clearly express 
 thought. 
 
 What we have now on hand is to discover whether, as a 
 matter of fact, wages are drawn from capital. As a pre- 
 liminary, let us settle what we mean by wages and what 
 we mean by capital. To the former word a sufficiently 
 definite meaning has been given by economic writers, but 
 'the ambiguities which have attached to the use of the 
 latter in political economy will require a detailed exami- 
 nation. 
 
 As used in common discourse "wages" means a com- 
 pensation paid to a hired person for his services; and we 
 speak of one man "working for wages," in contradistinc- 
 tion to another who is "working for himself." The use 
 of the term is still further narrowed by the habit of ap- 
 plying it solely to compensation paid for manual labor. 
 We do not speak of the wages of professional men, man- 
 agers or clerks, but of their fees, commissions, or sala- 
 ries. Thus the common meaning of the word wages is 
 the compensation paid to a hired person for manual 
 labor. But in political economy the word wages has a 
 much wider meaning, and includes all returns for exer- 
 tion. For, as political economists explain, the three 
 agents or factors in production are land, labor, and capi- 
 tal, and that part of the produce which goes to the sec- 
 ond of these factors is by them styled wages. 
 
 Thus the term labor includes all human exertion in 
 the production of wealth, and wages, being that part of 
 the produce which goes to labor, includes all reward for 
 such exertion. There is, therefore, in the politico-eco- 
 nomic sense of the term wages no distinction as to the 
 kind of labor, or as to whether its reward is received 
 through an employer or not, but wages means the return 
 received for the exertion of labor, as distinguished from
 
 32 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 the return received for the use of capital, and the return 
 received by the landholder for the use of land. The man 
 who cultivates the soil for himself receives his wages in 
 its produce, just as, if he uses his own capital and owns 
 his own land, he may also receive interest and rent; the 
 hunter's wages are the game he kills; the fisherman's 
 wages are the fish he takes. The gold washed out by the 
 self-employing gold-digger is as much his wages as the 
 money paid to the hired coal miner by the purchaser of 
 his labor,* and, as Adam Smith shows, the high profits' 
 of retail storekeepers are in large part wages, being the 
 recompense of their labor and not of their capital. In 
 short, whatever is received as the result or reward of ex- 
 ertion is "wages." 
 
 This is all it is now necessary to note as to "wages," 
 but it is important to keep this in mind. For in the 
 standard economic works this sense of the term wages is 
 recognized with greater or less clearness only to be sub- 
 sequently ignored. 
 
 But it is more difficult to clear away from the idea of 
 capital the ambiguities that beset it, and to fix the 
 scientific use of the term. In general discourse, all sorts 
 of things that have a value or will yield a return are 
 vaguely spoken of as capital, while economic writers vary 
 so widely that the term can hardly be said to have a fixed 
 meaning. Let us compare with each other the defini- 
 tions of a few representative writers: 
 
 "That part of a man's stock," says Adam Smith (Book 
 II, Chap. I), "which he expects to afford him a revenue, 
 is called his capital," and the capital of a country or 
 society, he goes on to say, consists of (1) machines and 
 instruments of trade which facilitate and abridge labor; 
 
 * This was recognized in common speech in California, where the 
 placer miners styled their earnings their "wages," and spoke of 
 making high wages or low wages according to the amount of gold 
 taken out.
 
 Chap.U. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 33 
 
 (2) buildings, not mere dwellings, but which may be con- 
 sidered instruments of trade such as shops, farmhouses, 
 etc.; (3) improvements of land which better fit it for 
 tillage or culture; (4) the acquired and useful abilities 
 of all the inhabitants; (5) money; (6) provisions in the 
 hands of producers and dealers, from the sale of which 
 they expect to derive a profit; (7) the material of, or 
 partially completed, manufactured articles still in the 
 hands of producers or dealers; (8) completed articles 
 still in the hands of producers or dealers. The first four 
 of these he styles fixed capital, and the last four circulat- 
 ing capital, a distinction of which it is not necessary to 
 our purpose to take any note. 
 Eicardo's definition is: 
 
 " Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is em- 
 ployed in production, and consists of food, clothing, tools, raw 
 materials, machinery, etc., necessary to give effect to labor." 
 Principles of Political Economy, Chapter V. 
 
 This definition, it will be seen, is very different from 
 that of Adam Smith, as it excludes many of the things 
 which he includes as acquired talents, articles of mere 
 taste or luxury in the possession of producers or dealers; 
 and includes some things he excludes such as food, 
 clothing, etc., in the possession of the consumer. 
 
 McCulloch's definition is: 
 
 " The capital of a nation really comprises all those portions of the 
 produce of industry existing in it that may be directly employed 
 either to support human existence or to facilitate production." 
 Notes on Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chap. I. 
 
 This definition follows the line of Kicardo's, but is 
 wider. While it excludes everything that is not capable 
 of aiding production, it includes everything that is so 
 capable, without reference to actual use or necessity for 
 use the horse drawing a pleasure carriage being, accord- 
 ing to McCulloch's view, as he expressly states, as much
 
 34 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Boole L 
 
 capital as the horse drawing a plow, because he may, if 
 need arises, be used to draw a plow. 
 
 John Stuart Mill, following the same general line as 
 Kicardo and McCulloch, makes neither the use nor the 
 capability of use, but the determination to use, the test 
 of capital. He says: 
 
 " Whatever things are destined to supply productive labor with 
 the shelter, protection, tools and materials which the work requires, 
 and to feed and otherwise maintain the laborer during the process, 
 are capital." Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. IV. 
 
 These quotations sufficiently illustrate the divergence 
 of the masters. Among minor authors the variance is 
 still greater, as a few examples will suffice to show. 
 
 Professor Wayland, whose "Elements of Political 
 Economy" has long been a favorite text-book in Amer- 
 ican educational institutions, where there has been any 
 pretense of teaching political economy, gives this lucid 
 definition: 
 
 " The word capital is used in two senses. In relation to product 
 it means any substance on which industry is to be exerted. In re- 
 lation to industry, the material on which industry is about to confer 
 value, that on which it has conferred value; the instruments which 
 are used for the conferring of value, as well as the means of suste- 
 nance by which the being is supported while he is engaged in per- 
 forming the operation." Elements of Political Economy, Book I, 
 Chap. I. 
 
 Henry C. Carey, the American apostle of protection- 
 ism, defines capital as "the instrument by which man 
 obtains mastery over nature, including in it the physical 
 and mental powers of man himself." Professor Perry, a 
 Massachusetts free trader, very properly objects to this 
 that it hopelessly confuses the boundaries between capi- 
 tal and labor, and then himself hopelessly confuses the 
 boundaries between capital and land by defining capital 
 as "any valuable thing outside of man himself from 
 whose use springs a pecuniary increase or profit." An
 
 Chap.n THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 35 
 
 English economic writer of high standing, Mr. Wm. 
 Thornton, begins an elaborate examination of the rela- 
 tions of labor and capital ("On Labor") by stating that 
 he will include land with capital, which is very much as 
 if one who proposed to teach algebra should begin with 
 the declaration that he would consider the signs plus and 
 minus as meaning the same thing and having the same 
 value. An American writer, also of high standing, Pro- 
 fessor Francis A. Walker, makes the same declaration in 
 his elaborate book on "The Wages Question." Another 
 English writer, N. A. Nicholson ("The Science of Ex- 
 changes," London, 1873), seems to cap the climax of 
 absurdity by declaring in one paragraph (p. 26) that 
 "capital must of course be accumulated by saving," and 
 in the very next paragraph stating that "the land which 
 produces a crop, the plow which turns the soil, the labor 
 which secures the produce, and the produce itself, if a 
 material profit is to be derived from its employment, are all 
 alike capital." But how land and labor are to be accu- 
 mulated by saving them he nowhere condescends to ex- 
 plain. In the same way a standard American writer, 
 Professor Amasa Walker (p. 66, "Science of Wealth"), 
 first declares that capital arises from the net savings of 
 labor and then immediately afterward declares that land 
 is capital. 
 
 I might go on for pages, citing contradictory and self- 
 contradictory definitions. But it would only weary the 
 reader. It is unnecessary to multiply quotations. Those 
 already given are sufficient to show how wide a difference 
 exists as to the comprehension of the term capital. Any 
 one who wants further illustration of the "confusion 
 worse confounded" which exists on this subject among 
 the professors of political economy may find it in any 
 library where the works of these professors are ranged 
 side by side. 
 
 Now, it makes little difference what name we give to
 
 36 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 things, if when we use the name we always keep in view 
 the same things and no others. But the difficulty arising 
 in economic reasoning from these vague and varying 
 definitions of capital is that it is only in the premises of 
 reasoning that the term is used in the peculiar sense as- 
 signed by the definition, while in the practical conclusions 
 that are reached it is always used, or at least it is always 
 understood, in one general and definite sense. When, 
 for instance, it is said that wages are drawn from capital, 
 the word capital is understood in the same sense as when 
 we speak of the scarcity or abundance, the increase or 
 decrease, the destruction or increment, of capital a com- 
 monly understood and definite sense which separates 
 capital from the other factors of production, land and 
 labor, and also separates it from like things used merely 
 for gratification. In fact, most people understand well 
 enough what capital is until they begin to define it, and 
 I think their works will show that the economic writers 
 who differ so widely in their definitions use the term in 
 this commonly understood sense in all cases except in 
 their definitions and the reasoning based on them. 
 
 This common sense of the term is that of wealth de- 
 voted to procuring more wealth. Dr. Adam Smith cor- 
 rectly expresses this common idea when he says: "That 
 part of a man's stock which he expects to afford him 
 revenue is called his capital." And the capital of a 
 community is evidently the sum of such individual 
 stocks, or that part of the aggregate stock which is ex- 
 pected to procure more wealth. This also is the deriva- 
 tive sense of the term. The word capital, as philologists 
 trace it, comes down to us from a time when wealth was 
 estimated in cattle, and a man's income depended upon 
 the number of head he could keep for their increase. 
 
 The difficulties which beset the use of the word capi- 
 tal, as an exact term, and which are even more strikingly 
 exemplified in current political and social discussions
 
 Chap. II. THE MEANING OF THE TEEMS. 37 
 
 than in the definitions of economic writers, arise from 
 two facts first, that certain classes of things, the pos- 
 session of which to the individual is precisely equivalent 
 to the possession of capital, are not part of the capital of 
 the community; and, second, that things of the same 
 kind may or may not be capital, according to the pur- 
 pose to which they are devoted. 
 
 With a little care as to these points, there should be 
 no difficulty in obtaining a sufficiently clear and fixed 
 idea of what the term capital as generally used properly 
 includes; such an idea as will enable us to say what 
 things are capital and what are not, and to use the word 
 without ambiguity or slip. 
 
 Land, labor, and capital are the three factors of pro- 
 duction. If we remember that capital is thus a term used 
 in contradistinction to land and labor, we at once see 
 that nothing properly included under either one of these 
 terms can be properly classed as capital. The term land 
 necessarily includes, not merely the surface of the earth 
 as distinguished from the water and the air, but the 
 whole material universe outside of man himself, for it is 
 only by having access to land, from which his very body 
 is drawn, that man can come in contact with or use 
 nature. The term land embraces, in short, all natural 
 materials, forces, and opportunities, and, therefore, 
 nothing that is freely supplied by nature can be properly 
 classed as capital. A fertile field, a rich vein of ore, a fall- 
 ing stream which supplies power, may give to the possessor 
 advantages equivalent to the possession of capital, but to 
 class such things as capital would be to put an end to the 
 distinction between land and capital, and, so far as they 
 relate to each other, to make the two terms meaningless. 
 The term labor, in like manner, includes all human 
 exertion, and hence human powers whether natural or 
 acquired can never properly be classed as capital. In 
 common parlance we often speak of a man's knowledge,
 
 38 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 skill, or industry as constituting his capital; but this is 
 evidently a metaphorical use of language that must be 
 eschewed in reasoning that aims at exactness. Superi- 
 ority in such qualities may augment the income of an 
 individual just as capital would, and an increase in the 
 knowledge, skill, or industry of a community may have 
 the same effect in increasing its production as would an 
 increase of capital; but this effect is due to the increased 
 power of labor and not to capital. Increased velocity 
 may give to the impact of a cannon ball the same effect 
 as increased weight, yet, nevertheless, weight is one 
 thing and velocity another. 
 
 Thus we must exclude from the category of capital 
 everything that may be included either as land or labor. 
 Doing so, there remain only things which are neither 
 land nor labor, but which have resulted from the union 
 of these two original factors of production. Nothing 
 can be properly capital that does not consist of these 
 that is to say, nothing can be capital that is not wealth. 
 
 But it is from ambiguities in the use of this inclusive 
 term wealth that many of the ambiguities which beset 
 the term capital are derived. 
 
 As commonly used the word "wealth" is applied to 
 anything having an exchange value. But when used as a 
 term of political economy it must be limited to a much 
 more definite meaning, because many things are commonly 
 spoken of as wealth which in taking account of collective 
 or general wealth cannot be considered as wealth at all. 
 Such things have an exchange value, and are commonly 
 spoken of as wealth, insomuch as they represent as be- 
 tween individuals, or between sets of individuals, the 
 power of obtaining wealth; but they are not truly wealth, 
 inasmuch as their increase or decrease does not affect the 
 sum of wealth. Such are bonds, mortgages, promissory 
 notes, bank bills, or other stipulations for the transfer of 
 wealth. Such are slaves, whose value represents merely
 
 Chap.lL THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 39 
 
 the power of one class to appropriate the earnings of 
 another class. Such are lands, or other natural oppor- 
 tunities, the value of which is but the result of the ac- 
 knowledgment in favor of certain persons of an exclusive 
 right to their use, and which represents merely the 
 power thus given to the owners to demand a share of the 
 wealth produced by those who use them. Increase in 
 the amount of bonds, mortgages, notes, or bank bills 
 cannot increase the wealth of the community that in- 
 cludes as well those who promise to pay as those who are 
 entitled to receive. The enslavement of a part of their 
 number could not increase the wealth of a people, for 
 what the enslavers gained the enslaved would lose. In- 
 crease in land values does not represent increase in the 
 common wealth, for what land owners gain by higher 
 prices, the tenants or purchasers who must pay them 
 will lose. And all this relative wealth, which, in com- 
 mon thought and speech, in legislation and law, is un- 
 distinguished from actual wealth, could, without the 
 destruction or consumption of anything more than a few 
 drops of ink and a piece of paper, be utterly annihilated. 
 By enactment of the sovereign political power debts 
 might be canceled, slaves emancipated, and land resumed 
 as the common property of the whole people, without the 
 aggregate wealth being diminished by the value of a 
 pinch of snuff, for what some would lose others would 
 gain. There would be no more destruction of wealth 
 than there was creation of wealth when Elizabeth Tudor 
 enriched her favorite courtiers by the grant of mo- 
 nopolies, or when Boris Godoonof made Russian peasants 
 merchantable property. 
 
 All things which have an exchange value are, therefore, 
 not wealth, in the only sense in which the term can be 
 used in political economy. Only such things can be 
 wealth the production of which increases and the destruc- 
 tion of which decreases the aggregate of wealth. If we
 
 40 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I 
 
 consider what these things are, and what their nature is, 
 we shall have no difficulty in defining wealth. 
 
 When we speak of a community increasing in wealth 
 as when we say that England has increased in wealth 
 since the accession of Victoria, or that California is a 
 wealthier country than when it was a Mexican territory 
 we do not mean to say that there is more land, or that 
 the natural powers of the land are greater, or that there 
 are more people, for when we *vish to express that idea 
 we speak of increase of population; or that the debts or 
 dues owing by some of these people to others of their 
 number have increased; but we mean that there is an in- 
 crease of certain tangible things, having an actual and 
 not merely a relative value such as buildings, cattle, 
 tools, machinery, agricultural and mineral products, 
 manufactured goods, ships, wagons, furniture, and the 
 like. The increase of such things constitutes an increase 
 of wealth; their decrease is a lessening of wealth; and 
 the community that, in proportion to its numbers, has 
 most of such things is the wealthiest community. The 
 common character of these things is that they consist of 
 natural substances or products which have been adapted 
 by human labor to human use or gratification, their value 
 depending on the amount of labor which upon the aver- 
 age would be required to produce things of like kind. 
 
 Thus wealth, as alone the term can be used in political 
 economy, consists of natural products that have been se- 
 cured, moved, combined, separated, or in other ways 
 modified by human exertion, so as to fit them for the 
 gratification of human desires. It is, in other words, 
 labor impressed upon matter in such a way as to store 
 up, as the heat of the sun is stored up in coal, the power 
 of human labor to minister to human desires. Wealth is 
 not the sole object of labor, for labor is also expended in 
 ministering directly to desire; but it is the object and 
 result of what we call productive labor that is, labor
 
 Chap. II. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 41 
 
 which gives value to material things. Nothing which 
 nature supplies to man without his labor is wealth, nor 
 yet does the expenditure of labor result in wealth unless 
 there is a tangible product which has and retains the 
 power of ministering to desire. 
 
 Now, as capital is wealth devoted to a certain purpose, 
 nothing can be capital which does not fall within this 
 definition of wealth. By recognizing and keeping this 
 in mind, we get rid of misconceptions which vitiate all 
 reasoning in which they are permitted, which befog pop- 
 ular thought, and have led into mazes of contradiction 
 even acute thinkers. 
 
 But though all capital is wealth, all wealth is not capi- 
 tal. Capital is only a part of wealth that part, namely, 
 which is devoted to the aid of production. It is in draw- 
 ing this line between the wealth that is and the wealth 
 that is not capital that a second class of misconceptions 
 are likely to occur. 
 
 The errors which I have been pointing out, and which 
 consist in confounding with wealth and capital things 
 essentially distinct, or which have but a relative exist- 
 ence, are now merely vulgar errors. They are wide- 
 spread, it is true, and have a deep root, being held, not 
 merely by the less educated classes, but seemingly by a 
 large majority of those who in such advanced countries 
 as England and the United States mold and guide public 
 opinion, make the laws in Parliaments, Congresses and 
 Legislatures, and administer them in the courts. They 
 crop out, moreover, in the disquisitions of many of those 
 flabby writers who have burdened the press and dark- 
 ened counsel by numerous volumes which are dubbed 
 political economy, and which pass as text-books with the 
 ignorant and as authority with those who do not think 
 for themselves. Neverthless, they are only vulgar errors, 
 inasmuch as they receive no countenance from the best 
 writers on political economy. By one of those lapses
 
 42 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 which flaw his great work and strikingly evince the im- 
 perfections of the highest talent, Adam Smith counts as 
 capital certain personal qualities, an inclusion which is 
 not consistent with his original definition of capital as 
 stock from which revenue is expected. But this error 
 has been avoided by his most eminent successors, and in 
 the definitions, previously given, of Eicardo, McCulloch, 
 and Mill, it is not involved. Neither in their defini- 
 tions nor in that of Smith is involved the vulgar error 
 which confounds as real capital things which are only rela- 
 tively capital, such as evidences of debt, land values, etc. 
 But as to things which are really wealth, their definitions 
 differ from each other, and widely from that of Smith, 
 as to what is and what is not to be considered as capital. 
 The stock of a jeweler would, for instance, be included 
 as capital by the definition of Smith, and the food or 
 clothing in possession of a laborer would be excluded. 
 But the definitions of Eicardo and McCulloch would ex- 
 clude the stock of the jeweler, as would also that of Mill, 
 if understood as most persons would understand the 
 words I have quoted. But as explained by him, it is 
 neither the nature nor the destination of the things 
 themselves which determines whether they are or are not 
 capital, but the intention of the owner to devote either 
 the things or the value received from their sale to the 
 supply of productive labor with tools, materials, and 
 maintenance. All these definitions, however, agree in 
 including as capital the provisions and clothing of the 
 laborer, which Smith excludes. 
 
 Let us consider these three definitions, which repre- 
 sent the best teachings of current political economy: 
 
 To McCulloch's definition of capital as "all those por- 
 tions of the produce of industry that may be directly 
 employed either to support human existence or to facil- 
 itate production," there are obvious objections. One 
 may pass along any principal street in a thriving town
 
 Chap.n. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 43 
 
 or city and see stores filled with all sorts of valuable 
 things, which, though they cannot be employed either 
 to support human existence or to facilitate production, 
 undoubtedly constitute part of the capital of the store- 
 keepers and part of the capital of the community. And 
 he can also see products of industry capable of support- 
 ing human existence or facilitating production being 
 consumed in ostentation or useless luxury. Surely these, 
 though they might, do not constitute part of capital. 
 
 Ricardo's definition avoids including as capital things 
 which might be but are not employed in production, by 
 covering only such as are employed. But it is open to 
 the first objection made to McCulloch's. If only wealth 
 that may be, or that is, or that is destined to be, used in 
 supporting producers, or assisting production, is capital, 
 then the stocks of jewelers, toy dealers, tobacconists, 
 confectioners, picture dealers, etc. in fact, all stocks 
 that consist of, and all stocks in so far as they consist of 
 articles of luxury, are not capital. 
 
 If Mill, by remitting the distinction to the mind of the 
 capitalist, avoids this difficulty (which does not seem to 
 me clear), it is by making the distinction so vague that 
 no power short of omnisicence could tell in any given 
 country at any given time what was and what was not 
 capital. 
 
 But the great defect which these definitions have in 
 common is that they include what clearly cannot be ac- 
 counted capital, if any distinction is to be made between 
 laborer and capitalist. For they bring into the category 
 of capital the food, clothing, etc., in the possession of 
 the day laborer, which he will consume whether he 
 works or not, as well as the stock in the hands of the 
 capitalist, with which he proposes to pay the laborer for 
 his work. 
 
 Yet, manifestly, this is not the sense in which the 
 term capital is used by these writers when they speak of
 
 44 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Boole I. 
 
 labor and capital as taking separate parts in the work of 
 production and separate shares in the distribution of its 
 proceeds; when they speak of wages as drawn from capi- 
 tal, or as depending upon the ratio between labor and 
 capital, or in any of the ways in which the term is gen- 
 erally used by them. In all these cases the term capital 
 is used in its commonly understood sense, as that portion 
 of wealth which its owners do not propose to use directly 
 for their own gratification, but for the purpose of obtain- 
 ing more wealth. In short, by political economists, in 
 everything except their definitions and first principles, 
 as well as by the world at large, "that part of a man's 
 stock/' to use the words of Adam Smith, "which he ex- 
 pects to afford him revenue is called his capital." This 
 is the only sense in which the term capital expresses any 
 fixed idea the only sense in which we can with any 
 clearness separate it from wealth and contrast it with 
 labor. For, if we must consider as capital everything 
 which supplies the laborer with food, clothing, shelter, 
 etc., then to find a laborer who is not a capitalist we shall 
 be forced to hunt up an absolutely naked man, destitute 
 even of a sharpened stick, or of a burrow in the ground 
 a situation in which, save as the result of exceptional 
 circumstances, human beings have never yet been found. 
 It seems to me that the variance and inexactitude in 
 these definitions arise from the fact that the idea of what 
 capital is has been deduced from a preconceived idea of 
 how capital assists production. Instead of determining 
 what capital is, and then observing what capital does, 
 the functions of capital have first been assumed, and 
 then a definition of capital made which includes all 
 things which do or may perform those functions. Let 
 us reverse this process, and, adopting the natural order, 
 ascertain what the thing is before settling what it does. 
 All we are trying to do, all that it is necessary to do, is to 
 fix, as it were, the metes and bounds of a term that in
 
 Chap.U. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 45 
 
 the main is well apprehended to make definite, that is, 
 sharp and clear on its verges, a common idea. 
 
 If the articles of actual wealth existing at a given time 
 in a given community were presented in situ to a dozen 
 intelligent men who had never read a line of political 
 economy, it is doubtful if they would differ in respect to 
 a single item, as to whether it should he accounted capi- 
 tal or not. Money which its owner holds for use in his 
 business or in speculation would be accounted capital; 
 money set aside for household or personal expenses 
 would not. That part of a farmer's crop held for sale or 
 for seed, or to feed his help in part payment of wages, 
 would be accounted capital; that held for the use of his 
 own family would not be. The horses and carriage of 
 a hackman would be classed as capital, but an equipage 
 kept for the pleasure of its owner would not. So no one 
 would think of counting as capital the false hair on the 
 head of a woman, the cigar in the mouth of a smoker, or 
 the toy with which a child is playing; but the stock of a 
 hair dealer, of a tobacconist, or of the keeper of a toy 
 store, would be unhesitatingly set down as capital. A 
 coat which a tailor had made for sale would be accounted 
 capital, but not the coat he had made for himself. Food 
 in the possession of a hotel-keeper or a restaurateur 
 would be accounted capital, but not the food in the 
 pantry of a housewife, or in the lunch basket of a work- 
 man. Pig iron in the hands of the smelter, or founder, 
 or dealer, would be accounted capital, but not the pig 
 iron used as ballast in the hold of a yacht. The bellows 
 of a blacksmith, the looms of a factory, would be capital, 
 but not the sewing machine of a woman who does only 
 her own work; a building let for hire, or used for busi- 
 ness or productive purposes, but not a homestead. In 
 short, I think we should find that now, as when Dr. 
 Adam Smith wrote, "that part of a man's stock which he 
 expects to yield him a revenue is called his capital."
 
 46 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 And, omitting his unfortunate slip as to personal quali- 
 ties, and qualifying somewhat his enumeration of money, 
 it is doubtful if we could better list the different articles 
 of capital than did Adam Smith in the passage which in 
 the previous part of this chapter I have condensed. 
 
 Now, if, after having thus separated the wealth that is 
 capital from the wealth that is not capital, we look for 
 the distinction between the two classes, we shall not find 
 it to be as to the character, capabilities, or final destina- 
 tion of the things themselves, as has been vainly at- 
 tempted to draw it; brt it seems to me that we shall find 
 it to be as to whether they are or are not in the posses- 
 sion of the consumer.* Such articles of wealth as in 
 themselves, in their uses, or in their products, are yet to 
 be exchanged are capital; such articles of wealth as are in 
 the hands of the consumer are not capital. Hence, if we 
 define capital as wealth in course of exchange, understand- 
 ing exchange to include not merely the passing from hand 
 to hand, but also such transmutations as occur when the 
 reproductive or transforming forces of nature are utilized 
 for the increase of wealth, we shall, I think, comprehend 
 all the things that the general idea of capital properly 
 includes, and shut out all it does not. Under this defini- 
 tion, it seems to me, for instance, will fall all such tools 
 as are really capital. For it is as to whether its services 
 or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool 
 an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. 
 
 * Money may be said to be in the hands of the consumer when 
 devoted to the procurement of gratification, as, though not in itself 
 devoted to consumption, it represents wealth which is; and thus 
 what in the previous paragraph I have given as the common classifi- 
 cation would be covered by this distinction, and would be substan- 
 tially correct. In speaking of money in this connection, I am of 
 course speaking of coin, for although paper money may perform all 
 the functions of coin, it is not wealth, and cannot therefore be 
 capital.
 
 Chap. 11. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 47 
 
 Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things 
 which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept 
 by a gentleman for his own amusement is not. Thus, 
 wealth used in the construction of a railroad, a public 
 telegraph line, a stage coach, a theater, a hotel, etc., may 
 be said to be placed in the course of exchange. The ex- 
 change is not effected all at once, but little by little, with 
 an indefinite number of people. Yet there is an ex- 
 change, and the "consumers" of the railroad, the tele- 
 graph line, the stage coach, theater or hotel, are not the 
 owners, but the persons who from time to time use them. 
 
 Nor is this definition inconsistent with the idea that 
 capital is that part of wealth devoted to production. It 
 is too narrow an understanding of production which con- 
 fines it merely to the making of things. Production in- 
 cludes not merely the making of things, but the bringing 
 of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper 
 is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or 
 farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to 
 production as is theirs. But it is not worth while now 
 to dwell upon the functions of capital, which we shall be 
 better able to determine hereafter. Nor is the definition 
 of capital I have suggested of any importance. I am not 
 writing a text-book, but only attempting to discover the 
 laws which control a great social problem, and if the 
 reader has been led to form a clear idea of what things 
 are meant when we speak of capital my purpose is served. 
 
 But before closing this digression let me call attention 
 to what is often forgotten namely, that the terms 
 "wealth," "capital," "wages," and the like, as used in 
 political economy are abstract terms, and that nothing 
 can be generally affirmed or denied of them that cannot 
 be affirmed or denied of the whole class of things they 
 represent. The failure to bear this in mind has led to 
 much confusion of thought, and permits fallacies, other- 
 wise transparent, to pass for obvious truths. Wealth
 
 48 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1. 
 
 being an abstract term, the idea of wealth, it must be 
 remembered, involves the idea of exchange ability. The 
 possession of wealth to a certain amount is potentially 
 the possession of any or all species of wealth to that 
 equivalent in exchange. And, consequently, so of 
 capital.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL, BUT PRODUCED BY 
 THE LABOR. 
 
 The importance of this digression will, I think, be- 
 come more and more apparent as we proceed in our in- 
 quiry, but its pertinency to the branch we are now 
 engaged in may at once be seen. 
 
 It is at first glance evident that the economic meaning 
 of the term wages is lost sight of, and attention is con- 
 centrated upon the common and narrow meaning of the 
 word, when it is affirmed that wages are drawn from 
 capital. For, in all those cases in which the laborer is 
 his own employer and takes directly the produce of his 
 labor as its reward, it is plain enough that wages are not 
 drawn from capital, but result directly as the product of 
 the labor. If, for instance, I devote my labor to gather- 
 ing birds' eggs or picking wild berries, the eggs or berries 
 I thus get are my wages. Surely no one will contend 
 that in such a case wages are drawn from capital. There 
 is no capital in the case. An absolutely naked man, 
 thrown on an island where no human being has before 
 trod, may gather birds' eggs or pick berries. 
 
 Or if I take a piece of leather and work it up into a 
 pair of shoes, the shoe*s are my wages the reward of my 
 exertion. Surely they are not drawn from capital 
 either my capital or any one else's capital but are 
 brought into existence by the labor of which they become 
 the wages; and in obtaining this pair of shoes as the 
 wages of my labor, capital is not even momentarily less-
 
 50 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Bookl. 
 
 ened one iota. For, if we call in the idea of capital, my 
 capital at the beginning consists of the piece of leather, 
 the thread, etc. As my labor goes on, value is steadily 
 added, until, when my labor results in the finished shoes, 
 I have my capital plus the difference in value between 
 the material and the shoes. In obtaining this additional 
 value my wages how is capital at any time drawn 
 upon? 
 
 Adam Smith, who gave the direction to economic 
 thought that has resulted in the current elaborate theories 
 of the relation between wages and capital, recognized the 
 fact that in such simple cases as I have instanced, wages 
 are the produce of labor, and thus begins his chapter 
 upon the wages of labor (Chapter VIII) : 
 
 " The produce of labor constitutes the natural recompense or wages 
 of labor. In that original state of things which precedes both the 
 appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole 
 produce of labor belongs to the laborer. He has neither landlord nor 
 master to share with him." 
 
 Had the great Scotchman taken this as the initial point 
 of his reasoning, and continued to regard the produce of 
 labor as the natural wages of labor, and the landlord and 
 master but as sharers, his conclusions would have been 
 very different, and political economy to-day would not 
 embrace such a mass of contradictions and absurdities; 
 but instead of following the truth obvious in the simple 
 modes of production as a clew through the perplexities of 
 the more complicated forms, he momentarily recognizes 
 it, only immediately to* abandon it, and stating that "in 
 every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a 
 master for one that is independent," he recommences the 
 inquiry from a point of view in which the master is con- 
 sidered as providing from his capital the wages of his 
 workmen. 
 
 It is evident that in thus placing the proportion of
 
 Chap. III. WAGES NOT DRAWN" FROM CAPITAL. 51 
 
 self-employing workmen as but one in twenty, Adam 
 Smith had in mind but the mechanic arts, and that, in- 
 cluding all laborers, the proportion who take their earn- 
 ings directly, without the intervention of an employer, 
 must, even in Europe a hundred years ago, have been 
 much greater than this. For, besides the independent 
 laborers who in every community exist in considerable 
 numbers, the agriculture of large districts of Europe 
 has, since the time of the Roman Empire, been carried 
 on by the metayer system, under which the capitalist re- 
 ceives his return from the laborer instead of the laborer 
 from the capitalist. At any rate, in the United States, 
 where any general law of wages must apply as fully as in 
 Europe, and where in spite of the advance of manufac- 
 tures a very large part of the people are yet self-employ- 
 ing farmers, the proportion of laborers who get their 
 wages through an employer must be comparatively small. 
 But it is not necessary to discuss the ratio in which self- 
 amploying laborers anywhere stand to hired laborers, nor 
 is it necessary to multiply illustrations of the truism that 
 where the laborer takes directly his wages they are the 
 product of his labor, for as soon as it is realized that the 
 term wages includes all the earnings of labor, as well when 
 taken directly by the laborer in the results of his labor 
 as when received from an employer, it is evident that 
 the assumption that wages are drawn from capital, on 
 which as a universal truth such a vast superstructure is 
 in standard politico -economic treatises so unhesitatingly 
 built, is at least in large part untrue, and the utmost 
 that can with any plausibility be affirmed, is that some 
 wages, i.e. wages received by the laborer from an em- 
 ployer, are drawn from capital. This restriction of the 
 major premise at once invalidates all the deductions that 
 are made from it; but without resting here, let us see 
 whether even in this restricted sense it accords with the 
 facts. I^et us pick up the clew where Adam Smith
 
 52 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book T. 
 
 dropped it, and advancing step by step, see whether the 
 relation of facts which is obvious in the simplest forms 
 of production does not run through the most complex. 
 
 Next in simplicity to "that original state of things," 
 of which many examples may yet be found, where the 
 whole produce of labor belongs to the laborer, is the ar- 
 rangement in which the laborer, though working for 
 another person, or with the capital of another person, 
 receives his wages in kind that is to say, in the things 
 his labor produces. In this case it is as clear 
 as in the case of the self-employing laborer that 
 the wages are really drawn from the product of the 
 labor, and not at all from capital. If I hire a man 
 to gather eggs, to pick berries, or to make shoes, paying 
 him from the eggs, the berries, or the shoes that his 
 labor secures, there can be no question that the source 
 of the wages is the labor for which they are paid. Of 
 this form of hiring is the saer-and-daer stock tenancy, 
 treated of with such perspicuity by Sir Henry Maine in 
 his "Early History of Institutions/ 'and which so clearly 
 involved the relation of employer and employed as to 
 render the acceptor of cattle the man or vassal of the 
 capitalist who thus employed him. It was on such terms 
 as these that Jacob worked for Laban, and to this day, 
 even in civilized countries, it is not an infrequent mode 
 of employing labor. The farming of land on shares, 
 which prevails to a considerable extent in the Southern 
 States of the Union and in California, the metayer system 
 of Europe, as well as the many cases in which superin- 
 tendents, salesmen, etc., are paid by a percentage of prof- 
 its, what are they but the employment of labor for wages 
 which consist of part of its produce? 
 
 The next step in the advance from simplicity to com- 
 plexity is where the wages, though estimated in kind, 
 are paid in an equivalent of something else. For in- 
 stance, on American whaling ships the custom is not to
 
 Chap. in. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 53 
 
 pay fixed wages, but a "lay," or proportion of the catch, 
 which varies from a sixteenth to a twelfth to the captain 
 down to a three-hundredth to the cabin-boy. Thus, 
 when a whaleship comes into New Bedford or San Fran- 
 cisco after a successful cruise, she carries in her hold the 
 wages of her crew, as well as the profits of her owners, 
 and an equivalent which will reimburse them for all the 
 stores used up during the voyage. Can anything be 
 clearer than that these wages this oil and bone which 
 the crew of the whaler have taken have not been drawn 
 from capital, but are really a part of the produce of their 
 labor? Nor is this fact changed or obscured in the 
 slightest degree where, as a matter of convenience, in- 
 stead of dividing up between the crew their proportion 
 of the oil and bone, the value of each man's share is esti- 
 mated at the market price, and he is paid for it in 
 money. The money is but the equivalent of the real 
 wages, the oil and bone. In no way is there any advance 
 of capital in this payment. The obligation to pay wages 
 does not accrue until the value from which they are to 
 be paid is brought into port. At the moment when the 
 owner takes from his capital money to pay the crew he 
 adds to his capital oil and bone. 
 
 So far there can be no dispute. Let us now take 
 another step, which will bring us to the usual method of 
 employing labor and paying wages. 
 
 The Farallone Islands, off the Bay of San Francisco, 
 are a hatching ground of sea-fowl, and a company who 
 claim these islands employ men in the proper season to 
 collect the eggs. They might employ these men for a 
 proportion of the eggs they gather, as is done in the 
 whale fishery and probably would do so if there were 
 much uncertainty attending the business; but as the fowl 
 are plentiful and tame, and about so many eggs can be 
 gathered by so much labor, they find it more convenient 
 to pay their men fixed wages. The men go out and re-
 
 54 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 main on the islands, gathering the eggs and bringing 
 them to a landing, whence, at intervals of a few days, 
 they are taken in a small vessel to San Francisco and 
 sold. When the season is over the men return and are 
 paid their stipulated wages in coin. Does not this trans- 
 action amount to the same thing as if, instead of being 
 paid in coin, the stipulated wages were paid in an equiva- 
 lent of the eggs gathered? Does not the coin represent 
 the eggs, by the sale of which it was obtained, and are 
 not these wages as much the product of the labor for 
 which they are paid as the eggs would be in the posses- 
 sion of a man who gathered them for himself without the 
 intervention of any employer? 
 
 To take another example, which shows by reversion 
 the identity of wages in money with wages in kind. In 
 San Buenaventura lives a man who makes an excellent 
 living by shooting for their oil and skins the common 
 hair seals which frequent the islands forming the Santa 
 Barbara Channel. When on these sealing expeditions he 
 takes two or three Chinamen along to help him, whom 
 at first he paid wholly in coin. But it seems that the 
 Chinese highly value some of the organs of the seal, 
 which they dry and pulverize for medicine, as well as 
 the long hairs in the whiskers of the male seal, which, 
 when over a certain length, they greatly esteem for 
 some purpose that to outside barbarians is not very 
 clear. And this man soon found that the Chinamen 
 were very willing to take instead of money these parts of 
 the seals killed, so that now, in large part, he thus pays 
 them their wages. 
 
 Now, is not what may be seen in all these cases the 
 identity of wages in money with wages in kind true of 
 all cases in which wages are paid for productive labor? Is 
 not the fund created by the labor really the fund from 
 which the wages are paid? 
 
 It may, perhaps, be said: "There is this difference
 
 Chap. in. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 55 
 
 where a man works for himself, or where, when working 
 for an employer, he takes his wages in kind, his wages 
 depend upon the result of his labor. Should that, from 
 any misadventure, prove futile, he gets nothing. When 
 he works for an employer, however, he gets his wages 
 anyhow they depend upon the performance of the labor, 
 not upon the result of the labor." But this is evidently 
 not a real distinction. For on the average, the labor 
 that is rendered for fixed wages not only yields the 
 amount of the wages, but more; else employers could 
 make no profit. When wages are fixed, the employer 
 takes the whole risk and is compensated for this assur- 
 ance, for wages when fixed are always somewhat less than 
 wages contingent. But though when fixed wages are 
 stipulated the laborer who has performed his part of the. 
 contract has usually a legal claim upon the employer, it 
 is frequently, if not generally, the case that the disaster 
 which prevents the employer from reaping benefit from 
 the labor prevents him from paying the wages. And in 
 one important department of industry the employer is 
 legally exempt in case of disaster, although the contract 
 be for wages certain and not contingent. For the maxim 
 of admiralty law is, that "freight is the mother of 
 wages," and though the seaman may have performed his 
 part, the disaster which prevents the ship from earning 
 freight deprives him of claim for his wages. 
 
 In this legal maxim is embodied the truth for which I 
 am contending. Production is always the mother of 
 wages. Without production, wages would not and could 
 not be. It is from the produce of labor, not from the 
 advances of capital that wages come. 
 
 Wherever we analyze the facts this will be found to be 
 true. For labor always precedes wages. This is as uni- 
 versally true of wages received by the laborer from an 
 employer as it is of wages taken directly by the laborer 
 who is his own employer. In the one class of cases as
 
 56 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book L 
 
 in the other, reward is conditioned upon exertion. Paid 
 sometimes by the day, oftener by the week or month, 
 occasionally by the year, and in many branches of pro- 
 duction by the piece, the payment of wages by an em- 
 ployer to an employee always implies the previous ren- 
 dering of labor by the employee for the benefit of the 
 employer, for the few cases in which advance payments 
 are made for personal services are evidently referable 
 either to charity or to guarantee and purchase. The 
 name "retainer," given to advance payments to lawyers, 
 shows the true character of the transaction, as does the 
 name "blood money" given in 'longshore vernacular to a 
 payment which is nominally wages advanced to sailors, 
 but which in reality is purchase money both English 
 and American law considering a sailor as much a chattel 
 as a pig. 
 
 I dwell on this obvious fact that labor always precedes 
 wages, because it is all-important to an understanding of 
 the more complicated phenomena of wages that it should 
 be kept in mind. And obvious as it is, as I have put it, 
 the plausibility of the proposition that wages are drawn 
 from capital a proposition that is made the basis for 
 such important and far-reaching deductions comes in 
 the first instance from a statement that ignores and leads 
 the attention away from this truth. That statement is, 
 that labor cannot exert its productive power unless sup- 
 plied by capital with maintenance.* The unwary reader 
 
 * Industry is limited by capital. . . There can be no more in- 
 dustry than is supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. 
 Self-evident as the thing is, it is often forgotten that the people of a 
 country are maintained and have their wants supplied not by the 
 produce of present labor, but of past. They consume what has 
 been produced, not what is about to be produced. Now, of what 
 has been produced a part only is allotted to the support of pro- 
 ductive labor, and there will not and cannot be more of that labor
 
 Chap. in. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. Sf 
 
 at once recognizes the fact that the laborer must fcaf e 
 food, clothing, etc., in order to enable him to perform 
 the work, and having been told that the food, clothing, 
 etc., used by productive laborers are capital, he assents 
 to the conclusion that the consumption of capital is nec- 
 essary to the application of labor, and from this it is but 
 an obvious deduction that industry is limited by capital 
 that the demand for labor depends upon the supply of 
 capital, and hence that wages depend upon the ratio be- 
 tween the number of laborers looking for employment 
 and the amount of capital devoted to hiring them. 
 
 But I think the discussion in the previous chapter will 
 enable any one to see wherein lies the fallacy of this rea- 
 soning a fallacy which has entangled some of the most 
 acute minds in a web of their own spinning. It is in the 
 use of the term capital in two senses. In the primary 
 proposition that capital is necessary to the exertion of 
 productive labor, the term "capital" is understood as in- 
 cluding all food, clothing, shelter, etc. ; whereas, in the 
 deductions finally drawn from it, the term is used in its 
 common and legitimate meaning of wealth devoted, not 
 to the immediate gratification of desire, but to the pro- 
 curement of more wealth of wealth in the hands of em- 
 ployers as distinguished from laborers. The conclusion 
 is no more valid than it would be from the acceptance of 
 the proposition that a laborer cannot go to work without 
 his breakfast and some clothes, to infer that no more 
 laborers can go to work than employers first furnish with 
 breakfasts and clothes. Now, the fact is that laborers 
 generally furnish their own breakfasts and the clothes in 
 which they go to work; and the further fact is that 
 
 than the portion so allotted (which is the capital of the country) can 
 feed and provide with the materials and instruments of production. 
 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. 
 V, Bee. L
 
 58 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 capital (in the sense in which the word is used in distinc- 
 tion to labor) in exceptional cases sometimes may, but is 
 never compelled to make advances to labor before the 
 work begins. Of all the vast number of unemployed 
 laborers in the civilized world to-day, there is probably 
 not a single one willing to work who could not be em- 
 ployed without any advance of wages. A great propor- 
 tion would doubtless gladly go to work on terms which 
 did not require the payment of wages before the end of 
 a month; it is doubtful if there are enough to be called 
 a class who would not go to work and wait for their 
 wages until the end of the week, as most laborers habit- 
 ually do; while there are certainly none who would not 
 wait for their wages until the end of the day, or if you 
 please, until the next meal hour. The precise time of 
 the payment of wages is immaterial; the essential point 
 the point I lay stress on is that it is after the per- 
 formance of work. 
 
 The payment of wages, therefore, always implies the 
 previous rendering of labor. Now, what does the render- 
 ing of labor in production imply? Evidently the produc- 
 tion of wealth, which, if it is to be exchanged or used in 
 production, is capital. Therefore, the payment of capi- 
 tal in wages pre-supposes a production of capital by the 
 labor for which the wages are paid. And as the em- 
 ployer generally makes a profit, the payment of wages is, 
 so far as he is concerned, but the return to the laborer 
 of a portion of the capital he has received from the labor. 
 So far as the employee is concerned, it is but the receipt 
 of a portion of the capital his labor has previously pro- 
 duced. As the value paid in the wages is thus exchanged 
 for a value brought into being by the labor, how can it 
 be said that wages are drawn from capital or advanced by 
 capital? As in the exchange of labor for wages the em- 
 ployer always gets the capital created by the labor before
 
 Chap.m. WAGES NOT DRAWN FEOM CAPITAL. 59 
 
 he pays out capital in the wages, at what point is his 
 capital lessened even temporarily? * 
 
 Bring the question to the test of facts. Take, for in- 
 stance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged in 
 turning raw material into finished products cotton into 
 cloth, iron into hardware, leather into boots, or so on, as 
 may be, and who pays his hands, as is generally the case, 
 once a week. Make an exact inventory of his capital on 
 Monday morning before the beginning of work, and it 
 will consist of his buildings, machinery, raw materials, 
 money on hand, and finished products in stock. Sup- 
 pose, for the sake of simplicity, that he neither buys nor 
 sells during the week, and after work has stopped and he 
 has paid his hands on Saturday night, take a new inven- 
 tory of his capital. The item of money will be less, for 
 it has been paid out in wages; there will be less raw 
 material, less coal, etc., and a proper deduction must be 
 made from the value of the buildings and machinery for 
 the week's wear and tear. But if he is doing a remuner- 
 ative business, which must on the average be the case, 
 the item of finished products will be so much greater as 
 to compensate for all these deficiencies and show in the 
 summing up an increase of capital. Manifestly, then, 
 the value he paid his hands in wages was not drawn from 
 
 * I speak of labor producing capital for the sake of greater clearness. 
 What labor always procures is either wealth, which may or may not 
 be capital, or services, the cases in which nothing is obtained being 
 merely exceptional cases of misadventure. Where the object of the 
 labor is simply the gratification of the employer, as where I hire a 
 man to black my boots, I do not pay the wages from capital, but 
 from wealth which I have devoted, not to reproductive uses, but to 
 consumption for my own satisfaction. Even if wages thus paid be 
 considered as drawn from capital, then by that act they pass from 
 the category of capital to that of wealth devoted to the gratification 
 of the possessor, as when a cigar dealer takes a dozen cigars from 
 the stock he has for sale and puts them in his pocket for his own 
 use.
 
 60 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book L 
 
 his capital, or from any one else's capital. It came, not 
 from capital, but from the value created by the labor 
 itself. There was no more advance of capital than if he 
 had hired his hands to dig clams, and paid them with a 
 part of the clams they dug. Their wages were as truly 
 the produce of their labor as were the wages of the 
 primitive man, when, long "before the appropriation of 
 land and the accumulation of stock," he obtained an 
 oyster by knocking it with a stone from the rocks. 
 
 As the laborer who works for an employer does not get 
 his wages until he has performed the work, his case is 
 similar to that of the depositor in a bank who cannot 
 draw money out until he has put money in. And as by 
 drawing out what he has previously put in, the bank de- 
 positor does not lessen the capital of the bank, neither 
 can laborers by receiving wages lessen even temporarily 
 either the capital of the employer or the aggregate capi- 
 tal of the community. Their wages no more come from 
 capital than the checks of depositors are drawn against 
 bank capital. It is true that laborers in receiving wages 
 do not generally receive back wealth in the same form in 
 which they have rendered it, any more than bank deposi- 
 tors receive back the identical coins or bank notes they 
 have deposited, but they receive it in equivalent form, 
 and as we are justified in saying that the depositor re- 
 ceives from the bank the money he paid in, so are we 
 justified in saying that the laborer receives in wages the 
 wealth he has rendered in labor. 
 
 That this universal truth is so often obscured, is 
 largely due to that fruitful source of economic obscuri- 
 ties, the confounding of wealth with money; and it is re- 
 markable to see so many of those who, since Dr. Adam 
 Smith made the egg stand on its head, have copiously 
 demonstrated the fallacies of the mercantile system, fall 
 into delusions of the very same kind in treating of the 
 relations of capital and labor. Money being the general
 
 Chap.m. WAGES NOT DRAWN FKOM CAPITAL. 61 
 
 medium of exchanges, the common flux through which 
 all transmutations of wealth from one form to another 
 take place, whatever difficulties may exist to an exchange 
 will generally show themselves on the side of reduction 
 to money, and thus it is sometimes easier to exchange 
 money for any other form of wealth than it is to ex- 
 change wealth in a particular form into money, for the 
 reason that there are more holders of wealth who desire 
 to make some exchange than there are who desire to 
 make any particular exchange. And so a producing em- 
 ployer who has paid out his money in wages may some- 
 times find it difficult to turn quickly back into money 
 the increased value for which his money has really been 
 exchanged, and is spoken of as having exhausted or ad- 
 vanced his capital in the payment of wages. Yet, unless 
 the new value created by the labor is less than the wages 
 paid, which can be only an exceptional case, the capital 
 which he had before in money he now has in goods it 
 has been changed in form, but not lessened. 
 
 There is one branch of production in regard to which 
 the confusions of thought which arise from the habit of 
 estimating capital in money are least likely to occur, in- 
 asmuch as its product is the general material and stand- 
 ard of money. And it so happens that this business fur- 
 nishes us, almost side by side, with illustrations of pro- 
 duction passing from the simplest to most complex 
 forms. 
 
 In the early days of California, as afterward in Aus- 
 tralia, the placer miner, who found in river bed or sur- 
 face deposit the glittering particles which the slow proc- 
 esses of nature had for ages been accumulating, picked 
 up or washed out his "wages" (so, too, he called them) 
 in actual money, for coin being scarce, gold dust passed 
 as currency by weight, and at the end of the day had his 
 wages in money in a buckskin bag in his pocket. There 
 can be no dispute as to whether these wages came from
 
 62 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Boole I. 
 
 capital or not. They were manifestly the produce of his 
 labor. Nor could there be any dispute when the holder 
 of a specially rich claim hired men to work for him and 
 paid them off in the identical money which their labor 
 had taken from gulch or bar. As coin became more 
 abundant, its greater convenience in saving the trouble 
 and loss of weighing assigned gold dust to the place of a 
 commodity, and with coin obtained by the sale of the 
 dust their labor had procured, the employing miner paid 
 off his hands. Where he had coin enough to do so, in- 
 stead of selling his gold dust at the nearest store and 
 paying a dealer's profit, he retained it until he got 
 enough to take a trip, or send by express to San Fran- 
 cisco, where at the mint he could have it turned into 
 coin without charge. While thus accumulating gold 
 dust he was lessening his stock of coin; just as the man- 
 ufacturer, while accumulating a stock of goods, lessens 
 his stock of money. Yet no one would be obtuse enough 
 to imagine that in thus taking in gold dust and paying 
 out coin the miner was lessening his capital. 
 
 But the deposits that could be worked without pre- 
 liminary labor were soon exhausted, and gold mining 
 rapidly took a more elaborate character. Before claims 
 could be opened so as to yield any return deep shafts had 
 to be sunk, great dams constructed, long tunnels cut 
 through the hardest rock, water brought for miles over 
 mountain ridges and across deep valleys, and expensive 
 machinery put up. These works could not be con- 
 structed without capital. Sometimes their construction 
 required years, during which no return could be hoped 
 for, while the men employed had to be paid their wages 
 every week, or every month. Surely, it will be said, in such 
 cases, even if in no others, that wages do actually come 
 from capital; are actually advanced by capital; and must 
 necessarily lessen capital in their payment! Surely here,
 
 Chap.M. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 63 
 
 at least, industry is limited by capital, for without capi- 
 tal such works could not be carried on! Let us see: 
 
 It is cases of this class that are always instanced as 
 showing that wages are advanced from capital. For 
 where wages are paid before the object of the labor is ob- 
 tained, or is finished as in agriculture, where plowing 
 and sowing must precede by several months the harvest- 
 ing of the crop; as in the erection of buildings, the con- 
 struction of ships, railroads, canals, etc. it is clear that 
 the owners of the capital paid in wages cannot expect an 
 immediate return, but, as the phrase is, must "outlay 
 it," or "lie out of it" for a time, which sometimes 
 amounts to many years. And hence, if first principles 
 are not kept in mind, it is easy to jump to the conclusion 
 that wages are advanced by capital. 
 
 But such cases will not embarrass the reader to whom 
 in what has preceded I have made myself clearly under- 
 stood. An easy analysis will show that these instances 
 where wages are paid before the product is finished, or 
 even produced, do not afford any exception to the rule 
 apparent where the product is finished before wages are 
 paid. 
 
 If I go to a broker to exchange silver for gold, I lay 
 down my silver, which he counts and puts away, and 
 then hands me the equivalent in gold, minus his com- 
 mission. Does the broker advance me any capital? 
 Manifestly not. What he had before in gold he now has 
 in silver, plus his profit. And as he got the silver before 
 he paid out the gold, there is on his part not even mo- 
 mentarily an advance of capital. 
 
 Now, this operation of the broker is precisely analo- 
 gous to what the capitalist does, when, in such cases as we 
 are now considering, he pays out capital in wages. As 
 the rendering of labor precedes the payment of wages, 
 and as the rendering of labor in production implies the
 
 64 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book t 
 
 creation of value, the employer receives value before he 
 pays out value he but exchanges capital of one form for 
 capital of another form. For the creation of value does 
 not depend upon the finishing of the product; it takes 
 place at every stage of the process of production, as the 
 immediate result of the application of labor, and hence, 
 no matter how long the process in which it is engaged, 
 labor always adds to capital by its exertion before it takes 
 from capital in its wages. 
 
 Here is a blacksmith at his forge making picks. 
 Clearly he is making capital adding picks to his em- 
 ployer's capital before he draws money from it in wages. 
 Here is a machinist or boilermaker working on the keel- 
 plates of a Great Eastern. Is not he also just as clearly 
 creating value making capital? The giant steamship, 
 as the pick, is an article of wealth, an instrument of pro- 
 duction, and though the one may not be completed for 
 years, while the other is completed in a few minutes, 
 each day's work, in the one case as in the other, is as 
 clearly a production of wealth an addition to capital. 
 In the case of the steamship, as in the case of the pick, it 
 is not the last blow, any more than the first blow, that 
 creates the value of the finished product the creation 
 of value is continuous, it immediately results from the 
 exertion of labor. 
 
 We see this very clearly wherever the division of labor 
 has made it customary for different parts of the full 
 process of production to be carried on by different sets 
 of producers that is to say, wherever we are in the habit 
 of estimating the amount of value which the labor ex- 
 pended in any preparatory stage of production has 
 created. And a moment's reflection will show that this 
 is the case as to the vast majority of products. Take a 
 ship, a building, a jack-knife, a book, a lady's thimble or 
 a loaf of bread. They are finished products. But they 
 were not produced at one operation or by one set of pro-
 
 Chap. lit WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 65 
 
 ducers. And this being the case, we readily distinguish 
 different points or stages in the creation of the value 
 which as completed articles they represent. "When we 
 do not distinguish different parts in the final process of 
 production we do distinguish the value of the materials. 
 The value of these materials may often be again decom- 
 posed many times, exhibiting as many clearly defined 
 steps in the creation of the final value. At each of these 
 steps we habitually estimate a creation of value, an ad- 
 dition to capital. The batch of bread which the baker is 
 taking from the oven has a certain value. But this is 
 composed in part of the value of the flour from which the 
 dough was made. And this again is composed of the 
 value of the wheat, the value given by milling, etc. 
 Iron in the form of pigs is very far from being a com- 
 pleted product. It must yet pass through several, or, 
 perhaps, through many, stages of production before it 
 results in the finished articles that were the ultimate ob- 
 jects for which the iron ore was extracted from the mine. 
 Yet, is not pig iron capital? And so the process of pro- 
 duction is not really completed when a crop of cotton is 
 gathered, nor yet when it is ginned and pressed; nor yet 
 when it arrives at Lowell or Manchester; nor yet when it 
 is converted into yarn; nor yet when it becomes cloth; 
 but only when it is finally placed in the hands of the 
 consumer. Yet at each step in this progress there is 
 clearly enough a creation of value an addition to capital. 
 Why, therefore, although we do not so habitually dis- 
 tinguish and estimate it, is there not a creation of value 
 an addition to capital when the ground is plowed for 
 the crop? Is it because it may possibly be a bad season 
 and the crop may fail? Evidently not; for a like possi- 
 bility of misadventure attends every one of the many 
 steps in the production of the finished article. On the 
 average a crop is sure to come up, and so much plowing 
 and sowing will on the average result in so much cotton
 
 66 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I 
 
 in the boll, as surely as so much spinning of cotton yarn 
 will result in so much cloth. 
 
 In short, as the payment of wages is always condi- 
 tioned upon the rendering of labor, the payment of 
 wages in production, no matter how long the process, 
 never involves any advance of capital, or even tempo- 
 rarily lessens capital. It may take a year, or even years, 
 to build a ship, but the creation of value of which the 
 finished ship will be the sum goes on day by day, and 
 hour by hour, from the time the keel is laid or even the 
 ground is cleared. Nor by the payment of wages before 
 the ship is completed, does the master builder lessen 
 either his capital or the capital of the community, for 
 the value of the partially completed ship stands in place 
 of the value paid out in wages. There is no advance of 
 capital in this payment of wages, for the labor of the 
 workmen during the week or month creates and renders 
 to the builder more capital than is paid back to them at 
 the end of the week or month, as is shown by the fact 
 that if the builder were at any stage of the construction 
 asked to sell a partially completed ship he would expect 
 a profit. 
 
 And so, when a Sutro or St. Gothard tunnel or a 
 Suez canal is cut, there is no advance of capital. The 
 tunnel or canal, as it is cut, becomes capital as much as 
 the money spent in cutting it or, if you please, the 
 powder, drills, etc., used in the work, and the food, 
 clothes, etc., used by the workmen as is shown by the 
 fact that the value of the capital stock of the company is 
 not lessened as capital in these forms is gradually 
 changed into capital in the form of tunnel or canal. On 
 the contrary, it probably, and on the average, increases 
 as the work progresses, just as the capital invested in a 
 speedier mode of production would on the average 
 increase. 
 
 And this is obvious in agriculture also. That the
 
 Chap. IU. WAGES NOT DBAWN PROM CAPITAL. 67 
 
 creation of value does not take place all at once when 
 the crop is gathered, but step by step during the whole 
 process which the gathering of the crop concludes, and 
 that no payment of wages in the interim lessens the 
 farmer's capital, is tangible enough when land is sold or 
 rented during the process of production, as a plowed field 
 will bring more than an unplowed field, or a field that 
 has been sown more than one merely plowed. It is 
 tangible enough when growing crops are sold, as is some- 
 times done, or where the farmer does not harvest him- 
 self, but lets a contract to the owner of harvesting ma- 
 chinery. It is tangible in the case of orchards and vine- 
 yards which, though not yet in bearing, bring prices 
 proportionate to their age. It is tangible in the case of 
 horses, cattle and sheep, which increase in value as they 
 grow toward maturity. And if not always tangible be- 
 tween what may be called the usual exchange points in 
 production, this increase of value as surely takes place 
 with every exertion of labor. Hence, where labor is 
 rendered before wages are paid, the advance of capital is 
 really made by labor, and is from the employed to the 
 employer, not from the employer to the employed. 
 
 "Yet," it may be said, "in such cases as we have been 
 considering capital is required!" Certainly; I do not 
 dispute that. But it is not required in order to make 
 advances to labor. It is required for quite another pur- 
 pose. What that purpose is we may readily see. 
 
 When wages are paid in kind that is to say, in wealth 
 of the same species as the labor produces; as, for in- 
 stance, if I hire men to cut wood, agreeing to give them 
 as wages a portion of the wood they cut, a method some- 
 times adopted by the owners or lessees of woodland, it 
 is evident that no capital is required for the payment of 
 wages. Nor yet when, for the sake of mutual conven- 
 ience, arising from the fact that a large quantity of wood 
 can be more readily and more advantageously exchanged
 
 68 TTAGES AND CAPITAL. Book T. 
 
 than a number of small quantities, I agree to pay wages 
 in money, instead of wood, shall I need any capital, 
 provided I can make the exchange of the wood for money 
 before the wages are due. It is only when I cannot 
 make such an exchange, or such an advantageous ex- 
 change as I desire, until I accumulate a large quantity 
 of wood that I shall need capital. Nor even then shall 
 I need capital if I can make a partial or tentative ex- 
 change by borrowing on my wood. If I cannot, or do 
 not choose, either to sell the wood or to borrow upon it, 
 and yet wish to go ahead accumulating a large stock of 
 wood, I shall need capital. But manifestly, I need this 
 capital, not for the payment of wages, but for the accu- 
 mulation of a stock of wood. Likewise in cutting a 
 tunnel. If the workmen were paid in tunnel (which, if 
 convenient, might easily be done by paying them in stock 
 of the company), no capital for the payment of wages 
 would be required. It is only when the undertakers 
 wish to accumulate capital in the shape of a tunnel that 
 they will need capital. To recur to our first illustration: 
 The broker to whom I sell my silver cannot carry on 
 his business without capital. But he does not need this 
 capital because he makes any advance of capital to 
 me when he receives my silver and hands me gold. He 
 needs it because the nature of the business requires the 
 keeping of a certain amount of capital on hand, in order 
 that when a customer comes he may be prepared to make 
 the exchange the customer desires. 
 
 And so we shall find it in every branch of production. 
 Capital has never to be set aside for the payment of 
 wages when the produce of the labor for which the wages 
 are paid is exchanged as soon as produced; it is only 
 required when this produce is stored up, or what is to 
 the individual the same thing, placed in the general cur- 
 rent of exchanges without being at once drawn against 
 lhat is, sold on credit. But the capital thus required is
 
 Chap.UL WAGES NOT DRAWN FKOM CAPITAL. 69 
 
 not required for the payment of wages, nor for advances 
 to labor, as it is always represented in the produce of the 
 labor. It is never as an employer of labor that any pro- 
 ducer needs capital; when he does need capital, it is be- 
 cause he is not only an employer of labor, but a merchant 
 or speculator in, or an accumulator of, the products of 
 labor. This is generally the case with employers. 
 
 To recapitulate: The man who works for himself gets 
 his wages in the things he produces, as he produces them, 
 and exchanges this value into another form whenever 
 he sells the produce. The man who works for another 
 for stipulated wages in money works under a contract of 
 exchange. He also creates his wages as he renders his 
 labor, but he does not get them except at stated times, 
 in stated amounts, and in a different form. In perform- 
 ing the labor he is advancing in exchange; when he gets 
 his wages the exchange is completed. During the time 
 he is earning the wages he is advancing capital to his 
 employer, but at no time, unless wages are paid before 
 work is done, is the employer advancing capital to him. 
 Whether the employer who receives this produce in ex- 
 change for the wages immediately re-exchanges it, or 
 keeps it for awhile, no more alters the character of the 
 transaction than does the final disposition of the product 
 made by the ultimate receiver, who may, perhaps, be in 
 another quarter of the globe and at the end of a series of 
 exchanges numbering hundreds.
 
 CHAPTER IV, 
 
 THE MAINTENANCE OF LABORERS NOT DRAWN FROM 
 CAPITAL. 
 
 But a stumbling block may yet remain, or may recur, 
 in the mind of the reader. 
 
 As the plowman cannot eat the furrow, nor a partially 
 completed steam engine aid in any way in producing the 
 clothes the machinist wears, have I not, in the words of 
 John Stuart Mill, "forgotten that the people of a coun- 
 try are maintained and have their wants supplied, not 
 by the produce of present labor, but of past?" Or, to 
 use the language of a popular elementary work that of 
 Mrs. Fawcett have I not "forgotten that many 
 months must elapse between the sowing of the seed and 
 the time when the produce of that seed is converted into 
 a loaf of bread," and that "it is, therefore, evident that 
 laborers cannot live upon that which their labor is assist- 
 ing to produce, but are maintained by that wealth which 
 their labor, or the labor of others, has previously pro- 
 duced, which wealth is capital?" * 
 
 The assumption made in these passages the assumption 
 that it is so self-evident that labor must be subsisted from 
 capital that the proposition has but to be stated to com- 
 pel recognition runs through the whole fabric of cur. 
 rent political economy. And so confidently is it held 
 that the maintenance of labor is drawn from capital that 
 
 * Political Economy for Beginners, by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, 
 Chap. Ill, p. 25.
 
 Chap. IT. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL. 71 
 
 the proposition that "population regulates itself by the 
 funds which are to employ it, and, therefore, always in- 
 creases or diminishes with the increase or diminution of 
 capital," * is regarded as equally axiomatic, and in its 
 turn made the basis of important reasoning. 
 
 Yet being resolved, these propositions are seen to be, 
 not self-evident, but absurd; for they involve the idea 
 that labor cannot be exerted until the products of labor 
 are saved thus putting the product before the producer. 
 
 And being examined, they will be seen to derive their 
 apparent plausibility from a confusion of thought. 
 
 I have already pointed out the fallacy, concealed by an 
 erroneous definition, which underlies the proposition 
 that because food, raiment and shelter are necessary to 
 productive labor, therefore industry is limited by capital. 
 To say that a man must have his breakfast before going 
 to work is not to say that he cannot go to work unless a 
 capitalist furnishes him with a breakfast, for his break- 
 fast may, and in point of fact in any country where there 
 is not actual famine will, come not from wealth set apart 
 for the assistance of production, but from wealth set 
 apart for subsistence. And, as has been previously shown, 
 food, clothing, etc. in short, all articles of wealth are 
 only capital so long as they remain in the possession of 
 those who propose, not to consume, *but to exchange 
 them for other commodities or for productive services, 
 and cease to be capital when they pass into the posses- 
 sion of those who will consume them; for in that trans- 
 action they pass from the stock of wealth held for the 
 purpose of procuring other wealth, and pass into the 
 stock of wealth held for purposes of gratification, irre- 
 spective of .whether their consumption will aid in the 
 production of wealth or not. Unless this distinction is 
 preserved it is impossible to draw the line between the 
 
 * The words quoted are Ricardo's (Chap. II); but the idea is com- 
 mon iu standard works.
 
 72 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1. 
 
 wealth that is capital and the wealth that is not capital, 
 even by remitting the distinction to the "mind of the 
 possessor," as does John Stuart Mill. For men do not 
 eat or abstain, wear clothes or go naked, as they propose 
 to engage in productive labor or not. They eat because 
 they are hungry, and wear clothes because they would be 
 uncomfortable without them. Take the food on the 
 breakfast table of a laborer who will work or not that day 
 as he gets the opportunity. If the distinction between 
 capital and non-capital be the support of productive 
 labor, is this food capital or not? It is as impossible for 
 the laborer himself as for any philosopher of the Ricardo- 
 Mill school to tell. Nor yet can it be told when it gets 
 into his stomach; nor, supposing that he does not get 
 work at first, but continues the search, can it be told 
 until it has passed into the blood and tissues. Yet the 
 man will eat his breakfast all the same. 
 
 But, though it would be logically sufficient, it is hardly 
 safe to rest here and leave the argument to turn on the 
 distinction between wealth and capital. Nor is it neces- 
 sary. It seems to me that the proposition that present 
 labor must be maintained by the produce of past labor 
 will upon analysis prove to be true only in the sense that 
 the afternoon's labor must be performed by the aid of 
 the noonday meal, or that before you eat the hare he 
 must be caught and cooked. And this, manifestly, is 
 not the sense in which the proposition is used to support 
 the important reasoning that is made to hinge upon it. 
 That sense is, that before a work which will not immedi- 
 ately result in wealth available for subsistence can be 
 carried on, there must exist such a stock of subsistence 
 as will support the laborers during the process. Let us 
 see if this be true: 
 
 The canoe which Robinson Crusoe made with such in- 
 finite toil and pains was a production in which his labor 
 could not yield an immediate return. But was it neces-
 
 Chap. IV. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL. 73 
 
 sary that, before he commenced, he should accumulate a 
 stock of food sufficient to maintain him while he felled 
 the tree, hewed out the canoe, and finally launched her 
 into the sea? Not at all. It was necessary only that he 
 should dev.ote part of his time to the procurement of 
 food while he was devoting part of his time to the build- 
 ing and launching of the canoe. Or supposing a hun- 
 dred men to be landed, without any stock of provisions, 
 in a new country. Will it be necessary for them to ac- 
 cumulate a season's stock of provisions before they can 
 begin to cultivate the soil? Not at all. It will be neces- 
 sary only that fish, game, berries, etc., shall be so abun- 
 dant that the labor of a part of the hundred may suffice 
 to furnish daily enough of these for the maintenance of 
 all, and that there shall be such a sense of mutual 
 interest, or such a correlation of desires, as shall lead 
 those who in the present get the food to divide (ex- 
 change) with those whose efforts are directed to future 
 recompense. 
 
 What is true in these cases is true in all cases. It is 
 not necessary to the production of things that cannot be 
 used as subsistence, or cannot be immediately utilized, 
 that there should have been a previous production of the 
 wealth required for the maintenance of the laborers 
 while the production is going on. It is only necessary 
 that there should be, somewhere within the circle of ex- 
 change, a contemporaneous production oi sufficient sub- 
 sistence for the laborers, and a willingness to exchange 
 this subsistence for the thing on which the labor is being 
 bestowed. 
 
 And as a matter of fact, is it not true, in any normal 
 condition of things, that consumption is supported by 
 contemporaneous production? 
 
 Here is a luxurious idler, who does no productive work 
 either with head or hand, but lives, we say, upon wealth 
 which his father left him securely invested in govern-
 
 74 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1. 
 
 ment bonds. Does his subsistence, as a matter of fact, 
 come from wealth accumulated in the past or from the 
 productive labor that is going on around him? On his 
 table are new-laid eggs, butter churned but a few days 
 before, milk which the cow gave this morning, fish which 
 twenty-four hours ago were swimming in the sea, meat 
 which the butcher boy has just brought in time to be 
 cooked, vegetables fresh from the garden, and fruit from 
 the orchard in short, hardly anything that has not re- 
 cently left the hand of the productive laborer (for in this 
 category must be included transporters and distributors 
 as well as those who are engaged in the first stages of 
 production), and nothing that has been produced for any 
 considerable length of time, unless it may be some bottles 
 of old wine. What this man inherited from his father, 
 and on which we say he lives, is not actually wealth at 
 all, but only the power of commanding wealth as others 
 produce it. And it is from this contemporaneous pro- 
 duction that his subsistence is drawn. 
 
 The fifty square miles of London undoubtedly contain 
 more wealth than within the same space anywhere else 
 exists. Yet were productive labor in London absolutely 
 to cease, within a few hours people would begin to 
 die like rotten sheep, and within a few weeks, or at most 
 a few months, hardly one would be left alive. For an 
 entire suspension of productive labor would be a disaster 
 more dreadful than ever yet befell a beleaguered city. It 
 would not be a mere external wall of circumvallation, 
 such as Titus drew around Jerusalem, which would pre- 
 vent the constant incoming of the supplies on which a 
 great city lives, but it would be the drawing of a similar 
 wall around each household. Imagine such a suspension 
 of labor in any community, and you will see how true it 
 is that mankind really live from hand to mouth; that it 
 is the daily labor of the community that supplies the 
 community with its daily bread.
 
 Chap.ir. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL. 75 
 
 Just as the subsistence of the laborers who built the 
 Pyramids was drawn not from a previously hoarded 
 stock, but from the constantly recurring crops of the Nile 
 Valley; just as a modern government when it undertakes 
 a great work of years does not appropriate to it wealth 
 already produced, but wealth yet to be produced, which 
 is taken from producers in taxes as the work progresses; 
 so it is that the subsistence of the laborers engaged in 
 production which does not directly yield subsistence 
 comes from the production of subsistence in which others 
 are simultaneously engaged. 
 
 If we trace the circle of exchange by which work done 
 in the production of a great steam engine secures to the 
 worker bread, meat, clothes and shelter, we shall find 
 that though between the laborer on the engine and the 
 producers of the bread, meat, etc., there may be a thou- 
 sand intermediate exchanges, the transaction, when re- 
 duced to its lowest terms, really amounts to an exchange 
 of labor between him and them. Now the cause which 
 induces the expenditure of the labor on the engine is 
 evidently that some one who has power to give what is 
 desired by the laborer on the engine wants in exchange 
 an engine that is to say, there exists a demand for an 
 engine on the part of those producing bread, meat, etc., 
 or on the part of those who are producing what the pro- 
 ducers of the bread, meat, etc., desire. It is this demand 
 which directs the labor of the machinist to the produc- 
 tion of the engine, and hence, reversely, the demand of 
 the machinist for bread, meat, etc., really directs an 
 equivalent amount of labor to the production of these 
 things, and thus his labor, actually exerted in the pro- 
 duction of the engine, virtually produces the things in 
 which he expends his wages. 
 
 Or, to formularize this principle: 
 
 TJie demand for consumption determines the direction in 
 which labor will be expended in production.
 
 76 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I 
 
 This principle is so simple and obvious that it needs 
 no further illustration, yet in its light all the complexi- 
 ties of our subject disappear, and we thus reach the same 
 view of the real objects and rewards of labor in the intri- 
 cacies of modern production that we gained by observing 
 in the first beginnings of society the simpler forms of 
 production and exchange. We see that now, as then, 
 each laborer is endeavoring to obtain by his exertions the 
 satisfaction of his own desires; we see that although the 
 minute division of labor assigns to each producer the 
 production of but a small part, or perhaps nothing at all, of 
 the particular things he labors to get, yet, in aiding in the 
 production of what other producers want, he is directing 
 other labor to the production of the things he wants in 
 effect, producing them himself. And thus, if he make 
 jack-knives and eat wheat, the wheat is really as much 
 the produce of his labor as if he had grown it for himself 
 and left wheat-growers to make their own jack-knives. 
 
 We thus see how thoroughly and completely true it 
 is, that in whatever is taken or consumed by laborers in 
 return for labor rendered, there is no advance of capital 
 to the laborers. If I have made jack-knives, and with 
 the wages received have bought wheat, I have simply ex- 
 changed jack-knives for wheat added jack-knives to the 
 existing stock of wealth and taken wheat from it. And 
 as the demand for consumption determines the direction 
 in which labor will be expended in production, it cannot 
 even be said, so long as the limit of wheat production has 
 not been reached, that I have lessened the stock of 
 wheat, for, by placing jack-knives in the exchangeable 
 stock of wealth and taking wheat out, I have determined 
 labor at the other end of a series of exchanges to the pro- 
 duction of wheat, just as the wheat grower, by putting in 
 wheat and demanding jack-knives, determined labor to 
 the production of jack-knives, as the easiest way by 
 which wheat could be obtained.
 
 Chap. IV. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL. 7? 
 
 And so the man who is following the plow though 
 the crop for which he is opening the ground is not yet 
 sown, and after being sown will take months to arrive at 
 maturity he is yet, by the exertion of his labor in plow- 
 ing, virtually producing the food he eats and the wages 
 he receives. For, though plowing is but a part of the 
 operation of producing a crop, it is a part, and as neces- 
 sary a part as harvesting. The doing of it is a step to- 
 ward procuring a crop, which, by the assurance which it 
 gives of the future crop, sets free from the stock con- 
 stantly held the subsistence and wages of the plowman. 
 This is not merely theoretically true, it is practically and 
 literally true. At the proper time for plowing, let plow- 
 ing cease. Would not the symptoms of scarcity at once 
 manifest themselves without waiting for the time of the 
 harvest? Let plowing cease, and would not the effect at 
 once be felt in counting-room, and machine shop, and 
 factory? Would not loom and spindle soon stand as idle 
 as the plow? That this would be so, we see in the effect 
 which immediately follows a bad season. And if this 
 would be so, is not the man who plows really producing 
 his subsistence and wages as much as though during the 
 day or week his labor actually resulted in the things for 
 which his labor is exchanged? 
 
 As a matter of fact, where there is labor looking for 
 employment, the want of capital does not prevent the 
 owner of land which promises a crop for which there is a 
 demand from hiring it. Either he makes an agreement 
 to cultivate on shares, a common method in some parts 
 of the United States, in which case the laborers, if they 
 are without means of subsistence, will, on the strength 
 of the work they are doing, obtain credit at the nearest 
 store; or, if he prefers to pay wages, the farmer will him- 
 self obtain credit, and thus the work done in cultivation 
 is immediately utilized or exchanged as it is done. If 
 anything more will be used up than would be used up if
 
 78 WAGES AND CAPITAL. BookL 
 
 the laborers were forced to beg Instead of to work (for in 
 any civilized country during a normal condition of things 
 the laborers must be supported anyhow), it will be the re- 
 serve capital drawn out by the prospect of replacement, and 
 which is in fact replaced by the work as it is done. For 
 instance, in the purely agricultural districts of Southern 
 California there was in 1877 a total failure of the crop, 
 and of millions of sheep nothing remained but their 
 bones. In the great San Joaquin Valley were many 
 farmers without food enough to support their families 
 until the next harvest time, let alone to support any 
 laborers. But the rains came again in proper season, 
 and these very farmers proceeded to hire hands to plow 
 and to sow. For every here and there was a farmer who 
 had been holding back part of his crop. As soon as the 
 rains came he was anxious to sell before the next harvest 
 brought lower prices, and the grain thus held in reserve, 
 through the machinery of exchanges and advances, 
 passed to the use of the cultivators set free, in effect 
 produced, by the work done for the next crop. 
 
 The series of exchanges which unite production and 
 consumption may be likened to a curved pipe filled with 
 water. If a quantity of water is poured in at one end, a 
 like quantity is released at the other. It is not iden- 
 tically the same water, but is its equivalent. And so 
 they who do the work of production put in as they take 
 out they receive in subsistence and wages but the prod- 
 uce of their labor.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE EBAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. 
 
 It may now be asked, If capital is not required for the 
 payment of wages or the support of labor during produc- 
 tion, what, then, are its functions? 
 
 The previous examination has made the answer clear. 
 Capital, as we have seen, consists of wealth used for the 
 procurement of more wealth, as distinguished from 
 wealth used for the direct satisfaction of desire; or, as I 
 think it may be defined, of wealth in the course oi 
 exchange. 
 
 Capital, therefore, increases the power of labor to pro- 
 duce wealth: (1) By enabling labor to apply itself in 
 more effective ways, as by digging up clams with a spade 
 instead of the hand, or moving a vessel by shoveling coal 
 into a furnace, instead of tugging at an oar. (2) By en- 
 abling labor to avail itself of the reproductive forces of 
 nature, as to obtain corn by sowing it, or animals by 
 breeding them. (3) By permitting the division of labor, 
 and thus, on the one hand, increasing the efficiency of 
 the human factor of wealth, by the utilization of special 
 capabilities, the acquisition of skill, and the reduction of 
 waste; and, on the other, calling in the powers of the 
 natural factor at their highest, by taking advantage of 
 the diversities of soil, climate and situation, so as to ob- 
 tain each particular species of wealth where nature is 
 most favorable to its production. 
 
 Capital does not supply the materials which labor 
 works up into wealth, as is erroneously taught; the ma-
 
 80 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 
 
 terials of wealth are supplied by nature. But such ma- 
 terials partially worked up and in the course of exchange 
 are capital. 
 
 Capital does not supply or advance wages, as is erro- 
 neously taught. Wages are that part of the produce of 
 his labor obtained by the laborer. 
 
 Capital does not maintain laborers during the progress 
 of their work, as is erroneously taught. Laborers are 
 maintained by their labor, the man who produces, in 
 whole or in part, anything that will exchange for articles 
 of maintenance, virtually producing that maintenance. 
 
 Capital, therefore, does not limit industry, as is erro- 
 neouly taught, the only limit to industry being the access 
 to natural material. But capital may limit the form of 
 industry and the productiveness of industry, by limiting 
 the use of tools and the division of labor. 
 
 That capital may limit the form of industry is clear. 
 "Without the factory, there could be no factory opera- 
 tives; without the sewing machine, no machine sewing; 
 without the plow, no plowman; and without a great capi- 
 tal engaged in exchange, industry could not take the 
 many special forms which are concerned with exchanges. 
 It is also as clear that the want of tools must greatly 
 limit the productiveness of industry. If the farmer 
 must use the spade because he has not capital enough for 
 a plow, the sickle instead of the reaping machine, the 
 flail instead of the thresher; if the machinist must rely 
 upon the chisel for cutting iron; the weaver on the hand 
 loom, and so on, the productiveness of industry cannot 
 be a tithe of what it is when aided by capital in the shape 
 of the best tools now in use. Nor could the division of 
 labor go further than the very rudest and almost imper- 
 ceptible beginnings, nor the exchanges which make it 
 possible extend beyond the nearest neighbors, unless a 
 portion of the things produced were constantly kept in 
 stock or in transit. Even the pursuits of hunting,
 
 Chap. V. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. 81 
 
 fishing, gathering nuts, and making weapons could not 
 be specialized so that an individual could devote himself 
 to any one, unless some part of what was procured by each 
 was reserved from immediate consumption, so that he 
 who devoted himself to the procurement of things of one 
 kind could obtain the others as he wanted them, and 
 could make the good luck of one day supply the short- 
 comings of the next. While to permit the minute sub- 
 division of labor that is characteristic of, and necessary to, 
 high civilization, a great amount of wealth of all descrip- 
 tions must be constantly kept in stock or in transit. To 
 enable the resident of a civilized community to exchange 
 his labor at option with the labor of those around him 
 and with the labor of men in the most remote parts of 
 the globe, there must be stocks of goods in warehouses, 
 in stores, in the holds of ships, and in railway cars, just 
 as to enable the denizen of a great city to draw at will 
 a cupful of water, there must be thousands of millions 
 of gallons stored in reservoirs and moving through miles 
 of pipe. 
 
 But to say that capital may limit the form of industry 
 or the productiveness of industry is a very different thing 
 from saying that capital limits industry. For the dictum 
 of the current political economy that "capital limits in- 
 dustry," means not that capital limits the form of labor 
 or the productiveness of labor, but that it limits the ex- 
 ertion of labor. This proposition derives its plausibility 
 from the assumption that capital supplies labor with ma- 
 terials and maintenance an assumption that we have 
 seen to be unfounded, and which is indeed transparently 
 preposterous the moment it is remembered that capital is 
 produced by labor, and hence that there must be labor 
 before there can be capital. Capital may limit the form 
 of industry and the productiveness of industry; but this 
 is not to say that there could be no industry without capi- 
 tal, any more than it is to say that without the power
 
 83 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book L 
 
 loom there could be no weaving; without the sewing 
 machine no sewing; no cultivation without the plow; or 
 that in a community of one, like that of Eobinson 
 Crusoe, there could be no labor because there could be 
 no exchange. 
 
 And to say that capital may limit the form and pro- 
 ductiveness of industry is a different thing from saying 
 that capital does. For the cases in which it can be truly 
 said that the form of productiveness of the industry of a 
 community is limited by its capital, will, I think, appear 
 upon examination to be more theoretical than real. It is 
 evident that in such a country as Mexico or Tunis the 
 larger and more general use of capital would greatly 
 change the forms of industry and enormously increase 
 its productiveness; and it is often said of such countries 
 that they need capital for the development of their re- 
 sources. But is there not something back of this a 
 want which includes the want of capital? Is it not the 
 rapacity and abuses of government, the insecurity of 
 property, the ignorance and prejudice of the people, that 
 prevent the accumulation and use of capital? Is not 
 the real limitation in these things, and not in the want 
 of capital, which would not be used even if placed there? 
 We can, of course, imagine a community in which the 
 want of capital would be the only obstacle to an increased 
 productiveness of labor, but it is only by imagining a 
 conjunction of conditions that seldom, if ever, occurs, 
 except by accident or as a passing phase. A community 
 in which capital has been swept away by war, conflagra- 
 tion, or convulsion of nature, and, possibly, a community 
 composed of civilized people just settled in a new land, 
 seem to me to furnish the only examples. Yet how 
 quickly the capital habitually used is reproduced in a 
 community that has been swept by war, has long been 
 noticed, while the rapid production of the capital it can,
 
 Chap. F. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. 83 
 
 or is disposed to use, is equally noticeable in the case of 
 a new community. 
 
 I am unable to think of any other than such rare and 
 passing conditions in which the productiveness of labor 
 is really limited by the want of capital. For, although 
 there may be in a community individuals who from want 
 of capital cannot apply their labor as efficiently as they 
 would, yet so long as there is a sufficiency of capital in the 
 community at large, the real limitation is not the want of 
 capital, but the want of its proper distribution. If bad 
 government rob the laborer of his capital, if unjust laws 
 take from the producer the wealth with which he would 
 assist production, and hand it over to those who are mere 
 pensioners upon industry, the real limitation to the 
 effectiveness of labor is in misgovernment, and not in 
 want of capital. And so of ignorance, or custom, or 
 other conditions which prevent the use of capital. It is 
 they, not the want of capital, that really constitute the 
 limitation. To give a circular saw to a Terra del 
 Fuegan, a locomotive to a Bedouin Arab, or a sewing 
 machine to a Flathead squaw, would not be to add to the 
 efficiency of their labor. Neither does it seem possible 
 by giving anything else to add to their capital, for any 
 wealth beyond what they had been accustomed to use as 
 capital would be consumed or suffered to waste. It is 
 not the want of seeds and tools that keeps the Apache 
 and the Sioux from cultivating the soil. If provided 
 with seeds and tools they would not use them produc- 
 tively unless at the same time restrained from wandering 
 and taught to cultivate the soil. If all the capital of a 
 London were given them in their present condition, it 
 would simply cease to be capital, for they would only use 
 productively such infinitesimal part as might assist in 
 the chase, and would not even use that until all the 
 edible part of the stock thus showered upon them had 
 been consumed. Yet such capital as they do want
 
 84- WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I 
 
 they manage to acquire, and in some forms in spite of 
 the greatest difficulties. These wild tribes hunt and 
 fight with the best weapons that American and English 
 factories produce, keeping up with the latest improve- 
 ments. It is only as they became civilized that they 
 would care for such other capital as the civilized state 
 requires, or that it would be of any use to them. 
 
 In the reign of George IV., some returning mission- 
 aries took with them to England a New Zealand chief 
 called Hongi. His noble appearance and beautiful 
 tatooing attracted much attention, and when about to 
 return to his people he was presented by the monarch 
 and some of the religious societies with a considerable 
 stock of tools, agricultural instruments, and seeds. 
 The grateful New Zealander did use this capital in the 
 production of food, but it was in a manner of which his 
 English entertainers little dreamed. In Sydney, on his 
 way back, he exchanged it all for arms and ammunition, 
 with which, on getting home, he began war against an- 
 other tribe with such success that on the first battle field 
 three hundred of his prisoners were cooked and eaten, 
 Hongi having preluded the main repast by scooping out 
 and swallowing the eyes and sucking the warm blood of 
 his mortally wounded adversary, the opposing chief.* 
 But now that their once constant wars have ceased, and 
 the remnant of the Maoris have largely adopted European 
 habits, there are among them many who have and use 
 considerable amounts of capital. 
 
 Likewise it would be a mistake to attribute the simple 
 modes of production and exchange which are resorted to 
 in new communities solely to a want of capital. These 
 modes, which require little capital, are in themselves 
 rude and inefficient, but when the conditions of such 
 
 *New Zealand and its Inhabitants. Rev. Richard Taylor. Lon- 
 don, 1855. Chap. XXI.
 
 Chap. F. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. 85 
 
 communities are considered, they will be found in reality 
 the most effective. A great factory with all the latest 
 improvements is the most efficient instrument that has 
 yet been devised for turning wool or cotton into cloth, 
 but only so where large quantities are to be made. The 
 cloth required for a little village could be made with far 
 less labor by the spinning wheel and hand loom. A 
 perfecting press will, for each man required, print many 
 thousand impressions while a man and a boy would be 
 printing a hundred with a Stanhope or Franklin press; 
 yet to work off the small edition of a country newspaper 
 the old-fashioned press is by far the most efficient ma- 
 chine. To carry occasionally two or three passengers, a 
 canoe is a better instrument than a steamboat; a few 
 sacks of flour can be transported with less expenditure 
 of labor by a pack horse than by a railroad train; to put 
 a great stock of goods into a cross-roads store in the 
 backwoods would be but to waste capital. And, gener- 
 ally, it will be found that the rude devices of production 
 and exchange which obtain among the sparse populations 
 of new countries result not so much from the want of 
 capital as from inability profitably to employ it. 
 
 As, no matter how much water is poured in, there can 
 never be in a bucket more than a bucketful, so no 
 greater amount of wealth will be used as capital than is 
 required by the machinery of production and exchange 
 that under all the existing conditions intelligence, 
 habit, security, density of population, etc. best suit the 
 people. And I am inclined to think that as a general 
 rule this amount will be had that the social organism 
 secretes, as it were, the necessary amount of capital just 
 as the human organism in a healthy condition secretes 
 the requisite fat. 
 
 But whether the amount of capital ever does limit the 
 productiveness of industry, and thus fix a maximum 
 which wages cannot exceed, it is evident that it is not
 
 86 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I 
 
 from any scarcity of capital that the poverty of the 
 masses in civilized countries proceeds. For not only do 
 wages nowhere reach the limit fixed by the productive- 
 ness of industry, but wages are relatively the lowest 
 where capital is most abundant. The tools and machin- 
 ery of production are in all the most progressive coun- 
 tries evidently in excess of the use made of them, and 
 any prospect of remunerative employment brings out 
 more than the capital needed. The bucket is not only 
 full; it is overflowing. So evident is this, that not only 
 among the ignorant, but by men of high economic repu- 
 tation, is industrial depression attributed to the abun- 
 dance of machinery and the accumulation of capital; 
 and war, which is the destruction of capital, is looked 
 upon as the cause of brisk trade and high wages an idea 
 strangely enough, so great is the confusion of thought 
 on such matters, countenanced by many who hold that 
 capital employs labor and pays wages. 
 
 Our purpose in this inquiry is to solve the problem to 
 which so many self-contradictory answers are given. In 
 ascertaining clearly what capital really is and what capi- 
 tal really does, we have made the first, and an all-impor- 
 tant step. But it is only a first step. Let us recapitulate 
 and proceed. 
 
 We have seen that the current theory that wages de- 
 pend upon the ratio between the number of laborers and 
 the amount of capital devoted to the employment of 
 labor is inconsistent with the general fact that wages and 
 interest do not rise and fall inversely, but conjointly. 
 
 This discrepancy having led us to an examination of 
 the grounds of the theory, we have seen, further, that, 
 contrary to the current idea, wages are not drawn from 
 capital at all, but come directly from the produce of the 
 labor for which they are paid. We have seen that capi-
 
 Oiap. V. RECAPITULATION. 87 
 
 tal does not advance wages or subsist laborers, but that 
 its functions are to assist labor in production with tools, 
 seed, etc., and with the wealth required to carry on ex- 
 changes. 
 
 We are thus irresistibly led to practical conclusions so 
 important as amply to justify the pains taken to make 
 sure of them. 
 
 For if wages aro drawn, not from capital, but from the 
 produce of labor, the current theories as to the relations 
 of capital and labor are invalid, and all remedies, whether 
 proposed by professors of political economy or working- 
 men, which look to the alleviation of poverty either by 
 the increase of capital or the restriction of the number 
 of laborers or the efficiency of their work, must be con- 
 demned. 
 
 If each laborer in performing the labor really creates 
 the fund from which his wages are drawn, then wages 
 cannot be diminished by the increase of laborers, but, on 
 the contrary, as the efficiency of labor manifestly increases 
 with the number of laborers, the more laborers, other 
 things being equal, the higher should wages be. 
 
 But this necessary proviso, "other things being equal," 
 brings us to a question which must be considered and 
 disposed of before we can further proceed. That ques- 
 tion is, Do the productive powers of nature tend to 
 diminish with the increasing drafts made upon them by 
 increasing population?
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY, ITS GENESIS 
 
 AND SUPPORT. 
 
 CHAPTER II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 
 CHAPTER III. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 
 CHAPTER IV. DISPROOF OP THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY.
 
 Are God and Nature then at strife, 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 
 So careless of the single life. 
 
 Tennyson.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY, ITS GENESIS AND SUPPORT. 
 
 Behind the theory we have been considering lies a 
 theory we have yet to consider. The current doctrine as 
 to the derivation and law of wages finds its strongest 
 support in a doctrine as generally accepted the doctrine 
 to which Malthus has given his name that population 
 naturally tends to increase faster than subsistence. 
 These two doctrines, fitting in with each other, frame 
 the answer which the current political economy gives to 
 the great problem we are endeavoring to solve. 
 
 In what has preceded, the current doctrine that wages 
 are determined by the ratio between capital and laborers 
 has, I think, been shown to be so utterly baseless as to 
 excite surprise as to how it could so generally and so 
 long obtain. It is not to be wondered at that such a 
 theory should have arisen in a state of society where the 
 great body of laborers seem to depend for employment 
 and wages upon a separate class of capitalists, nor yet 
 that under these conditions it should have maintained 
 itself among the masses of men, who rarely take the 
 trouble to separate the real from the apparent. But it 
 is surprising that a theory which on examination appears 
 to be so groundless could have been successively accepted 
 by so many acute thinkers as have during the present 
 century devoted their powers to the elucidation and 
 development of the science of political economy. 
 
 The explanation of this otherwise unaccountable fact 
 is to be found in the general acceptance of the Malthu- 
 sian theory. The current theory of wages has never 
 been fairly put upon its trial, because, backed by the
 
 92 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book 11. 
 
 Malthusian theory, it has seemed in the minds of polit- 
 ical economists a self-evident truth. These two theories 
 mutually blend with, strengthen, and defend each other, 
 while they both derive additional support from a princi- 
 ple brought prominently forward in the discussions of 
 the theory of rent viz., that past a certain point the 
 application of capital and labor to land yields a diminish- 
 ing return. Together they give such an explanation of 
 the phenomena presented in a highly organized and 
 advancing society as seems to fit all the facts, and which 
 has thus prevented closer investigation. 
 
 Which of these two theories is entitled to historical 
 precedence it is hard to say. The theory of population 
 was not formulated in such a way as to give it the stand- 
 ing of a scientific dogma until after that had been done 
 for the theory of wages. But they naturally spring up 
 and grow with each other, and were both held in a form 
 more or less crude long prior to any attempt to construct 
 a system of political economy. It is evident, from several 
 passages, that though he never fully developed it, the 
 Malthusian theory was in rudimentary form present in 
 the mind of Adam Smith, and to this, it seems to me, 
 must be largely due the misdirection which on the sub- 
 ject of wages his speculations took. But, however this 
 may be, so closely are the two theories connected, so 
 completely do they complement each other, that Buckle, 
 reviewing the history of the development of political 
 economy in his "Examination of the Scotch Intellect 
 during the Eighteenth Century," attributes mainly to 
 Malthus the honor of "decisively proving" the current 
 theory of wages by advancing the current theory of the 
 pressure of population upon subsistence. He says in 
 his "History of Civilization in England," Vol. 3, Chap. 5: 
 
 " Scarcely had the Eighteenth Century passed away when it was 
 decisively proved that the reward of labor depends solely on two 
 things; namely, the magnitude of that national fund out of which
 
 Chap. 1. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 93 
 
 all labor is paid, and the number of laborers among whom the fund 
 is to be divided. This vast step in our knowledge is due, mainly, 
 though not entirely, to Malthus, whose work on population, besides 
 marking an epoch in the history of speculative thought, has already 
 produced considerable practical results, and will probably give rise 
 to others more considerable still. It was published in 1798; so that 
 Adam Smith, who died in 1790, missed what to him would have 
 been the intense pleasure of seeing how, in it, his own views were 
 expanded rather than corrected. Indeed, it is certain that without 
 Smith there would have been no Malthus; that is, unless Smith had 
 laid the foundation, Malthus could not have raised the super- 
 structure." 
 
 The famous doctrine which ever since its enunciation 
 has so powerfully influenced thought, not alone in the 
 province of political economy, but in regions of even 
 higher speculation, was formulated by Malthus in the 
 proposition that, as shown by the growth of the North 
 American colonies, the natural tendency of population 
 is to double itself at least every twenty-five years, thus 
 increasing in a geometrical ratio, while the subsistence 
 that can be obtained from land "under circumstances 
 the most favorable to human industry could not possibly 
 be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio, 
 or by an addition every twenty-five years of a quantity 
 equal to what it at present produces." "The necessary 
 effects of these two different rates of increase, when 
 brought together," Mr. Malthus naively goes on to say, 
 "will be very striking." And thus (Chap. I) he brings 
 them together: 
 
 "Let us call the population of this island eleven millions; and 
 suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a 
 number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be 
 twenty-two millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of 
 subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five 
 years the population would be forty-four millions, and the means of 
 subsistance only equal to the support of thirty-three millions. In 
 the next period the population would be equal to eighty-eight mil- 
 lions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support
 
 94 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book H. 
 
 that number. And at the conclusion of the first century, the popu- 
 lation would be a hundred and seventy-six millions, and the means of 
 subsistence only equal to the support of fifty-five millions; leaving a 
 population of a hundred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided 
 for. 
 
 "Taking the whole earth instead of this island, emigration would 
 of course be excluded; and supposing the present population equal 
 to a thousand millions, the human species would increase as the 
 numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 
 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the population would be to the means 
 of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three centuries, 4,096 to 13, and in two 
 thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable." 
 
 Such a result is of course prevented by the physical 
 fact that no more people can exist than can find subsist- 
 ence, and hence Malthus' conclusion is, that this ten- 
 dency of population to indefinite increase must be held 
 back either by moral restraint upon the reproductive 
 faculty, or by the various causes which increase mortality, 
 which he resolves into vice and misery. Such causes as 
 prevent propagation he styles the preventive check; 
 such causes as increase mortality he styles the positive 
 check. This is the famous Malthusian doctrine, as 
 promulgated by Malthus himself in the "Essay on Popu- 
 lation." 
 
 It is not worth while to dwell upon the fallacy in- 
 volved in the assumption of geometrical and arithmetical 
 rates of increase, a play upon proportions which hardly 
 rises to the dignity of that in the familiar puzzle of the 
 hare and the tortoise, in which the hare is made to chase 
 the tortoise through all eternity without coming up with 
 him. For this assumption is not necessary to the Mal- 
 thusian doctrine, or at least is expressly repudiated by 
 some of those who fully accept that doctrine; as, for in- 
 stance, John Stuart Mill, who speaks of it as "an un- 
 lucky attempt to give precision to things which do not 
 admit of it, which every person capable of reasoning
 
 Chap. 1. THE MALTHUSIAN" THEORY. 95 
 
 must see is wholly superfluous to the argument." * The 
 essence of the Malthusian doctrine is, that population 
 tends to increase faster than the power of providing food, 
 and whether this difference be stated as a geometrical 
 ratio for population and an arithmetical ratio for subsist- 
 ence, as by Malthus; or as a constant ratio for popula- 
 tion and a diminishing ratio for subsistence, as by Mill, 
 is only a matter of statement. The vital point, on 
 which both agree, is, to use the words of Mathus, "that 
 there is a natural tendency and constant effort in popu- 
 lation to increase beyond the means of subsistence." 
 
 The Malthusian doctrine, as at present held, may be 
 thus stated in its strongest and least objectionable form: 
 
 That population, constantly tending to increase, must, 
 when unrestrained, ultimately press against the limits of 
 subsistence, not as against a fixed, but as against an 
 elastic barrier, which makes the procurement of subsist- 
 ence progressively more and more difficult. And thus, 
 wherever reproduction has had time to assert its power, 
 and is unchecked by prudence, there must exist that de- 
 gree of want which will keep population within the 
 bounds of subsistence. 
 
 Although in reality not more repugnant to the sense 
 of harmonious adaptation by creative beneficence and wis- 
 dom than the complacent no-theory which throws the 
 responsibility for poverty and its concomitants upon the 
 inscrutable decrees of Providence, without attempting to 
 trace them, this theory, in avowedly making vice and 
 suffering the necessary results of a natural instinct with 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Chap. IX., Sec. VI. 
 Yet notwithstanding what Mill says, it is clear that Malthus him- 
 self lays great stress upon his geometrical and arithmetical ratios, 
 and it is also probable that it is to these ratios that Malthus is largely 
 indebted for his fame, as they- supplied one of those high-sounding 
 formulas that with many people carry far more weight than the 
 clearest reasoning.
 
 96 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book D. 
 
 which are linked the purest and sweetest affections, 
 comes rudely in collision with ideas deeply rooted in the 
 human mind, and it was, as soon as formally promul- 
 gated, fought with a bitterness in which zeal was often 
 more manifest than logic. But it has triumphantly 
 withstood the ordeal, and in spite of the refutations of 
 the Godwins, the denunciations of the Cobbetts, and all 
 the shafts that argument, sarcasm, ridicule, and senti- 
 ment could direct against it, to-day it stands in the world 
 of thought as an accepted truth, which compels the 
 recognition even of those who would fain disbelieve it. 
 
 The causes of its triumph, the sources of its strength, 
 are not obscure. Seemingly backed by an indisputable 
 arithmetical truth that a continuously increasing popu- 
 lation must eventually exceed the capacity of the earth 
 to furnish food or even standing room, the Malthusian 
 theory is supported by analogies in the animal and vege- 
 table kingdoms, where life everywhere beats wastefully 
 against the barriers that hold its different species in 
 check analogies to which the course of modern thought, 
 in leveling distinctions between different forms of life, 
 has given a greater and greater weight; and it is appar- 
 ently corroborated by many obvious facts, such as the 
 prevalence of poverty, vice, and misery amid dense pop- 
 ulations; the general effect of material progress in in- 
 creasing population without relieving pauperism; the 
 rapid growth of numbers in newly settled countries and 
 the evident retardation of increase in more densely set- 
 tled countries by the mortality among the class con- 
 demned to want. 
 
 The Malthusian theory furnishes a general principle 
 which accounts for these and similar facts, and accounts 
 for them in a way which harmonizes with the doctrine 
 that wages are drawn from capital, and with all the prin- 
 ciples that are deduced from it. According to the cur- 
 rent doctrine of wages, wages fall as increase in the num.-
 
 THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 97 
 
 ber of laborers necessitates a more minute division of 
 capital; according to the Malthusian theory, poverty 
 appears as increase in population necessitates the more 
 minute division of subsistence. It requires but the 
 identification of capital with subsistence, and number of 
 laborers with population, an identification made in the 
 current treatises on political economy, where the terms 
 are often converted, to make the two propositions as 
 identical formally as they are substantially.* And thus 
 it is, as stated by Buckle in the passage previously 
 quoted, that the theory of population advanced by Mal- 
 thus has appeared to prove decisively the theory of wages 
 advanced by Smith. 
 
 Ricardo, who a few years subsequent to the publica- 
 tion of the "Essay on Population" corrected the mistake 
 into which Smith had fallen as to the nature and cause 
 of rent, furnished the Malthusiau theory an additional 
 support by calling attention to the fact that rent would 
 increase as the necessities of increasing population forced 
 cultivation to less and less productive lands, or to less 
 and less productive points on the same lands, thus ex- 
 plaining the rise of rent. In this way was formed a 
 triple combination, by which the Malthusian theory has 
 been buttressed on both sides the previously received 
 doctrine of wages and the subsequently received doctrine 
 of rent exhibiting in this view but special examples of 
 the operation of the general principle to which the name 
 of Malthus has been attached the fall in wages and tire 
 rise in rents which come with increasing population 
 being but modes in which the pressure of population 
 upon subsistence shows itself. 
 
 Thus taking its place in the very framework of polit- 
 
 * The effect of the Malthusian doctrine upon the definitions of 
 capital may, I think, be seen by comparing (see pp. 33, 33, 34) the defi- 
 nition of Smith, who wrote prior to Malthus, with the definitions of 
 Ricardo, McCulloch and Mill, who wrote subsequently.
 
 98 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book 11. 
 
 ical economy (for the science as currently accepted has 
 undergone no material change or improvement since the 
 time of Kicardo, though in some minor points it has been 
 cleared and illustrated), the Malthusian theory, though 
 repugnant to sentiments before alluded to, is not repug- 
 nant to other ideas, which, in older countries at least, 
 generally prevail among the working classes; but, on 
 the contrary, like the theory of wages by which it is 
 supported and in turn supports, it harmonizes with 
 them. To the mechanic or operative the cause of low 
 wages and of the inability to get employment is obviously 
 the competition caused by the pressure of numbers, and 
 in the squalid abodes of poverty what seems clearer than 
 that there are too many people? 
 
 But the great cause of the triumph of this theory is, 
 that, instead of menacing any vested right or antagoniz- 
 ing any powerful interest, it is eminently soothing and 
 reassuring to the classes who, wielding the power of 
 wealth, largely dominate thought. At a time when old 
 supports were falling away, it came to the rescue of the 
 special privileges by which a few monopolize so much 
 of the good things of this world, proclaiming a natural 
 cause for the want and misery which, if attributed to 
 political institutions, must condemn every government 
 under which they exist. The "Essay on Population" 
 was avowedly a reply to William Godwin's "Inquiry con- 
 cerning Political Justice," a work asserting the principle 
 of human equality; and its purpose was to justify exist- 
 ing inequality by shifting the responsibility for it from 
 human institutions to the laws of the Creator. There 
 was nothing new in this, for Wallace, nearly forty years 
 before, had brought forward the danger of excessive 
 multiplication as the answer to the demands of justice 
 for an equal distribution of wealth; but the circum- 
 stances of the times were such as to make the same idea, 
 when brought forward by Malthus, peculiarly grateful
 
 CTiap. 1. THE MALTHUSIAtf THEOBY. 99 
 
 to a powerful class, in whom an intense fear of any ques- 
 tioning of the existing state of things had been generated 
 by the outburst of the French Revolution. 
 
 Now, as then, the Malthusian doctrine parries the de- 
 mand for reform, and shelters selfishness from question 
 and from conscience by the interposition of an inevitable 
 necessity. It furnishes a philosophy by which Dives as he 
 feasts can shut out the image of Lazarus who faints with 
 hunger at his door; by which wealth may complacently but- 
 ton up its pocket when poverty asks an alms, and the rich 
 Christian bend on Sundays in a 'nicely upholstered pew 
 to implore the good gifts of the All Father without any 
 feeling of responsibility for the squalid misery that is 
 festering but a square away. For poverty, want, and 
 starvation are by this theory not chargeable either to in- 
 dividual greed or to social mal-adjustments; they are 
 the inevitable results of universal laws, with which, if it 
 were not impious, it were as hopeless to quarrel as with 
 the law of gravitation. In this view, he who in the 
 midst of want has accumulated wealth, has but fenced 
 in a little oasis from the driving sand which else would 
 have overwhelmed it. He has gained for himself, but 
 has hurt nobody. And even if the rich were literally to 
 obey the injunctions of Christ and divide their wealth 
 among the poor, nothing would be gained. Population 
 would be increased, only to press again upon the limits 
 of subsistence or capital, and the equality that would be 
 produced would be but the equality of common misery. 
 And thus reforms which would interfere with the inter- 
 ests of any powerful class are discouraged as hopeless. 
 As the moral law forbids any forestalling of the methods 
 by which the natural law gets rid of surplus population 
 and thus holds in check a tendency to increase potent 
 enough to pack the surface of the globe with human 
 beings as sardines are packed in a box, nothing can 
 really be done, either by individual or by combined
 
 100 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 
 
 effort, to extirpate poverty, save to trust to the efficacy 
 of education and preach the necessity of prudence. 
 
 A theory that, falling in with the habits of thought of 
 the poorer classes, thus justifies the greed of the rich 
 and the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly 
 and strike its roots deep. This has been the case with 
 the theory advanced by Malthus. 
 
 And of late years the Malthusian theory has received 
 new support in the rapid change of ideas as to the origin 
 of man and the genesis of species. That Buckle was 
 right in saying that the" promulgation of the Malthusian 
 theory marked an epoch in the history of speculative 
 thought could, it seems to me, be easily shown; yet to 
 trace its influence in the higher domains of philosophy, 
 of which Buckle's own work is an example, would, 
 though extremely interesting, carry us beyond the scope 
 of this investigation. But how much be reflex and how 
 much original, the support which is given to the Malthu- 
 sian theory by the new philosophy of development, now 
 rapidly spreading in every direction, must be noted in 
 any estimate of the sources from which this theory de- 
 rives its present strength. As in political economy, the 
 support received from the doctrine of wages and the 
 doctrine of rent combined to raise the Malthusian theory 
 to the rank of a central truth, so the extension of similar 
 ideas to the development of life in all its forms has the 
 effect of giving it a still higher and more impregnable 
 position. Agassiz, who, to the day of his death, was a 
 strenuous opponent of the new philosophy, spoke of 
 Darwinism as "Malthus all over," * and Darwin himself 
 says the struggle for existence "is the doctrine of Mal- 
 thus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms."! 
 
 * Address before Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 18721 
 Report U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1873. 
 f Origin of Species, Chap. III.
 
 Chap. L THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 101 
 
 It does not, however, seem to me exactly correct to 
 say that the theory of development by natural selection 
 or survival of the fittest is extended Malthusianism, for 
 the doctrine of Malthus did not originally and does not 
 necessarily involve the idea of progression. But this was 
 soon added to it. McCulloch* attributes to the "prin- 
 ciple of increase" social improvement and the progress 
 of the arts, and declares that the poverty that it engen- 
 ders acts as a powerful stimulus to the development of 
 industry, the extension of science and the accumulation 
 of wealth by the upper and middle classes, without which 
 stimulus society would quickly sink into apathy and de- 
 cay. What is this but the recognition in regard to 
 human society of the developing effects of the "struggle 
 for existence" and "survival of the fittest," which we 
 are now told on the authority of natural science have 
 been the means which Nature has employed to bring 
 forth all the infinitely diversified and wonderfully 
 adapted forms which the teeming life of the globe as- 
 sumes? What is it but the recognition of the force, 
 which, seemingly cruel and remorseless, has yet in the 
 course of unnumbered ages developed the higher from 
 the lower type, differentiated the man and the monkey, 
 and made the Nineteenth Century succeed the age of 
 stone? 
 
 Thus commended and seemingly proved, thus linked 
 and buttressed, the Malthusian theory the doctrine 
 that poverty is due to the pressure of population against 
 subsistence, or, to put it in its other form, the doctrine 
 that the tendency to increase in the number of laborers 
 must always tend to reduce wages to the minimum on 
 which laborers can reproduce is now generally accepted 
 as an unquestionable truth, in the light of which social 
 phenomena are to be explained, just as for ages the 
 
 *Note IV. to Wealth of Nations.
 
 102 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book U. 
 
 phenomena of the sidereal heavens were explained upon 
 the supposition of the fixity of the earth, or the facts of 
 geology upon that of the literal inspiration of the Mosaic 
 record. If authority were alone to be considered, for- 
 mally to deny this doctrine would require almost as much 
 audacity as that of the colored preacher who recently 
 started out on a crusade against the opinion that the 
 earth moves around the sun, for in one form or another, 
 the Malthusian doctrine has received in the intellectual 
 world an almost universal indorsement, and in the best 
 as in the most common literature of the day may be seen 
 cropping out in every direction. It is indorsed by 
 economists and by statesmen, by historians and by 
 natural investigators; by social science congresses and 
 by trade unions; by churchmen and by materialists; by 
 conservatives of the strictest sect and by the most radical 
 of radicals. It is held and habitually reasoned from by 
 many who never heard of Malthus and who have not the 
 slightest idea of what his theory is. 
 
 Nevertheless, as the grounds of the current theory of 
 wages have vanished when subjected to a candid exami- 
 nation, so, do I believe, will vanish the grounds of this, 
 its twin. In proving that wages are not drawn from 
 capital we have raised this Antaeus from the earth.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 
 
 The general acceptance of the Malthusian theory and 
 the high authority by which it is indorsed have seemed 
 to me to make it expedient to review its grounds and 
 the causes which have conspired to give it such a domi- 
 nating influence in the discussion of social questions. 
 
 But when we subject the theory itself to the test of 
 straightforward analysis, it will, I think, be found as 
 utterly untenable as the current theory of wages. 
 
 In the first place, the facts which are marshaled in 
 support of this theory do not prove it, and the analogies 
 do not countenance it. 
 
 And in the second place, there are facts which con- 
 clusively disprove it. 
 
 I go to the heart of the matter in saying that there is 
 no warrant, either in experience or analogy, for the as- 
 sumption that there is any tendency in population to 
 increase faster than subsistence. The facts cited to show 
 this simply show that where, owing to the sparseness of 
 population, as in new countries, or where, owing to the 
 unequal distribution of wealth, as among the poorer 
 classes in old countries, human life is occupied with the 
 physical necessities of existence, the tendency to repro- 
 duce is at a rate which would, were it to go on un- 
 checked, some time exceed subsistence. But it is not a 
 legitimate inference from this that the tendency to re- 
 produce would show itself in the same force where popu-
 
 104 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 
 
 lation was sufficiently dense and wealth distributed with 
 sufficient evenness to lift a whole community above the 
 necessity of devoting their energies to a struggle for mere 
 existence. Nor can it be assumed that the tendency to 
 reproduce, by causing poverty, must prevent the exist- 
 ence of such a community; for this, manifestly, would 
 be assuming the very point at issue, and reasoning in a 
 circle. And even if it be admitted that the tendency to 
 multiply must ultimately produce poverty, it cannot 
 from this alone be predicated of existing poverty that it 
 is due to this cause, until it be shown that there are no 
 other causes which can account for it a thing in the 
 present state of government, laws, and customs, mani- 
 festly impossible. 
 
 This is abundantly shown in the "Essay on Popula- 
 tion" itself. This famous book, which is much oftener 
 spoken of than read, is still well worth perusal, if only 
 as a literary curiosity. The contrast between the merits 
 of the book itself and the effect it has produced, or is at 
 least credited with (for though Sir James Stewart, Mr. 
 Townsend, and others, share with Malthus the glory of 
 discovering "the principle of population," it was the 
 publication of the "Essay on Population" that brought 
 it prominently forward), is, it seems to me, one of the 
 most remarkable things in the history of literature; and 
 it is easy to understand how Godwin, whose "Political 
 Justice" provoked the "Essay on Population," should 
 until his old age have disdained a reply. It begins with 
 the assumption that population tends to increase in a 
 geometrical ratio, while subsistence can at best be made 
 to increase only in an arithmetical ratio an assumption 
 just as valid, and no more so, than it would be, from the 
 fact that a puppy doubled the length of his tail while he 
 added so many pounds to his weight, to assert a geomet- 
 ric progression of tail and an arithmetical progression 
 of weight. And, the inference from the assumption is
 
 Chap.IL INFERENCES FROM PACTS. 105 
 
 just such as Swift in satire might have credited to the 
 savans of a previously dogless island, who, by bringing 
 these two ratios together, might deduce the very "strik- 
 ing consequence" that by the time the dog grew to a 
 weight of fifty pounds his tail would be over a mile long, 
 and extremely difficult to wag, and hence recommend 
 the prudential check of a bandage as the only alterna- 
 tive to the positive check of constant amputations. 
 Commencing with such an absurdity, the essay includes 
 a long argument for the imposition of a duty on the im- 
 portation, and the payment of a bounty for the exporta- 
 tion of corn, an idea that has long since been sent to the 
 limbo of exploded fallacies. And it is marked through- 
 out the argumentative portions by passages which show 
 on the part of the reverend gentleman the most ridicu- 
 lous incapacity for logical thought as, for instance, 
 that if wages were to be increased from eighteen pence 
 or two shillings per day to five shillings, meat would 
 necessarily increase in price from eight or nine pence to 
 two or three shillings per pound, and the condition of 
 the laboring classes would therefore not be improved, a 
 statement to which I can think of no parallel so close as 
 a proposition I once heard a certain printer gravely ad- 
 vance that because an author, whom he had known, 
 was forty years old when he was twenty, the author must 
 now be eighty years old because he (the printer) was 
 forty. This confusion of thought does not merely crop 
 out here and there; it characterizes the whole work.* 
 
 * Malthus' other works, though written after he became famous, 
 made no mark, and are treated with contempt even by those who 
 find in the Essay a great discovery. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
 for instance, though fully accepting the Malthusian theory, says of 
 Malthus' Political Economy: " It is very ill arranged, and is in no 
 respect either a practical or a scientific exposition of the subject. It 
 is in great part occupied with an examination of parts of Mr. 
 Ricardo's peculiar doctrines, and with an inquiry into the nature and
 
 106 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 
 
 The main body of the book is taken up with what is in 
 reality a refutation of the theory which the book ad- 
 vances, for Malthus' review of what he calls the positive 
 checks to population is simply the showing that the re- 
 sults which he attributes to over -population actually 
 arise from other causes. Of all the cases cited, and 
 pretty much the whole globe is passed over in the survey, 
 in which vice and misery check increase by limiting mar- 
 riages or shortening the term of human life, there is not 
 a single case in which the vice and misery can be traced 
 to an actual increase in the number of mouths over the 
 power of the accompanying hands to feed them; but in 
 every case the vice and misery are shown to spring either 
 from unsocial ignorance and rapacity, or from bad gov- 
 ernment, unjust laws or destructive warfare. 
 
 Nor what Malthus failed to show has any one since 
 him shown. The globe may be surveyed and history 
 may be reviewed in vain for any instance of a considera- 
 ble country* in which poverty and want can be fairly 
 attributed to the pressure of an increasing population. 
 Whatever be the possible dangers involved in the power 
 of human increase, they have never yet appeared. What- 
 ever may some time be, this never yet has been the evil 
 that has afflicted mankind. Population always tending 
 
 causes of value. Nothing, however, can be more unsatisfactory than 
 these discussions. In truth Mr. Malthus never had any clear or 
 accurate perception of Mr. Ricardo's theories, or of the principles 
 which determine the value in exchange of different articles." 
 
 * I say considerable country, because there may be small islands, 
 such as Pitcairn's Island, cut off from communication with the rest 
 of the world and consequently from the exchanges which are nec- 
 essary to the improved modes of production resorted to as population 
 becomes dense, which may seem to offer examples in point. A 
 moment's reflection, however, will show that these exceptional cases 
 are not in point.
 
 Chap. II. INFERENCES FBOM FACTS. 107 
 
 to overpass the limit of subsistence! How is it, then, 
 that this globe of ours, after all the thoissands, and it is 
 now thought millions, of years that man has been upon 
 the earth, is yet so thinly populated? How is it, then, 
 that so many of the hives of human life are now deserted 
 that once cultivated fields are rank with jungle, and 
 the wild beast licks her cubs where once were busy 
 haunts of men? 
 
 It is a fact, that, as we count our increasing millions, 
 we are apt to lose sight of nevertheless it is a fact that 
 in what we know of the world's history decadence of 
 population is as common as increase. Whether the 
 aggregate population of the earth is now greater than at 
 any previous epoch is a speculation which can deal only 
 with guesses. Since Montesquieu, in the early part of 
 the last century, asserted, what was then probably the 
 prevailing impression, that the population of the earth 
 had, since the Christian era, greatly declined, opinion 
 has run the other way. But the tendency of recent in- 
 vestigation and exploration has been to give greater 
 credit to what have been deemed the exaggerated accounts 
 of ancient historians and travelers, and to reveal indica- 
 tions of denser populations and more advanced civiliza- 
 tions than had before been suspected, as well as of a 
 higher antiquity in the human race. And in basing our 
 estimates of population upon the development of trade, 
 the advance of the arts, and the size of cities, we are apt 
 to underrate the density of population which the inten- 
 sive cultivations, characteristic of the earlier civiliza- 
 tions, are capable of maintaining especially where irri- 
 gation is resorted to. As we may see from the closely 
 cultivated districts of China and Europe a very great 
 population of simple habits can readily exist with very 
 little commerce and a much lower stage of those arts in 
 which modern progress has been most marked, and with-
 
 108 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book 11. 
 
 out that tendency to concentrate in cities which modern 
 populations show.* 
 
 Be this as it may, the only continent which we can be 
 sure now contains a larger population than ever before is 
 Europe. But this is not true of all parts of Europe. 
 Certainly Greece, the Mediterranean Islands, and Turkey 
 in Europe, probably Italy, and possibly Spain, have con- 
 tained larger populations than now, and this may be 
 likewise true of Northwestern and parts of Central and 
 Eastern Europe. 
 
 America also has increased in population during the 
 time we know of it; but this increase is not so great as is 
 popularly supposed, some estimates giving to Peru alone 
 at the time of the discovery a greater population than 
 now exists on the whole continent of South America. 
 And all the indications are that previous to the discovery 
 the population of America had been declining. "What 
 great nations have run their course, what empires have 
 arisen and fallen in "that new world which is the old," 
 we can only imagine. But fragments of massive ruins yet 
 attest a grander pre-Incan civilization; amid the tropical 
 forests of Yucatan and Central America are the remains of 
 great cities forgotten ere the Spanish conquest; Mexico, as 
 Cortez found it, showed the superimposition of barbarism 
 upon a higher social development, while through a great 
 
 * As may be seen from the map in H. H. Bancroft's "Native 
 Races," the State of Vera Cruz is not one of those parts of Mexico 
 noticeable for its antiquities. Yet Hugo Fink, of Cordova, writing 
 to the Smithsonian Institute (Reports 1870), says there is hardly a 
 foot in the whole State in which by excavation either a broken 
 obsidian knife or a broken piece of pottery is not found; that the 
 whole country is intersected with parallel lines of stones intended to 
 keep the earth from washing away in the rainy season, which show 
 that even the very poorest land was put into requisition, and that it 
 is impossible to resist the conclusion that the ancient population 
 was at least as dense as it is at present in the most populous districts 
 of Europe.
 
 Chap. n. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 109 
 
 part of what is now the United States are scattered 
 mounds which prove a once relatively dense population, 
 and here and there, as in the Lake Superior copper 
 mines, are traces of higher arts than were known to the 
 Indians with whom the whites came in contact. 
 
 As to Africa there can be no question. Northern Af- 
 rica can contain but a fraction of the population that 
 it had in ancient times; the Nile Valley once held an enor- 
 mously greater population than now, while south of the 
 Sahara there is nothing to show increase within historic 
 times, and widespread depopulation was certainly caused 
 by the slave trade. 
 
 As for Asia, which even now contains more than half 
 the human race, though it is not much more than half 
 as densely populated as Europe, there are indications 
 that both India and China once contained larger popula- 
 tions than now, while that great breeding ground of men 
 from which issued swarms that overran both countries 
 and sent great waves of people rolling upon Europe, 
 must have been once far more populous. But the most 
 marked change is in Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, 
 Persia, and in short that vast district which yielded to 
 the conquering arms of Alexander. Where were once 
 great cities and teeming populations are now squalid 
 villages and barren wastes. 
 
 It is somewhat strange that among all the theories 
 that have been raised, that of a fixed quantity to human 
 life on this earth has not been broached. It would at 
 least better accord with historical facts than that of the 
 constant tendency of population to outrun subsistence. 
 It is clear that population has here ebbed and there 
 flowed; its centers have changed; new nations have 
 arisen and old nations declined; sparsely settled districts 
 have become populous and populous districts have lost 
 their population; but as far back as we can go without 
 abandoning ourselves wholly to inference, there is noth-
 
 110 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book U. 
 
 ing to show continuous Increase, or even clearly to 
 show an aggregate increase from time to time. The 
 advance of the pioneers of peoples has, so far as we can 
 discern, never been into uninhabited lands their march 
 has always been a battle with some other people pre- 
 viously in possession; behind dim empires vaguer ghosts 
 of empire loom. That the population of the world must 
 have had its small beginnings we confidently infer, for 
 we know that there was a geologic era when human life 
 could not have existed, and we cannot believe that men 
 sprang up all at once, as from the dragon teeth sowed by 
 Cadmus; yet through long vistas, where history, tradi- 
 tion and antiquities shed a light that is lost in faint glim- 
 mers, we may discern large populations. And during 
 these long periods the principle of population has not 
 been strong enough fully to settle the world, or even so 
 far as we can clearly see materially to increase its aggre- 
 gate population. Compared with its capacities to sup- 
 port human life the earth as a whole is yet most sparsely 
 populated. 
 
 There is another broad, general fact which cannot fail 
 to strike any one who, thinking of this subject, extends 
 his view beyond modern society. Malthusianism pred- 
 icates a universal law that the natural tendency of popu- 
 lation is to outrun subsistence. If there be such a law, 
 it must, wherever population has attained a certain 
 density, become as obvious as any of the great natural 
 laws which have been everywhere recognized. How is 
 it, then, that neither in classical creeds and codes, nor in 
 those of the Jews, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the 
 Chinese, nor any of the peoples who have lived in close 
 association and have built up creeds and codes, do we 
 find any injunctions to the practice of the prudential 
 restraints of Malthus; but that, on the contrary, the wis- 
 dom of the centuries, the religions of the world, have 
 always inculcated ideas of civic and religious duty the
 
 Chap.D. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. Ill 
 
 very reverse of those which the current political econ- 
 omy enjoins, and which Annie Besant is now trying to 
 popularize in England? 
 
 And it must be remembered that there have been 
 societies in which the community guaranteed to every 
 member employment and subsistence. John Stuart Mill 
 says (Book II, Chap. XII, Sec. 2), that to do this with- 
 out state regulation of marriages and births, would be to 
 produce a state of general misery and degradation. 
 "These consequences," he says, "have been so often and 
 so clearly pointed out by authors of reputation that 
 ignorance of them on the part of educated persons is no 
 longer pardonable." Yet in Sparta, in Peru, in Para- 
 guay, as in the industrial communities which appear 
 almost everywhere to have constituted the primitive 
 agricultural organization, there seems to have been an 
 utter ignorance of these dire consequences of a natural 
 tendency. 
 
 Besides the broad, general facts I have cited, there are 
 facts of common knowledge which seem utterly inconsist- 
 ent with such an overpowering tendency to multiplica- 
 tion. If the tendency to reproduce be so strong as Mal- 
 thusianism supposes, how is it that families so often be- 
 come extinct families in which want is unknown? How 
 is it, then, that when every premium is offered by heredi- 
 tary titles and hereditary possessions, not alone to the 
 principle of increase, but to the preservation of genea- 
 logical knowledge and the proving up of descent, that 
 in such an aristocracy as that of England, so many peer- 
 ages should lapse, and the House of Lords be kept up 
 from century to century only by fresh creations? 
 
 For the solitary example of a family that has survived 
 any great lapse of time, even though assured of subsist- 
 ence and honor, we must go to unchangeable China. 
 The descendants of Confucius still exist there, and enjoy 
 peculiar privileges and consideration, forming, in fact,
 
 112 POPULATION" AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 
 
 the only hereditary aristocracy. On the presumption 
 that population tends to double every twenty -five years, 
 they should, in 2,150 years after the death of Confucius, 
 have amounted to 859,559,193,106,709,670,198,710,528 
 souls. Instead of any such unimaginable number, the de- 
 scendants of Confucius, 2,150 years after his death, in the 
 reign of Kanghi, numbered 11,000 males, or say 22,000 
 souls. This is quite a discrepancy, and is the more strik- 
 ing when it is remembered that the esteem in which this 
 family is held on account of their ancestor, "the Most 
 Holy Ancient Teacher/' has prevented the operation of 
 the positive check, while the maxims of Confucius incul- 
 cate anything but the prudential check. 
 
 Yet, it may be said, that even this increase is a great 
 one. Twenty-two thousand persons descended from a 
 single pair in 2,150 years is far short of the Malthusian 
 rate. Nevertheless, it is suggestive of possible over- 
 crowding. 
 
 But consider. Increase of descendants does not show 
 increase of population. It could only do this when the 
 breeding was in and in. Smith and his wife have a son 
 and daughter, who marry respectively some one else's 
 daughter and son, and each have two children. Smith 
 and his wife would thus have four grandchildren; but 
 there would be in the one generation no greater number 
 than in the other each child would have four grand- 
 parents. And supposing this process were to go on, the 
 line of descent might constantly spread out into hun- 
 dreds, thousands and millions; but in each generation of 
 descendants there would be no more individuals than in 
 any previous generation of ancestors. The web of gener- 
 ations is like lattice-work or the diagonal threads in 
 cloth. Commencing at any point at the top, the eye fol- 
 lows lines which at the bottom widely diverge; but be- 
 ginning at any point at the bottom, the lines diverge in 
 the same way to the top. How many children a man
 
 Ckap.U. rffFEKENCES FBOM FACTS. 113 
 
 may have is problematical. But that he had two parents 
 is certain, and that these again had two parents each 
 is also certain. Follow this geometrical progression 
 through a few generations and see if it does not lead to 
 quite as "striking consequences'* as Mr. Malthus' peo- 
 pling of the solar systems. 
 
 But from such considerations as these let us advance 
 to a more definite inquiry. I assert that the cases com- 
 monly cited as instances of over-population will not bear 
 investigation. India, China, and Ireland furnish the 
 strongest of these cases. In each of these countries, 
 large numbers have perished by starvation and large 
 classes are reduced to abject misery or compelled to 
 emigrate. But is this really due to over-population? 
 
 Comparing total population with total area, India and 
 China are far from being the most densely populated 
 countries of the world. According to the estimates of 
 MM. Behm and Wagner, the population of India is but 
 132 to the square mile and that of China 119, whereas 
 Saxony has a population of 442 to the square mile; Bel- 
 gium 441; England 422; the Netherlands 291; Italy 234 
 and Japan 233.* There are thus in both countries large 
 areas unused or not fully used, but even in their more 
 densely populated districts there can be no doubt that 
 either could maintain a much greater population in a 
 much higher degree of comfort, for in both countries is 
 labor applied to production in the rudest and most in- 
 efficient ways, and in both countries great natural re- 
 sources are wholly neglected. This arises from no innate 
 
 *I take these figures from the Smithsonian Report for 1878, 
 leaving out decimals. MM. Behm and Wagner put the population 
 of China at 446,500,000, though there are some who contend that it 
 does not exceed 150,000,000. They put the population of Hither 
 India at 206,225,580, giving 132.29 to the square mile; of Ceylon at 
 2,405,287 or 97. 36 to the square mile; of Further India at 21,018,062, 
 or 27.94 to the square mile. They estimate the population of the 
 world at 1,377,000,000, an average of 26.64 to the square mile.
 
 11-1 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 
 
 deficiency in the people, for the Hindoo, as comparative 
 philology has shown, is of our own blood, and China pos- 
 sessed a high degree of civilization and the rudiments of 
 the most important modern inventions when our ances- 
 tors were wandering savages. It arises from the form 
 which the social organization has in both countries taken, 
 which has shackled productive power and robbed indus- 
 try of its reward. 
 
 In India from time immemorial, the working classes 
 have been ground down by exactions and oppressions into 
 a condition of helpless and hopeless degradation. For 
 ages and ages the cultivator of the soil has esteemed 
 himself happy if, of his produce, the extortion of the 
 strong hand left him enough to support life and furnish 
 seed; capital could nowhere be safely accumulated or to 
 any considerable extent be used to assist production; all 
 wealth that could be wrung from the people was in the 
 possession of princes who were little better than robber 
 chiefs quartered on the country, or in that of their 
 farmers or favorites, and was wasted in useless or worse 
 than useless luxury, while religion, sunken into an elab- 
 orate and terrible superstition, tyrannized over the mind 
 as physical force did over the bodies of men. Under 
 these conditions, the only arts that could advance were 
 those that ministered to the ostentation and luxury of 
 the great. The elephants of the rajah blazed with gold 
 of exquisite workmanship, and the umbrellas that sym- 
 bolized his regal power glittered with gems; but the plow 
 of the ryot was only a sharpened stick. The ladies of 
 the rajah's harem wrapped themselves in muslins so fine 
 as to take the name of woven wind, but the tools of the 
 artisan were of the poorest and rudest description, and 
 commerce could only be carried on, as it were, by stealth. 
 
 Is it not clear that this tyranny and insecurity have 
 produced the want and starvation of India; and not, as 
 according to Buckle, the pressure of population upon
 
 Chap.lL INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 116 
 
 subsistence that has produced the want, and the want the 
 tyranny.* Says the Rev. William Tennant, a chaplain 
 in the service of the East India Company, writing in 
 1796, two years before the publication of the "Essay on 
 Population:" 
 
 "When we reflect upon the great fertility of Hindostan, it Is 
 amazing to consider the frequency of famine. It is evidently not 
 owing to any sterility of soil or climate; the evil must be traced to 
 some political cause, and it requires but little penetration to discover 
 it in the avarice and extortion of the various governments. The 
 great spur to industry, that of security, is taken away. Hence no 
 man raises more grain than is barely sufficient for himself, and the 
 first unfavorable season produces a famine. 
 
 " The Mogul government at no period offered full security to the 
 prince, still less to his vassals; and to peasants the most scanty pro- 
 tection of all. It was a continued tissue of violence and insurrection, 
 treachery and punishment, under which neither commerce nor the 
 arts could prosper, nor agriculture assume the appearance of a sys- 
 tem. Its downfall gave rise to a state still more afflictive, since 
 anarchy is worse than misrule. The Mohammedan government, 
 wretched as it was, the European nations have not the merit of over- 
 turning. It fell beneath the weight of its own corruption, and had 
 already been succeeded by the multifarious tyranny of petty chiefs, 
 whose right to govern consisted in their treason to the state, and 
 whose exactions on the peasants were as boundless as their avarice. 
 The rents to government were, and, where natives rule, still are, 
 levied twice a year by a merciless banditti, under the semblance of 
 an army, who wantonly destroy or carry off whatever part of the 
 produce may satisfy their caprice or satiate their avidity, after having 
 hunted the ill-fated peasants from the villages to the woods. Any 
 attempt of the peasants to defend their persons or property within 
 the mud walls of their villages only calls for the more signal venge- 
 ance on those useful, but ill-fated mortals. They are then sur- 
 
 * History of Civilization. Vol. I., Chap. 2. In this chapter 
 Buckle has collected a great deal of evidence of the oppression and 
 degradation of the people of India from the most remote times, a 
 condition which, blinded by the Malthusian doctrine, he has accepted 
 and made the cornerstone of his theory of the development of civili- 
 zation, he attributes to the ease with which food can there be pro- 
 duced.
 
 116 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IL 
 
 rounded and attacked with musketry and field pieces till resistance 
 ceases, when the survivors are sold, and their habitations burned and 
 leveled with the ground. Hence you will frequently meet with the 
 ryots gathering up the scattered remnants of what had yesterday 
 been their habitation, if fear has permitted them to return; but 
 oftener the rums are seen smoking, after a second visitation of this 
 kind, without the appearance of a human being to interrupt the 
 awful silence of desolation. This description does not apply to the 
 Mohammedan chieftains alone; it is equally applicable to the Rajahs 
 in the districts governed by Hindoos." * 
 
 To this merciless rapacity, which would have produced 
 want and famine were the population but one to a 
 square mile and the land a Garden of Eden, succeeded, 
 in the first era of British rule in India, as merciless a 
 rapacity, backed by a far more irresistible power. Says 
 Macaulay, in his essay on Lord Clive: 
 
 " Enormous fortunes were rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while 
 millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretched- 
 ness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never 
 under tyranny like this. They found the little finger of the Com- 
 pany thicker than the loins of Surajah Dowlah. * * * It resembled 
 the government of evil genii, rather than the government of human 
 tyrants. Sometimes they submitted in patient misery. Sometimes 
 they fled from the white man as their fathers had been used to fly 
 from the Maharatta, and the palanquin of the English traveler was 
 often carried through silent villages and towns that the report of his 
 approach had made desolate." 
 
 Upon horrors that Macaulay thus but touches, the 
 vivid eloquence of Burke throws a stronger light whole 
 districts surrendered to the unrestrained cupidity of the 
 worst of human kind, poverty-stricken peasants fiend- 
 ishly tortured to compel them to give up their little 
 hoards, and once populous tracts turned into deserts. 
 
 But the lawless license of early English rule has been 
 long restrained. To all that vast population the strong 
 
 Indian Recreations. By Rev. Wm. Tennant. London, 1804. 
 Vol. I., Sec. XXXIX.
 
 Chap.n. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 117 
 
 hand of England has given a more than Eoman peace; 
 the just principles of English law have been extended 
 by an elaborate system of codes and law officers designed 
 to secure to the humblest of these abject peoples the 
 rights of Anglo-Saxon freemen; the whole peninsula has 
 been intersected by railways, and great irrigation works 
 have been constructed. Yet, with increasing frequency, 
 famine has succeeded famine, raging with greater 
 intensity over wider areas. 
 
 Is not this a demonstration of the Malthusian theory? 
 Does it not show that no matter how much the possibili- 
 ties of subsistence are increased, population still con- 
 tinues to press upon it? Does it not show, as Malthus 
 contended, that, to shut up the sluices by which super- 
 abundant population is carried off, is but to compel 
 nature to open new ones, and that unless the sources of 
 human increase are checked by prudential regulation, 
 the alternative of war is famine? This has been the 
 orthodox explanation. But the truth, as may be seen in 
 the facts brought forth in recent discussions of Indian 
 affairs in the English periodicals, is that these famines, 
 which have been, and are now, sweeping away their mil- 
 lions, are no more due to the pressure of population upon 
 the natural limits of subsistence than was the desolation 
 of the Carnatic when Hyder Ali's horsemen burst upon it 
 in a whirlwind of destruction. 
 
 The millions of India have bowed their necks beneath 
 the yokes of many conquerors, but worst of all is the 
 steady, grinding weight of English domination a weight 
 which is literally crushing millions out of existence, and, 
 as shown by English writers, is inevitably tending to a 
 most frightful and wid espread catastrophe. Other con- 
 querors have lived in the land, and, though bad and 
 tyrannous in their rule, have understood and been un- 
 derstood by the people; but India now is like a great 
 estate owned by an absentee and alien landlord. A most
 
 118 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book H 
 
 expensive military and civil establishment is kept up, 
 managed and officered by Englishmen who regard India 
 as but a place of temporary exile; and an enormous sum, 
 estimated as at least 20,000,000 annually, raised from a 
 population where laborers are in many places glad in 
 good times to work for ld. to 4d. a day, is drained 
 away to England in the shape of remittances, pensions, 
 home charges of the government, etc. a tribute for 
 which there is no return. The immense sums lavished 
 on railroads have, as shown by the returns, been econom- 
 ically unproductive; the great irrigation works are for 
 the most part costly failures. In large parts of India 
 the English, in their desire to create a class of landed 
 proprietors, turned over the soil in absolute possession to 
 hereditary tax-gatherers, who rack-rent the cultivators 
 most mercilessly. In other parts, where the rent is still 
 taken by the State in the shape of a land tax, assessments 
 are so high, and taxes are collected so relentlessly, as to 
 drive the ryots, who get but the most scanty living in 
 good seasons, into the claws of money lenders, who are, 
 if possible, even more rapacious than the zemindars. 
 Upon salt, an article of prime necessity everywhere, and 
 of especial necessity where food is almost exclusively 
 vegetable, a tax of nearly twelve hundred per cent, is 
 imposed, so that its various industrial uses are prohib- 
 ited, and large bodies of the people cannot get enough to 
 keep either themselves or their cattle in health. Below 
 the English officials are a horde of native employees who 
 oppress and extort. The effect of English law, with its 
 rigid rules, and, to the native, mysterious proceedings, 
 has been but to put a potent instrument of plunder into 
 the hands of the native money lenders, from whom the 
 peasants are compelled to borrow on the most extrava- 
 gant terms to meet their taxes, and to whom they are 
 easily induced to give obligations of which they know 
 not the meaning. "We do not care for the people of
 
 Chap.H. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 119 
 
 India," writes Florence Nightingale, with what seems 
 like a sob. "The saddest sight to be seen in the East 
 nay, probably in the world is the peasant of our East- 
 ern Empire." And she goes on to show the causes of 
 the terrible famines, in taxation which takes from the 
 cultivators the very means of cultivation, and the actual 
 slavery to which the ryots are reduced as "the conse- 
 quences of our own laws;" producing in "the most fer- 
 tile country in the world, a grinding, chronic semi-star- 
 vation in many places where what is called famine does 
 not exist." * "The famines which have been devastating 
 India," says H. M. Hyndman,f "are in the main finan- 
 cial famines. Men and women cannot get food, because 
 they cannot save the money to buy it. Yet we are 
 driven, so we say, to tax these people more." And he 
 shows how, even from famine stricken districts, food is 
 exported in payment of taxes, and how the whole of 
 India is subjected to a steady and exhausting drain, 
 which, combined with the enormous expenses of govern- 
 ment, is making the population year by year poorer. 
 The exports of India consist almost exclusively of agri- 
 cultural products. For at least one-third of these, as 
 Mr. Hyndman shows, no return whatever is received; 
 
 *Miss Nightingale (The People of India, in " Nineteenth Century" 
 for August, 1878) gives instances, which she says represent millions 
 of cases, of the state of peonage to which the cultivators of Southern 
 India have been reduced through the facilities afforded by the Civil 
 Courts to the frauds and oppressions of money lenders and minor 
 native officials. " Our Civil Courts are regarded as institutions for 
 enabling the rich to grind the faces of the poor, and many are fain 
 to seek a refuge from their jurisdiction within native territory, "says 
 Sir David Wedderburn, in an article on Protected Princes in India, 
 in a previous (July) number of the same magazine, in which he also 
 gives a native State, where taxation is comparatively light, as an 
 instance of the most prosperous population of India. 
 
 j-See articles In "Nineteenth Century "for October, 1878, and 
 March, 1879.
 
 120 POPULATION 1 AND SUBSISTENCE. Boole H 
 
 they represent tribute remittances made by English- 
 men in India, or expenses of the English branch of the 
 Indian government.* And for the rest, the return is for 
 the most part government stores, or articles of comfort 
 and luxury used by the English masters of India. He 
 shows that the expenses of government have been enor- 
 mously increased under Imperial rule; that the relentless 
 taxation of a population so miserably poor that the 
 masses are not more than half fed, is robbing them of 
 their scanty means for cultivating the soil; that the 
 number of bullocks (the Indian draft animal) is decreas- 
 ing, and the scanty implements of culture being given up 
 to money lenders, from whom "we, a business people, are 
 forcing the cultivators to borrow at 12, 24, 60 per cent, f 
 to build and pay the interest on the cost of vast public 
 works, which have never paid nearly five per cent." 
 Says Mr. Hyndman: "The truth is that Indian society 
 as a whole has been frightfully impoverished under our 
 rule, and that the process is now going on at an exceed- 
 ingly rapid rate" a statement which cannot be doubted, 
 in view of the facts presented not only by such writers 
 as I have referred to, but by Indian officials themselves. 
 The very efforts made by the government to alleviate 
 famines do, by the increased taxation imposed, but in- 
 tensify and extend their real cause. Although in the 
 recent famine in Southern India six millions of people, 
 it is estimated, perished of actual starvation, and the 
 great mass of those who survived were actually stripped, 
 
 * Prof. Fawcett, in a recent article on the Proposed Loans to India, 
 calls attentions to such items as 1,200 for outfit and passage of a 
 member of the Governor General's Council; 2,450 for outfit and 
 passage of Bishops of Calcutta and Bombay. 
 
 f Florence Nightingale says 100 per cent, is common, and even 
 then the cultivator is robbed in ways which she illustrates. It is 
 hardly necessary to say that these rates, like those of the pawnbroker, 
 are not interest in the economic sense of the term.
 
 Chap. II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 121 
 
 yet the taxes were not remitted and the salt tax, already 
 prohibitory to the great bulk of these poverty stricken 
 people, was increased forty percent., just as after the ter- 
 rible Bengal famine in 1770 the revenue was actually 
 driven up, by raising assessments upon the survivors and 
 rigorously enforcing collection. 
 
 In India now, as in India in past times, it is only the 
 most superficial view that can attribute want and starva- 
 tion to pressure of population upon the ability of the 
 land to produce subsistence. Could the cultivators 
 retain their little capital could they be released from 
 the drain which, even in non-famine years, reduces great 
 masses of them to a scale of living not merely below 
 what is deemed necessary for the sepoys, but what Eng- 
 lish humanity gives to the prisoners in the jails reviv- 
 ing . industry, assuming more productive forms, would 
 undoubtedly suffice to keep a much greater population. 
 There are still in India great areas uncultivated, vast 
 mineral resources untouched, and it is certain that the 
 population of India does not reach, as within historical 
 times it never has reached, the real limit of the soil to 
 furnish subsistence, or even the point where this power 
 begins to decline with the increasing drafts made upon 
 it. The real cause of want in India has been, and yet is, 
 the rapacity of man, not the niggardliness of nature. 
 
 What is true of India is true of China. Densely popu- 
 lated as China is in many parts, that the extreme poverty 
 of the lower classes is to be attributed to causes similar 
 to those which have operated in India, and not to too 
 great population, is shown by many facts. Insecurity 
 prevails, production goes on under the greatest disad- 
 vantages, and exchange is closely fettered. Where the 
 government is a succession of squeezings, and security 
 for capital of any sort must be purchased of a mandarin; 
 where men's shoulders are the great reliance for inland 
 transportation; where the junk is obliged to be con-
 
 123 POPULATION" AND SUBSISTENCE. Boole It 
 
 structed so as to unfit it for a sea-boat; where piracy is a 
 regular trade, and robbers often march in regiments, 
 poverty would prevail and the failure of a crop result in 
 famine, no matter how sparse the population.* That 
 China is capable of supporting a much greater population 
 is shown not only by the great extent of uncultivated land 
 to which all travelers testify, but by the immense un- 
 worked mineral deposits which are there known to exist. 
 China, for instance, is said to contain the largest and 
 finest deposit of coal yet anywhere discovered. How 
 much the working of these coal beds would add to the 
 ability to support a greater population, may readily be 
 imagined. Coal is not food, it is true; but its production 
 is equivalent to the production of food. For, not only 
 may coal be exchanged for food, as is done in all mining 
 districts, but the force evolved by its consumption may 
 be used in the production of food, or may set labor free 
 for the production of food. 
 
 Neither in India nor China, therefore, can poverty and 
 starvation be charged to the pressure of population 
 against subsistence. It is not dense population, but the 
 causes which prevent social organization from taking its 
 natural development and labor from securing its full 
 return, that keep millions just on the verge of starva- 
 tion, and every now and again force millions beyond it. 
 That the Hindoo laborer thinks himself fortunate to get 
 a handful of rice, that the Chinese eat rats and puppies, 
 is no more due to the pressure of population than it is 
 due to the pressure of population that the Digger Indians 
 live on grasshoppers, or the aboriginal inhabitants of 
 Australia eat the worms found in rotten wood. 
 
 Let me be understood. I do not mean merely to say 
 that India or China could, with a more highly developed 
 
 * The seat of recent famine in China was not the most thickly 
 settled districts.
 
 Chap.n. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 123 
 
 civilization, maintain a greater population, for to this 
 any Malthusian would agree. The Malthusian doctrine 
 does not deny that an advance in the productive arts 
 would permit a greater population to find subsistence. 
 But the Malthusian theory affirms and this is its essence 
 that, whatever be the capacity for production, the 
 natural tendency of population is to come up with it, 
 and, in the endeavor to press beyond it, to produce, to 
 use the phrase of Malthus, that degree of vice and misery 
 which is necessary to prevent further increase; so that as 
 productive power is increased, population will corre- 
 spondingly increase, and in a little time produce the 
 same results as before. What I say is this: that nowhere 
 is there any instance which will support this theory; 
 that nowhere can want be properly attributed to the 
 pressure of population against the power to procure sub- 
 sistence in the then existing degree of human knowledge; 
 that everywhere the vice and misery attributed to over- 
 population can be traced to the warfare, tyranny, and 
 oppression which prevent knowledge from being utilized 
 and deny the security essential to production. The rea- 
 son why the natural increase of population does not pro- 
 duce want, we shall come to hereafter. The fact that it 
 has not yet anywhere done so, is what we are now con- 
 cerned with. This fact is obvious with regard to India 
 and China. It will be obvious, too, wherever we trace 
 to their causes the results which on superficial view are 
 often taken to proceed from over-population. 
 
 Ireland, of all European countries, furnishes the great 
 stock example of over-population. The extreme poverty 
 of the peasantry and the low rate of wages there prevail- 
 ing, the Irish famine, and Irish emigration, are con- 
 stantly referred to as a demonstration of the Malthusian 
 theory worked out under the eyes of the civilized world. 
 I doubt if a more striking instance can be cited of the 
 power of a preaccepted theory to blind men as to the
 
 124 POPULATION 1 AND SUBSISTENCE. Book It 
 
 true relations of facts. The truth is, and it lies on the 
 surface, that Ireland has never yet had a population 
 which the natural powers of the country, in the existing 
 state of the productive arts, could not have maintained 
 in ample comfort. At the period of her greatest popu- 
 lation (1840-45) Ireland contained something over eight 
 millions of people. But a very large proportion of them 
 managed merely to exist lodging in miserable cabins, 
 clothed with miserable rags, and with but potatoes for 
 their staple food. When the potato blight came, they 
 died by thousands. But was it the inability of the soil 
 to support so large a population that compelled so many 
 to live in this miserable way, and exposed them to starva- 
 tion on the failure of a single root crop? On the con- 
 trary, it was the same remorseless rapacity that robbed 
 the Indian ryot of the fruits of his toil and left him to 
 starve where nature offered plenty. A merciless banditti 
 of tax-gatherers did not march through the land plunder- 
 ing and torturing, but the laborer was just as effectually 
 stripped by as merciless a horde of landlords, among 
 whom the soil had been divided as their absolute posses- 
 sion, regardless of any rights of those who lived upon it. 
 Consider the conditions of production under which 
 this eight millions managed to live until the potato 
 blight came. It was a condition to which the words 
 used by Mr. Tennant in reference to India may as appro- 
 priately be applied "the great spur to industry, that of 
 security, was taken away." Cultivation was for the 
 most part carried on by tenants at will, who, even if the 
 rack-rents which they were forced to pay had permitted 
 them, did not dare to make improvements which would 
 have been but the signal for an increase of rent. Labor 
 was thus applied in the most inefficient and wasteful 
 manner, and labor was dissipated in aimless idleness 
 that, with any security for its fruits, would have been 
 applied unremittingly. But even under these condi-
 
 Chap.H. INFERENCES PROM FACTS. 125 
 
 tions, it is a matter of fact that Ireland did more than 
 support eight millions. For when her population was at 
 its highest, Ireland was a food-exporting country. Even 
 during the famine, grain and meat and butter and cheese 
 were carted for exportation along roads lined with the 
 starving and past trenches into which the dead were 
 piled. For these exports of food, or at least for a great 
 part of them, there was no return. So far as the people 
 of Ireland were concerned, the food thus exported might 
 as well have been burned up or thrown into the sea, or 
 never produced. It went not as an exchange, but as a 
 tribute to pay the rent of absentee landlords; a levy 
 wrung from producers by those who in no wise con- 
 tributed to production. 
 
 Had this food been left to those who raised it; had the 
 cultivators of the soil been permitted to retain and use 
 the capital their labor produced; had security stimulated 
 industry and permitted the adoption of economical 
 methods, there would have been enough to support in 
 bounteous comfort the largest population Ireland ever 
 had, and the potato blight might have come and gone 
 without stinting a single human being of a full meal. 
 For it was not the imprudence "of Irish peasants," as 
 English economists coldly say, which induced them to 
 make the potato the staple of their food. Irish emi- 
 grants, when they can get other things, do not live upon 
 the potato, and certainly in the United States the pru- 
 dence of the Irish character, in endeavoring to lay by 
 something for a rainy day, is remarkable. They lived on 
 the potato, because rack-rents stripped everything else 
 from them. The truth is, that the poverty and misery 
 of Ireland have never been fairly attributable to over- 
 population. 
 
 ircCulloch, writing in 1838, says, in Note IV to 
 "Wealth of Nations:"
 
 126 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 
 
 "The wonderful density of population in Ireland is the immediate 
 cause of the abject poverty and depressed condition of the great 
 bulk of the people. It is not too much to say that there are at 
 present more than double the persons in Ireland it is, with its exist- 
 ing means of production, able either fully to employ or to maintain 
 in a moderate state of comfort." 
 
 As in 1841 the population of Ireland was given as 
 8,175,124, we may set it down in 1838 as about eight 
 millions. Thus, to change McCulloch's negative into an 
 affirmative, Ireland would, according to the over-popu- 
 lation theory, have been able to employ fully and main- 
 tain in a moderate state of comfort something less than 
 four million persons. Now, in the early part of the pre- 
 ceding century, when Dean Swift wrote his "Modest 
 Proposal," the population of Ireland was about two mil- 
 lions. As neither the means nor the arts of production 
 had perceptibly advanced in Ireland during the interval, 
 then if the abject poverty and depressed condition of 
 the Irish people in 1838 were attributable to over-popula- 
 tion there should, upon McCulloch's own admission, 
 have been in Ireland in 1727 more than full employment, 
 and much more than a moderate state of comfort, for 
 the whole two millions. Yet, instead of this being the 
 case, the abject poverty and depressed condition of the 
 Irish people in 1727 were such, that, with burning, blis- 
 tering irony, Dean Swift proposed to relieve surplus 
 population by cultivating a taste for roasted babies, and 
 bringing yearly to the shambles, as dainty food for the 
 rich, 100,000 Irish infants! 
 
 It is difficult for one who has been looking over the 
 literature of Irish misery, as while writing this chapter I 
 have been doing, to speak in decorous terms of the com- 
 placent attribution of Irish want and suffering to over- 
 population which are to be found even in the works of 
 such high-minded men as Mill and Buckle. I know of 
 nothing better calculated to make the blood boil than
 
 Chap. II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 127 
 
 the cold accounts of the grasping, grinding tyranny to 
 which the Irish people have been subjected, and to 
 which, and not to any inability of the land to support its 
 population, Irish pauperism and Irish famine are to be 
 attributed; and were it not for the enervating effect 
 which the history of the world proves to be everywhere 
 the result of abject poverty, it would be difficult to resist 
 something like a feeling of contempt for a race who, 
 stung by such wrongs, have only occasionally murdered 
 a landlord! 
 
 Whether over-population ever did cause pauperism and 
 starvation, may be an open question; but the pauperism 
 and starvation of Ireland can no more be attributed to 
 this cause than can the slave trade be attributed to the 
 over-population of Africa, or the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem to the inability of subsistence to keep pace with 
 reproduction. Had Ireland been by nature a grove of 
 bananas and bread-fruit, had her coasts been lined by the 
 guano-deposits of the Chinchas, and the sun of lower 
 latitudes warmed into more abundant life her moist soil, 
 the social conditions that have prevailed there would 
 still have brought forth poverty and starvation. How 
 could there fail to be pauperism and famine in a country 
 where rack-rents wrested from the cultivator of the soil 
 all the produce of his labor except just enough to main- 
 tain life in good seasons; where tenure at will forbade 
 improvements and removed incentive to any but the most 
 wasteful and poverty-stricken culture; where the tenant 
 dared not accumulate capital, even if he could get it, for 
 fear the landlord would demand it in the rent; where in 
 fact he was an abject slave, who, at the nod of a human 
 being like himself, might at any time be driven from his 
 miserable mud cabin, a houseless, homeless, starving 
 wanderer, forbidden even to pluck the spontaneous fruits 
 of the earth, or to trap a wild hare to satisfy his hunger? 
 No matter how sparse the population, no matter what
 
 128 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE,, Book IL 
 
 the natural resources, are not pauperism and starvation 
 necessary consequences in a land where the producers of 
 wealth are compelled to work under conditions which 
 deprive them of hope, of self-respect, of energy, of thrift; 
 where absentee landlords drain away without return at 
 least a fourth of the net produce of the soil, and when, 
 besides them, a starving industry must support resident 
 landlords, with their horses and hounds, agents, jobbers, 
 middlemen and bailiffs, an alien state church to insult 
 religious prejudices, and an army of policemen and sol- 
 diers to overawe and hunt down any opposition to the 
 iniquitous system? Is it not impiety far worse than 
 atheism to charge upon natural laws misery so caused ? 
 
 What is true in these three cases will be found upon 
 examination true of all cases. So far as our knowl- 
 edge of facts goes, we may safely deny that the in- 
 crease of population has ever yet pressed upon subsist- 
 ence in such a way as to produce vice and misery; that 
 increase of numbers has ever yet decreased the relative 
 production of food. The famines of India, China, and 
 Ireland can no more be credited to over-population than 
 the famines of sparsely populated Brazil. The vice and 
 misery that come of want can no more be attributed 
 to the niggardliness of Nature than can the six mil- 
 lions slain by the sword of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane's 
 pyramid of skulls, or the extermination of the ancient 
 Britons or of the aboriginal inhabitants of the West 
 Indies.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY, 
 
 IF we turn from an examination of the facts "brought 
 forward in illustration of the Malthusian theory to con- 
 sider the analogies by which it is supported, we shall find 
 the same inconclusiveness. 
 
 The strength of the reproductive force in the animal 
 and vegetable kingdoms such facts as that a single pair 
 of salmon might, if preserved from their natural enemies 
 for a few years, fill the ocean; that a pair of rabbits 
 would, under the same circumstances, soon overrun a 
 continent; that many plants scatter their seeds by the 
 hundred fold, and some insects deposit thousands of 
 eggs; and that everywhere through these kingdoms each 
 species constantly tends to press, and when not limited 
 by the number of its enemies, evidently does press, 
 against the limits of subsistence is constantly cited, 
 from Malthus down to the text-books of the present day, 
 as showing that population likewise tends to press against 
 subsistence, and, when unrestrained by other means, its 
 natural increase must necessarily result in such low 
 wages and want, or, if that will not suffice, and the in- 
 crease still goes on, in such actual starvation, as will 
 keep it within the limits of subsistence. 
 
 But is this analogy valid? It is from the vegetable 
 and animal kingdoms that man's food is drawn, and 
 hence the greater strength of the reproductive force in 
 the vegetable and animal kingdoms than in man simply 
 proves the power of subsistence to increase faster than
 
 130 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Boole IL 
 
 population. Does not the fact that all of the things 
 which furnish man's subsistence have the power to multi- 
 ply many fold some of them many thousand fold, and 
 some of them many million or even billion fold while 
 he is only doubling his numbers, show that, let human 
 beings increase to the full extent of their reproductive 
 power, the increase of population can never exceed sub- 
 sistence? This is clear when it is remembered that 
 though in the vegetable and animal kingdoms each 
 species, by virtue of its reproductive power, naturally 
 and necessarily presses against the conditions which limit 
 its further increase, yet these conditions are nowhere 
 fixed and final. No species reaches the ultimate limit of 
 soil, water, air, and sunshine; but the actual limit of 
 each is in the existence of other species, its rivals, its 
 enemies, or its food. Thus the conditions which limit 
 the existence of such of these species as afford him sub- 
 sistence man can extend (in some cases his mere appear- 
 ance will extend them), and thus the reproductive forces 
 of the species which supply his wants, instead of wasting 
 themselves against their former limit, start forward in 
 his service at a pace which his powers of increase can- 
 not rival. If he but shoot hawks, food-birds will in- 
 crease, if he but trap foxes the wild rabbits will multiply; 
 the honey bee moves with the pioneer, and on the or- 
 ganic matter with which man's presence fills the rivers, 
 fishes feed. 
 
 Even if any consideration of final causes be excluded; 
 even if it be not permitted to suggest that the high and 
 constant reproductive force in vegetables and animals 
 has been ordered to enable them to subserve the uses of 
 man, and that therefore the pressure of the lower forms 
 of life against subsistence does not tend to show that it 
 must likewise be so with man, "the roof and crown of 
 things;" yet there still remains a distinction between 
 man and all other forms of life that destroys the analogy.
 
 Chap.m. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 131 
 
 Of all living things, man is the only one who can give 
 play to the reproductive forces, more powerful than his 
 own, which supply him with food. Beast, insect, bird, 
 and fish take only what they find. Their increase is at 
 the expense of their food, and when they have reached 
 the existing limits of food, their food must increase be- 
 fore they can increase. But unlike that of any other 
 living thing, the increase of man involves the increase of 
 his food. If bears instead of men had been shipped 
 from Europe to the North American continent, there 
 would now be no more bears than in the time of Colum- 
 bus, and possibly fewer, for bear food would not have 
 been increased nor the conditions of bear life extended, 
 by the bear immigration, but probably the reverse. But 
 within the limits of the United States alone, there are 
 now forty-five millions of men where then there were 
 only a few hundred thousand, and yet there is now within 
 that territory much more food per capita for the forty- 
 five millions than there was then for the few hundred 
 thousand. It is not the increase of food that has caused 
 this increase of men; but the increase of men that has 
 brought about the increase of food. There is more food, 
 simply because there are more men. 
 
 Here is a difference between the animal and the man. 
 Both the jay-hawk and the man eat chickens, but the 
 more jay-hawks the fewer chickens, while the more men 
 the more chickens. Both the seal and the man eat 
 salmon, but when a seal takes a salmon there is a salmon 
 the less, and were seals to increase past a certain point 
 salmon must diminish; while by placing the spawn of the 
 salmon under favorable conditions man can so increase 
 the number of salmon as more than to make up for all he 
 may take, and thus, no matter how much men may in- 
 crease, their increase need never outrun the supply of 
 salmon. 
 
 In short, while all through the vegetable and animal
 
 132 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book 11 
 
 kingdoms the limit of subsistence is independent of the 
 thing subsisted, with man the limit of subsistence is, 
 within the final limits of earth, air, water, and sunshine, 
 dependent upon man himself. And this being the case, 
 the analogy which it is sought to draw between the lower 
 forms of life and man manifestly fails. While vegetables 
 and animals do press against the limits of subsistence, 
 man cannot press against the limits of his subsistence 
 until the limits of the globe are reached. Observe, this 
 is not merely true of the whole, but of all the parts. As 
 we cannot reduce the level of the smallest bay or harbor 
 without reducing the level not merely of the ocean with 
 which it communicates, but of all the seas and oceans of 
 the world, so the limit of subsistence in any particular 
 place is not the physical limit of that place, but the 
 physical limit of the globe. Fifty square miles of soil 
 will in the present state of the productive arts yield sub- 
 sistence for only some thousands of people, but on the 
 fifty square miles which comprise the city of London 
 some three and a half millions of people are maintained, 
 and subsistence increases as population increases. So far 
 as the limit of subsistence is concerned, London may grow 
 to a population of a hundred millions, or five hundred 
 millions, or a thousand millions, for she draws for sub- 
 sistence upon the whole globe, and the limit which sub- 
 sistence sets to her growth in population is the limit of 
 the globe to furnish food for its inhabitants. 
 
 But here will arise another idea from which the Mal- 
 thusian theory derives great support that of the dimin- 
 ishing productiveness of land. As conclusively proving 
 the law of diminishing productiveness it is said in the 
 current treatises that were it not true that beyond a cer- 
 tain point land yields less and less to additional applica- 
 tions of labor and capital, increasing population would 
 not cause any extension of cultivation, but that all the 
 increased supplies needed could and would be raised
 
 . INFERENCES PROM ANALOGY. 133 
 
 without taking into cultivation any fresh ground. As- 
 sent to this seems to involve assent to the doctrine that 
 the difficulty of obtaining subsistence must increase with 
 increasing population. 
 
 But I think the necessity is only in seeming. If the 
 proposition be analyzed it will be seen to belong to a 
 class that depend for validity upon an implied or sug- 
 gested qualification a truth relatively, which taken ab- 
 solutely becomes a non-truth. For that man cannot 
 exhaust or lessen the powers of nature follows from the 
 indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force. 
 Production and consumption are only relative terms. 
 Speaking absolutely, man neither produces nor con- 
 sumes. The whole human race, were they to labor to 
 infinity, could not make this rolling sphere one atom 
 heavier or one atom lighter, could not add to or diminish 
 by one iota the sum of the forces whose everlasting cir- 
 cling produces all motion and sustains all life. As the 
 water that we take from the ocean must again return to 
 the ocean, so the food we take from the reservoirs of 
 nature is, from the moment we take it, on its way back 
 to those reservoirs. What we draw from a limited ex- 
 tent of land may temporarily reduce the productiveness 
 of that land, because the return may be to other land, or 
 may be divided between that land and other land, or, 
 perhaps, all land; but this possibility lessens with in- 
 creasing area, and ceases when the whole globe is con- 
 sidered. That the earth could maintain a thousand bil- 
 lions of people as easily as a thousand millions is a neces- 
 sary deduction from the manifest truths that, at least so 
 far as our agency is concerned, matter is eternal and 
 force must forever continue to act. Life does not use 
 up the forces that maintain life. We come into the 
 material universe bringing nothing; we take nothing 
 away when we depart. The human being, physically 
 considered, is but a transient form, of matter, a changing
 
 134 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book 11 
 
 mode of motion. The matter remains and the force 
 persists. Nothing is lessened, nothing is weakened. 
 And from this it follows that the limit to the population 
 of the globe can be only the limit of space. 
 
 Now this limitation of space this danger that the 
 human race may increase beyond the possibility of finding 
 elbow room is so far off as to have for us no more prac- 
 tical interest than the recurrence of the glacial period or 
 the final extinguishment of the sun. Yet remote and 
 shadowy as it is, it is this possibility which gives to the 
 Malthusian theory its apparently self-evident character. 
 But if we follow it, even this shadow will disappear. 
 It, also, springs from a false analogy. That vegetable 
 and animal life tend to press against the limits of space 
 does not prove the same tendency in human life. 
 
 Granted that man is only a more highly developed 
 animal; that the ring-tailed monkey is a distant relative 
 who has gradually developed acrobatic tendencies, and 
 the hump-backed whale a far-off connection who in early 
 life took to the sea granted that back of these he is kin 
 to the vegetable, and is still subject to the same laws as 
 plants, fishes, birds, and beasts. Yet there is still this 
 difference between man and all other animals he is the 
 only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the 
 only animal that is never satisfied. The wants of every 
 other living thing are uniform and fixed. The ox of to- 
 day aspires to no more than did the ox when man first 
 yoked him. The sea gull of the English Channel, who 
 poises himself above the swift steamer, wants no better 
 food or lodging than the gulls who circled round as the 
 keels of Caesar's galleys first grated on a British beach. 
 Of all that nature offers them, be it ever so abundant, all 
 living things save man can take, and care for, only 
 enough to supply wants which are definite and fixed. 
 The only use they can make of additional supplies or 
 additional opportunities is to multiply.
 
 Chap.ni. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 135 
 
 But not so with man. No sooner are his animal wants 
 satisfied than new wants arise. Food he wants first, as 
 does the beast; shelter next, as does the beast; and these 
 given, his reproductive instincts assert their sway, as do 
 those of the beast. But here man and beast part com- 
 pany. The beast never goes further; the man has but 
 set his feet on the first step of an infinite progression a 
 progression upon which the beast never enters; a pro- 
 gression away from and above the beast. 
 
 The demand for quantity once satisfied, he seeks 
 quality. The very desires that he has in common with 
 the beast become extended, refined, exalted. It is not 
 merely hunger, but taste, that seeks gratification in food; 
 in clothes, he seeks not merely comfort, but adornment; 
 the rude shelter becomes a house; the undiscriminating 
 sexual attraction begins to transmute itself into subtile in- 
 fluences, and the hard and common stock of animal life 
 to blossom and to bloom into shapes of delicate beauty. 
 As power to gratify his wants increases, so does aspira- 
 tion grow. Held down to lower levels of desire, Lucullus 
 will sup with Lucullus; twelve boars turn on spits that 
 Antony's mouthful of meat maybe done to a turn; every 
 kingdom of Nature be ransacked to add to Cleopatra's 
 charms, and marble colonnades and hanging gardens and 
 pyramids that rival the hills arise. Passing into higher 
 forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant and fit- 
 fully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man. The eyes 
 of the mind are opened, and he longs to know. He 
 braves the scorching heat of the desert and the icy blasts 
 of the polar sea, but not for food; he watches all night, 
 but it is to trace the circling of the eternal stars. He 
 adds toil to toil, to gratify a hunger no animal has felt; 
 to assuage a thirst no beast can know. 
 
 Out upon nature, in upon himself, back through the 
 mists that shroud the past, forward into the darkness 
 that overhangs the future, turns the restless desire that
 
 136 POPULATION" AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II 
 
 arises when tbe animal wants slumber in satisfaction. 
 Beneath things, he seeks the law; he would know how 
 the globe was forged and the stars were hung, and trace 
 to their origins the springs of life. And, then, as the 
 man develops his nobler nature, there arises the desire 
 higher yet the passion of passions, the hope of hopes 
 the desire that he, even he, may somehow aid in making 
 life better and brighter, in destroying want and sin, sor- 
 row and shame. He masters and curbs the animal; he 
 turns his back upon the feast and renounces the place of 
 power; he leaves it to others to accumulate wealth, to 
 gratify pleasant tastes, to bask themselves in the warm 
 sunshine of the brief day. He works for those he never 
 saw and never can see; for a fame, or maybe but for a 
 scant justice, that can only come long after the clods 
 have rattled upon his coffin lid. He toils in the advance, 
 where it is cold, and there is little cheer from men, and 
 the stones are sharp and the brambles thick. Amid the 
 scoffs of the present and the sneers that stab like knives, 
 he builds for the future; he cuts the trail that progress- 
 ive humanity may hereafter broaden into a highroad. 
 Into higher, grander spheres desire mounts and beckons, 
 and a star that rises in the east leads him on. Lo! the 
 pulses of the man throb with the yearnings of the god 
 he would aid in the process of the suns! 
 
 Is not the gulf too wide for the analogy to span? Give 
 more food, open fuller conditions of life, and the vege- 
 table or animal can but multiply; the man will develop. 
 In the one the expansive force can but extend existence 
 in new numbers; in the other, it will inevitably tend to 
 extend existence in higher forms and wider powers. 
 Man is an animal; but he is an animal plus something 
 else. He is the mythic earth-tree, whose roots are in the 
 ground, but whose topmost branches may blossom in the 
 heavens! 
 
 Whichever way it be turned, the reasoning by which
 
 . INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 137 
 
 this theory of the constant tendency of population to 
 press against the limits of subsistence is supported shows 
 an unwarranted assumption, an undistributed middle, as 
 the logicians would say. Facts do not warrant it, anal- 
 ogy does not countenance it. It is a pure chimera of 
 the imagination, such as those that for a long time pre- 
 vented men from recognizing the rotundity and motion 
 of the earth. It is just such a theory as that under- 
 neath us everything not fastened to the earth must fall 
 off; as that a ball dropped from the mast of a ship in 
 motion must fall behind the mast; as that a live fish 
 placed in a vessel full of water will displace no water. 
 It is as unfounded, if not as grotesque, as an assumption 
 we can imagine Adam might have made had he been of 
 an arithmetical turn of mind and figured on the growth 
 of his first baby from the rate of its early months. From 
 the fact that at birth it weighed ten pounds and in eight 
 months thereafter twenty pounds, he might, with the 
 arithmetical knowledge which some sages have supposed 
 him to possess, have ciphered out a result quite as strik- 
 ing as that of Mr. Malthus; namely, that by the time it 
 got to be ten years old it would be as heavy as an ox, at 
 twelve as heavy as an elephant, and at thirty would 
 weigh no less than 175,716,339,548 tons. 
 
 The fact is, there is no more reason for us to trouble 
 ourselves about the pressure of population upon subsist- 
 ence than there was for Adam to worry himself about the 
 rapid growth of his baby. So far as an inference is 
 really warranted by facts and suggested by analogy, it is 
 that the law of population includes such beautiful adap- 
 tations as investigation has already shown in other 
 natural laws, and that we are no more warranted in as- 
 suming that the instinct of reproduction, in the natural 
 development of society, tends to produce misery and vice, 
 than we should be in assuming that the force of gravita- 
 tion must hurl the moon to the earth and the earth to the
 
 138 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 
 
 sun, or than in assuming from the contraction of water 
 with reductions of temperature down to thirty-two 
 degrees that rivers and lakes must freeze to the bottom 
 with every frost, and the temperate regions of earth be 
 thus rendered uninhabitable by even moderate winters. 
 That, besides the positive and prudential checks of Mal- 
 thus, there is a third check which comes into play with 
 the elevation of the standard of comfort and the develop- 
 ment of the intellect, is pointed to by many well-known 
 facts. The proportion of births is notoriously greater in 
 new settlements, where the struggle with nature leaves 
 little opportunity for intellectual life, and among the 
 poverty -bound classes of older countries, who in the 
 midst of wealth are deprived of all its advantages and re- 
 duced to all but an animal existence, than it is among 
 the classes to whom the increase of wealth has brought 
 independence, leisure, comfort, and a fuller and more 
 varied life. This fact, long ago recognized in the 
 homely adage, "a rich man for luck, and a poor man for 
 children," was noted by Adam Smith, who says it is not 
 uncommon to find a poor half-starved Highland woman 
 has been the mother of twenty-three or twenty-four chil- 
 dren, and is everywhere so clearly perceptible that it is 
 only necessary to allude to it. 
 
 If the real law of population is thus indicated, as I 
 think it must be, then the tendency to increase, instead 
 of being always uniform, is strong where a greater popu- 
 lation would give increased comfort, and where the per- 
 petuity of the race is threatened by the mortality in- 
 duced by adverse conditions; but weakens just as the 
 higher development of the individual becomes possible 
 and the perpetuity of the race is assured. In other 
 words, the law of population accords with and is subordi- 
 nate to the law of intellectual development, and any 
 danger that human beings may be brought into a world 
 where they cannot be provided for arises not from the
 
 Chap.m. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 139 
 
 ordinances of nature, but from social mal-adjustments 
 that in the midst of wealth condemn men to want. The 
 truth of this will, I think, be conclusively demonstrated 
 when, after having cleared the ground, we trace out the 
 true laws of social growth. But it would disturb the 
 natural order of the argument to anticipate them now. 
 If I have succeeded in maintaining a negative in show- 
 ing that the Malthusian theory is not proved by the rea- 
 soning by which it is supported it is enough for the 
 present. In the next chapter I propose to take the 
 affirmative and show that it is disproved by facts.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DISPKOOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 
 
 So deeply rooted and thoroughly entwined with the 
 reasonings of the current political economy is this doc- 
 trine that increase of population tends to reduce wages 
 and produce poverty, so completely does it harmonize 
 with many popular notions, and so liable is it to recur in 
 different shapes, that I have thought it necessary to meet 
 and show in some detail the insufficiency of the argu- 
 ments by which it is supported, before bringing it to the 
 test of facts; for the general acceptance of this theory 
 adds a most striking instance to the many which the his- 
 tory of thought affords of how easily men ignore facts 
 when blindfolded by a preaccepted theory. 
 
 To the supreme and final test of facts we can easily 
 bring this theory. Manifestly the question whether in- 
 crease of population necessarily tends to reduce wages 
 and cause want, is simply the question whether it tends 
 to reduce the amount of wealth that can be produced by 
 a given amount of labor. 
 
 This is what the current doctrine holds. The accepted 
 theory is, that the more that is required from nature the 
 less generously does she respond, so that doubling the 
 application of labor will not double the product; and 
 hence, increase of population must tend to reduce wages 
 and deepen poverty, or, in the phrase of Malthus, must 
 result in vice and misery. To quote the language of 
 John Stuart Mill: 
 
 " A greater number of people cannot, in any given state of civill-
 
 Chop. TV. DISPBOOF OF THE MALTHUSIAST THEOKT. 141 
 
 zation, be collectively so well provided for as a smaller. The 
 niggardliness of nature, not the injustice of society, is the cause of 
 the penalty attached to over-population. An unjust distribution of 
 wealth does not aggravate the evil, but, at most, causes it be some- 
 what earlier felt. It is in vain to say that all mouths which the in- 
 crease of mankind calls into existence bring with them hands. The 
 new mouths require as much food as the old ones, and the hands do 
 not produce as much. If all instruments of production were held in 
 joint property by the whole people, and the produce divided with 
 perfect equality among them, and if in a society thus constituted, 
 industry were as energetic and the produce as ample as at the present 
 time, there would be enough to make all the existing population ex- 
 tremely comfortable; but when that population had doubled itself, 
 as, with existing habits of the people, under such an encouragement, 
 it undoubtedly would in little more than twenty years, what would 
 then be their condition? Unless the arts of production were in the 
 same time improved in an almost unexampled degree, the inferior 
 soils which must be resorted to, and the more laborious and scantily 
 remunerative cultivation which must be employed on the superior 
 soils, to procure food for so much larger a population, would, by an 
 insuperable necessity, render every individual in the community 
 poorer than before. If the population continued to increase at the 
 same rate, a time would soon arrive when no one would have more 
 than mere necessaries, and, soon after, a time when no one would 
 have a sufficiency of those, and the further increase of population 
 would be arrested by death." * 
 
 All this I deny. I assert that the very reverse of these 
 propositions is true. I assert that in any given state of 
 civilization a greater number of people can collectively 
 be better provided for than a smaller. I assert that the 
 injustice of society, not the niggardliness of nature, is 
 the cause of the want and misery which the current 
 theory attributes to over-population. I assert that the 
 new mouths which an increasing population calls into 
 existence require no more food than the old ones, while 
 the hands they bring with them can in the natural order 
 of things produce more. I assert that, other things being 
 equal, the greater the population, the greater the com- 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, Book L, Chap. XIII, Sec, 2.
 
 142 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book It 
 
 fort which an equitable distribution of wealth would 
 give to each individual. I assert that in a state of 
 equality the natural increase of population would con- 
 stantly tend to make every individual richer instead of 
 poorer. 
 
 I thus distinctly join issue, and submit the question to 
 the test of facts. 
 
 But observe (for even at the risk of repetition I wish 
 to warn the reader against a confusion of thought that 
 is observable even in writers of great reputation), that 
 the question of fact into which this issue resolves itself is 
 not in what stage of population is most subsistence pro- 
 duced? but in what stage of population is there exhibited 
 the greatest power of producing wealth? For the power 
 of producing wealth in any form is the power of produc- 
 ing subsistence and the consumption of wealth in any 
 form, or of wealth-producing power, is equivalent to the 
 consumption of subsistence. I have, for instance, some 
 money in my pocket. With it I may buy either food or 
 cigars or jewelry or theater tickets, and just as I expend 
 my money do I determine labor to the production of 
 food, of cigars, of jewelry, or of theatrical representa- 
 tions. A set of diamonds has a value equal to so many 
 barrels of flour that is to say, it takes on the average as 
 much labor to produce the diamonds as it would to pro- 
 duce so much flour. If I load my wife with diamonds, it 
 is as much an exertion of subsistence-producing power 
 as though I had devoted so much food to purposes of 
 ostentation. If I keep a footman, I take a possible plow- 
 man from the plow. The breeding and maintenance of 
 a race-horse require care and labor which would suffice 
 for the breeding and maintenance of many work-horses. 
 The destruction of wealth involved in a general illumina- 
 tion or the firing of a salute is equivalent to the burning 
 up of so much food; the keeping of a regiment of sol- 
 diers, or of a war-ship and her crew, is the diversion to
 
 Chap. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAJf THEORY. 143 
 
 unproductive uses of labor that could produce subsist- 
 ence for many thousands of people. Thus the power of 
 any population to produce the necessaries of life is not 
 to be measured by the necessaries of life actually pro- 
 duced, but by the expenditure of power in all modes. 
 
 There is no necessity for abstract reasoning. The 
 question is one of simple fact. Does the relative power 
 of producing wealth decrease with the increase of popu- 
 lation? 
 
 The facts are so patent that it is only necessary to call 
 attention to them. We have, in modern times, seen 
 many communities advance in population. Have they 
 not at the same time advanced even more rapidly in 
 wealth? We see many communities still increasing in 
 population. Are they not also increasing their wealth 
 still faster? Is there any doubt that while England has 
 been increasing her population at the rate of two per 
 cent, per annum, her wealth has been growing in still 
 greater proportion? Is it not true that while the popu- 
 lation of the United States has been doubling every 
 twenty-nine* years her wealth has been doubling at 
 much shorter intervals? Is it not true that under sim- 
 ilar conditions that is to say, among communities of 
 similar people in a similar stage of civilization the most 
 densely populated community is also the richest? Are 
 not the more densely populated Eastern States richer in 
 proportion to population than the more sparsely popu- 
 lated Western or Southern States? Is 'not England, 
 where population is even denser than in the Eastern 
 States of the Union, also richer in proportion? Where 
 will you find wealth devoted with the most lavishness to 
 non-productive use costly buildings, fine furniture, lux- 
 urious equipages, statues, pictures, pleasure gardens and 
 yachts? Is it not where population is densest rather 
 
 *The rate up to 1860 was 35 per cent, each decade.
 
 144: POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Boole H 
 
 than where it is sparsest? Where will you find in largest 
 proportion those whom the general production suffices to 
 keep without productive labor on their part men of in- 
 come and of elegant leisure, thieves, policemen, menial 
 servants, lawyers, men of letters, and the like? Is it not 
 where population is dense rather than where it is sparse? 
 Whence is it that capital overflows for remunerative in- 
 vestment? Is it not from densely populated countries to 
 sparsely populated countries? These things conclusively 
 show that wealth is greatest where population is densest; 
 that the production of wealth to a given amount of labor 
 increases as population increases. These things are ap- 
 parent wherever we turn our eyes. On the same level of 
 civilization, the same stage of the productive arts, gov- 
 ernment, etc., the most populous countries are always 
 the most wealthy. 
 
 Let us take a particular case, and that a case which of 
 all that can be cited seems at first blush best to support 
 the theory we are considering the case of a community 
 where, while population has largely increased, wages 
 have greatly decreased, and it is not a matter of dubious 
 inference but of obvious fact that the generosity of 
 nature has lessened. That community is California. 
 When upon the discovery of gold the first wave of immi- 
 gration poured into California it found a country in 
 which nature was in the most generous mood. From 
 the river banks and bars the glittering deposits of thou- 
 sands of years could be taken by the most primitive appli- 
 ances, in amounts which made an ounce ($16) per day 
 only ordinary wages. The plains, covered with nutri- 
 tious grasses, were alive with countless herds of horses 
 and cattle, so plenty that any traveler was at liberty to 
 shift his saddle to a fresh steed, or to kill a bullock if he 
 needed a steak, leaving the hide, its only valuable part, 
 for the owner. From the rich soil which came first 
 under cultivation, the mere plowing and sowing brought
 
 Chap.ir. DISPKOOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEOKT. 145 
 
 crops that in older countries, if procured at all, can only 
 be procured by the most thorough manuring and culti- 
 vation. In early California, amid this profusion of 
 nature, wages and interest were higher than anywhere 
 else in the world. 
 
 This virgin profusion of nature has been steadily giv- 
 ing way before the greater and greater demands which an 
 increasing population has made upon it. Poorer and 
 poorer diggings have been worked, until now no dig- 
 gings worth speaking of can be found, and gold mining 
 requires much capital, large skill, and elaborate machin- 
 ery, and involves great risks. "Horses cost money," 
 and cattle bred on the sage-brush plains of Nevada are 
 brought by railroad across the mountains and killed in 
 San Francisco shambles, while farmers are beginning to 
 save their straw and look for manure, and land is in cul- 
 tivation which will hardly yield a crop three years out 
 of four without irrigation. At the same time wages and 
 interest have steadily gone down. Many men are now 
 glad to work for a week for less than they once demanded 
 for the day, and money is loaned by the year for a rate 
 which once would hardly have been thought extortionate 
 by the month. Is the connection between the reduced 
 productiveness of nature and the reduced rate of wages 
 that of cause and effect? Is it true that wages are lower 
 because labor yields less wealth? On the contrary! In- 
 stead of the wealth-producing power of labor being less 
 in California in 1879 than in 1849, I am convinced that 
 it is greater. And, it seems to me, that no one who 
 considers how enormously during these years the effici- 
 ency of labor in California has been increased by roads, 
 wharves, flumes, railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, and 
 machinery of all kinds; by a closer connection with the 
 rest of the world; and by the numberless economies re- 
 sulting from a larger population, can doubt that the 
 return which labor receives from nature in California is
 
 146 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Boob IL 
 
 on the whole much greater now than it was in the days of 
 unexhausted placers and virgin soil the increase in the 
 power of the human factor having more than compen- 
 sated for the decline in the power of the natural factor. 
 That this conclusion is the correct one is proved by many 
 facts which show that the consumption of wealth is now 
 much greater, as compared with the number of laborers, 
 than it was then. Instead of a population composed al- 
 most exclusively of men in the prime of life, a large pro- 
 portion of women and children are now supported, and 
 other non-producers have increased in much greater ratio 
 than the population; luxury has grown far more than 
 wages have fallen; where the best houses were cloth and 
 paper shanties, are now mansions whose magnificence 
 rivals European palaces; there are liveried carriages on 
 the streets of San Francisco and pleasure yachts on her 
 bay; the class who can live sumptuously on their incomes 
 has steadily grown; there are rich men beside whom the 
 richest of the earlier years would seem little better than 
 paupers in short, there are on every hand the most 
 striking and conclusive evidences that the production 
 and consumption of wealth have increased with even 
 greater rapidity than the increase of population, and that 
 if any class obtains less it is solely because of the greater 
 inequality of distribution. 
 
 What is obvious in this particular instance is obvious 
 where the survey is extended. The richest countries 
 are not those where nature is most prolific; but those 
 where labor is most efficient not Mexico, but Massa- 
 chusetts; not Brazil, but England. The countries where 
 population is densest and presses hardest upon the capa- 
 bilities of nature, are, other things being equal, the 
 countries where the largest proportion of the produce 
 can be devoted to luxury and the support of non-pro- 
 ducers, the countries where capital overflows, the coun- 
 tries that upon exigency, such as war, can stand the
 
 Chop. IT. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAST THEORY. 147 
 
 greatest drain. That the production of wealth must, in 
 proportion to the labor employed, be greater in a densely 
 populated country like England than in new countries 
 where wages and interest are higher, is evident from the 
 fact that, though a much smaller proportion of the popu- 
 lation is engaged in productive labor, a much larger sur- 
 plus is available for other purposes than that of supplying 
 physical needs. In a new country the whole available 
 force of the community is devoted to production there 
 is no well man who does not do productive work of some 
 kind, no well woman exempt from household tasks. 
 There are no paupers or beggars, no idle rich, no class 
 whose labor is devoted to ministering to the convenience 
 or caprice of the rich, no purely literary or scientific 
 class, no criminal class who live by preying upon society, 
 no large class maintained to guard society against them. 
 Yet with the whole force of the community thus devoted 
 to production, no such consumption of wealth in propor- 
 tion to the whole population takes place, or can be 
 afforded, as goes on in the old country; for, though the 
 condition of the lowest class is better, and there is no one 
 who cannot get a living, there is no one who gets much 
 more few or none who can live in anything like what 
 would be called luxury, or even comfort, in the older 
 country. That is to say, that in the older country the 
 consumption of wealth in proportion to population is 
 greater, although the proportion of labor devoted to the 
 production of wealth is less or that fewer laborers pro- 
 duce more wealth; for wealth must be produced before it 
 can be consumed. 
 
 It may, however, be said, that the superior wealth of 
 older countries is due not to superior productive power, 
 but to the accumulations of wealth which the new country 
 has not yet had time to make. 
 
 It will be well for a moment to consider this idea of 
 accumulated wealth. The truth is, that wealth can be
 
 148 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Poo* IL 
 
 accumulated but to a slight degree, and that communities 
 really live, as the vast majority of individuals live, from 
 hand to mouth. Wealth will not bear much accumula- 
 tion; except in a few unimportant forms it will not keep. 
 The matter of the universe, which, when worked up by 
 labor into desirable forms, constitutes wealth, is con- 
 stantly tending back to its original state. Some forms 
 of wealth will last for a few hours, some for a few days, 
 some for a few months, some for a few years; and there 
 are very few forms of wealth that can be passed from one 
 generation to another. Take wealth in some of its most 
 useful and permanent forms ships, houses, railways, 
 machinery. Unless labor is constantly exerted in pre- 
 serving and renewing them, they will almost immediately 
 become useless. Stop labor in any community, and 
 wealth would vanish almost as the jet of a fountain 
 vanishes when the flow of water is shut off. Let labor 
 again exert itself, and wealth will almost as immediately 
 reappear. This has been long noticed where war or 
 other calamity has swept away wealth, leaving population 
 unimpaired. There is not less wealth in London to-day 
 because of the great fire of 1666; nor yet is there less 
 wealth in Chicago because of the great fire of 1870. On 
 those fire-swept acres have arisen, under the hand of 
 labor, more magnificent buildings, filled with greater 
 stocks of goods; and the stranger who, ignorant of the 
 history of the city, passes along those stately avenues 
 would not dream that a few years ago all lay so black and 
 bare. The same principle that wealth is constantly re- 
 created is obvious in every new city. Given the same 
 population and the same efficiency of labor, and the town 
 of yesterday will possess and enjoy as much as the town 
 founded by the Romans. No one who has seen Mel- 
 bourne or San Francisco can doubt that if the population 
 of England were transported to New Zealand, leaving all 
 accumulated wealth behind, New Zealand would soon bo
 
 Chap. IT. DISPEOOF OF THE MALTHTJSIAN" THEORY. 149 
 
 as rich as England is now; or, conversely, that if the 
 population of England were reduced to the sparseness of 
 the present population of New Zealand, in spite of accu- 
 mulated wealth, they would soon be as poor. Accumu- 
 lated wealth seems to play just about such a part in rela- 
 tion to the social organism as accumulated nutriment 
 does to the physical organism. Some accumulated wealth 
 is necessary, and to a certain extent it may be drawn 
 upon in exigencies; but the wealth produced by past gen- 
 erations can no more account for the consumption of 
 the present than the dinners he ate last year can supply a 
 man with present strength. 
 
 But without these considerations, which I allude to 
 more for their general than for their special bearing, it 
 is evident that superior accumulations of wealth can ac- 
 count for greater consumption of wealth only in cases where 
 accumulated wealth is decreasing, and that wherever the 
 volume of accumulated wealth is maintained, and even 
 more obviously where it is increasing, a greater consump- 
 tion of wealth must imply a greater production of 
 wealth. Now, whether we compare different communi- 
 ties with each other, or the same community at different 
 times, it is obvious that the progressive state, which is 
 marked by increase of population, is also marked by an 
 increased consumption and an increased accumulation of 
 wealth, not merely in the aggregate, but per capita. 
 And hence, increase of population, so far as it has yet 
 anywhere gone, does not mean a reduction, but an in- 
 crease in the average production of wealth. 
 
 And the reason of this is obvious. For, even if the 
 increase of population does reduce the power of the 
 natural factor of wealth, by compelling a resort to poorer 
 soils, etc., it yet so vastly increases the power of the 
 human factor as more than to compensate. Twenty 
 men working together will, where nature is niggardly, 
 produce more than twenty times the wealth that one ma*
 
 150 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book ZZ. 
 
 can produce where nature is most bountiful. The denser 
 the population the more minute becomes the subdivision 
 of labor, the greater the economies of production and 
 distribution, and, hence, the very reverse of the Malthu- 
 sian doctrine is true; and, within the limits in which we 
 have reason to suppose increase would still go on, in any 
 given state of civilization a greater number of people can 
 produce a larger proportionate amount of wealth, and 
 more fully supply their wants, than can a smaller 
 number. 
 
 Look simply at the facts. Can anything be clearer 
 than that the cause of the poverty which festers in the 
 centers of civilization is not in the weakness of the pro- 
 ductive forces? In countries where poverty is deepest, 
 the forces of production are evidently strong enough, if 
 fully employed, to provide for the lowest not merely 
 comfort but luxury. The industrial paralysis, the com- 
 mercial depression which curses the civilized world to-day, 
 evidently springs from no lack of productive power. 
 Whatever be the trouble, it is clearly not in the want of 
 ability to produce wealth. 
 
 It is this very fact that want appears where produc- 
 tive power is greatest and the production of wealth is 
 largest that constitutes the enigma which perplexes the 
 civilized world, and which we are trying to unravel. 
 Evidently the Malthusian theory, which attributes want 
 to the decrease of productive power, will not explain it. 
 That theory is utterly inconsistent with all the facts. It 
 is really a gratuitous attribution to the laws of God of 
 results which, even from this examination, we may infer 
 really spring from the mal-adjustments of men an infer- 
 ence which, as we proceed, will become a demonstration. 
 For we have yet to find what does produce poverty amid 
 advancing wealth.
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 THE LAWS OF DISTEIBUTION. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHAPTER III, 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE INQUIRY NARROWED TO THE LAWS 
 OF DISTRIBUTION NECESSARY RELA- 
 TION OF THESE LAWS. 
 
 RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 
 
 INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 
 
 OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND OF PROFITS 
 OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR INTEREST. 
 
 THE LAW OF INTEREST. 
 
 WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 
 
 CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF 
 THESE LAWS. 
 
 THE STATICS OP THB PROBLEM THUS 
 EXPLAINED.
 
 The machines that are first invented to perform any particular 
 movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists 
 generally discover that with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of 
 motion than had originally been employed, the same effects may be 
 more easily produced. The first philosophical systems, in the same 
 manner, are always the most complex, and a particular connecting 
 chain, or principle, is generally thought necessary to unite every two 
 seemingly disjointed appearances; but it often happens that one 
 great connecting principle is afterward found to be sufficient to bind 
 together all the discordant phenomena that occur in a whole species 
 of things. Adam Smith, Essay on the Principles which Lead and 
 Direct Philosophical Inquiries, as Illustrated by the History of 
 Astronomy.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 tHE INQUIRY NARROWED TO THE LAWS OF DISTRIBU- 
 TION THE NECESSARY RELATION OF THESE LAWS. 
 
 The preceding examination has, I think, conclusively 
 shown that the explanation currently given, in the name 
 of political economy, of the problem we are attempting 
 to solve, is no explanation at all. 
 
 That with material progress wages fail to increase, but 
 rather tend to decrease, cannot be explained by the theory 
 that the increase of laborers constantly tends to divide 
 into smaller portions the capital sum from which wages 
 are paid. For, as we have seen, wages do not come from 
 capital, but are the direct produce of labor. Each pro- 
 ductive laborer, as he works, creates his wages, and with 
 every additional laborer there is an addition to the true 
 wages fund an addition to the common stock of wealth, 
 which, generally speaking, is considerably greater than 
 the amount he draws in wages. 
 
 Nor, yet, can it be explained by the theory that nature 
 yields less to the increasing drafts which an increasing 
 population make upon her; for the increased efficiency 
 of labor makes the progressive state a state of continually 
 increasing production per capita, and the countries of 
 densest population, other things being equal, are always 
 the countries of greatest wealth. 
 
 So far, we have only increased the perplexities of the 
 problem. We have overthrown a theory which did, in 
 some sort of fashion, explain existing facts; but in doing 
 so have only made existing facts seem more inexplicable. 
 It is as though, while the Ptolemaic theory was yet in
 
 154 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book DL 
 
 its strength, it had been proved simply that the sun and 
 stars do not revolve about the earth. The phenomena 
 of day and night, and of the apparent motion of the 
 celestial bodies, would yet remain unexplained, inevitably 
 to reinstate the old theory unless a better one took 
 its place. Our reasoning has led us to the conclusion 
 that each productive laborer produces his own wages, and 
 that increase in the number of laborers should increase 
 the wages of each; whereas, the apparent facts are that 
 there are many laborers who cannot obtain remunerative 
 employment, and that increase in the number of laborers 
 brings diminution of wages. We have, in short, proved 
 that wages ought to be highest where in reality they are 
 lowest. 
 
 Nevertheless, even in doing this we have made some 
 progress. Next to finding what we look for, is to dis- 
 cover where it is useless to look. We havfe at least nar- 
 rowed the field of inquiry. For this, at least, is now 
 clear that the cause which, in spite of the enormous 
 increase of productive power, confines the great body of 
 producers to the least share of the product upon which 
 they will consent to live, is not the limitation of capital, 
 nor yet the limitation of the powers of nature which 
 respond to labor. As it is not, therefore, to be found in 
 the laws which bound the production of wealth, it must 
 be sought in the laws which govern distribution. To 
 them let us turn. 
 
 It will be necessary to review in its main branches the 
 whole subject of the distribution of wealth. To discover 
 the cause which, as population increases and the produc- 
 tive arts advance, deepens the poverty of the lowest 
 class, we must find the law which determines what part 
 of the produce is distributed to labor as wages. To find 
 the law of wages, or at least to make sure when we have 
 found it, we must also determine the laws which fix the
 
 Chap. I. THEIR NECESSA.RY RELATION. 155 
 
 part of the produce which goes to capital and the part 
 which goes to land owners, for as land, labor, and capital 
 join in producing wealth, it is between these three that 
 the produce must be divided. What is meant by the 
 produce or production of a community is the sum of the 
 wealth produced by that community the general fund 
 from which, as long as previously existing stock is not 
 lessened, all consumption must be met and all revenues 
 drawn. As I have already explained, production does 
 not merely mean the making of things, but includes the 
 increase of value gained by transporting or exchanging 
 things. There is a produce of wealth in a purely com- 
 mercial community, as there is in a purely agricultural 
 or manufacturing community; and in the one case, as in 
 the others, some part of this produce will go to capital, 
 some part to labor, and some part, if land have any value, 
 to the owners of land. As a matter of fact, a portion of 
 the wealth produced is constantly going to the replace- 
 ment of capital, which is constantly consumed and con- 
 stantly replaced. But it is not necessary to take this into 
 account, as it is eliminated by considering capital as 
 continuous, which, in speaking or thinking of it, we 
 habitually do. When we speak of the produce, we mean, 
 therefore, that part of the wealth produced above what is 
 necessary to replace the capital consumed in production; 
 and when we speak of interest, or the return to capital, 
 we mean what goes to capital after its replacement or 
 maintenance. 
 
 It is, further, a matter of fact, that in every commu- 
 nity which has passed the most primitive stage some 
 portion of the produce is taken in taxation and con- 
 sumed by government. But it is not necessary, in seek- 
 ing the laws of distribution, to take this into considera- 
 tion. We may consider taxation either as not existing, 
 or as by so much reducing the produce. And so, too, of 
 what is taken from the produce by certain forms of mon-
 
 156 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book HL 
 
 opoly, which will be considered in a subsequent chapter 
 (Chap. IV), and which exercise powers analogous to tax- 
 ation. After we have discovered the laws of distribution 
 we can then see what bearing, if any, taxation has upon 
 them. 
 
 We must discover these laws of distribution for our- 
 selves or, at least, two out of the three. For, that they 
 are not, at least as a whole, correctly apprehended by the 
 current political economy, may be seen, irrespective of 
 our preceding examination of one of them, in any of 
 the standard treatises. 
 
 This is evident, in the first place, from the terminol- 
 ogy employed. 
 
 In all politico-economic works we are told that the 
 three factors in production are land, labor, and capital, 
 and that the whole produce is primarily distributed into 
 three corresponding parts. Three terms, therefore, are 
 needed, each of which shall clearly express one of these 
 parts to the exclusion of the others. Eent, as defined, 
 clearly enough expresses the first of these parts that 
 which goes to the owners of land. Wages, as defined, 
 clearly enough expresses the second that part which 
 constitutes the return to labor. But as to the third 
 term that which should express the return to capital 
 there is in the standard works a most puzzling ambiguity 
 and confusion. 
 
 Of words in common use, that which comes nearest to 
 exclusively expressing the idea of return for the use of 
 capital, is interest, which, as commonly used, implies 
 the return for the use of capital, exclusive of any labor 
 in its use or management, and exclusive of any risk, ex- 
 cept such as may be involved in the security. The word 
 profits, as commonly used, is almost synonymous with 
 revenue; it means a gain, an amount received in excess 
 of an amount expended, and frequently includes receipts 
 that are properly rent; while it nearly always includea
 
 Chap. I. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 157 
 
 receipts which are properly wages, as well as compensa- 
 tions for the risk peculiar to the various uses of capital. 
 Unless extreme violence is done to the meaning of the 
 word, it cannot, therefore, be used in political economy 
 to signify that share of the produce which goes to capi- 
 tal, in contradistinction to those parts which go to labor 
 and to land owners. 
 
 Now, all this is recognized in the standard works on 
 political economy. Adam Smith well illustrates how 
 wages and compensation for risk largely enter into prof- 
 its, pointing out how the large profits of apothecaries 
 and small retail dealers are in reality wages for their 
 labor, and not interest on their capital; and how the 
 great profits sometimes made in risky businesses, such as 
 smuggling and the lumber trade, are really but compen- 
 sations for risk, which, in the long run, reduce the 
 returns to capital so used to the ordinary, or below the 
 ordinary, rate. Similar illustrations are given in most of 
 the subsequent works, where profit is formally defined in 
 its common sense, with, perhaps, the exclusion of rent. 
 In all these works, the reader is told that profits are 
 made up of three elements wages of superintendence, 
 compensation for risk, and interest, or the return for the 
 use of capital. 
 
 Thus, neither in its common meaning nor in the mean- 
 ing expressly assigned to it in the current political econ- 
 omy, can profits have any place in the discussion of the 
 distribution of wealth between the three factors of pro- 
 duction. Either in its common meaning or in the mean- 
 ing expressly assigned to it, to talk about the distribution 
 of wealth into rent, wages, and profits is like talking of 
 the division of mankind into men, women, and human 
 beings. 
 
 Yet this, to the utter bewilderment of the reader, is 
 what is done in all the standard works. After formally 
 decomposing profits into wages of superintendence, com-
 
 158 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. JBoofc 111 
 
 pensation for risk, and interest the net return for the 
 use of capital they proceed to treat of the distribution 
 of wealth between the rent of land, the wages of labor, 
 and the PROFITS of capital. 
 
 I doubt not that there are thousands of men who have 
 vainly puzzled their brains over this confusion of terms, 
 and abandoned the effort in despair, thinking that as the 
 fault could not be in such great thinkers, it must be in 
 their own stupidity. If it is any consolation to such men 
 they may turn to Buckle's "History of Civilization, "and 
 see how a man who certainly got a inarvelously clear idea 
 of what he read, and who had read carefully the principal 
 economists from Smith down, was inextricably confused 
 by this jumble of profits and interest. For Buckle (Vol. 
 1, Chap. II, and notes) persistently speaks of the dis- 
 tribution of wealth into rent, wages, interest, and profits. 
 
 And this is not to be wondered at. For, after 
 formally decomposing profits into wages of superintend- 
 ence, insurance, and interest, these economists, in as- 
 signing causes which fix the general rate of profit, speak 
 of things which evidently affect only that part of profits 
 which they have denominated interest; and then, in 
 speaking of the rate of interest, either give the meaning- 
 less formula of supply and demand, or speak of causes 
 Avhich affect the compensation for risk; evidently using 
 the word in its common sense, and not in the economic 
 sense they have assigned to it, from which compensation 
 for risk is eliminated. If the reader will take up John 
 Stuart Mill's "Principles of Political Economy," and 
 compare the chapter on Profits (Book II, Chap. 15) with 
 the chapter on Interest (Book III, Chap. 23), he will see 
 the confusion thus arising exemplified in the case of the 
 most logical of English economists, in a more striking 
 manner than I would like to characterize. 
 
 Now, such men have not been led into such confusion 
 of thought without a cause. If they, one after another,
 
 Chap.L THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 159 
 
 have followed Dr. Adam Smith, as boys play "follow my 
 leader," jumping where he jumped, and falling where 
 he fell, it has been that there was a fence where he 
 jumped and a hole where he fell. 
 
 The difficulty from which this confusion has sprung is 
 in the preaccepted theory of wages. For reasons which 
 I have before assigned, it has seemed to them a self- 
 evident truth that the wages of certain classes of laborers 
 depended upon the ratio between capital and the num- 
 ber of laborers. But there are certain kinds of reward 
 for exertion to which this theory evidently will not 
 apply, so the term wages has in use been contracted to 
 include only wages in the narrow common sense. This 
 being the case, if the term interest were used, as consist- 
 ently with their definitions it should have been used, to 
 represent the third part of the division of the produce, 
 all rewards of personal exertion, save those of what are 
 commonly called wage-workers, would clearly have been 
 left out. But by treating the division of wealth as be- 
 tween rent, wages, and profits, instead of between rent, 
 wages, and interest, this difficulty is glossed over, all 
 wages which will not fall under the preaccepted law of 
 wages being vaguely grouped under profits, as wages of 
 superintendence. 
 
 To read carefully what economists say about the dis- 
 tribution of wealth is to see that, though they correctly 
 define it, wages, as they use it in this connection, is what 
 logicians would call an undistributed term it does not 
 mean all wages, but only some wages viz., the wages of 
 manual labor paid by an employer. So other wages are 
 thrown over with the return to capital, and included 
 under the term profits, and any clear distinction between 
 the returns to capital and the returns to human exertion 
 thus avoided. The fact is that the current political econ- 
 omy fails to give any clear and consistent account of the 
 distribution of wealth. The law of rent is clearly stated,
 
 160 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION". Book HI. 
 
 but it stands unrelated. The rest is a confused and 
 incoherent jumble. 
 
 The very arrangement of these works shows this con- 
 fusion and inconclusiveness of thought. In no politico- 
 economic treatise that I know of are these laws of dis- 
 tribution brought together, so that the reader can take 
 them in at a glance and recognize their relation to each 
 other; but what is said about each one is enveloped in a 
 mass of political and moral reflections and dissertations. 
 And the reason is not far to seek. To bring together the 
 three laws of distribution as they are now taught, is to 
 ghow at a glance that they lack necessary relation. 
 
 The laws of the distribution of wealth are obviously 
 laws of proportion, and must be so related to each other 
 that any two being given the third may be inferred. 
 For to say that one of the three parts of a whole is in- 
 creased or decreased, is to say that one or both of the 
 other parts is, reversely, decreased or increased. If Tom, 
 Dick, and Harry are partners in business, the agreement 
 which fixes the share of one in the profits must at the 
 same time fix either the separate or the joint shares of 
 the other two. To fix Tom's share at forty per cent, is 
 to leave but sixty per cent, to be divided between Dick 
 and Harry. To fix Dick's share at forty per cent, and 
 Harry's share at thirty-five per cent, is to fix Tom's share 
 at twenty-five per cent. 
 
 But between the laws of the distribution of wealth, as 
 laid down in the standard works, there is no such rela- 
 tion. If we fish them out and bring them together, we 
 find them to be as follows: 
 
 Wages are determined by the ratio between the amount 
 of capital devoted to the payment and subsistence of 
 labor and the number of laborers seeking employment. 
 
 Rent is determined by the margin of cultivation; all 
 lands yielding as rent that part of their produce which 
 exceeds what an equal application of labor and capital 
 could procure from the poorest land in use.
 
 Chap. I. THEIB NECESSARY RELATION". 161 
 
 Interest is determined by the equation between the de- 
 mands of borrowers and the supply of capital offered by 
 lenders. Or, if we take what is given as the law of prof- 
 its, it is determined by wages, falling as wages rise and ris- 
 ing as wages fall or, to use the phrase of Mill, by the 
 cost of labor to the capitalist. 
 
 The bringing together of these current statements of 
 the laws of the distribution of wealth shows at a glance 
 that they lack the relation to each other which the true 
 laws of distribution must have. They do not correlate 
 and co-ordinate. Hence, at least two of these three laws 
 are either wrongly apprehended or wrongly stated. This 
 tallies with what we have already seen, that the current 
 apprehension of the law of wages, and, inferentially, of 
 the law of interest, will not bear examination. Let us, 
 then, seek the true laws of the distribution of the prod- 
 uce of labor into wages, rent, and interest. The proof 
 that we have found them will be in their correlation 
 that they meet, and relate, and mutually bound each 
 other. 
 
 With profits this inquiry has manifestly nothing to do. 
 We want to find what it is that determines the division 
 of their joint produce between land, labor, and capital; 
 and profits is not a term that refers exclusively to any 
 one of these three divisions. Of the three parts into 
 which profits are divided by political economists - 
 namely, compensation for risk, wages of superintendence, 
 and return for the use of capital the latter falls under 
 the term interest, which includes all the returns for the 
 use of capital, and excludes everything else; wages of su- 
 perintendence falls under the term wages, which includes 
 all returns for human exertion, and excludes everything 
 else; and compensation for risk has no place whatever, as 
 risk is eliminated when all the transactions of a commu- 
 nity are taken together. I shall, therefore, consistently 
 with the definitions of political economists, use the term
 
 162 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book JIL 
 
 interest as signifying that part of the produce which goes 
 to capital. 
 
 To recapitulate: 
 
 Land, labor, and capital are the factors of production. 
 The term land includes all natural opportunities or 
 forces; the term labor, all human exertion; and the term 
 capital, all wealth used to produce more wealth. In re- 
 turns to these three factors is the whole produce dis- 
 tributed. That part which goes to land owners as pay- 
 ment for the use of natural opportunities is called rent; 
 that part which constitutes the reward of human exer- 
 tion is called wages; and that part which constitutes the 
 return for the use of capital is called interest. These 
 terms mutually exclude each other. The income of any 
 individual may be made up from any one, two, or all 
 three of these sources; but in the effort to discover the 
 laws of distribution we must keep them separate. 
 
 Let me premise the inquiry which we are about to un- 
 dertake by saying that the miscarriage of political econ- 
 omy, which I think has now been abundantly shown, can, 
 it seems to me, be traced to the adoption of an erroneous 
 standpoint. Living and making their observations in a 
 state of society in which a capitalist generally rents land 
 and hires labor, and thus seems to be the undertaker or 
 first mover in production, the great cultivators of the 
 science have been led to look upon capital as the prime 
 factor in production, land as its instrument, and labor 
 as its agent or tool. This is apparent on every page in 
 the form and course of their reasoning, in the character 
 of their illustrations, and even in their choice of terms. 
 Everywhere capital is the starting point, the capitalist 
 the central figure. So far does this go that both Smith 
 and Eicardo use the term "natural wages" to express the 
 minimum upon which laborers can live; whereas, unless 
 injustice is natural, all that the laborer produces should
 
 Chap. I. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 163 
 
 rather be held as his natural wages. This habit of look- 
 ing upon capital as the employer of labor has led both to 
 the theory that wages depend upon the relative abun- 
 dance of capital, and to the theory that interest varies 
 inversely with wages, while it has led away from truths 
 that but for this habit would have been apparent. In 
 short, the misstep which, so far as the great laws of dis- 
 tribution are concerned, has led political economy into 
 the jungles, instead of upon the mountain tops, was 
 taken when Adam Smith, in his first book, left the 
 standpoint indicated in the sentence, "The produce of 
 labor constitutes the natural recompense or wages of 
 labor," to take that in which capital is considered as 
 employing labor and paying wages. 
 
 But when we consider the origin and natural sequence 
 of things, this order is reversed; and capital instead of 
 first is last; instead of being the employer of labor, it is 
 in reality employed by labor. There must be land be- 
 fore labor can be exerted, and labor must be exerted 
 before capital can be produced. Capital is a result of 
 labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further produc- 
 tion. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is 
 therefore the employer of capital. Labor can be exerted 
 only upon land, and it is from land that the matter 
 which it transmutes into wealth must be drawn. Land 
 therefore is the condition precedent, the field and ma- 
 terial of labor. The natural order is land, labor, capital; 
 and, instead of starting from capital as our initial point, 
 we should start from land. 
 
 There is another thing to be observed. Capital is not 
 a necessary factor in production. Labor exerted upon 
 land can produce wealth without the aid of capital, and 
 in the necessary genesis of things must so produce 
 wealth before capital can exist. Therefore the law of 
 rent and the law of wages must correlate each other and 
 form a perfect whole without reference to the law of
 
 164 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book HI. 
 
 capital, as otherwise these laws would not fit the cases 
 which can readily be imagined, and which to some degree 
 actually exist, in which capital takes no part in produc- 
 tion. And as capital is, as is often said, but stored-up 
 labor, it is but a form of labor, a subdivision of the gen- 
 eral term labor; and its law must be subordinate to, and 
 independently correlate with, the law of wages, so as to 
 fit cases in which the whole produce is divided between 
 labor and capital, without any deduction for rent. To 
 resort to the illustration before used: The division of the 
 produce between land, labor and capital must be as it 
 would be between Tom, Dick, and Harry, if Tom and 
 Dick were the original partners, and Harry came in but 
 as an assistant to and sharer with Dick.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 
 
 The term rent, in its economic sense that is, when 
 used, as I am using it, to distinguish that part of the 
 produce which accrues to the owners of land or other 
 natural capabilities by virtue of their ownership differs 
 in meaning from the word rent as commonly used. In 
 some respects this economic meaning is narrower than 
 the common meaning; in other respects it is wider. 
 
 It is narrower in this: In common speech, we apply 
 the word rent to payments for the use of buildings, ma- 
 chinery, fixtures, etc., as well as to payments for the use 
 of land or other natural capabilities; and in speaking of 
 the rent of a house or the rent of a farm, we do not 
 separate the price for the use of the improvements from 
 the price for the use of the bare land. But in the eco- 
 nomic meaning of rent, payments for the use of any of the 
 products of human exertion are excluded, and of the 
 lumped payments for the use of houses, farms, etc., only 
 that part is rent which constitutes the consideration for 
 the use of the land that part paid for the use of build- 
 ings or other improvements being properly interest, as it 
 is a consideration for the use of capital. 
 
 It is wider in this: In common speech we speak of rent 
 only when owner and user are distinct persons. But in 
 the economic sense there is also rent where the same per- 
 son is both owner and user. Where owner and user are 
 thus the same person, whatever part of his income he 
 might obtain by letting the land to another is rent, while 
 the return for his labor and capital are that part of his
 
 166 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III. 
 
 income which they would yield him did he hire instead 
 of owning the land. Eent is also expressed in a selling 
 price. When land is purchased, the payment which is 
 made for the ownership, or right to perpetual use, is rent 
 commuted or capitalized. If I buy land for a small price 
 and hold it until I can sell it for a large price, I have 
 become rich, not by wages for my labor or by interest 
 upon my capital, but by the increase of rent. Rent, in 
 short, is the share in the wealth produced which the ex- 
 clusive right to the use of natural capabilities gives to 
 the owner. Wherever land has an exchange value there 
 is rent in the economic meaning of the term. Wherever 
 land having a value is used, either by owner or hirer, 
 there is rent actual; wherever it is not used, but still has 
 a value, there is rent potential. It is this capacity of 
 yielding rent which gives value to land. Until its own- 
 ership will confer some advantage, land has no value.* 
 
 Thus rent or land value does not arise from the pro- 
 ductiveness or utility of land. It in no wise represents 
 any help or advantage given to production, but simply 
 the power of securing a part of the results of production. 
 No matter what are its capabilities, land can yield no 
 rent and have no value until some one is willing to give 
 labor or the results of labor for the privilege of using it; 
 and what any one will thus give depends not upon the 
 capacity of the land, but upon its capacity as compared 
 with that of land that can be had for nothing. I may 
 have very rich land, but it will yield no rent and have no 
 value so long as there is other land as good to be had 
 without cost. But when this other land is appropriated, 
 and the best land to be had for nothing is inferior, either 
 in fertility, situation, or other quality, my land will begin 
 
 * In speaking of the value of land I use and shall use the words 
 as referring to the value of the bare land. When I wish to speak of 
 the value of land and improvements I shall use those words.
 
 Chap.IL BENT AND THE LAW OP RENT. 167 
 
 to have a value and yield rent. And though the pro- 
 ductiveness of my land may decrease, yet if the produc- 
 tiveness of the land to be had without charge decreases 
 in greater proportion, the rent I can get, and conse- 
 quently the value of my land, will steadily increase. 
 Bent, 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. 
 If one man owned all the land accessible to any com- 
 munity, he could, of course, demand any price or condi- 
 tion for its use that he saw fit; and, as long as his owner- 
 ship was acknowledged, the other members of the com- 
 munity would have but death or emigration as the alter- 
 native to submission to his terms. This has been the 
 case in many communities; but in the modern form of 
 society, the land, though generally reduced to individ- 
 ual ownership, is in the hands of too many different per- 
 sons to permit the price which can be obtained for its 
 use to be fixed by mere caprice or desire. While each 
 individual owner tries to get all he can, there is a limit 
 to what he can get, which constitutes the market price 
 or market rent of the land, and which varies with differ- 
 ent lands and at different times. The law, or relation, 
 which, under these circumstances of free competition 
 among all parties, the condition which in tracing out the 
 principles of political economy is always to be assumed, 
 determines what rent or price can be got by the owner, 
 is styled the law of rent. This fixed with certainty, we 
 have more than a starting point from which the laws 
 which regulate wages and interest may be traced. For, 
 as the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertaining 
 what fixes the share of the produce which goes as rent, 
 we also ascertain what fixes the share which is left for 
 wages, where there is no co-operation of capital; and what 
 fixes the joint share left for wages and interest, where 
 capital does co-operate in production.
 
 168 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III. 
 
 Fortunately, as to the law of rent there is no necessity 
 for discussion. Authority here coincides with common 
 sense,* and the accepted dictum of the current political 
 economy has the self-evident character of a geometric 
 axiom. This accepted law of rent, which John Stuart 
 Mill denominates the pons asinorumof political economy, 
 is sometimes styled "Ricardo's law of rent," from the 
 fact that, although not the first to announce it, he first 
 brought it prominently into notice, f It is: 
 
 The rent of land is determined by the excess of its 
 produce over that which the same application can secure 
 from the least productive land in use. 
 
 This law, which of course applies to land used for 
 other purposes than agriculture, and to all natural 
 agencies, such as mines, fisheries, etc., has been exhaust- 
 ively explained and illustrated by all the leading econo- 
 mists since Ricardo. But its mere statement has all the 
 force of a self-evident proposition, for it is clear that the 
 effect of competition is to make the lowest reward for 
 which labor and capital will engage in production, the 
 highest that they can claim; and hence to enable the 
 owner of more productive land to appropriate in rent all 
 
 * I do not mean to say that the accepted law of rent has never 
 been disputed. In all the nonsense that in the present disjointed 
 condition of the science has been printed as political economy, it 
 would be hard to find anything that has not been disputed. But I 
 mean to say that it has the sanction of all economic writers who are 
 really to be regarded as authority. As John Stuart Mill says (Book 
 II., Chap. XVI.). "there are few persons who have refused their 
 assent to it, except from not having thoroughly understood it. The 
 loose and inaccurate way in which it is often apprehended by those 
 who affect to refute it is very remarkable." An observation which 
 has received many later exemplifications. 
 
 f According to McCulloch the law of rent was first stated in a 
 pamphlet by Dr. James Anderson of Edinburgh in 1777, and simul- 
 taneously in the beginning of this century by Sir Edward West, Mr. 
 Malthus, and Mr. Ricardo.
 
 Chap.n. BENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 169 
 
 the return above that required to recompense labor and 
 capital at the ordinary rate that is to say, what they can 
 obtain upon the least productive land in use, or at the 
 least productive point, where, of course, no rent is paid. 
 
 Perhaps it may conduce to a fuller understanding ot 
 the law of rent to put it in this form: The ownership of 
 a natural agent of production will give the power of ap- 
 propriating so much of the wealth produced by the exer- 
 tion of labor and capital upon it as exceeds the return 
 which the same application of labor and capital could 
 secure in the least productive occupation in which they 
 freely engage. 
 
 This, however, amounts to precisely the same thing, 
 for there is no occupation in which labor and capital can 
 engage which does not require the use of land; and, fur- 
 thermore, the cultivation or other use of land will always 
 be carried to as low a point of remuneration, all things 
 considered, as is freely accepted in any other pursuit. 
 Suppose, for instance, a community in which part of the 
 labor and capital is devoted to agriculture and part to 
 manufactures. The poorest land cultivated yields an 
 average return which we will call 20, and 20 there- 
 fore will be the average return to labor and capital, as 
 well in manufactures as in agriculture. Suppose that 
 from some permanent cause the return in manufactures 
 is now reduced to 15. Clearly, the labor and capital 
 engaged in manufactures will turn to agriculture; and 
 the process will not stop until, either by the extension of 
 cultivation to inferior lands or to inferior points on the 
 same land, or by an increase in the relative value of man- 
 ufactured products, owing to the diminution of produc- 
 tion or, as a matter of fact, by both processes the yield 
 to labor and capital in both pursuits has, all things con- 
 sidered, been brought again to the same level, so that 
 whatever be the final point of productiveness at which 
 manufactures are still carried on, whether it be 18
 
 170 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION". Book III, 
 
 or 17 or 16, cultivation will also be extended to that 
 point. And, thus, to say that rent will be the excess 
 in productiveness over the yield at the margin, or 
 lowest point, of cultivation, is the same thing as to say 
 that it will be the excess of produce over what the same 
 amount of labor and capital obtains in the least remuner- 
 ative occupation. 
 
 The law of rent is, in fact, but a deduction from the 
 law of competition, and amounts simply to the assertion 
 that as wages and interest tend to a common level, all 
 that part of the general production of wealth which ex- 
 ceeds what the labor and capital employed could have 
 secured for themselves, if applied to the poorest natural 
 agent in use, will go to land owners in the shape of rent. 
 It rests, in the last analysis, upon the fundamental prin- 
 ciple, which is to political economy what the attraction 
 of gravitation is to physics that men will seek to gratify 
 their desires with the least exertion. 
 
 This, then, is the law of rent. Although many stand- 
 ard treatises follow too much the example of Ricardo, 
 who seems to view it merely in its relation to agriculture, 
 and in several places speaks of manufactures yielding no 
 rent, when, in truth, manufactures and exchange yield 
 the highest rents, as is evinced by the greater value of 
 land in manufacturing and commercial cities, thus hid- 
 ing the full importance of the law, yet, ever since the 
 time of Ricardo, the law itself has been clearly appre- 
 hended and fully recognized. But not so its corollaries. 
 Plain as they are, the accepted doctrine of wages (backed 
 and fortified not only as has been hitherto explained, 
 but by considerations whose enormous weight will be seen 
 when the logical conclusion toward which we are tending 
 is reached) has hitherto prevented their recognition.* 
 
 * Buckle (Chap. II., History of Civilization) recognizes the neces- 
 sary relation between rent, interest, and wages, but evidently never 
 worked it out.
 
 Chap. II. RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 171 
 
 Yet, is it not as plain as the simplest geometrical demon- 
 stration, that the corollary of the law of rent is the law 
 of wages, where the division of the produce is simply be- 
 tween rent and wages; or the law of wages and interest 
 taken together, where the division is into rent, wages, 
 and interest? Stated reversely, the law of rent is neces- 
 sarily the law of wages and interest taken together, for 
 it is the assertion, that no matter what be the production 
 which results from the application of labor and capital, 
 these two factors will receive in wages and interest only 
 such part of the produce as they could have produced on 
 land free to them without fhe payment of rent that is, 
 the least productive land or point in use. For, if, of the 
 produce, all over the amount which labor and capital 
 could secure from land for which no rent is paid must go 
 to land owners as rent, then all that can be claimed by 
 labor and capital as wages and interest is the amount 
 which they could have secured from land yielding no rent. 
 
 Or to put it in algebraic form: 
 
 As Produce=Kent+Wages+Interest, 
 
 Therefore, Produce Rent=Wages+Interest. 
 
 Thus wages and interest do not depend upon the prod- 
 uce of labor and capital, but upon what is left after 
 rent is taken out; or, upon the produce which they could 
 obtain without paying rent that is, from the poorest 
 land in use. And hence, no matter what be the increase 
 in productive power, if the increase in rent keeps pace 
 with it, neither wages nor interest can increase. 
 
 The moment this simple relation is recognized, a flood 
 of light streams in upon what was before inexplicable, 
 and seemingly discordant facts range themselves under 
 an obvious law. The increase of rent which goes on in 
 progressive countries is at once seen to be the key which 
 explains why wages and interest fail to increase with in- 
 crease of productive power. For the wealth produced 
 in every community is divided into two parts by what
 
 172 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book m. 
 
 may be called the rent line, which is fixed by the margin 
 of cultivation, or the return which labor and capital could 
 obtain from such natural opportunities as are free to 
 them without the payment of rent. From the part of 
 the produce below this line wages and interest must be 
 paid. All that is above goes to the owners of land. 
 Thus, where the value of land is low, there may be a 
 small production of wealth, and yet a high rate of wages 
 and interest, as we see in new countries. And, where the 
 value of land is high, there may be a very large produc- 
 tion of wealth, and yet a low rate of wages and interest, 
 as we see in old countries. And, where productive power 
 increases, as it is increasing in all progressive countries, 
 wages and interest will be affected, not by the increase, 
 but by the manner in which rent is affected. If the 
 value of land increases proportionately, all the increased 
 production will be swallowed up by rent, and wages and 
 interest will remain as before. If the value of land in- 
 creases in greater ratio than productive power, rent will 
 swallow up even more than the increase; and while the 
 produce of labor and capital will be much larger, wages 
 and interest will fall. It is only when the value of land 
 fails to increase as rapidly as productive power, that wages 
 and interest can increase with the increase of productive 
 power. All this is exemplified in actual fact.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OP INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 
 
 Having made sure of the law of rent, we have ob- 
 tained as its necessary corollary the law of wages, where 
 the division is between rent and wages; and the law of 
 wages and interest taken together, where the division is 
 between the three factors. What proportion of the prod- 
 uce is taken as rent must determine what proportion is 
 left for wages, if but land and labor are concerned; or to 
 be divided between wages and interest, if capital joins in 
 the production. 
 
 But without reference to this deduction, let us seek 
 each of these laws separately and independently. If, 
 when obtained in this way, we find that they correlate, 
 our conclusions will have the highest certainty. 
 
 And, inasmuch as the discovery of the law of wages is 
 the ultimate purpose of our inquiry, let us take up first 
 the subject of interest. 
 
 I have already referred to the difference in meaning 
 between the terms profits and interest. It may be worth 
 while, further, to say that interest, as an abstract term in 
 the distribution of wealth, differs in meaning from the 
 word as commonly used, in this: That it includes all re- 
 turns for the use of capital, and not merely those that 
 pass from borrower to lender; and that it excludes com- 
 pensation for risk, which forms so great a part of what is 
 commonly called interest. Compensation for risk is evi- 
 dently only an equalization of return between different 
 employments of capital. What we want to find is, what 
 fixes the general rate of interest proper? The different
 
 174 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book ID. 
 
 rates of compensation for risk added to this will give the 
 current rates of commercial interest. 
 
 Now, it is evident that the greatest differences in what 
 is ordinarily called interest are due to differences in risk; 
 but it is also evident that between different countries and 
 different times there are also considerable variations in 
 the rate of interest proper. In California at one time 
 two per cent, a month would not have been considered 
 extravagant interest on security on which loans could 
 now be effected at seven or eight per cent, per annum, 
 and though some part of the difference may be due to an 
 increased sense of general stability, the greater part is 
 evidently due to some other general cause. In the 
 United States generally the rate of interest has been 
 higher than in England; and in the newer States of the 
 Union higher than in the older States; and the tendency 
 of interest to sink as society progresses is well marked 
 and has long been noticed. What is the law which will 
 bind all these variations together and exhibit their cause? 
 
 It is not worth while to dwell more than has hitherto 
 incidentally been done upon the failure of the current 
 political economy to determine the true law of interest. 
 Its speculations upon this subject have not the definite- 
 ness and coherency which have enabled the accepted doc- 
 trine of wages to withstand the evidence of fact, and do 
 not require the same elaborate review. That they run 
 counter to the facts is evident. That interest does not 
 depend on the productiveness of labor and capital is 
 proved by the general fact that where labor and capital 
 are most productive interest is lowest. That it does not 
 depend reversely upon wages (or the cost of labor), low- 
 ering as wages rise, and increasing as wages fall, is proved 
 by the general fact that interest is high when and where 
 wages are high, and low when and where wages are low. 
 
 Let us begin at the beginning. The nature and func- 
 tions of capital have already been sufficiently shown, but
 
 Chap, in, INTEBEST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 175 
 
 even at the risk of something like a digression, let us 
 endeavor to ascertain the cause of interest before consid- 
 ering its law. For in addition to aiding our inquiry by 
 giving us a firmer and clearer grasp of the subject now 
 in hand, it may lead to conclusions whose practical im- 
 portance will be hereafter apparent. 
 
 What is the reason and justification of interest? Why 
 should the borrower pay back to the lender more than 
 he received? These questions are worth answering, not 
 merely from their speculative, but from their practical 
 importance. The feeling that interest is the robbery of 
 industry is widespread and growing, and on both sides of 
 the Atlantic shows itself more and more in popular liter- 
 ature and in popular movements. The expounders of 
 the current political economy say that there is no conflict 
 between labor and capital, and oppose as injurious to 
 labor, as well as to capital, all schemes for restricting the 
 reward which capital obtains; yet in the same works the 
 doctrine is laid down that wages and interest bear to each 
 other an inverse relation, and that interest will be low or 
 high as wages are high or low.* Clearly, then, if this 
 doctrine is correct, the only objection that from the 
 standpoint of the laborer can be logically made to any 
 scheme for the reduction of interest is that it will not 
 work, which is manifestly very weak ground while ideas 
 of the omnipotence of legislatures are yet so widespread; 
 and though such an objection may lead to the abandon- 
 ment of any one particular scheme, it will not prevent 
 the search for another. 
 
 Why should interest be? Interest, we are told, in all 
 the standard works, is the reward of abstinence. But, 
 manifestly, this does not sufficiently account for it. Ab- 
 stinence is not an active, but a passive quality; it is not a 
 
 * This is really said of profits, but with the evident meaning of 
 returns to capital.
 
 176 THE LAWS OF DISTBIBUTION. Book III. 
 
 doing it is simply a not doing. Abstinence in itself 
 produces nothing. Why, then, should any part of what 
 is produced be claimed for it? If I have a sum of money 
 which I lock up for a year, I have exercised as much ab- 
 stinence as though I had loaned it. Yet, though in the 
 latter case I will expect it to be returned to me with an 
 additional sum by way of interest, in the former I will 
 have but the same sum, and no increase. But the ab- 
 stinence is the same. If it be said that in lending it I 
 do the borrower a service, it may be replied that he also 
 does me a service in keeping it safely a service that 
 under some conditions may be very valuable, and for 
 which I would willingly pay, rather than not have it; 
 and a service which, as to some forms of capital, may be 
 even more obvious than as to money. For there are 
 many forms of capital which will not keep, but must be 
 constantly renewed; and many which are onerous to 
 maintain if one has no immediate use for them. So, if 
 the accumulator of capital helps the user of capital by 
 loaning it to him, does not the user discharge the debt 
 in full when he hands it back? Is not the secure preser- 
 vation, the maintenance, the re-creation of capital, a 
 complete offset to the use? Accumulation is the end 
 and aim of abstinence. Abstinence can go no further 
 and accomplish no more; nor of itself can it even do 
 this. If we were merely to abstain from using it, how 
 much wealth would disappear in a year! And how little 
 would be left at the end of two years! Hence, if more is 
 demanded for abstinence than the safe return of capital, 
 is not labor wronged? Such ideas as these underlie the 
 widespread opinion that interest can accrue only at the 
 expense of labor, and is in fact a robbery of labor which 
 in a social condition based on justice would be abolished. 
 The attempts to refute these views do not appear to me 
 always successful. For instance, as it illustrates the 
 usual reasoning, take Bastiat's oft-quoted illustration of
 
 Chap.UL INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 177 
 
 the plane. One carpenter, James, at the expense of 
 ten days' labor, makes himself a plane, which will last 
 in use for 290 of the 300 working days of the year. 
 William, another carpenter, proposes to borrow the 
 plane for a year, offering to give back at the end of 
 that time, when the plane will be worn out, a new 
 plane equally as good. James objects to lending the 
 plane on these terms, urging that if he merely gets back 
 a plane he will have nothing to compensate him for the 
 loss of the advantage which the use of the plane during 
 the year would give him. William, admitting this, 
 agrees not merely to return a plane, but, in addition, to 
 give James a new plank. The agreement is carried out 
 to mutual satisfaction. The plane is used up during the 
 year, but at the end of the year James receives as good 
 a one, and a plank in addition. He lends the new plane 
 again and again, until finally it passes into the hands of 
 his son, "who still continues to lend it," receiving a 
 plank each time. This plank, which represents interest, 
 is said to be a natural and equitable remuneration, as by 
 giving it in return for the use of the plane, William 
 "obtains the power which exists in the tool to increase 
 the productiveness of labor," and is no worse off than he 
 would have been had he not borrowed the plane; while 
 James obtains no more than he would have had if he had 
 retained and used the plane instead of lending it. 
 
 Is this really so? It will be observed that it is not 
 affirmed that James could make the plane and William 
 could not, for that would be to make the plank the re- 
 ward of superior skill. It is only that James had ab- 
 stained from consuming the result of his labor until he 
 had accumulated it in the form of a plane which is the 
 essential idea of capital. 
 
 Now, if James had not lent the plane he could have 
 used it for 290 days, when it would have been worn out, 
 and he would have been obliged to take the remaining
 
 178 THE LAWS OP DISTRIBUTION. Book JUL 
 
 ten days of the working year to make a new plane. If 
 William had not borrowed the plane he would have taken 
 ten days to make himself a plane, which he could have 
 used for the remaining 290 days. Thus, if we take a 
 plank to represent the fruits of a day's labor with the 
 aid of a plane, at the end of the year, had no borrowing 
 taken place, each would have stood with reference to the 
 plane as he commenced, James with a plane, and William 
 with none, and each would have had as the result of the 
 year's work 290 planks. If the condition of the borrow- 
 ing had been what William first proposed, the return of 
 a new plane, the same relative situation would have been 
 secured. William would have worked for 290 days, and 
 taken the last ten days to make the new plane to return 
 to James. James would have taken the first ten days of 
 the year to make another plane which would have lasted 
 for 290 days, when he would have received a new plane 
 from William. Thus, the simple return of the plane 
 would have put each in the same position at the end of 
 the year as if no borrowing had taken place. James 
 would have lost nothing to the gain of William, and Will- 
 iam would have gained nothing to the loss of James. 
 Each would have had the return his labor would other- 
 wise have yielded viz., 290 planks, and James would 
 have had the advantage with which he started, a new 
 piane. 
 
 But when, in addition to the return of a plane, a 
 plank is given, James at the end of the year will be in a 
 better position than if there had been no borrowing, and 
 William in a worse. James will have 291 planks and a 
 new plane, and William 289 planks and no plane. If 
 William now borrows the plank as well as the plane on the 
 same terms as before, he will at the end of the year have 
 to return to James a plane, two planks and a fraction 
 of a plank; and if this difference be again borrowed, and 
 so on, ia it not evident that the income of the one will
 
 . INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 179 
 
 progressively decline, and that of the other will progress- 
 ively increase, until at length, if the operation be con- 
 tinued, the time will come when, as the result of the 
 original lending of a plane, James will obtain the whole 
 result of William's labor that is to say, William will be- 
 come virtually his slave? 
 
 Is interest, then, natural and equitable? There is 
 nothing in this illustration to show it to be. Evidently 
 what Bastiat (and many others) assigns as the basis of 
 interest, "the power which exists in the tool to increase 
 the productiveness of labor," is neither in justice nor in 
 fact the basis of interest. The fallacy which makes 
 Bastiat's illustration pass as conclusive with those who 
 do not stop to analyze it, as we have done, is that with 
 the loan of the plane they associate the transfer of the 
 increased productive power which a plane gives to labor. 
 But this is really not involved. The essential thing 
 which James loaned to William was not the increased 
 power which labor acquires from using planes. To sup- 
 pose this, we should have to suppose that the making 
 and using of planes was a trade secret or a patent right, 
 when the illustration would become one of monopoly, 
 not of capital. The essential thing which James loaned 
 to William was not the privilege of applying his labor in 
 a more effective way, but the use of the concrete result of 
 ten days' labor. If "the power which exists in tools to 
 increase the productiveness of labor" were the cause of 
 interest, then the rate of interest would increase with 
 the march of invention. This is not so. Nor yet will I 
 be expected to pay more interest if I borrow a fifty-dollar 
 * sewing machine than if I borrow fifty dollars' worth of 
 needles; if I borrow a steam engine than if I borrow a 
 pile of bricks of equal value. Capital, like wealth, is 
 interchangeable. It is not one thing; it is anything to 
 that value within the circle of exchange. Nor yet does 
 the improvement of tools add to the reproductive power 
 of capital; it adds to the productive power of labor.
 
 180 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. . Book III. 
 
 And I am inclined to think that if all wealth consisted 
 of such things as planes, and all production was such as 
 that of carpenters that is to say, if wealth consisted but 
 of the inert matter of the universe, and production of 
 working up this inert matter into different shapes, that 
 interest would be but the robbery of industry, and could 
 not long exist. This is not to say that there would be no 
 accumulation, for though the hope of increase is a 
 motive for turning wealth into capital, it is not the 
 motive, or, at least, not the main motive, for accumulat- 
 ing. Children will save their pennies for Christmas; 
 pirates will add to their buried treasure; Eastern princes 
 will accumulate hoards of coin; and men like Stewart or 
 Vanderbilt, having become once possessed of the passion 
 of accumulating, would continue as long as they could to 
 add to their millions, even though accumulation brought 
 no increase. Nor yet is it to say that there would be no 
 borrowing or lending, for this, to a large extent, would 
 be prompted by mutual convenience. If William had a 
 job of work to be immediately begun and James one that 
 would not commence until ten days thereafter, there 
 might be a mutual advantage in the loan of the plane, 
 though no plank should be given. 
 
 But all wealth is not of the nature of planes, or planks, 
 or money, which has no reproductive power; nor is all 
 production merely the turning into other forms of this 
 inert matter of the universe. It is true that if I put 
 away money, it will not increase. But suppose, instead, 
 I put away wine. At the end of a year I will have an 
 increased value, for the wine will have improved in 
 quality. Or supposing that in a country adapted to 
 them, I set out bees; at the end of a year I will have 
 more swarms of bees, and the honey which they have 
 made. Or, supposing, where there is a range, I turn out 
 sheep, or hogs, or cattle; at the end of the year I will, 
 upon the average, also have an increase.
 
 Chap.ni. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 181 
 
 Now what gives the increase in these cases is some- 
 thing which, though it generally requires labor to utilize 
 it, is yet distinct and separable from labor the active 
 power of nature; the principle of growth, of reproduc- 
 tion, which everywhere characterizes all the forms of 
 that mysterious thing or condition which we call life. 
 And it seems to me that it is this which is the cause of 
 interest, or the increase of capital over and above that 
 due to labor. There are, so to speak, in the movements 
 which make up the everlasting flux of nature, certain 
 vital currents, which will, if we use them, aid us, with a 
 force independent of our own efforts, in turning matter 
 into the forms we desire that is to say, into wealth. 
 
 While many things might be mentioned which, like 
 money, or planes, or planks, or engines, or clothing, 
 have no innate power of increase, yet other things are 
 included in the terms wealth and capital which, like 
 wine, will of themselves increase in quality up to a cer- 
 tain point; or, like bees or cattle, will of themselves in- 
 crease in quantity; and certain other things, such as 
 seeds, which, though the conditions which enable them 
 to increase may not be maintained without labor, yet 
 will, when these conditions are maintained, yield an in- 
 crease, or give a return over and above that which is to 
 be attributed to labor. 
 
 Now the interchangeability of wealth necessarily in- 
 volves an average between all the species of wealth of 
 any special advantage which accrues from the possession 
 of any particular species, for no one would keep capital 
 in one form when it could be changed into a more ad- 
 vantageous form. No one, for instance, would grind 
 wheat into flour and keep it on hand for the convenience 
 of those who desire from time to time to exchange wheat 
 or its equivalent for flour, unless he could by such ex- 
 change secure an increase equal to that which, all things 
 considered, he could secure by planting his wheat. No
 
 182 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book 111. 
 
 one, if he could keep them, would exchange a flock of 
 sheep now for their net weight in mutton to be returned 
 next year; for by keeping the sheep he would not only 
 have the same amount of mutton next year, but also the 
 lambs and the fleeces. No one would dig an irrigating 
 ditch, unless those who by its aid are enabled to utilize 
 the reproductive forces of nature would give him such 
 a portion of the increase they receive as to make his cap- 
 ital yield him as much as theirs. And so, in any cir- 
 cle of exchange, the power of increase which the repro- 
 ductive or vital force of nature gives to some species of 
 capital must average with all; and he who lends, or uses 
 in exchange, money, or planes, or bricks, or clothing, is 
 not deprived of the power to obtain an increase, any 
 more than if he had lent or put to a reproductive use so 
 much capital in a form capable of increase. 
 
 There is also in the utilization of the variations in the 
 powers of nature and of man which is effected by ex- 
 change, an increase which somewhat resembles that pro- 
 duced by the vital forces of nature. In one place, for 
 instance, a given amount of labor will secure 200 in 
 vegetable food or 100 in animal food. In another place, 
 these conditions are reversed, and the same amount of 
 labor will produce 100 in vegetable food or 200 in ani- 
 mal. In the one place, the relative value of vegetable 
 to animal food will be as two to one, and in the other as 
 one to two; and, supposing equal amounts of each to be re- 
 quired, the same amount of labor will in either place secure 
 150 of both. But by devoting labor in the one place to 
 the procurement of vegetable food, and in the other, to 
 the procurement of animal food, and exchanging to the 
 quantity required, the people of each place will be en- 
 abled by the given amount of labor to procure 200 
 of both, less the losses and expenses of exchange; so 
 that in each place the produce which is taken from 
 use and devoted to exchange brings back an increase.
 
 Chap.UI. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OP INTEREST. 183 
 
 Thus Whittington's cat, sent to a far country where cats 
 are scarce and rats are plenty, returns in bales of goods 
 and bags of gold. 
 
 Of course, labor is necessary to exchange, as it is to 
 the utilization of the reproductive forces of nature, and 
 the produce of exchange, as the produce of agriculture, 
 is clearly the produce of labor; but yet, in the one case 
 as in the other, there is a distinguishable force co-operat- 
 ing with that of labor, which makes it impossible to 
 measure the result solely by the amount of labor ex- 
 pended, but renders the amount of capital and the time 
 it is in use integral parts in the sum of forces. Capital 
 aids labor in all of the different modes of production, but 
 there is a distinction between the relations of the two in 
 such modes of production as consist merely of changing 
 the form or place of matter, as planing boards or mining 
 coal; and such modes of production as avail themselves 
 of the reproductive forces of nature, or of the power 
 of increase arising from differences in the distribu- 
 tion of natural and human powers, such as the raising of 
 grain or the exchange of ice for sugar. In production 
 of the first kind, labor alone is the efficient cause; when 
 labor stops, production stops. When the carpenter 
 drops his plane as the sun sets, the increase of value, 
 which he with his plane is producing, ceases until he be- 
 gins his labor again the following morning. When the 
 factory bell rings for closing, when the mine is shut 
 down, production ends until work is resumed. The in- 
 tervening time, so far as regards production, might as 
 well be blotted out. The lapse of days, the change of 
 seasons is no element in the production that depends 
 solely upon the amount of labor expended. But in the 
 other modes of production to which I have referred, and 
 in which the part of labor may be likened to the opera- 
 tions of lumbermen who throw their logs into the 
 stream, leaving it to the current to carry them to the
 
 184 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION". Book HI 
 
 boom of the sawmill many miles below, time is an ele- 
 ment. The seed in the ground germinates and growa 
 while the farmer sleeps or plows new fields, and the ever- 
 flowing currents of air and ocean bear Whittington's cat 
 toward the rat-tormented ruler in the regions of romance. 
 To recur now to Bastiat's illustration. It is evident 
 that if there is any reason why William at the end of the 
 year should return to James more than an equally good 
 plane, it does not spring, as Bastiat has it, from the in- 
 creased power which the tool gives to labor, for that, as I 
 have shown, is not an element; but it springs from the 
 element of time the difference of a year between the 
 lending and return of the plane. Now, if the view is 
 confined to the illustration, there is nothing to suggest 
 how this element should operate, for a plane at the end 
 of the year has no greater value than a plane at the be- 
 ginning. But if we substitute for the plane a calf, it is 
 clearly to be seen that to put James in as good a position 
 as if he had not lent, William at the end of the year 
 must return, not a calf, but a cow. Or, if we suppose 
 that the ten days' labor had been devoted to planting 
 corn, it is evident that James would not have been fully 
 recompensed if at the end of the year he had received 
 simply so much planted corn, for during the year the 
 planted corn would have germinated and grown and mul- 
 tiplied; and so if the plane had been devoted to ex- 
 change, it might during the year have been turned over 
 several times, each exchange yielding an increase to 
 James. Now, therefore, as James' labor might have 
 been applied in any of those ways or what amounts to 
 the same thing, some of the labor devoted to making 
 planes might have been thus transferred he will not 
 make a plane for William to use for the year unless he 
 gets back more than a plane. And William can afford to 
 give back more than a plane, because the same general 
 average of the advantages of labor applied in different
 
 Chap. III. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OP INTEREST. 185 
 
 modes will enable him to obtain from his labor an ad- 
 vantage from the element of time. It is this general 
 averaging, or as we may say, ''pooling" of advantages, 
 which necessarily takes place where the exigencies of 
 society require the simultaneous carrying on of the differ- 
 ent modes of production, which gives to the possession of 
 wealth incapable in itself of increase an advantage simi' 
 lar to that which attaches to wealth used in such a way 
 as to gain from the element of time. And, in the last 
 analysis, the advantage which is given by the lapse of 
 time springs from the generative force of nature and the 
 varying powers of nature and of man. 
 
 Were the quality and capacity of matter everywhere 
 uniform, and all productive power in man, there would 
 be no interest. The advantage of superior tools might 
 at times be transferred on terms resembling the payment 
 of interest, but such transactions would be irregular and 
 intermittent the exception, not the rule. For the power 
 of obtaining such returns would not, as now, inhere in 
 the possession of capital, and the advantage of time 
 would operate only in peculiar circumstances. That I, 
 having a thousand dollars, can certainly let it out at in- 
 terest, does not arise from the fact that there are others, 
 not having a thousand dollars, who will gladly pay me 
 for the use of it, if they can get it no other way; but 
 from the fact that the capital which my thousand dollars 
 represents has the power of yielding an increase to 
 whomsoever has it, even though he be a millionaire. 
 For the price which anything will bring does not depend 
 upon what the buyer would be willing to give rather than 
 go without it, so much as upon what the seller can other- 
 wise get. For instance, a manufacturer who wishes to 
 retire from business has machinery to the value of $100,- 
 000. If he cannot, should he sell, take this $100,000 
 and invest it so that it will yield him interest, it will 
 be immaterial to him, risk being eliminated, whether h*
 
 186 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book UL 
 
 obtains the whole price at once or in installments, and if 
 the purchaser has the requisite capital, which we must 
 suppose in order that the transaction may rest on its own 
 merits, it will be immaterial whether he pay at once or 
 after a time. If the purchaser has not the required capital, 
 it may be to his convenience that payments should be de- 
 layed, but it would be only in exceptional circumstances 
 that the seller would ask, or the buyer would consent, to 
 pay any premium on this account; nor in such cases 
 would this premium be properly interest. For interest 
 is not properly a payment made for the use of capital, 
 but a return accruing from the increase of capital. If 
 the capital did not yield an increase, the cases would be 
 few and exceptional in which the owner would get a 
 premium. William would soon find out if it did not pay 
 him to give a plank for the privilege of deferring pay- 
 ment on James' plane. 
 
 In short, when we come to analyze production we find 
 it to fall into three modes viz: 
 
 ADAPTING, or changing natural products either in form 
 or in place so as to fit them for the satisfaction of human 
 desire. 
 
 GROWING, or utilizing the vital forces of nature, as by 
 raising vegetables or animals. 
 
 EXCHANGING, or utilizing, so as to add to the general 
 sum of wealth, the higher powers of those natural forces 
 which vary with locality, or of those human forces which 
 vary with situation, occupation, or character. 
 
 In each of these three modes of production capital 
 may aid labor or, to speak more precisely, in the first 
 mode capital may aid labor, but is not absolutely necessary; 
 in the others capital must aid labor, or is necessary. 
 
 Now, while by adapting capital in proper forms we 
 may increase the effective power of labor to impress 
 upon matter the character of wealth, as when we adapt 
 wood and iron to the form and use of a plane; or iron.
 
 Chap. Ill INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 187 
 
 coal, water, and oil to the form and use of a steam 
 engine; or stone, clay, timber, and iron to that of a 
 building, yet the characteristic of this use of capital is, 
 that the benefit is in the use. When, however, we em- 
 ploy capital in the second of these modes, as when we 
 plant grain in the ground, or place animals on a stock 
 farm, or put away wine to improve with age, the benefit 
 arises, not from the use, but from the increase. And so, 
 when we employ capital in the third of these modes, and 
 instead of using a thing we exchange it, the benefit is in 
 the increase or greater value of the things received in 
 return. 
 
 Primarily, the benefits which arise from use go to labor, 
 and the benefits which arise from increase, to capital. 
 But, inasmuch as the division of labor and the inter- 
 changeability of wealth necessitate and imply an averag- 
 ing of benefits, in so far as these different modes of pro- 
 duction correlate with each other, the benefits that arise 
 from one will average with the benefits that arise from 
 the others, for neither labor nor capital will be devoted 
 to any mode of production while any other mode which 
 is open to them will yield a greater return. That is to 
 say, labor expended in the first mode of production will 
 get, not the whole return, but the return minus such part 
 as is necessary to give to capital such an increase as it 
 could have secured in the other modes of production, and 
 capital engaged in the second and third modes will ob- 
 tain, not the whole increase, but the increase minus what 
 is sufficient to give to labor such reward as it could have 
 secured if expended in the first mode. 
 
 Thus interest springs from the power of increase which 
 the reproductive forces of nature, and the in effect anal- 
 ogous capacity for exchange, give to capital. It is not 
 an arbitrary, but a natural thing; it is not the result of a 
 particular social organization, but of laws of the universe 
 which underlie society. It is, therefore, just.
 
 188 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book HI 
 
 They who talk about abolishing interest fall into an 
 error similar to that previously pointed out as giving its 
 plausibility to the doctrine that wages are drawn from 
 capital. When they thus think of interest, they think 
 only of that which is paid by the user of capital to the 
 owner of capital. But, manifestly, this is not all inter- 
 est, but only some interest. Whoever uses capital and 
 obtains the increase it is capable of giving receives inter- 
 est. If I plant and care for a tree until it comes to 
 maturity, I receive, in its fruit, interest upon the capital 
 I have thus accumulated that is, the labor I have ex- 
 pended. If I raise a cow, the milk which she yields me, 
 morning and evening, is not merely the reward of the 
 labor then exerted; but interest upon the capital which 
 my labor, expended in raising her, has accumulated in 
 the cow. And so, if I use my own capital in directly aid- 
 ing production, as by machinery, or in indirectly aiding 
 production, in exchange, I receive a special and dis- 
 tinguishable advantage from the reproductive character 
 of capital, which is as real, though perhaps not as clear, 
 as though I had lent my capital to another and he had 
 paid me interest.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND OF PROFITS OFTEN MISTAKEN 
 FOR INTEREST. 
 
 The belief that interest is the robbery of industry is, I 
 am persuaded, in large part due to a failure to discrim- 
 inate between what is really capital and what is not, and 
 between profits which are properly interest and profits 
 which arise from other sources than the use of capital. 
 In the speech and literature of the day every one is 
 styled a capitalist who possesses what, independent of 
 his labor, will yield him a return, while whatever is thus 
 received is spoken of as the earnings or takings of capi- 
 tal, and we everywhere hear of the conflict of labor and 
 capital. Whether there is, in reality, any conflict be- 
 tween labor and capital, I do not yet ask the reader to 
 make up his mind; but it will be well here to clear away 
 some misapprehensions which confuse the judgment. 
 
 Attention has already been called to the fact that land 
 values, which constitute such an enormous part of what 
 is commonly called capital, are not capital at all; and 
 that rent, which is as commonly included in the receipts 
 of capital, and which takes an ever-increasing portion of 
 the produce of an advancing community, is not the earn- 
 ings of capital, and must be carefully separated from in- 
 terest. It is not necessary now to dwell further upon 
 this point. Attention has likewise been called to the 
 fact that the stocks, bonds, etc., which constitute an- 
 other great part of what is commonly called capital, 
 are not capital at all; but, in some of their shapes, these 
 evidences of indebtedness so closely resemble capital,
 
 190 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION'. Book IH 
 
 and in some cases actually perform, or seem to perform, 
 the functions of capital, while they yield a return to their 
 owners which is not only spoken of as interest, but has 
 every semblance of interest, that it is worth while, before 
 attempting to clear the idea of interest from some other 
 ambiguities that beset it, to speak again of these at 
 greater length. 
 
 Nothing can be capital, let it always be remembered, 
 that is not wealth that is to say, nothing can be capital 
 that does not consist of actual, tangible things, not the 
 spontaneous offerings of nature, which have in them- 
 selves, and not by proxy, the power of directly or indi- 
 rectly ministering to human desire. 
 
 Thus, a government bond is not capital, nor yet is it 
 the representative of capital. The capital that was once 
 received for it by the government has been consumed un- 
 productively blown away from the mouths of cannon, 
 used up in war ships, expended in keeping men march- 
 ing and drilling, killing and destroying. The bond can- 
 not represent capital that has been destroyed. It does 
 not represent capital at all. It is simply a solemn decla- 
 ration that the government will, some time or other, 
 take by taxation from the then existing stock of the peo- 
 ple, so much wealth, which it will turn over to the holder 
 of the bond; and that, in the meanwhile, it will, from 
 time to time, take, in the same way, enough to make up 
 to the holder the increase which so much capital as it 
 some day promises to give him would yield him were it 
 actually in his possession. The immense sums which are 
 thus taken from the produce of every modern country to 
 pay interest on public debts are not the earnings or in- 
 crease of capital are not really interest in the strict 
 sense of the term, but are taxes levied on the produce of 
 labor and capital, leaving so much less for wages and so 
 much less for real interest. 
 
 But, supposing the bonds have been issued for the
 
 Chap. IV. OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND INTEBEST. 191 
 
 deepening of a riverbed, the construction of lighthouses, 
 or the erection of a public market; or supposing, to em- 
 body the same idea while changing the illustration, they 
 have been issued by a railroad company. Here they do 
 represent capital, existing and applied to productive 
 uses, and like stock in a dividend paying company may 
 be considered as evidences of the ownership of capital. 
 But they can be so considered only in so far as they act- 
 ually represent capital, and not as they have been issued 
 in excess of the capital used. Nearly all our railroad 
 companies and other incorporations are loaded down in 
 this way. Where one dollar's worth of capital has been 
 really used, certificates for two, three, four, five, or even 
 ten, have been issued, and upon this fictitious amount 
 interest or dividends are paid with more or less regu- 
 larity. Now, what, in excess of the amount due as in- 
 terest to the real capital invested, is thus earned by these 
 companies and thus paid out, as well as the large sums 
 absorbed by managing rings and never accounted for, is 
 evidently not taken from the aggregate produce of the 
 community on account of the services rendered by capi- 
 tal it is not interest. If we are restricted to the ter- 
 minology of economic writers who decompose profits into 
 interest, insurance, and wages of superintendence, it 
 must fall into the category of wages of superintendence. 
 
 But while wages of superintendence clearly enough 
 include the income derived from such personal qualities 
 as skill, tact, enterprise, organizing ability, inventive 
 power, character, etc., to the profits we are speaking of 
 there is another contributing element, which can only ar- 
 bitrarily be classed with these the element of monopoly. 
 
 "When James I. granted to his minion the exclusive 
 privilege of making gold and silver thread, and prohib- 
 ited, under severe penalties, every one else from making 
 such thread, the income which Buckingham enjoyed in 
 consequence did not arise from the interest upon the
 
 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III 
 
 capital invested in the manufacture, nor from the skill, 
 etc., of those who really conducted the operations, but 
 from what he got from the king viz., the exclusive 
 privilege in reality the power to levy a tax for his own 
 purposes upon all the users of such thread. From a 
 similar source comes a large part of the profits which 
 are commonly confounded with the earnings of capital. 
 Receipts from the patents granted for a limited term of 
 years for the purpose of encouraging invention are clearly 
 attributable to this source, as are the returns derived from 
 monopolies created by protective tariffs under the pre- 
 tense of encouraging home industry. But there is an- 
 other far more insidious and far more general form of 
 monopoly. In the aggregation of large masses of capital 
 under a common control there is developed a new and 
 essentially different power from that power of increase 
 which is a general characteristic of capital and which 
 gives rise to interest. While the latter is, so to speak, 
 constructive in its nature, the power which, as aggrega- 
 tion proceeds, rises upon it is destructive. It is a power 
 of the same kind as that which James granted to Buck- 
 ingham, and it is often exercised with as reckless a dis- 
 regard, not only of the industrial, but of the personal 
 rights of individuals. A railroad company approaches a 
 small town as a highwayman approaches his victim. 
 The threat, "If you do not accede to our terms we will 
 leave your town two or three miles to one side!" is as 
 efficacious as the "Stand and deliver/' when backed by 
 a cocked pistol. For the threat of the railroad company 
 is not merely to deprive the town of the benefits which 
 the railroad might give; it is to put it in a far worse po- 
 sition than if no railroad had been built. Or if, where 
 there is water communication, an opposition boat is put 
 on; rates are reduced until she is forced off, and then 
 the public are compelled to pay the cost of the operation, 
 just as the Kohillas were obliged to pay the forty lacs
 
 Chap. JT. OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND INTEREST. 193 
 
 with which Surajah Dowlah hired of Warren Hastings an 
 English force to assist him in desolating their country 
 and decimating their people. And just as robbers unite 
 to plunder in concert and divide the spoil, so do the 
 trunk lines of railroad unite to raise rates and pool their 
 earnings, or the Pacific roads form a combination with 
 the Pacific Mail Steamship Company by which toll gates 
 are virtually established on land and ocean. And just as 
 Buckingham's creatures, under authority of the gold 
 thread patent, searched private houses, and seized papers 
 and persons for purposes of lust and extortion, so does 
 the great telegraph company which, by the power of as- 
 sociated capital deprives the people of the United States 
 of the full benefits of a beneficent invention, tamper 
 with correspondence and crush out newspapers which 
 offend it. 
 
 It is necessary only to allude to these things, not to 
 dwell on them. Every one knows the tyranny and 
 rapacity with which capital when concentrated in large 
 amounts is frequently wielded to corrupt, to rob, and to 
 destroy. What I wish to call the reader's attention to is 
 that profits thus derived are not to be confounded with 
 the legitimate returns of capital as an agent of produc- 
 tion. They are for the most part to be attributed to a 
 maladjustment of forces in the legislative department of 
 government, and to a blind adherence to ancient barbar- 
 isms and the superstitious reverence for the technicalities 
 of a narrow profession in the administration of law; while 
 the general cause which in advancing communities tends, 
 with the concentration of wealth, to the concentration 
 of power, is the solution of the great problem we are seek- 
 ing for, but have not yet found. 
 
 Any analysis will show that much of the profits which 
 are, in common thought, confounded with interest are in 
 reality due, not to the power of capital, but to the 
 power of concentrated capital, or of concentrated capital
 
 194 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III 
 
 acting upon bad social adjustments. And it will also 
 show that what are clearly and properly wages of super- 
 intendence are very frequently confounded with the 
 earnings of capital. 
 
 And, so, profits properly due to the elements of risk 
 are frequently confounded with interest. Some people 
 acquire wealth by taking chances which to the majority 
 of people must necessarily bring loss. Such are many 
 forms of speculation, and especially that mode of 
 gambling known as stock dealing. Nerve, judgment, 
 the possession of capital, skill in what in lower forms of 
 gambling are known as the arts of the confidence man 
 and blackleg, give advantage to the individual; but, 
 just as at a gaming table, whatever one gains some one 
 else must lose. 
 
 Now, taking the great fortunes that are so often re- 
 ferred to as exemplifying the accumulative power of capi- 
 tal the Dukes of Westminster and Marquises of Bute, 
 the Rothschilds, Astors, Stewarts, Vanderbilts, Goulds, 
 Stanfords, and Floods it is upon examination readily 
 seen that they have been built up, in greater or less part, 
 not by interest, but by elements such as we have been 
 reviewing. 
 
 How necessary it is to note the distinctions to which I 
 have been calling attention is shown in current discus- 
 sions, where the shield seems alternately white or black 
 as the standpoint is shifted from one side to the other. 
 On the one hand we are called upon to see, in the exist- 
 ence of deep poverty side by side with vast accumula- 
 tions of wealth, the aggressions of capital on labor, and 
 in reply it is pointed out that capital aids labor, and 
 hence we are asked to conclude that there is nothing 
 unjust or unnatural in the wide gulf between rich and 
 poor; that wealth is but the reward of industry, intelli- 
 gence, and thrift; and poverty but the punishment of 
 indolence, ignorance, and imprudence.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE LAW OF INTEREST. 
 
 Let us torn now to the law of interest, keeping in 
 mind two things to which attention has heretofore been 
 called viz: 
 
 First That it is not capital which employs labor, but 
 labor which employs capital. 
 
 Second That capital is not a fixed quantity, but can 
 always be increased or decreased, (1) by the greater or 
 less application of labor to the production of capital, and 
 (2) by the conversion of wealth into capital, or capital 
 into wealth, for capital being but wealth applied in a cer- 
 tain way, wealth is the larger and inclusive term. 
 
 It is manifest that under conditions of freedom the 
 maximum that can be given for the use of capital will be 
 the increase it will bring, and the minimum or zero will 
 be the replacement of capital; for above the one point 
 the borrowing of capital would involve a loss, and below 
 the other, capital could not be maintained. 
 
 Observe, again: It is not, as is carelessly stated by 
 some writers, the increased efficiency given to labor by 
 the adaptation of capital to any special form or use which 
 fixes this maximum, but the average power of increase 
 which belongs to capital generally. The power of apply- 
 ing itself in advantageous forms is a power of labor, 
 which capital as capital cannot claim nor share. A bow 
 and arrows will enable an Indian to kill, let us say, a 
 buffalo every day, while with sticks and stones he could 
 hardly kill one in a week; but the weapon maker of the 
 tribe could not claim from the hunter six out of every
 
 196 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III 
 
 seven buffaloes killed as a return for the use of a bow 
 and arrows; nor will capital invested in a woolen factory 
 yield to the capitalist the difference between the produce 
 of the factory and what the same amount of labor could 
 have obtained with the spinning-wheel and handloom. 
 William when he borrows a plane from James does not 
 in that obtain the advantage of the increased efficiency of 
 labor when using a plane for the smoothing of boards over 
 what it has when smoothing them with a shell or flint. 
 The progress of knowledge has made the advantage in- 
 volved in the use of planes a common property and power 
 of labor. What he gets from James is merely such ad- 
 vantage as the element of a year's time will give to the 
 possession of so much capital as is represented by the 
 plane. 
 
 Now, if the vital forces of nature which give an ad- 
 vantage to the element of time be the cause of interest, 
 it would seem to follow that this maximum rate of inter- 
 est would be determined by the strength of these forces 
 and the extent to which they are engaged in production. 
 But while the reproductive force of nature seems to vary 
 enormously, as, for instance, between the salmon, which 
 spawns thousands of eggs, and the whale, which brings 
 forth a single calf at intervals of years; between the rab- 
 bit and the elephant, the thistle and the gigantic red- 
 wood, it appears from the way the natural balance is 
 maintained that there is an equation between the repro- 
 ductive and destructive forces of nature, which in effect 
 brings the principle of increase to a uniform point. This 
 natural balance man has within narrow limits the power 
 to disturb, and by the modification of natural conditions 
 may avail himself at will of the varying strength of the 
 reproductive force in nature. But when he does so, 
 there arises from the wide scope of his desires another 
 principle which brings about in the increase of wealth a 
 similar equation and balance to that which is effected in
 
 Chap. V. THE LAW OF INTEREST. 197 
 
 nature between the different forms of life. This equa- 
 tion exhibits itself through values. If, in a country 
 adapted to both, I go to raising rabbits and you to rais- 
 ing horses, my rabbits may, until the natural limit is 
 reached, increase faster than your horses. But my capi- 
 tal will not increase faster, for the effect of the varying 
 rates of increase will be to lower the value of rabbits as 
 compared with horses, and to increase the value of horses 
 as compared with rabbits. 
 
 Though the varying strength of the vital forces of 
 nature is thus brought to uniformity, there may be a dif- 
 ference in the different stages of social development as to 
 the proportionate extent to which, in the aggregate pro- 
 duction of wealth, these vital forces are enlisted. But 
 as to this, there are two remarks to be made. In the 
 first place, although in such a country as England the 
 part taken by manufactures in the aggregate wealth pro- 
 duction has very much increased as compared with the 
 part taken by agriculture, yet it is to be noticed that to 
 a very great extent this is true only of the political or 
 geographical division, and not of the industrial commu- 
 nity. For industrial communities are not limited by 
 political divisions, or bounded by seas or mountains. 
 They are limited only by the scope of their exchanges, 
 and the proportion which in the industrial economy of 
 England agriculture and stock-raising bear to maufac- 
 tures is averaged with Iowa and Illinois, with Texas and 
 California, with Canada and India, with Queensland and 
 the Baltic in short, with every country to which the 
 world-wide exchanges of England extend. In the next 
 place, it is to be remarked that although in the progress 
 of civilization the tendency is to the relative increase of 
 manufactures, as compared with agriculture, and con- 
 sequently to a proportionately less reliance upon the 
 reproductive forces of nature, yet this is accompanied 
 by a corresponding extension of exchanges, and hence a
 
 198 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III. 
 
 greater calling in of the power of increase which thus 
 arises. So these tendencies, to a great extent, and, prob- 
 ably, so far as we have yet gone, completely, balance each 
 other, and preserve the equilibrium which fixes the aver- 
 age increase of capital, or the normal rate of interest. 
 
 Now, this normal point of interest, which lies between 
 the necessary maximum and the necessary minimum of 
 the return to capital, must, wherever it rests, be such 
 that all things (such as the feeling of security, desire for 
 accumulation, etc.) considered, the reward of capital and 
 the reward of labor will be equal that is to say, will give 
 an equally attractive result for the exertion or sacrifice 
 involved. It is impossible, perhaps, to formulate this 
 point, as wages are habitually estimated in quantity and 
 interest in a ratio; but if we suppose a given quantity of 
 wealth to be the produce of a given amount of labor, co- 
 operating for a stated time with a certain amount of 
 capital, the proportion in which the produce would be 
 divided between the labor and the capital would afford 
 a comparison. There must be such a point at, or rather, 
 about, which the rate of interest must tend to settle; 
 since, unless such an equilibrium were effected, labor 
 would not accept the use of capital, or capital would not 
 be placed at the disposal of labor. For labor and capital 
 are but different forms of the same thing human exer- 
 tion. Capital is produced by labor; it is, in fact, but 
 labor impressed upon matter labor stored up in matter, 
 to be released again as needed, as the heat of the sun 
 stored up in coal is released in the furnace. The use of 
 capital in production is, therefore, but a mode of labor. 
 As capital can be used only by being consumed, its use 
 is the expenditure of labor, and for the maintenance of 
 capital, its production by labor must be commensurate 
 with its consumption in aid of labor. Hence the prin- 
 ciple that, under circumstances which permit free com- 
 petition, operates to bring wages to a common standard
 
 Chap. V. THE LAW OF INTEREST. 199 
 
 and profits to a substantial equality the principle that 
 men will seek to gratify their desires with the least exer- 
 tion operates to establish and maintain this equilibrium 
 between wages and interest. 
 
 This natural relation between interest and wages tnis 
 equilibrium at which both will represent equal returns to 
 equal exertions may be stated in a form which suggests 
 a relation of opposition; but this opposition is only ap- 
 parent. In a partnership between Dick and Harry, the 
 statement that Dick receives a certain proportion of 
 the profits implies that the portion of Harry is less or 
 greater as Dick's is greater or less; but where, as in this 
 case, each gets only what he adds to the common fund, 
 the increase of the portion of the one does not decrease 
 what the other receives. 
 
 And this relation fixed, it is evident that interest and 
 wages must rise and fall together, and that interest can- 
 not be increased without increasing wages; nor wages 
 lowered without depressing interest. For if wages fall, 
 interest must also fall in proportion, else it becomes 
 more profitable to turn labor into capital than to apply 
 it directly; while, if interest falls, wages must likewise 
 proportionately fall, or else the increment of capital 
 would be checked. 
 
 We are, of course, not speaking of particular wages 
 and particular interest, but of the general rate of wages 
 and the general rate of interest, meaning always by inter- 
 est the return which capital can secure, less insurance 
 and wages of superintendence. In a particular case, or 
 a particular employment, the tendency of wages and in- 
 terest to an equilibrium may be impeded; but between the 
 general rate of wages and the general rate of interest, 
 this tendency must be prompt to act. For though in a 
 particular branch of producton the line may be clearly 
 drawn between those who furnish labor and those who 
 furnish capital, yet even in comm unities where there is
 
 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION". Boole 111 
 
 the sharpest distinction between the general class labor- 
 ers and the general class capitalists, these two classes 
 shade off into each other by imperceptible gradations, 
 and on the extremes where the two classes meet in the 
 same persons, the interaction which restores equilibrium, 
 or rather prevents its disturbance, can go on without ob- 
 struction, whatever obstacles may exist where the separa- 
 tion is complete. And, furthermore, it must be remem- 
 bered, as has before been stated, that capital is but a 
 portion of wealth, distinguished from wealth generally 
 only by the purpose to which it is applied, and, hence, 
 the whole body of wealth has upon the relations of capi- 
 tal and labor the same equalizing effect that a fly-wheel 
 has upon the motion of machiLc 'y, taking up capital 
 when it is in excess and giving it out again when there 
 is a deficiency, just as a jeweler may give his wife dia- 
 monds to wear when he has a superabundant stock, and 
 put them in his showcase again when his stock becomes 
 reduced. Thus any tendency on the part of interest to 
 rise above the equilibrium with wages must immediately 
 beget not only a tendency to direct labor to the produc- 
 tion of capital, but also the application of wealth to the 
 uses of capital; while any tendency of wages to rise above 
 the equilibrium with interest must in like manner beget 
 not only a tendency to turn labor from the production of 
 capital, but also to lessen the proportion of capital by 
 diverting from a productive to a non-productive use 
 some of the articles of wealth of which capital is com- 
 posed. 
 
 To recapitulate: There is a certain relation or ratio be- 
 tween wages and interest, fixed by causes, which, if not 
 absolutely permanent, slowly change, at which enough 
 labor will be turned into capital to supply the capital 
 which, in the degree of knowledge, state of the arts, 
 density of population, character of occupations, variety, 
 extent and rapidity of exchanges, will be demanded for
 
 Chap. V. THE LAW OF INTEREST. 201 
 
 production, and this relation or ratio the interaction of 
 labor and capital constantly maintains; hence interest 
 must rise and fall with the rise and fall of wages. 
 
 To illustrate: The price of flour is determined hy the 
 price of wheat and cost of milling. The cost of milling 
 varies slowly and but little, the difference being, even at 
 long intervals, hardly perceptible; while the price of 
 wheat varies frequently and largely. Hence we correctly 
 say that the price of flour is governed by the price of 
 wheat. Or, to put the proposition in the same form as 
 the preceding: There is a certain relation or ratio be- 
 tween the value of wheat and the value of flour, fixed by 
 the cost of milling, which relation or ratio the interac- 
 tion between the demand for flour and the supply of 
 wheat constantly maintains; hence the price of flour 
 must rise and fall with the rise and fall of the price of 
 wheat. 
 
 Or, as, leaving the connecting link, the price of wheat, 
 to inference, we say that the price of flour depends upon 
 the character of the seasons, wars, etc., so may we put the 
 law of interest in a form which directly connects it with 
 the law of rent, by saying that the general rate of interest 
 will be determined by the return to capital upon the poor- 
 est land to which capital is freely applied that is to say, 
 upon the best land open to it without the payment of 
 rent. Thus we bring the law of interest into a form 
 which shows it to be a corollary of the law of rent. 
 
 We may prove this conclusion in another way: For 
 that interest must decrease as rent increases, we can 
 plainly see if we eliminate wages. To do this, we must, 
 to be sure, imagine a universe organized on totally differ- 
 ent principles. Nevertheless, we may imagine what 
 Carlyle would call a fool's paradise, where the production 
 of wealth went on without the aid of labor, and solely by 
 the reproductive force of capital where sheep bore 
 ready-made clothing on their backs, cows presented but-
 
 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III. 
 
 ter and cheese, and oxen, when they got to the proper 
 point of fatness, carved themselves into beefsteaks and 
 roasting ribs; where houses grew from the seed, and a 
 jackknife thrown upon the ground would take root and 
 in due time bear a crop of assorted cutlery. Imagine 
 certain capitalists transported, with their capital in ap- 
 propriate forms, to such a place. Manifestly, they would 
 get, as the return for their capital, the whole amount of 
 wealth it produced only so long as none of its produce 
 was demanded as rent. When rent arose, it would 
 come out of the produce of capital, and as it increased, 
 the return to the owners of capital must necessarily 
 diminish. If we imagine the place where capital pos- 
 sessed this power of producing wealth without the aid of 
 labor to be of limited extent, say an island, we shall see 
 that as soon as capital had increased to the limit of the 
 island to support it, the return to capital must fall to a 
 trifle above its minimum of mere replacement, and the 
 land owners would receive nearly the whole produce as 
 rent, for the only alternative capitalists would have 
 would be to throw their capital into the sea. Or, if we 
 imagine such an island to be in communication with the 
 rest of the world, the return to capital would settle at the 
 rate of return in other places. Interest there would be 
 neither higher nor lower than anywhere else. Rent would 
 obtain the whole of the superior advantage, and the 
 land of such an island would have a great value. 
 To sum up, the law of interest is this: 
 
 The relation between wages and interest is determined 
 by the average power of increase which attaches to capital 
 from its use in reproductive modes. As rent arises, in- 
 terest will fall as wages fall, or will be determined by the 
 margin of cultivation. 
 
 I have endeavored at this length to trace out and illus- 
 trate the law of interest more in deference to the existing
 
 : THE LAW OP INTEREST. 203 
 
 terminology and modes of thought than from the real 
 necessities of our inquiry, were it unembarrassed by be- 
 fogging discussions. In truth, the primary division of 
 wealth in distribution is dual, not tripartite. Capital is 
 but a form of labor, and its distinction from labor is in 
 reality but a subdivision, just as the division of labor into 
 skilled and unskilled would be. In our examination we 
 have reached the same point as would have been attained 
 had we simply treated capital as a form of labor, and 
 sought the law which divides the produce between rent 
 and wages; that is to say, between the possessors of the 
 two factors, natural substances and powers, and human 
 exertion which two factors by their union produce all 
 wealth.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 
 
 We have by inference already obtained the law of 
 wages. But to verify the deduction and to strip the 
 subject of all ambiguities, let us seek the law from an 
 independent starting point. 
 
 There is, of course, no such thing as a common rate of 
 wages, in the sense that there is at any given time and 
 place a common rate of interest. Wages, which include 
 all returns received from labor, not only vary with the 
 differing powers of individuals, but, as the organization 
 of society becomes elaborate, vary largely as between 
 occupations. Nevertheless, there is a certain general 
 relation between all wages, so that we express a clear and 
 well-understood idea when we say that wages are higher 
 or lower in one time or place than in another. In their 
 degrees, wages rise and fall in obedience to a common 
 law. What is this law? 
 
 The fundamental principle of human action the law 
 that is to political economy what the law of gravitation 
 is to physics is that men seek to gratify their desires 
 with the least exertion. Evidently, this principle must 
 bring to an equality, through the competition it induces, 
 the reward gained by equal exertions under similar cir- 
 cumstances. When men work for themselves, this 
 equalization will be largely affected by the equation of 
 prices; and between those who work for themselves and 
 those who work for others, the same tendency to equali- 
 zation will operate. Now, under this principle, what, in 
 conditions of freedom, will be the terms at which one 
 man can hire others to work for him? Evidently, they
 
 Chap. FT. WAGES AND THE LAW OP WAGES. 205 
 
 will be fixed by what the men could make if laboring for 
 themselves. The principle which will prevent him from 
 having to give anything above this, except what is neces- 
 sary to induce the change, will also prevent them from 
 taking less. Did they demand more, the competition of 
 others would prevent them-irom getting employment. 
 Did he offer less, none would accept the terms, as they 
 could obtain greater results by working for themselves. 
 Thus, although the employer wishes to pay as little as 
 possible, and the employee to receive as much as possi- 
 ble, wages will be fixed by the value or produce of such 
 labor to the laborers themselves. If wages are tempo- 
 rarily carried either above or below this line, a tendency 
 to carry them back at once arises. 
 
 But the result, or the earnings of labor, as is readily 
 seen in those primary and fundamental occupations in 
 which labor first engages, and which, even in the most 
 highly developed condition of society, still form the base 
 of production, does not depend merely upon the inten-. 
 sity or quality of the labor itself. Wealth is the product 
 of two factors, land and labor, and what a given amount 
 of labor will yield will vary with the powers of the 
 natural opportunities to which it is applied. This being 
 the case, the principle that men seek to gratify their de- 
 sires with the least exertion will fix wages at the produce 
 of such labor at the point of highest natural productive- 
 ness open to it. Now, by virtue of the same principle, 
 the highest point of natural productiveness open to 
 labor under existing conditions will be the lowest point 
 at which production continues, for men, impelled by a 
 supreme law of the human mind to seek the satisfaction 
 of their desires with the least exertion, will not expend 
 labor at a lower point of productiveness while a higher is 
 open to them. Thus the wages which an employer must 
 pay will be measured by the lowest point of natural pro- 
 ductiveness to which production extends, and wages will 
 rise or fall as this point rises or falls.
 
 206 THE LAWS OP DISTRIBUTION'. Book 1IL 
 
 To illustrate: In a simple state of society, each man, 
 as is the primitive mode, works for himself some in 
 hunting, let us say, some in fishing, some in cultivating 
 the ground. Cultivation, we will suppose, has just be- 
 gun, and the land in use is all of the same quality, yield- 
 ing a similar return to similar exertions. Wages, there- 
 fore for, though there is neither employer nor em- 
 ployed, there are yet wages will be the full produce of 
 labor, and, making allowance for the difference of agree- 
 ableness, risk, etc., in the three pursuits, they will be on 
 the average equal in each that is to say, equal exertions 
 will yield equal results. Now, if one of their number 
 wishes to employ some of his fellows to work for him in- 
 stead of for themselves, he must pay wages fixed by this 
 full, average produce of labor. 
 
 Let a period of time elapse. Cultivation has ex- 
 tended, and, instead of land of the same quality, em- 
 braces lands of different qualities. Wages, now, will not 
 be as before, the average produce of labor. They will be 
 the average produce of labor at the margin of cultiva- 
 tion, or the point of lowest return. For, as men seek to 
 satisfy their desires with the least possible exertion, the 
 point of lowest return in cultivation must yield to labor 
 a return equivalent to the average return in hunting and 
 fishing.* Labor will no longer yield equal returns to 
 equal exertions, but those who expend their labor on the 
 superior land will obtain a greater produce for the same 
 exertion than those who cultivate the inferior land. 
 Wages, however, will still be equal, for this excess which 
 the cultivators of the superior land receive is in reality 
 rent, and if land has been subjected to individual owner- 
 ship will give it a value. Now, if, under these changed 
 circumstances, one member of this community wishes to 
 hire others to work for him, he will have to pay only 
 
 * This equalization will be effected by the equation of prices.
 
 Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 207 
 
 what the labor yields at the lowest point of cultivation. 
 If thereafter the margin of cultivation sinks to points of 
 lower and lower productiveness, so must wages sink; if, 
 on the contrary, it rises, so also must wages rise; for, 
 just as a free body tends to take the shortest route to 
 the earth's center, so do men seek the easiest mode to 
 the gratification of their desires. 
 
 Here, then, we have the law of wages, as a deduction 
 from a principle most obvious and most universal. That 
 wages depend upon the margin of cultivation that they 
 will be greater or less as the produce which labor can ob- 
 tain from the highest natural opportunities open to it is 
 greater or less, flows from the principle that men will 
 seek to satisfy their wants with the least exertion. 
 
 Now, if we turn from simple social states to the complex 
 phenomena of highly civilized societies, we shall find 
 upon examination that they also fall under this law. 
 
 In such societies, wages differ widely, but they still 
 bear a more or less definite and obvious relation to each 
 other. This relation is not invariable, as at one time a 
 philosopher of repute may earn by his lectures many fold 
 the wages of the best mechanic, and at another can 
 hardly hope for the pay of a footman; as in a great city 
 occupations may yield relatively high wages, which in a 
 new settlement would yield relatively low wages; yet 
 these variations between wages may, under all conditions, 
 and in spite of arbitrary divergences caused by custom, 
 law, etc., be traced to certain circumstances. In one of 
 his most interesting chapters Adam Smith thus enumer- 
 ates the principal circumstances "which make up for a 
 small pecuniary gain in some employments and counter- 
 balance a great one in others: First, the agreeableness or 
 disagreeableness of the employments themselves. Sec- 
 ondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and 
 expense of learning them. Thirdly, the constancy or in- 
 constancy of employment in them. Fourthly, the small
 
 208 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III 
 
 or great trust which must be reposed in them. Fifthly, 
 the probability or improbability of success in them. " * It 
 is not necessary to dwell in detail on these causes of vari- 
 ation in wages between different employments. They 
 have been admirably explained and illustrated by Adam 
 Smith and the economists who have followed him, who 
 have well worked out the details, even if they have failed 
 to apprehend the main law. 
 
 The effect of all the circumstances which give rise to 
 the differences between wages in different occupations 
 may be included as supply and demand, and it is per- 
 fectly correct to say that the wages in different occupa- 
 tions will vary relatively according to differences in the 
 supply and demand of labor meaning by demand the 
 call which the community as a whole makes for services 
 of the particular kind, and by supply the relative amount 
 of labor which, under the existing conditions, can be de- 
 termined to the performance of those particular services. 
 But though this is true as to the relative differences of 
 wages, when it is said, as is commonly said, that the gen- 
 eral rate of wages is determined by supply and demand, 
 the words are meaningless. For supply and demand are 
 but relative terms. The supply of labor can only mean 
 labor offered in exchange for labor or the produce of 
 labor, and the demand for labor can only mean labor or 
 the produce of labor offered in exchange for labor. Sup- 
 ply is thus demand, and demand supply, and, in the whole 
 community, one must be co-extensive with the other. 
 This is clearly apprehended by the current political econ- 
 omy in relation to sales, and the reasoning of Ricardo, 
 Mill, and others, which proves that alterations in supply 
 and demand cannot produce a general rise or fall of 
 
 * This last, which is analogous to the element of risk in profits, 
 accounts for the high wages of successful lawyers, physicians, con 
 tractors, actors, etc.
 
 Chap. FT. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 209 
 
 values, though they may cause a rise or fall in the value 
 of a particular thing, is as applicable to labor. What 
 conceals the absurdity of speaking generally of supply 
 and demand in reference to labor is the habit of consid- 
 ering the demand for labor as springing from capital and 
 as something distinct from labor; but the analysis to 
 which this idea has been heretofore subjected has suffi- 
 ciently shown its fallacy. It is indeed evident from the 
 mere statement, that wages can never permanently ex- 
 ceed the produce of labor, and hence that there is no 
 fund from which wages can for any time be drawn, save 
 that which labor constantly creates. 
 
 But, though all the circumstances which produce the 
 differences in wages between occupations may be consid- 
 ered as operating through supply and demand, they, or 
 rather, their effects, for sometimes the same cause oper- 
 ates in both ways, may be separated into two classes, ac- 
 cording as they tend only to raise apparent wages or as 
 they tend to raise real wages that is, to increase the 
 average reward for equal exertion. The high wages of 
 some occupations much resemble what Adam Smith com- 
 pares them to, the prizes of a lottery, in which the great 
 gain of one is made up from the losses of many others. 
 This is not only true of the professions by means of 
 which Dr. Smith illustrates the principle, but is largely 
 true of the wages of superintendence in mercantile pur- 
 suits, as shown by the fact that over ninety per cent, of 
 the mercantile firms that commence business ultimately 
 fail. The higher wages of those occupations which can 
 be prosecuted only in certain states of the weather, or 
 are otherwise intermittent and uncertain, are also of 
 this class; while differences that arise from hardship, 
 discredit, unhealthiness, etc., imply differences of sac- 
 rifice, the increased compensation for which only pre- 
 serves the level of equal returns for equal exertions. All 
 these differences are, in fact, equalizations, arising from
 
 210 THE LAWS OF DISTEIBUTION. Book IIL 
 
 circumstances which, to use the words of Adam Smith, 
 "make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employ- 
 ments and counterbalance a great one in others." But, 
 besides these merely apparent differences, there are real 
 differences in wages between occupations, which are 
 caused by the greater or less rarity of the qualities re- 
 quired greater abilities or skill, whether natural or 
 acquired, commanding on the average greater wages. 
 Now, these qualities, whether natural or acquired, are 
 essentially analogous to differences in strength and quick^ 
 ness in manual labor, and as in manual labor the higher 
 wages paid the man who can do more would be based 
 upon wages paid to those who can do only the average 
 amount, so wages in the occupations requiring superior 
 abilities and skill must depend upon the common wages 
 paid for ordinary abilities and skill. 
 
 It is, indeed, evident from observation, as it must be 
 from theory, that whatever be the circumstances which 
 produce the differences of wages in different occupations, 
 and although they frequently vary in relation to each 
 other, producing, as between time and time, and place 
 and place, greater or less relative differences, yet the rate 
 of wages in one occupation is always dependent on the 
 rate in another, and so on, down, until the lowest and 
 widest stratum of wages is reached, in occupations where 
 the demand is more nearly uniform and in which there is 
 the greatest freedom to engage. 
 
 For, although barriers of greater or less difficulty may 
 exist, the amount of labor which can be determined to 
 any particular pursuit is nowhere absolutely fixed. All 
 mechanics could act as laborers, and many laborers could 
 readily become mechanics; all storekeepers could act as 
 shopmen, and many shopmen could easily become store- 
 keepers; many farmers would, upon inducement, become 
 hunters or miners, fishermen or sailors, and many hunt- 
 ers, miners, fishermen, and sailors know enough of farm-
 
 Chap. VI WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 211 
 
 ing to turn their hands to it on demand. In each 
 occupation there are men who unite it with others, or 
 who alternate between occupations, while the young men 
 who are constantly coming in to fill up the ranks of labor 
 are drawn in the direction of the strongest inducements 
 and least resistances. And further than this, all the 
 gradations of wages shade into each other by imperceptible 
 degrees, instead of being separated by clearly defined 
 gulfs. The wages, even of the poorer paid mechanics, 
 are generally higher than the wages of simple laborers, 
 but there are always some mechanics who do not, on the 
 whole, make as much as some laborers; the best paid 
 lawyers receive much higher wages than the best paid 
 clerks, but the best paid clerks make more than some 
 lawyers, and in fact the worst paid clerks make more 
 than the worst paid lawyers. Thus, on the verge of each 
 occupation, stand those to whom the inducements be- 
 tween one occupation and another are so nicely balanced 
 that the slightest change is sufficient to determine their 
 labor in one direction or another. Thus, any increase or 
 decrease in the demand for labor of a certain kind can- 
 not, except temporarily, raise wages in that occupation 
 above, nor depress them below, the relative level with 
 wages in other occupations, which is determined by the 
 circumstances previously adverted to, such as relative 
 agreeableness or continuity of employment, etc. Even, 
 as experience shows, where artificial barriers are imposed 
 to this interaction, such as limiting laws, guild regula- 
 tions, the establishment of caste, etc., they may inter- 
 fere with, but cannot prevent, the maintenance of this 
 equilibrium. They operate only as dams, which pile up 
 the water of a stream above its natural level, but cannot 
 prevent its overflow. 
 
 Thus, although they may from time to time alter in 
 relation to each other, as the circumstances which deter- 
 mine relative levels change, yet it is evident that wages
 
 212 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book Ut. 
 
 in all strata must ultimately depend upon wages in the 
 lowest and widest stratum the general rate of wages 
 rising or falling as these rise or fall. 
 
 Now, the primary and fundamental occupations, upon 
 which, so to speak, all others are built up, are evidently 
 those which procure wealth directly from nature; hence 
 the law of wages in them must be the general law of 
 wages. And, as wages in such occupations clearly de- 
 pend upon what labor can produce at the loAvest point of 
 natural productiveness to which it is habitually applied; 
 therefore, wages generally depend upon the margin of 
 cultivation, or, to put it more exactly, upon the highest 
 point of natural productiveness to which labor is free to 
 apply itself without the payment of rent. 
 
 So obvious is this law that it is often apprehended 
 without being recognized. It is frequently said of such 
 countries as California and Nevada that cheap labor 
 would enormously aid their development, as it would en- 
 able the working of the poorer but most extensive 
 deposits of ore. A relation between low wages and a 
 low point of production is perceived by those who talk 
 in this way, but they invert cause and effect. It is not 
 low wages which will cause the working of low-grade ore, 
 but the extension of production to the lower point which 
 will diminish wages. If wages could be arbitrarily forced 
 down, as has sometimes been attempted by statute, the 
 poorer mines would not be worked so long as richer 
 mines could be worked. But if the margin of produc- 
 tion were arbitrarily forced down, as it might be, were 
 the superior natural opportunities in the ownership of 
 those who chose rather to wait for future increase of 
 value than to permit them to be used now, wages would 
 necessarily fall. 
 
 The demonstration is complete. The law of wages we 
 have thus obtained is that which we previously obtained
 
 Chap. FT. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 213 
 
 as the corollary of the law of rent, and it completely 
 harmonizes with the law of interest. It is, that: 
 
 Wages depend upon the margin of production, or upon 
 the produce which labor can obtain at the highest point of 
 natural productiveness open to it without the payment of 
 rent. 
 
 This law of wages accords with and explains universal 
 facts that without its apprehension seem unrelated and 
 contradictory. It shows that: 
 
 Where land is free and labor is unassisted by capital, 
 the whole produce will go to labor as wages. 
 
 Where land is free and labor is assisted by capital, 
 wages will consist of the whole produce, less that part 
 necessary to induce the storing up of labor as capital. 
 
 Where land is subject to ownership and rent arises, 
 wages will be fixed by what labor could secure from the 
 highest natural opportunities open to it without the 
 payment of rent. 
 
 Where natural opportunities are all monopolized, 
 wages may be forced by the '"competition among laborers 
 to the minimum at which laborers will consent to repro- 
 duce. 
 
 This necessary 'minimum of wages (which by Smith 
 and Eicardo is denominated the point of "natural 
 wages," and by Mill supposed to regulate wages, which 
 will be higher or lower as the working classes consent to 
 reproduce at a higher or lower standard of comfort) is, 
 however, included in the law of wages as previously 
 stated, as it is evident that the margin of production 
 cannot fall below that point at which enough will be left 
 as wages to secure the maintenance of labor. 
 
 Like Eicardo's law of rent of which it is the corollary, 
 this law of wages carries with it its own proof and be- 
 comes self-evident by mere statement. For it is but an 
 Application of the central truth that is the foundation of
 
 214 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III 
 
 economic reasoning that men will seek to satisfy their 
 desires with the least exertion. The average man will 
 not work for an employer for less, all things considered, 
 than he can earn by working for himself; nor yet will he 
 work for himself for less than he can earn by working 
 for an employer, and hence the return which labor can 
 secure from such natural opportunities as are free to it 
 must fix the wages which labor everywhere gets. That 
 is to say, the line of rent is the necessary measure of the 
 line of wages. In fact, the accepted law of rent depends 
 for its recognition upon a previous, though in many cases 
 it seems to be an unconscious, acceptance of this law of 
 wages. What makes it evident that land of a particu- 
 lar quality will yield as rent the surplus of its produce 
 over that of the least productive land in use, is the ap- 
 prehension of the fact that the owner of the higher 
 quality of land can procure the labor to work his land by 
 the payment of what that labor could produce if exerted 
 upon land of the poorer quality. 
 
 In its simpler manifestations, this law of wages is rec- 
 ognized by people who do not trouble themselves about 
 political economy, just as the fact that a heavy body 
 would fall to the earth was long recognized by those who 
 never thought of the law of gravitation. It does not re- 
 quire a philosopher to see that if in any country natural 
 opportunities were thrown open which would enable 
 laborers to make for themselves wages higher than the 
 lowest now paid, the general rate of wages would rise; 
 while the most ignorant and stupid of the placer miners 
 of early California knew that as the placers gave out or 
 were monopolized, wages must fall. It requires no fine- 
 spun theory to explain why wages are so high relatively 
 to production in new countries where land is yet unmo- 
 nopolized. The cause is on the surface. One man will 
 not work for another for less than his labor will really 
 yield, when he can go upon the next quarter section and
 
 Chap. m. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 215 
 
 take up a farm for himself. It is only as land becomes 
 monopolized and these natural opportunities are shut off 
 from labor, that laborers are obliged to compete with 
 each other for employment, and it becomes possible for 
 the farmer to hire hands to do his work while he main- 
 tains himself on the difference between what their labor 
 produces and what he pays them for it. 
 
 Adam Smith himself saw the cause of high wages where 
 land was yet open to settlement, though he failed to ap- 
 preciate the importance and connection of the fact. In 
 treating of the Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies 
 (Chapter VII, Book IV, "Wealth of Nations,") he says: 
 
 " Every colonist gets more land than he can possibly cultivate. 
 He has no rent and scarce any taxes to pay. * * He is eager, 
 therefore, to collect laborers from every quarter and to pay them the 
 most liberal wages. But these liberal wages, joined to the plenty 
 and cheapness of land, soon make these laborers leave him in order 
 to become landlords themselves, and to reward with equal liberality 
 other laborers who soon leave them for the same reason they left 
 their first masters." 
 
 This chapter contains numerous expressions which, 
 like the opening sentence in the chapter on The Wages 
 of Labor, show that Adam Smith failed to appreciate 
 the true laws of the distribution of wealth only because 
 he turned away from the more primitive forms of society 
 to look for first principles amid complex social manifes- 
 tations, where he was blinded by a pre-accepted theory 
 of the functions of capital, and, as it seems to me, by a 
 vague acceptance of the doctrine which, two years after 
 his death, was formulated by Malthus. And it is impos- 
 sible to read the works of the economists who since the 
 time of Smith have endeavored to build up and elucidate 
 the science of political economy without seeing how, over 
 and over again, they stumble over the law of wages with- 
 out once recognizing it. Yet, "if it were a dog it would 
 bite them!" Indeed, it is difficult to resist the impres-
 
 216 THE LA.WS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book IH 
 
 sion that some of them really saw this law of wages, but, 
 fearful of the practical conclusions to which it would 
 lead, preferred to ignore and cover it up, rather than use 
 it as the key to problems which without it are so perplex- 
 ing. A great truth to an age which has rejected and 
 trampled on it, is not a word of peace, but a sword! 
 
 Perhaps it may be well to remind the reader, before 
 closing this chapter, of what has been before stated 
 that I am using the word wages not in the sense of a 
 quantity, but in the sense of a proportion. When I say 
 that wages fall as rent rises, I do not mean that the 
 quantity of wealth obtained by laborers as wages is nec- 
 essarily less, but that the proportion which it bears to 
 the whole produce is necessarily less. The proportion 
 may diminish while the quantity remains the same or 
 even increases. If the margin of cultivation descends 
 from the productive point which we will call 25, to 
 the productive point we will call 20, the rent of all 
 lands that before paid rent will increase by this differ- 
 ence, and the proportion of the whole produce which 
 goes to laborers as wages will to the same extent dimin- 
 ish; but if, in the meantime, the advance of the arts or 
 the economies that become possible with greater popula- 
 tion have so increased the productive power of labor that 
 at 20 the same exertion will produce as much wealth 
 as before at 25, laborers will get as wages as great a 
 quantity as before, and the relative fall of wages will 
 not be noticeable in any diminution of the necessaries 
 or comforts of the laborer, but only in the increased 
 value of land and the greater incomes and more lavish 
 expenditure of the rent-receiving class.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OP THESE LAWS. 
 
 The conclusions we have reached as to the laws which 
 govern the distribution of wealth recast a large and most 
 important part of the science of political economy, as at 
 present taught, overthrowing some of its most highly 
 elaborated theories and shedding a new light on some of 
 its most important problems. Yet, in doing this, no 
 disputable ground has been occupied; not a single funda- 
 mental principle advanced that is not already recognized. 
 
 The law of interest and the law of wages which we 
 have substituted for those now taught are necessary de- 
 ductions from the great law which alone makes any 
 science of political economy possible the all-compelling 
 law that is as inseparable from the human mind as at- 
 traction is inseparable from matter, and without which 
 it would be impossible to previse or calculate upon any 
 human action, the most trivial or the most important. 
 This fundamental law, that men seek to gratify their de- 
 sires with the least exertion, becomes, when viewed in its 
 relation to one of the factors of production, the law of 
 rent; in relation to another, the law of interest; and in 
 relation to a third, the law of wages. And in accepting 
 the law of rent, which, since the time of Eicardo, has 
 been accepted by every economist of standing, and 
 which, like a geometrical axiom, has but to be under- 
 stood to compel assent, the law of interest and law of 
 wages, as I have stated them, are inferentially accepted, 
 as its necessary sequences. In fact, it is only relatively 
 that they can be called sequences, as in the recognition 
 of the law of rent they too must be recognized. For on
 
 218 
 
 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION 1 . 
 
 Book III. 
 
 what depends the recognition of the law of rent? Evi- 
 dently upon the recognition of the fact that the effect of 
 competition is to prevent the return to labor and capital 
 being anywhere greater than upon the poorest land in 
 use. It is in seeing this that we see that the owner of 
 land will be able to claim as rent all of its produce which 
 exceeds what would be yielded to an equal application of 
 labor and capital on the poorest land in use. 
 
 The harmony and correlation of the laws of distribu- 
 tion as we have now apprehended them are in striking 
 contrast with the want of harmony which characterizes 
 these laws as presented by the current political economy. 
 Let us state them side by side: 
 
 The Current Statement. 
 
 RENT depends on the margin 
 of cultivation, rising as it 
 falls and falling as it rises. 
 
 WAGES depend upon the 
 ratio between the number 
 of laborers and the amount 
 of capital devoted to their 
 employment. 
 
 INTEREST depends upon the 
 
 The True Statement. 
 
 RENT depends on the margin 
 of cultivation, rising as it 
 falls and falling as it rises. 
 
 WAGES depend on the mar- 
 gin of cultivation, falling 
 as it falls and rising as it 
 rises. 
 
 INTEREST (its ratio with wa- 
 
 ges being fixed by the net 
 power of increase which 
 attaches to capital) de- 
 pends on the margin of 
 cultivation, falling as it 
 falls and rising as it rises. 
 
 equation between the sup- 
 ply of and demand for 
 capital; or, as is stated of 
 profits, upon wages (or 
 the cost of labor), rising 
 as wages fall, and falling 
 as wages rise. 
 
 In the current statement the laws of distribution have 
 no common center, no mutual relation; they are not the 
 correlating divisions of a whole, but measures of differ- 
 ent qualities. In the statement we have given, they 
 spring from one point, support and supplement each 
 other, and form the correlating divisions of a complete 
 whole.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE STATICS OF THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINED. 
 
 "We have now obtained a clear, simple, and consistent 
 theory of the distribution of wealth, which accords with 
 first principles and existing facts, and which, when under- 
 stood, will commend itself as self-evident. 
 
 Before working out this theory, I have deemed it nec- 
 essary to show conclusively the insufficiency of current 
 theories; for, in thought, as in action, the majority of 
 men do but follow their leaders, and a theory of wages 
 which has not merely the support of the highest names, 
 but is firmly rooted in common opinions and prejudices, 
 will, until it has been proved untenable, prevent any 
 other theory from being even considered, just as the 
 theory that the earth was the center of the universe pre- 
 vented any consideration of the theory that it revolves 
 on its own axis and circles round the sun, until it was 
 clearly shown that the apparent movements of the 
 heavenly bodies could not be explained in accordance 
 with the theory of the fixity of the earth. 
 
 There is in truth a marked resemblance between the 
 science of political economy, as at present taught, and 
 the science of astronomy, as taught previous to the rec- 
 ognition of the Copernican theory. The devices by 
 which the current political economy endeavors to explain 
 the social phenomena that are now forcing themselves 
 upon the attention of the civilized world may well be 
 compared to the elaborate system of cycles and epicycles 
 constructed by the learned to explain the celestial phe- 
 nomena in a manner according with the dogmas of author-
 
 220 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book HI 
 
 ity and the rude impressions and prejudices of the un- 
 learned. And, just as the observations which showed 
 that this theory of cycles and epicycles could not explain 
 all the phenomena of the heavens cleared the way for 
 the consideration of the simpler theory that supplanted 
 it, so will a recognition of the inadequacy of the current 
 theories to account for social phenomena clear the way 
 for the consideration of a theory that will give to polit- 
 ical economy all the simplicity and harmony which the 
 Copernican theory gave to the science of astronomy. 
 
 But at this point the parallel ceases. That "the fixed 
 and steadfast earth" should be really whirling through 
 space with inconceivable velocity is repugnant to the 
 first apprehensions of men in every state and situation; 
 but the truth I wish to make clear is naturally perceived, 
 and has been recognized in the infancy of every people, 
 being obscured only by the complexities of the civilized 
 state, the warpings of selfish interests, and the false di- 
 rection which the speculations of the learned have taken. 
 To recognize it, we have but to come back to first prin- 
 ciples and heed simple perceptions. Nothing can be 
 clearer than the proposition that the failure of wages to 
 increase with increasing productive power is due to the 
 increase of rent. 
 
 Three things unite to production labor, capital, and 
 land. 
 
 Three parties divide the produce the laborer, the 
 capitalist, and the land owner. 
 
 If, with an increase of production the laborer gets no 
 more and the capitalist no more it is a necessary infer- 
 ence that the land owner reaps the whole gain. 
 
 And the facts agree with the inference. Though 
 neither wages nor interest anywhere increase as material 
 progress goes on, yet the invariable accompaniment and 
 mark of material progress is the increase of rent the 
 rise of laud values.
 
 Chap. rm. STATICS OF THE PHOBLEM EXPLAINED. 
 
 The increase of rent explains why wages and interest 
 do not increase. The cause which gives to the land 
 holder is the cause which denies to the laborer and capi- 
 talist. That wages and interest are higher in new than 
 in old countries is not, as the standard economists say, 
 because nature makes a greater return to the application 
 of labor and capital, but because land is cheaper, and, 
 therefore, as a smaller proportion of the return is taken 
 by rent, labor and capital can keep for their share a 
 larger proportion of what nature does return. It is not 
 the total produce, but the net produce, after rent has 
 been taken from it, that determines what can be divided 
 as wages and interest. Hence, the rate of wages and in- 
 terest is everywhere fixed, not so much by the produc- 
 tiveness of labor as by the value of land. Wherever the 
 value of land is relatively low, wages and interest are 
 relatively high; wherever land is relatively high, wages 
 and interest are relatively low. 
 
 If production had not passed the simple stage in which 
 all labor is directly applied to the land and all wages are 
 paid in its produce, the fact that when the land owner 
 takes a larger portion the laborer must put up with a 
 smaller portion could not be lost sight of. 
 
 But the complexities of production in the civilized 
 state, in which so great a part is borne by exchange, and 
 so much labor is bestowed upon materials after they have 
 been separated from the land, though they may to the 
 unthinking disguise, do not alter the fact that all pro- 
 duction is still the union of the two factors, land and 
 labor, and that rent (the share of the land holder) can- 
 not be increased except at the expense of wages (the 
 share of the laborer) and interest (the share of capital). 
 Just as the portion of the crop, which in the simpler 
 forms of industrial organization the owner of agricul- 
 tural land receives at the end of the harvest as his rent, 
 lessens the amount left to the cultivator as wages and
 
 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Booh III 
 
 interest, so does the rental of land on which a manufac- 
 turing or commercial city is built lessen the amount 
 which can be divided as wages and interest between the 
 laborer and capital there engaged in the production and 
 exchange of wealth. 
 
 In short, the value of land depending wholly upon the 
 power which its ownership gives of appropriating wealth 
 created by labor, the increase of land values is always at 
 the expense of the value of labor. And, hence, that the 
 increase of productive power does not increase wages, is 
 because it does increase the value of land. Rent swal- 
 lows up the whole gain and pauperism accompanies 
 progress. 
 
 It is unnecessary to refer to facts. They will suggest 
 themselves to the reader. It is the general fact, observ- 
 able everywhere, that as the value of land increases, so 
 does the contrast between wealth and want appear. It is 
 the universal fact, that where the value of land is high- 
 est, civilization exhibits the greatest luxury side by side 
 with the most piteous destitution. To see human beings 
 in the most abject, the most helpless and hopeless con- 
 dition, you must go, not to the unfenced prairies and the 
 log cabins of new clearings in the backwoods, where man 
 single-handed is commencing the struggle with nature, 
 and land is yet worth nothing, but to the great cities, 
 where the ownership of a little patch of ground is a 
 fortune.
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 EFFECT OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE 
 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE DYNAMICS OF THE PROBLEM YET TO 
 
 SEEK. 
 CHAPTER II. EFFECT OF INCREASE OF POPULATION UPON 
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 CHAPTER III. EFFECT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS 
 
 UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 CHAPTER IV. EFFECT OF THE EXPECTATION RAISED BY 
 
 MATERIAL PROGRESS.
 
 Hitherto, It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet 
 made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. John 
 Stuart Mill. 
 
 Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 
 
 Ere the sorrow conies with years? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
 
 And that cannot stop their tears. 
 The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; 
 
 The young birds are chirping in the nest; 
 The young fawns are playing with the shadows; 
 
 The young flowers are blowing toward the west 
 But the young, young children, O, my brothers, 
 
 They are weeping bitterly! 
 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
 In the country of the free. 
 
 Mrs. Browning,
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DYNAMICS OF THE PROBLEM YET TO SEEK 
 
 In identifying rent as the receiver of the increased pro- 
 duction which material progress gives, but which labor 
 fails to obtain; in seeing that the antagonism of interests 
 is not between labor and capital, as is popularly believed, 
 but is in reality between labor and capital on the one side 
 and land ownership on the other, we have reached a con- 
 clusion that has most important practical bearings. But 
 it is not worth while to dwell on them now, for we have 
 not yet fully solved the problem which was at the outset 
 proposed. To say that wages remain low because rent 
 advances is like saying that a steamboat moves because 
 its wheels turn around. The further question is, What 
 causes rent to advance? What is the force or necessity 
 that, as productive power increases, distributes a greater 
 and greater proportion of the produce as rent? 
 
 The only cause pointed out by Ricardo as advancing 
 rent is the increase of population, which by requiring 
 larger supplies of food necessitates the extension of culti- 
 vation to inferior lands, or to points of inferior produc- 
 sion on the same lands, and in current works of other 
 authors attention is so exclusively directed to the exten- 
 sion of production from superior to inferior lands as the 
 cause of advancing rents that Mr. Carey (followed by 
 Professor Perry and others) has imagined that he has 
 overthrown the Ricardian theory of rent by denying that 
 the progress of agriculture is from better to worse lands.* 
 
 * As to this, it may be worth while to say: (1) That the general 
 fact, as shown by the progress of agriculture in the newer States of
 
 226 EFFECTS OF MATEEIAL PBOGBES8. Boole IT. 
 
 Now, while it is unquestionably true that the increas- 
 ing pressure of population which compels a resort to in- 
 ferior points of production will raise rents, and does 
 raise rents, I do not think that all the deductions com- 
 monly made from this principle are valid, nor yet that it 
 fully accounts for the increase of rent as material prog- 
 ress goes on. There are evidently other causes which 
 conspire to raise rent, but which seem to have been 
 wholly or partially hidden by the erroneous views as to 
 the functions of capital and genesis of wages which have 
 been current. To see what these are, and how they 
 operate, let us trace the effect of material progress upon 
 the distribution of wealth. 
 
 The changes which constitute or contribute to material 
 progress are three: (1) increase in population; (2) im- 
 provements in the arts of production and exchange; and 
 (3) improvements in knowledge, education, government, 
 police, manners, and morals, so far as they increase the 
 power of producing wealth. Material progress, as com- 
 monly understood, consists of these three elements or 
 directions of progression, in all of which the progressive 
 nations have for some time past been advancing, though 
 in different degrees. As, considered in the light of ma- 
 
 the Union and by the character of the land left out of cultivation in 
 the older, is that the course of cultivation is from the better to the 
 worse qualities of land. (2) That, whether the coursr of production 
 be from the absolutely better to the absolutely worse lands or the 
 reverse (and there is much to indicate that better or worse in this 
 connection merely relates to our knowledge, and that future advances 
 may discover compensating qualities in portions of the earth now 
 esteemed most sterile), it is always, and from the nature of the human 
 mind, must always tend to be, from land under existing conditions 
 deemed better, to land under existing conditions deemed worse. (3) 
 That Ricardo's law of rent does not depend upon the direction of the 
 extension of cultivation, but upon the proposition that if land of a 
 certain quality will yield something, land of a better quality will 
 yield more.
 
 Chap. J DYNAMICS OF THE PBOBLEM YET TO SEEK. 227 
 
 terial forces or economies, the increase of knowledge, th$ 
 betterment of government, etc., have the same effect as 
 improvements in the arts, it will not be necessary in this 
 view to consider them separately. What bearing intel- 
 lectual or moral progress, merely as such, has upon our 
 problem we may hereafter consider. We are at present 
 dealing with material progress, to which these things 
 contribute only as they increase wealth-producing power, 
 and shall see their effects when we see the effect of 
 improvements in the arts. 
 
 To ascertain the effects of material progress upon the 
 distribution of wealth, let us, therefore, consider the 
 effects of increase of population apart from improvement 
 in the arts, and then the effect of improvement in the 
 arts apart from increase of population.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF INCREASE OF POPULATION" UPON THB 
 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 The manner in which increasing population advances 
 rent, as explained and illustrated in current treatises, is 
 that the increased demand for subsistence forces pro- 
 duction to inferior soil or to inferior productive points. 
 Thus, if, with a given population, the margin of cultiva- 
 tion is at 30, all lands of productive power over 30 will 
 pay rent. If the population be doubled, an additional 
 supply is required, which cannot be obtained without an 
 extension of cultivation that will cause lands to yield 
 rent that before yielded none. If the extension be to 20, 
 then all the land between 20 and 30 will yield rent and 
 have a value, and all land over 30 will yield increased 
 rent and have increased value. 
 
 It is here that the Malthusian doctrine receives from 
 the current elucidations of the theory of rent the sup- 
 port of which I spoke when enumerating the causes that 
 have combined to give that doctrine an almost undis- 
 puted sway in current thought. According to the Mal- 
 thusian theory, the pressure of population against sub- 
 sistence becomes progressively harder as population 
 increases, and although two hands come into the world 
 with every new mouth, it becomes, to use the language 
 of John Stuart Mill, harder and harder for the new 
 hands to supply the new mouths. According to Kicardo's 
 theory of rent, rent arises from the difference in produc- 
 tiveness of the lands in use, and as explained by Ricardo 
 and the economists who have followed him, the advance
 
 Chap. IT. INCKEASE OF POPULATION. 229 
 
 in rents which, experience shows, accompanies increasing 
 population, is caused by the inability of procuring more 
 food except at a greater cost, which thus forces the mar- 
 gin of population to lower and lower points of produc- 
 tion, commensurately increasing rent. Thus the two 
 theories, as I have before explained, are made to har- 
 monize and blend, the law of rent becoming but a special 
 application of the more general law propounded by Mal- 
 thus, and the advance of rents with increasing popula- 
 tion a demonstration of its resistless operation. I refer 
 to this incidentally, because it now lies in our way to see 
 the misapprehension which has enlisted the doctrine of 
 rent in the support of a theory to which it in reality 
 gives no countenance. The Malthusian theory has been 
 already disposed of, and the cumulative disproof which 
 will prevent the recurrence of a lingering doubt will be 
 given when it is shown, further on, that the phenomena 
 attributed to the pressure of population against subsist- 
 ence would, under existing conditions, manifest them- 
 selves were population to remain stationary. 
 
 The misapprehension to which I now refer, and which, 
 to a proper understanding of the effect of increase of 
 population upon the distribution of wealth, it is neces- 
 sary to clear up, is the presumption, expressed or implied 
 in all the current reasoning upon the subject of rent in 
 connection with population, that the recourse to lower 
 points of production involves a smaller aggregate produce 
 in proportion to the labor expended; though that this is 
 not always the case is clearly recognized in connection 
 with agricultural improvements, which, to use the words 
 of Mill, are considered "as a partial relaxation of the 
 bonds which confine the increase of population." But it 
 is not involved even where there is no advance in the 
 arts, and the recourse to lower points of production is 
 clearly the result of the increased demand of an increased 
 population. For increased population, of itself, and
 
 230 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IT. 
 
 without any advance in the arts, implies an increase in 
 the productive power of labor. The labor of 100 men, 
 other things being equal, will produce much more than 
 one hundred times as much as the labor of one man, and 
 the labor of 1,000 men much more than ten times as 
 much as the labor of 100 men; and, so, with every addi- 
 tional pair of hands which increasing population brings, 
 there is a more than proportionate addition to the pro- 
 ductive power of labor. Thus, with an increasing popu- 
 lation, there may be a recourse to lower natural powers 
 of production, not only without any diminution in the 
 average production of wealth as compared to labor, but 
 without any diminution at the lowest point. If popu- 
 lation be doubled, land of but 20 productiveness may 
 yield to the same amount of labor as much as land 
 of 30 productiveness could before yield. For it must 
 not be forgotten (what often is forgotten) that the 
 productiveness either of land or labor is not to be meas- 
 ured in any one thing, but in all desired things. A 
 settler and his family may raise as much corn on land 
 a hundred miles away from the nearest habitation 
 as they could raise were their land in the center of a 
 populous district. But in the populous district they 
 could obtain with the same labor as good a living from 
 much poorer land, or from land of equal quality could 
 make as good a living after paying a high rent, because 
 in the midst of a large population their labor would have 
 become more effective; not, perhaps, in the production 
 of corn, but in the production of wealth generally or 
 the obtaining of all the commodities and services which 
 are the real object of their labor. 
 
 But even where there is a diminution in the produc- 
 tiveness of labor at the lowest point that is to say, 
 where the increasing demand for wealth has driven pro- 
 duction to a lower point of natural productiveness than 
 the addition to the power of labor from increasing popu-
 
 Chap. II. INCREASE OP POPULATION. 231 
 
 lation suffices to make up for it does not follow that the 
 aggregate production, as compared with the aggregate 
 labor, has been lessened. 
 
 Let us suppose land of diminishing qualities. The best 
 would naturally be settled first, and as population in- 
 creased production would take in the next lower quality, 
 and so on. But, as the increase of population, by per- 
 mitting greater economies, adds to the effectiveness of 
 labor, the cause which brought each quality of land suc- 
 cessively into cultivation would at the same time increase 
 the amount of wealth that the same quality of labor 
 could produce from it. But it would also do more than 
 this it would increase the power of producing wealth 
 on all the superior lands already in cultivation. If the 
 relations of quantity and quality were such that increas- 
 ing population added to the effectiveness of labor faster 
 than it compelled a resort to less productive qualities of 
 land, though the margin of cultivation would fall and 
 rent would rise, the minimum return to labor would in- 
 crease. That is to say, though wages as a proportion 
 would fall, wages as a quantity would rise. The average 
 production of wealth would increase. If the relations 
 were such that the increasing effectiveness of labor just 
 compensated for the diminishing productiveness of the 
 land as it was called into use, the effect of increasing 
 population would be to increase rent by lowering the 
 margin of cultivation without reducing wages as a 
 quantity, and to increase the average production. If we 
 now suppose population still increasing, but, between 
 the poorest quality of land in use and the next lower 
 quality, to be a difference so great that the increased 
 power of labor which comes with the increased popula- 
 tion that brings it into cultivation cannot compensate 
 for it the minimum return to labor will be reduced, and 
 with the rise of rents, wages will fall, not only as a pro- 
 portion, but as a quantity. But unless the descent in
 
 232 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 
 
 the quality of land is far more precipitous than we can 
 well imagine, or than, I think, ever exists, the average 
 production will still be increased, for the increased effect- 
 iveness which comes by reason of the increased popula- 
 tion that compels resort to the inferior quality of land 
 attaches to all labor, and the gain on the superior quali- 
 ties of land will more than compensate for the diminished 
 production on the quality last brought in. The aggre- 
 gate wealth production, as compared with the aggregate 
 expenditure of labor, will be greater, though its distribu- 
 tion will be more unequal. 
 
 Thus, increase of population, as it operates to extend 
 production to lower natural levels, operates to increase 
 rent and reduce wages as a proportion, and may or may 
 not reduce wages as a quantity; while it seldom can, and 
 probably never does, reduce the aggregate production of 
 wealth as compared with the aggregate expenditure of 
 labor, but on the contrary increases, and frequently 
 largely increases it. 
 
 But while the increase of population thus increases 
 rent by lowering the margin of cultivation, it is a mis- 
 take to look upon this as the only mode by which rent 
 advances as population grows. Increasing population 
 increases rent, without reducing the margin of cultiva- 
 tion; and notwithstanding the dicta of such writers as 
 McCulloch, who assert that rent would not arise were 
 there an unbounded extent of equally good land, in- 
 creases it without reference to the natural qualities of 
 land, for the increased powers of co-operation and ex- 
 change which come with increased population are 
 equivalent to nay, I think we can say without meta- 
 phor, that they give an increased capacity to land. 
 
 I do not mean to say merely that, like an improvement 
 in the methods or tools of production, the increased 
 power which comes with increased population gives to 
 the same labor an increased result, which is equivalent
 
 Chap.H. INCREASE OP POPULATION. 233 
 
 to an increase in the natural powers of land; but that 
 it brings out a superior power in labor, which is localized 
 on land which attaches not to labor generally, but only 
 to labor exerted on particular land; and which thus in- 
 heres in the land as much as any qualities of soil, climate, 
 mineral deposit, or natural situation, and passes, as they 
 do, with the possession of the land. 
 
 An improvement in the method of cultivation which, 
 with the same outlay, will give two crops a year in place 
 of one, or an improvement in tools and machinery which 
 will double the result of labor, will manifestly, on a par- 
 ticular piece of ground, have the same effect on the prod- 
 uce as a doubling of the fertility of the land. But the 
 difference is in this respect the improvement in method 
 or in tools can be utilized on any land; but the improve- 
 ment in fertility can be utilized only on the particular 
 land to which it applies. Now, in large part, the in- 
 creased productiveness of labor which arises from in- 
 creased population can be utilized only on particular 
 land, and on particular land in greatly varying degrees. 
 
 Here, let us imagine, is an unbounded savannah, 
 stretching off in unbroken sameness of grass and flower, 
 tree and rill, till the traveler tires of the monotony. 
 Along comes the wagon of the first immigrant. Where 
 to settle he cannot tell every acre seems as good as 
 every other acre. As to wood, as to water, as to fertil- 
 ity, as to situation, there is absolutely no choice, and he 
 is perplexed by the embarrassment of richness. Tired 
 out with the search for one place that is better than 
 another, he stops somewhere, anywhere and starts to 
 make himself a home. The soil is virgin and rich, game 
 is abundant, the streams flash with the finest trout. 
 Nature is at her very best. He has what, were he in a 
 populous district, would make him rich; but he is very 
 poor. To say nothing of the mental craving, which 
 would lead him to welcome the sorriest stranger, he
 
 234 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Boole IV. 
 
 labors under all the material disadvantages of solitude. 
 He can get no temporary assistance for any work that 
 requires a greater union of strength than that afforded 
 by his own family, or by such help as he can permanently 
 keep. Though he has cattle, he cannot often have fresh 
 meat, for to get a beefsteak he must kill a bullock. He 
 must be his own blacksmith, wagonmaker, carpenter, and 
 cobbler in short, a "jack of all trades and master of 
 none." He cannot have his children schooled, for, to 
 do so, he must himself pay and maintain a teacher. 
 Such things as he cannot produce himself, he must buy 
 in quantities and keep on hand, or else go without, for 
 he cannot be constantly leaving his work and making a 
 long journey to the verge of civilization; and when 
 forced to do so, the getting of a vial of medicine or the 
 replacement of a broken auger may cost him the labor of 
 himself and horses for days. Under such circumstances, 
 though nature is prolific, the man is poor. It is an easy 
 matter for him to get enough to eat; but beyond this, 
 his labor will suffice to satisfy only the simplest wants in 
 the rudest way. 
 
 Soon there comes another immigrant. Although 
 every quarter section of the boundless plain is as good 
 as every other quarter section, he is not beset by any 
 embarrassment as to where' to settle. Though the land 
 is the same, there is one place that is clearly better for 
 him than any other place, and that is where there is 
 already a settler and he may have a neighbor. He set- 
 tles by the side of the first comer, whose condition is at 
 once greatly improved, and to whom many things are 
 now possible that were before impossible, for two men 
 may help each other to do things that one man could 
 never do. 
 
 Another immigrant comes, and, guided by the same 
 attraction, settles where there are already two. Another, 
 and another, until around our first comer there are a
 
 Cfcap.lt INOBEASB OF POPULATION. 235 
 
 score of neighbors. Labor has now an effectiveness 
 which, in the solitary state, it could not approach. If 
 heavy work is to be done, the settlers have a log-rolling, 
 and together accomplish in a day what singly would re- 
 quire years. When one kills a bullock, the others take 
 part of it, returning when they kill, and thus they have 
 fresh meat all the time. Together they hire a school- 
 master, and the children of each are taught for a frac- 
 tional part of what similar teaching would have cost the 
 first settler. It becomes a comparatively easy matter to 
 send to the nearest town, for some one is always going. 
 But there is less need for such journeys. A blacksmith 
 and a wheelwright soon set up shops, and our settler can 
 have his tools repaired for a small part of the labor it 
 formerly cost him. A store is opened and he can get 
 what he wants as he wants it; a post-office, soon added, 
 gives him regular communication with the rest of the 
 world. Then come a cobbler, a carpenter, a harness- 
 maker, a doctor; and a little church soon arises. Satis- 
 factions become possible that in the solitary state were 
 impossible. There are gratifications for the social and 
 the intellectual nature for that part of the man that 
 rises above the animal. The power of sympathy, the 
 sense of companionship, the emulation of comparison and 
 contrast, open a wider, and fuller, and more varied life. 
 In rejoicing, there are others to rejoice; in sorrow, the 
 mourners do not mourn alone. There are husking bees, 
 and apple parings, and quilting parties. Though the 
 ballroom be unplastered and the orchestra but a fiddle, 
 the notes of the magician are yet in the strain, and 
 Cupid dances with the dancers. At the wedding, there 
 are others to admire and enjoy; in the house of death, 
 there are watchers; by the open grave, stands human 
 sympathy to sustain the mourners. Occasionally, comes 
 a straggling lecturer to open up glimpses of the world 
 of science, of literature, or of art; in election times,
 
 336 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Boole IT. 
 
 come stump speakers, and the citizen rises to a sense of 
 dignity and power, as the cause of empires is tried before 
 him in the struggle of John Doe and Eichard Roe for his 
 support and vote. And, by and by, comes the circus, 
 talked of months before, and opening to children whose 
 horizon has been the prairie, all the realms of the imag' 
 ination princes and princesses of fairy tale, mail-clad 
 crusaders and turbaned Moors, Cinderella's fairy coach, 
 and the giants of nursery lore; lions such as crouched 
 before Daniel, or in circling Roman amphitheater tore 
 the saints of God; ostriches who recall the sandy deserts; 
 camels such as stood around when the wicked brethren 
 raised Joseph from the well and sold him into bondage; 
 elephants such as crossed the Alps with Hannibal, or felt 
 the sword of the Maccabees; and glorious music that 
 thrills and builds in the chambers of the mind as rose 
 the sunny dome of Kubla Khan. 
 
 Go to our settler now, and say to him: "You have so 
 many fruit trees which you planted; so much fencing, 
 such a well, a barn, a house in short, you have by your 
 labor added so much value to this farm. Your land 
 itself is not quite so good. You have been cropping it, 
 and by and by it will need manure. I will give you the 
 full value of all your improvements if you will give it to 
 me, and go again with your family beyond the verge of 
 settlement." He would laugh at you. His land yields 
 no more wheat or potatoes than before, but it does yield 
 far more of all the necessaries and comforts of life. His 
 labor upon it will bring no heavier crops, and, we will 
 suppose, no more valuable . crops, but it will bring far 
 more of all the other things for which men work. The 
 presence of other settlers the increase of population 
 has added to the productiveness, in these things, of labor 
 bestowed upon it, and this added productiveness gives it 
 a superiority over land of equal natural quality where 
 there are as yet no settlers. If no land remains to be
 
 Chap. II. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 337 
 
 taken up, except such as is as far removed from popula- 
 tion as was our settler's land when he first went upon it, 
 the value or rent of this land will be measured by the 
 whole of this added capability. If, however, as we have 
 supposed, there is a continuous stretch of equal land, over 
 which population is now spreading, it will not be neces- 
 sary for the new settler to go into the wilderness, as did 
 the first. He will settle just beyond the other settlers, 
 and will get the advantage of proximity to them. The 
 value or rent of our settler's land will thus depend on the 
 advantage which it has, from being at the center of 
 population, over that on the verge. In the one case, the 
 margin of production will remain as before; in the other, 
 the margin of production will be raised. 
 
 Population still continues to increase, and as it in- 
 creases so do the economies which its increase permits, 
 and which in effect add to the productiveness of the land. 
 Our first settler's land, being the center of population, 
 the store, the blacksmith's forge, the wheelwright's shop, 
 are set up on it, or on its margin, where soon arises a 
 village, which rapidly grows into a town, the center of 
 exchanges for the people of the whole district. With no 
 greater agricultural productiveness than it had at first, 
 this land now begins to develop a productiveness of a 
 higher kind. To labor expended in raising corn, or 
 wheat, or potatoes, it will yield no more of those things 
 than at first; but to labor expended in the subdivided 
 branches of production which require proximity to other 
 producers, and, especially, to labor expended in that 
 final part of production, which consists in distribution, 
 it will yield much larger returns. The wheat-grower 
 may go further on, and find land on which his labor will 
 produce as much wheat, and nearly as much wealth; but 
 the artisan, the manufacturer, the storekeeper, the pro- 
 fessional man, find that their labor expended here, at the 
 center of exchanges, will yield them much more than if
 
 338 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 
 
 expended even at a little distance away from it; and this 
 excess of productiveness for such purposes the land- 
 owner can claim just as he could an excess in its wheat- 
 producing power. And so our settler is able to sell in 
 building lots a few of his acres for prices which it would 
 not bring for wheat-growing if its fertility had been mul- 
 tiplied many times. With the proceeds, he builds him' 
 self a fine house, and furnishes it handsomely. That is 
 to say, to reduce the transaction to its lowest terms, the 
 people who wish to use the land build and furnish the 
 house for him, on condition that he will let them avail 
 themselves of the superior productiveness which the in- 
 crease of population has given the land. 
 
 Population still keeps on increasing, giving greater 
 and greater utility to the land, and more and more wealth 
 to its owner. The town has grown into a city a St. 
 Louis, a Chicago or a San Francisco and still it grows. 
 Production is here carried on upon a great scale, with 
 the best machinery and the most favorable facilities; the 
 division of labor becomes extremely minute, wonderfully 
 multiplying efficiency; exchanges are of such volume and 
 rapidity that they are made with the minimum of friction 
 and loss. Here is the heart, the brain, of the vast social 
 organism that has grown up from the germ of the first 
 settlement; here has developed one of the great gan- 
 glions of the human world. Hither run all roads, hither 
 set all currents, through all the vast regions round 
 about. Here, if you have anything to sell, is the 
 market; here, if you have anything to buy, is the largest 
 and the choicest stock. Here intellectual activity is 
 gathered into a focus, and here springs that stimulus 
 which is born of the collision of mind with mind. Here 
 are the great libraries, the storehouses and granaries of 
 knowledge, the learned professors, the famous special- 
 ists. Here are museums and art galleries, collections of 
 philosophical apparatus, and all things rare, and valuable,
 
 Chap.n. INOEBASB OF POPULATION. 239 
 
 and best of their kind. Here come great actors, and 
 orators, and singers, from all over the world. Here, in 
 short, is a center of human life, in all its varied mani- 
 festations. 
 
 So enormous are the advantages which this land now 
 offers for the application of labor that instead of one 
 man with a span of horses scratching over acres, you may 
 count in places thousands of workers to the acre, work- 
 ing tier on tier, on floors raised one above the other, five, 
 six, seven and eight stories from the ground, while un- 
 derneath the surface of the earth engines are throbbing 
 with pulsations that exert the force of thousands of 
 horses. 
 
 All these advantages attach to the land; it is on this 
 land and no other that they can be utilized, for here is 
 the center of population the focus of exchanges, the 
 market place and workshop of the highest forms of in- 
 dustry. The productive powers which density of popu- 
 lation has attached to this land are equivalent to the 
 multiplication of its original fertility by the hundred fold 
 and the thousand fold. And rent, which measures the 
 difference between this added productiveness and that of 
 the least productive land in use, has increased accord- 
 ingly. Our settler, or whoever has succeeded to his 
 right to the land, is now a millionaire. Like another 
 Kip Van Winkle, he may have lain down and slept; still 
 he is rich not from anything he has done, but from the 
 increase of population. There are lots from which for 
 every foot of frontage the owner may draw more than an 
 average mechanic can earn; there are lots that will sell 
 for more than would suffice to pave them with gold coin. 
 In the principal streets are towering buildings, of 
 granite, marble, iron, and plate glass, finished in the 
 most expensive style, replete with every convenience. 
 Yet they are not worth as much as the land upon which 
 they rest the same land, in nothing changed, which 
 when our first settler came upon it had no value at all.
 
 240 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book W. 
 
 That this is the way in which the increase of popula- 
 tion powerfully acts in increasing rent, whoever, in a 
 progressive country, will look around him, may see for 
 himself. The process is going on under his eyes. The 
 increasing difference in the productiveness of the land in 
 use, which causes an increasing rise in rent, results not 
 so much from the necessities of increased population 
 compelling the resort to inferior land, as from the in- 
 creased productiveness which increased population gives 
 to the lands already in use. The most valuable lands on 
 the globe, the lands which yield the highest rent, are not 
 lands of surpassing natural fertility, but lands to which 
 a surpassing utility has been given by the increase of 
 population. 
 
 The increase of productiveness or utility which in- 
 crease of population gives to certain lands, in the way to 
 which I have been calling attention, attaches, as it were, 
 to the mere quality of extension. The valuable quality 
 of land that has become a center of population is its 
 superficial capacity it makes no difference whether it is 
 fertile, alluvial soil like that of Philadelphia; rich bottom 
 land like that of New Orleans; a filled-in marsh like that 
 of St. Petersburg, or a sandy waste like the greater part 
 of San Francisco. 
 
 And where value seems to arise from superior natural 
 qualities, such as deep water and good anchorage, rich 
 deposits of coal and iron, or heavy timber, observation 
 also shows that these superior qualities are brought out, 
 rendered tangible, by population. The coal and iron 
 fields of Pennsylvania, that to-day are worth enormous 
 sums, were fifty years ago valueless. What is the efficient 
 cause of the difference? Simply the difference in popu- 
 lation. The coal and iron beds of Wyoming and Mon- 
 tana, which to-day are valueless, will, in fifty years from 
 now, be worth millions on millions, simply because, in 
 the meantime, population will have greatly increased.
 
 Chap.n. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 241 
 
 It is a well provisioned ship, this on which we sail 
 through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem 
 to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new 
 supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very 
 great command over the services of others comes to 
 those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to 
 say, "This is mine!'* 
 
 To recapitulate: The effect of increasing population 
 upon the distribution of wealth is to increase rent, and 
 consequently to diminish the proportion of the produce 
 which goes to capital and labor, in two ways: First, By 
 lowering the margin of cultivation. Second, By bring- 
 ing out in land special capabilities otherwise latent, and 
 by attaching special capabilities to particular lands. 
 
 I am disposed to think that the latter mode, to which 
 little attention has been given by political economists, is 
 really the more important. But this, in our inquiry, is 
 not a matter of moment.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS UPOW THE 
 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 Eliminating improvements in the arts, we have seen 
 the effects of increase of population upon the distribution 
 of wealth. Eliminating increase of population, let us 
 now see what effect improvements in the arts of produc- 
 tion have upon distribution. 
 
 We have seen that increase of population increases 
 rent, rather by increasing the productiveness of labor 
 than by decreasing it. If it can now be shown that, irre- 
 spective of the increase of population, the effect of im- 
 provements in methods of production and exchange is to 
 increase rent, the disproof of the Malthusian theory 
 and of all the doctrines derived from or related to it 
 will be final and complete, for we shall have accounted 
 for the tendency of material progress to lower wages and 
 depress the condition of the lowest class, without re- 
 course to the theory of increasing pressure against the 
 means of subsistence. 
 
 That this is the case will, I think, appear on the 
 slightest consideration. 
 
 The effect of inventions and improvements in the pro- 
 ductive arts is to save labor that is, to enable the same 
 result to be secured with less labor, or a greater result 
 with the same labor. 
 
 Now, in a state of society in which the existing power 
 of labor served to satisfy all material desires, and there 
 was no possibility of new desires being called forth by 
 the opportunity of gratifying them, the effect of labor-
 
 Chap.HL IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ABTS. 243 
 
 saving improvements would be simply to reduce the 
 amount of labor expended. But such a state of society, 
 if it can anywhere be found, which I do not believe, 
 exists only where the human most nearly approaches 
 the animal. In the state of society called civilized, and 
 which in this inquiry we are concerned with, the very 
 reverse is the case. Demand is not a fixed quantity, 
 that increases only as population increases. In each in- 
 dividual it rises with his power of getting the things de- 
 manded. Man is not an ox, who, when he has eaten his 
 fill, lies down to chew the cud; he is the daughter of the 
 horse leech, who constantly asks for more. "When I get 
 some money," said Erasmus, "I will buy me some Greek 
 books and afterward some clothes." The amount of 
 wealth produced is nowhere commensurate with the 
 desire for wealth, and desire mounts with every addi- 
 tional opportunity for gratification. 
 
 This being the case, the effect of labor-saving improve- 
 ments will be to increase the production of wealth. Now, 
 for the production of wealth, two things are required 
 labor and land. Therefore, the effect of labor-saving 
 improvements will be to extend the demand for land, 
 and wherever the limit of the quality of land in use is 
 reached, to bring into cultivation lands of less natural 
 productiveness, or to extend cultivation on the same 
 lands to a point of lower natural productiveness. And 
 thus, while the primary effect of labor-saving improve- 
 ments is to increase the power of labor, the secondary 
 effect is to extend cultivation, and, where this lowers the 
 margin of cultivation, to increase rent. Thus, where 
 land is entirely appropriated, as in England, or where it 
 is either appropriated or is capable of appropriation as 
 rapidly as it is needed for use, as in the United States, 
 the Himate effect of labor-saving machinery or improve- 
 ments is to increase rent without increasing wages or 
 interest.
 
 24:4 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 
 
 It is important that this be fully understood, for it 
 shows that effects attributed by current theories to in- 
 crease of population are really due to the progress of in- 
 vention, and explains the otherwise perplexing fact that 
 labor-saving machinery everywhere fails to benefit 
 laborers. 
 
 Yet, to grasp fully this truth, it is necessary to keep 
 in mind what I have already more than once adverted to 
 the interchangeability of wealth. I refer to this again, 
 only because it is so persistently forgotten or ignored by 
 writers who speak of agricultural production as though it 
 were to be distinguished from production in general, and 
 of food or subsistence as though it were not included in 
 the term wealth. 
 
 Let me ask the reader to bear in mind, what has 
 already been sufficiently illustrated, that the possession or 
 production of any form of wealth is virtually the posses- 
 sion or production of any other form of wealth for which 
 it will exchange in order that he may clearly see that it 
 is not merely improvements which effect a saving in 
 labor directly applied to land that tend to increase rent, 
 but all improvements that in any way save labor. 
 
 That the labor of any individual is applied exclusively 
 to the production of one form of wealth is solely the 
 result of the division of labor. The object of labor on 
 the part of any individual is not the obtainment of 
 wealth in one particular form, but the obtainment of 
 wealth in all the forms that consort with his desires. 
 And, hence, an improvement which effects a saving in 
 the labor required to produce one of the things desired, 
 is, in effect, an increase in the power of producing all 
 the other things. If it take half a man's labor to keep 
 him in food, and the other half to provide him clothing 
 and shelter, an improvement which would increase his 
 power of producing food would also increase his power 
 of providing clothing and shelter. If his desires for
 
 Chap.m. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE AKTS. 245 
 
 more or better food, and for more or better clothing and 
 shelter, were equal, an improvement in one department 
 of labor would be precisely equivalent to a like improve- 
 ment in the other. If the improvement consisted in a 
 doubling of the power of his labor in producing food, 
 he would give one-third less labor to the production of 
 food, and one-third more to the providing of clothing 
 and shelter. If the improvement doubled his power to 
 provide clothing and shelter he would give one-third less 
 labor to the production of these things, and one-third 
 more to the production of food. In either case, the 
 result would be the same he would be enabled with the 
 same labor to get one-third more in quantity or quality 
 of all the things he desired. 
 
 And, so, where production is carried on by the division 
 of labor between individuals, an increase in the power of 
 producing one of the things sought by production in the 
 aggregate adds to the power of obtaining others, and 
 will increase the production of the others, to an extent 
 determined by the proportion which the saving of labor 
 bears to the total amount of labor expended, and by the 
 relative strength of desires. I am unable to think of any 
 form of wealth, the demand for which would not be in- 
 creased by a saving in the labor required to produce the 
 others. Hearses and coffins have been selected as exam- 
 ples of things for which the demand is little likely to 
 increase; but this is true only as to quantity. That in- 
 creased power of supply would lead to a demand for 
 more expensive hearses and coffins, no one can doubt 
 who has noticed how strong is the desire to show regard 
 for the dead by costly funerals. 
 
 Nor is the demand for food limited, as in economic 
 reasoning is frequently, but erroneously, assumed. Sub- 
 sistence is often spoken of as though it were a fixed 
 quantity; but it is fixed only as having a definite 
 minimum. Less than a certain amount will not keep a
 
 246 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PEOGRESS. Book IF. 
 
 human being alive, and less than a somewhat larger 
 amount will not keep a human being in good health. 
 But, above this minimum, the subsistence which a 
 human being can use may be increased almost indefi- 
 nitely. Adam Smith says, and Eicardo indorses the 
 statement, that the desire for food is limited in every 
 man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but 
 this, manifestly, is true only in the sense that when a 
 man's belly is filled, hunger is satisfied. His demands 
 for food have no such limit. .The stomach of a Louis 
 XIV., a Louis XV., or a Louis XVI., could not hold or 
 digest more than the stomach of a French peasant of 
 equal stature, yet, while a few rods of ground would 
 supply the black bread and herbs which constituted the 
 subsistence of the peasant, it took hundreds of thousands 
 of acres to supply the demands of the king, who, besides 
 his own wasteful use of the finest qualities of food, re- 
 quired immense supplies for his servants, horses and 
 dogs. And in the common facts of daily life, in the un- 
 satisfied, though perhaps latent, desires which each one 
 has, we may see how every increase in the power of pro- 
 ducing any form of wealth must result in an increased 
 demand for land and the direct products of land. The 
 man who now uses coarse food, and lives in a small house, 
 will, as a rule, if his income be increased, use more costly 
 food, and move to a larger house. If he grows richer 
 and richer he will procure horses, servants, gardens and 
 lawns, his demand for the use of land constantly increas- 
 ing with his wealth. In the city where I write, is a man 
 but the type of men everywhere to be found who 
 used to boil his own beans and fry his own bacon, but 
 who, now that he has got rich, maintains a town house 
 that takes up a whole block and would answer for a first- 
 class hotel, two or three country houses with extensive 
 grounds, a large stud of racers, a breeding farm, private 
 track, etc. It certainly takes at least a thousand
 
 Chap.m. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. 347 
 
 times, it may be several thousand times, as much land 
 to supply the demands of this man now as it did when 
 he was poor. 
 
 And, so, every improvement or invention, no matter 
 what it be, which gives to labor the power of producing 
 more wealth, causes an increased demand for land and 
 its direct products, and thus tends to force down the 
 margin of cultivation, just as would the demand caused 
 by an increased population. This being the case, every 
 labor-saving invention, whether it be a steam plow, a 
 telegraph, an improved process of smelting ores, a per- 
 fecting printing press, or a sewing machine, has a tend- 
 ency to increase rent. 
 
 Or to state this truth concisely: 
 
 Wealth in all its forms being the product of labor applied 
 to land or the products of land, any increase in the power 
 of labor, the demand for wealth being unsatisfied, will be 
 utilized in procuring more loealth, and thus increase the 
 demand for land. 
 
 To illustrate this effect of labor-saving machinery and 
 improvements, let us suppose a country where, as in all 
 the countries of the civilized world, the land is in the 
 possession of but a portion of the people. Let us sup- 
 pose a permanent barrier fixed to further increase of 
 population, either by the enactment and strict enforce- 
 ment of an Herodian law, or from such a change in 
 manners and morals as might result from an extensive 
 circulation of Annie Besant's pamphlets. Let the mar- 
 gin of cultivation, or production, be represented by 20. 
 Thus land or other natural opportunities which, from 
 the application of labor and capital, will yield a return 
 of 20, will just give the ordinary rate of wages and in- 
 terest, without yielding any rent; while all lands yielding 
 to equal applications of labor and capital more than 20
 
 248 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGEESS. Book W. 
 
 will yield the excess as rent. Population remaining 
 fixed, let there be made inventions and improvements 
 which will reduce by one-tenth the expenditure of labor 
 and capital necessary to produce the same amount of 
 wealth. Now, either one-tenth of the labor and capital 
 may be freed, and production remain the same as before; 
 or the same amount of labor and capital may be em- 
 ployed, and production be correspondingly increased. 
 But the industrial organization, as in all civilized coun- 
 tries, is such that labor and capital, and especially labor, 
 must press for employment on any terms the industrial 
 organization is such that mere laborers are not in a posi- 
 tion to demand their fair share in the new adjustment, 
 and that any reduction in the application of labor to pro- 
 duction will, at first, at least, take the form, not of giving 
 each laborer the same amount of produce for less work, 
 but of throwing some of the laborers out of work and 
 giving them none of the produce. Now, owing to the 
 increased efficiency of labor secured by the new improve- 
 ments, as great a return can be secured at the point of 
 natural productiveness represented by 18, as before at 20. 
 Thus, the unsatisfied desire for wealth, the competition 
 of labor and capital for employment, would insure the 
 extension of the margin of production, we will say to 18, 
 and thus rent would be increased by the difference be- 
 tween 18 and 20, while wages and interest, in quantity, 
 would be no more than before, and, in proportion to the 
 whole produce, would be less. There would be a 
 greater production of wealth, but land owners would get 
 the whole benefit, subject to temporary deductions, 
 which will be hereafter stated. 
 
 If invention and improvement still go on, the efficiency 
 of labor will be still further increased, and the amount 
 of labor and capital necessary to produce a given result 
 further diminished. The same causes will lead to the 
 utilization of this new gain in productive power for the
 
 Chap.m. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. 349 
 
 production of more wealth; the margin of cultivation 
 will be again extended, and rent will increase, both in 
 proportion and amount, without any increase in wages 
 and interest. And, so, as invention and improvement 
 go on, constantly adding to the efficiency of labor, the 
 margin of production will be pushed lower and lower, 
 and rent constantly increased, though population should 
 remain stationary. 
 
 I do not mean to say that the lowering of the margin 
 of production would always exactly correspond with the 
 increase in productive power, any more than I mean to 
 say that the process would be one of clearly defined 
 steps. Whether, in any particular case, the lowering of 
 the margin of production lags behind or exceeds the in- 
 crease in productive power, will depend, I conceive, upon 
 what may be called the area of productiveness that can 
 be utilized before cultivation is forced to the next lowest 
 point. For instance, if the margin of cultivation be at 
 20, improvements which enable the same produce to be 
 obtained with one-tenth less capital and labor will not 
 carry the margin to 18, if the area having a produc- 
 tiveness of 19 is sufficient to employ all the labor and 
 capital displaced from the cultivation of the superior 
 lauds. In this case, the margin of cultivation would 
 rest at 19, and rents would be increased by the dif- 
 ference between 19 and 20, and wages and interest by 
 the difference between 18 and 19. But if, with the same 
 increase in productive power the area of productiveness 
 between 20 and 18 should not be sufficient to employ all 
 the displaced labor and capital, the margin of cultivation 
 must, if the same amount of labor and capital press for 
 employment, be carried lower than 18. In this case, 
 rent would gain more than the increase in the product, 
 and wages and interest would be less than before the im- 
 provements which increased productive power. 
 
 Nor is it precisely true that the labor set free by each
 
 250 EFFECTS OF MATEBUL PEOGBESS. Book ir. 
 
 improvement will all be driven to seek employment in 
 the production of more wealth. The increased power of 
 satisfaction, which each fresh improvement gives to a 
 certain portion of the community, will be utilized in de- 
 manding leisure or services, as well as in demanding 
 wealth. Some laborers will, therefore, become idlers 
 and some will pass from the ranks of productive to those 
 of unproductive laborers the proportion of which, as 
 observation shows, tends to increase with the progress of 
 society. 
 
 But, as I shall presently refer to a cause, as yet uncon- 
 sidered, which constantly tends to lower the margin of 
 cultivation, to steady the advance of rent, and even carry 
 it beyond the proportion that would be fixed by the 
 actual margin of cultivation, it is not worth while to 
 take into account these perturbations in the downward 
 movement of the margin of cultivation and the upward 
 movement of rent. All I wish to make clear is that, 
 without any increase in population, the progress of in- 
 vention constantly tends to give a larger proportion of 
 the produce to the owners of land, and a smaller and 
 smaller proportion to labor and capital. 
 
 And, as we can assign no limits to the progress of in- 
 vention, neither can we assign any limits to the increase 
 of rent, short of the whole produce. For, if labor-saving 
 inventions went on until perfection was attained, and 
 the necessity of labor in the production of wealth was 
 entirely done away with, then everything that the earth 
 could yield could be obtained without labor, and the 
 margin of cultivation would be extended to zero. "Wages 
 would be nothing, and interest would be nothing, while 
 rent would take everything. For the owners of the 
 land, being enabled without labor to obtain all the wealth 
 that could be procured from nature, there would be no 
 use for either labor or capital, and no possible way in 
 which either could compel any share of the wealth pro-
 
 Chap, lit IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. 251 
 
 duced. And no matter how small population might be, 
 if anybody but the land owners continued to exist, it 
 would be at the whim or by the mercy of the land owners 
 they would be maintained either for the amusement 
 of the land owners, or, as paupers, by their bounty. 
 
 This point, of the absolute perfection of labor-saving 
 inventions, may seem very remote, if not impossible of 
 attainment; but it is a point toward which the march of 
 invention is every day more strongly tending. And in 
 the thinning out of population in the agricultural dis- 
 tricts of Great Britain, where small farms are being con- 
 verted into larger ones, and in the great machine-worked 
 wheat-fields of California and Dakota, where one may 
 ride for miles and miles through waving grain without 
 seeing a human habitation, there are already suggestions 
 of the final goal toward which the whole civilized world 
 is hastening. The steam plow and the reaping machine 
 are creating in the modern world latifundia of the same 
 kind that the influx of slaves from foreign wars created 
 in ancient Italy. And to many a poor fellow as he is 
 shoved out of his accustomed place and forced to move 
 on as the Roman farmers were forced to join the pro- 
 letariat of the great city, or sell their blood for bread in 
 the ranks of the legions it seems as though these labor- 
 saving inventions were in themselves a curse, and we 
 hear men talking of work, as though the wearying strain 
 of the muscles were, in itself, a thing to be desired. 
 
 In what has preceded, I have, of course, spoken of in- 
 ventions and improvements when generally diffused. It 
 is hardly necessary to say that as long as an invention or 
 an improvement is used by so few that they derive a 
 special advantage from it, it does not, to the extent of 
 this special advantage, affect the general distribution of 
 wealth. So, in regard to the limited monopolies created 
 by patent laws, or by the causes which give the same 
 character to railroad and telegraph lines, etc. Although.
 
 252 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 
 
 generally mistaken for profits of capital, the special prof- 
 its thus arising are really the returns of monopoly, as has 
 been explained in a previous chapter, and, to the extent 
 that they subtract from the benefits of an improvement, 
 do not primarily affect general distribution. For in- 
 stance, the benefits of a railroad or similar improvement 
 in cheapening transportation are diffused or monopolized, 
 as its charges are reduced to a rate which will yield ordi- 
 nary interest on the capital invested, or kept up to a 
 point which will yield an extraordinary return, or cover 
 the stealing of the constructors or directors. And, as is 
 well known, the rise in rent or land values corresponds 
 with the reduction in the charges. 
 
 As has before been said, in the improvements which 
 advance rent, are not only to be included the improve- 
 ments which directly increase productive power, but also 
 such improvements in government, manners, and morals 
 as indirectly increase it. Considered as material forces, 
 the effect of all these is to increase productive power, 
 and, like improvements in the productive arts, their 
 benefit is ultimately monopolized by the possessors of 
 the land. A notable instance of this is to be found in 
 the abolition of protection by England. Free trade has 
 enormously increased the wealth of Great Britain, with- 
 out lessening pauperism. It has simply increased rent. 
 And if the corrupt governments of our great American 
 cities were to be made models of purity and economy, the 
 effect would simply be to increase the value of land, not 
 to raise either wages or interest.
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 EFFECT OF THE EXPECTATION EAISED BY MATEBIAL 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 We have now seen that while advancing population 
 tends to advance rent, so all the causes that in a pro- 
 gressive state of society operate to increase the produc- 
 tive power of labor tend, also, to advance rent, and not 
 to advance wages or interest. The increased production 
 of wealth goes ultimately to the owners of land in in- 
 creased rent; and, although, as improvement goes on, 
 advantages may accrue to individuals not land holders, 
 which concentrate in their hands considerable portions of 
 the increased produce, yet there is in all this improve- 
 ment nothing which tends to increase the general return 
 either to labor or to capital. 
 
 But there is a cause, not yet adverted to, which must 
 be taken into consideration fully to explain the influence 
 of material progress upon the distribution of wealth. 
 
 That cause is the confident expectation of the future 
 enhancement of land values, which arises in all progress- 
 ive countries from the steady increase of rent, and which 
 leads to speculation, or the holding of land for a higher 
 price than it would then otherwise bring. 
 
 We have hitherto assumed, as is generally assumed in 
 elucidations of the theory of rent, that the actual margin 
 of cultivation always coincides with what may be termed 
 the necessary margin of cultivation that is to say, we 
 have assumed that cultivation extends to less productive 
 points only as it becomes necessary from the fact that 
 natural opportunities are at the more productive points 
 fully utilized.
 
 254: EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IT. 
 
 This, probably, is the case in stationary or very slowly 
 progressing communities, but in rapidly progressing 
 communities, where the swift and steady increase of rent 
 gives confidence to calculations of further increase, it is 
 not the case. In such communities, the confident ex- 
 pectation of increased prices produces, to a greater or 
 less extent, the effects of a combination among land 
 holders, and tends to the withholding of land from use, 
 in expectation of higher prices, thus forcing the margin 
 of cultivation farther than required by the necessities of 
 production. 
 
 This cause must operate to some extent in all progress- 
 ive communities, though in such countries as England, 
 where the tenant system prevails in agriculture, it may 
 be shown more in the selling price of land than in the 
 agricultural margin of cultivation, or actual rent. But 
 in communities like the United States, where the user of 
 land generally prefers, if he can, to own it, and where 
 there is a great extent of land to overrun, it operates 
 with enormous power. 
 
 The immense area over which the population of the 
 United States is scattered shows this. The man who 
 sets out from the Eastern seaboard in search of the mar- 
 gin of cultivation, where he may obtain land without 
 paying rent, must, like the man who swam the river to 
 get a drink, pass for long distances through half-tilled 
 farms, and traverse vast areas of virgin soil, before he 
 reaches the point where land can be had free of rent 
 i.e., by homestead entry or pre-emption. He (and, with 
 him, the margin of cultivation) is forced so much farther 
 than he otherwise need have gone, by the speculation 
 which is holding these unused lands in expectation of in- 
 creased value in the future. And when he settles, he 
 will, in his turn, take up, if he can, more land than he 
 can use, in the belief that it will soon become valuable; 
 and so those who follow him are again forced farther on
 
 Chap.ir. EXPECTATION RAISED. 255 
 
 than the necessities of production require, carrying the 
 margin of cultivation to still less productive, because still 
 more remote points. 
 
 The same thing may be seen in every rapidly growing 
 city. If the land of superior quality as to location were 
 always fully used before land of inferior quality were 
 resorted to, no vacant lots would be left as a city ex- 
 tended, nor would we find miserable shanties in the midst 
 of costly buildings. These lots, some of them extremely 
 valuable, are withheld from use, or from the full use to 
 which they might be put, because their owners, not being 
 able or not wishing to improve them, prefer, in expecta- 
 tion of the advance of land values, to hold them for a 
 higher rate than could now be obtained from those will- 
 ing to improve them. And, in consequence of this land 
 being withheld from use, or from the full use of which 
 it is capable, the margin of the city is pushed away so 
 much farther from the center. 
 
 But when we reach the limits of the growing city the 
 actual margin of building, which corresponds to the mar- 
 gin of cultivation in agriculture we shall not find the 
 land purchasable at its value for agricultural purposes, as 
 it would be were rent determined simply by present re- 
 quirements; but we shall find that for a long distance 
 beyond the city land bears a speculative value, based 
 upon the belief that it will be required in the future for 
 urban purposes, and that to reach the point at which land 
 can be purchased at a price not based upon urban rent, 
 we must go very far beyond the actual margin of urban 
 use. 
 
 Or, to take another case of a different kind, instances 
 similar to which may doubtless be found in every locality. 
 There is in Marin County, within easy access of San 
 Francisco, a fine belt of redwood timber. Naturally, 
 this would be first used, before resorting for the supply 
 of the San Francisco market to timber lands at a much
 
 256 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PEOGEESS. Book IT. 
 
 greater distance. But it yet remains uncut, and lumber 
 procured many miles beyond is daily hauled past it on 
 the railroad, because its owner prefers to hold for the 
 greater price it will bring in the future. Thus, by the 
 withholding from use of this body of timber, the margin 
 of production of redwood is forced so much farther up 
 and down the Coast Kange. That mineral land, when 
 reduced to private ownership, is frequently withheld 
 from use while poorer deposits are worked, is well known, 
 and in new States it is common to find individuals who 
 are called "land poor" that is, who remain poor, some- 
 times almost to deprivation, because they insist on hold- 
 ing land, which they themselves cannot use, at prices at 
 which no one else can profitably use it. 
 
 To recur now to the illustration we made use of in the 
 preceding chapter: With the margin of cultivation 
 standing at 20, an increase in the power of production 
 takes place, which renders the same result obtainable 
 with one-tenth less labor. For reasons before stated, 
 the margin of production must now be forced down, and 
 if it rests at 18, the return to labor and capital will be 
 the same as before, when the margin stood at 20. 
 Whether it will be forced to 18 or be forced lower depends 
 upon what I have called the area of productiveness which 
 intervenes between 20 and 18. But if the confident ex- 
 pectation of a further increase of rents leads the land 
 owners to demand 3 rent for 20 land, 2 for 19, and 1 for 
 18 land, and to withhold their land from use until these 
 terms are complied with, the area of productiveness may 
 be so reduced that the margin of cultivation must fall to 
 17 or even lower; and thus, as the result of the increase 
 in the efficiency of labor, laborers would get less than 
 before, while interest would be proportionately reduced, 
 and rent would increase in greater ratio than the increase 
 in productive power. 
 
 Whether we formulate it as an extension of the margin
 
 Chap. IV. EXPECTATION BAISED. 257 
 
 of production, or as a carrying of the rent line beyond 
 the margin of production, the influence of speculation in 
 land in increasing rent is a great fact which cannot be 
 ignored in any complete theory of the distribution of 
 wealth in progressive countries. It is the force, evolved 
 by material progress, which tends constantly to increase 
 rent in a greater ratio than progress increases production, 
 and thus constantly tends, as material progress goes on 
 and productive power increases, to reduce wages, not 
 merely relatively, but absolutely. It is this expansive 
 force which, operating with great power in new coun- 
 tries, brings to them, seemingly long before their time, 
 the social diseases of older countries; produces "tramps" 
 on virgin acres, and breeds paupers on half-tilled soil. 
 
 In short, the general and steady advance in land values 
 in a progressive community necessarily produces that ad- 
 ditional tendency to advance which is seen in the case of 
 commodities when any general and continuous cause oper- 
 ates to increase their price. As, during the rapid de- 
 preciation of currency which marked the latter days of 
 the Southern Confederacy, the fact that whatever was 
 bought one day could be sold for a higher price the next, 
 operated to carry up the prices of commodities even 
 faster than the depreciation of the currency, so does the 
 steady increase of land values, which material progress 
 produces, operate still further to accelerate the increase. 
 We see this secondary cause operating in full force in 
 those manias of land speculation which mark the growth 
 of new communities; but though these are the abnormal 
 and occasional manifestations, it is undeniable that the 
 cause steadily operates, with greater or less intensity, in 
 all progressive societies. 
 
 The cause which limits speculation in commodities, 
 the tendency of increasing price to draw forth additional 
 supplies, cannot limit the speculative advance in land 
 values, as land is a fixed quantity, which human agency
 
 258 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IT. 
 
 can neither increase nor diminish; but there is neverthe- 
 less a limit to the price of land, in the minimum required 
 by labor and capital as the condition of engaging in pro- 
 duction. If it were possible continuously to reduce 
 wages until zero were reached, it would be possible con- 
 tinuously to increase rent until it swallowed up the 
 whole produce. But as wages cannot be permanently 
 reduced below the point at which laborers will consent 
 to work and reproduce, nor interest below the point at 
 which capital will be devoted to production, there is a 
 limit which restrains the speculative advance of rent. 
 Hence speculation cannot have the same scope to ad- 
 vance rent in countries where wages and interest are 
 already near the minimum, as in countries where they 
 are considerably above it. Yet that there is in all pro- 
 gressive countries a constant tendency in the speculative 
 advance of rent to overpass the limit where production 
 would cease, is, I think, shown by recurring seasons of 
 industrial paralysis a matter which will be more fully 
 examined in the next book.
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF RECURRING PAR- 
 OXYSMS OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY AMID AD- 
 VANCING WEALTH.
 
 To whomsoever the soil at any time belongs, to him belong the 
 fruits of it. White parasols, and elephants mad with pride are the 
 flowers of a grant of land. Sir Wm. Jones' translation of an Indian 
 grant of land, found at Tanna. 
 
 The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner; a per- 
 fumed seigneur, delicately lounging in the CEil de Boeuf, hath an 
 alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle, and call 
 it rent. Carlyle.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF RECURRING PAROXYSMS OP 
 INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 
 
 Our long inquiry is ended. We may now marshal the 
 results. 
 
 To begin with the industrial depressions, to account 
 for which so many contradictory and self-contradictory 
 theories are broached. 
 
 A consideration of the manner in which the specula- 
 tive advance in land values cuts down the earnings of 
 labor and capital and checks production leads, I think, 
 irresistibly to the conclusion that this is the main cause 
 of those periodical industrial depressions to which every 
 civilized country, and all civilized countries together, 
 seem increasingly liable. 
 
 I do not mean to say that there are not other proxi- 
 mate causes. The growing complexity and interdepend- 
 ence of the machinery of production, which makes each 
 shock or stoppage propagate itself through a widening 
 circle; the essential defect of currencies which contract 
 when most needed, and the tremendous alternations in 
 volume that occur in the simpler forms of commercial 
 credit, which, to a much greater extent than currency in 
 any form, constitute the medium or flux of exchanges; 
 the protective tariffs which present artificial barriers to 
 the interplay of productive forces, and other similar 
 causes, undoubtedly bear important part in producing 
 and continuing what are called hard times. But, both 
 from the consideration of principles and the observation 
 of phenomena, it is clear that the great initiatory cause
 
 262 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 is to be looked for in the speculative advance of land 
 values. 
 
 In the preceding chapter I have shown that the specu- 
 lative advance in land values tends to press the margin of 
 cultivation, or production, beyond its normal limit, thus 
 compelling labor and capital to accept of a smaller re- 
 turn, or (and this is the only way they can resist the 
 tendency) to cease production. Now, it is not only 
 natural that labor and capital should resist the crowding 
 down of wages and interest by the speculative advance of 
 rent, but they are driven to this in self-defense, inasmuch 
 as there is a minimum of return below which labor can- 
 not exist nor capital be maintained. Hence, from the 
 fact of speculation in land, we may infer all the phe- 
 nomena which mark these recurring seasons of industrial 
 depression. 
 
 Given a progressive community, in which population is 
 increasing and one improvement succeeds another, and 
 land must constantly increase in value. This steady in- 
 crease naturally leads to speculation in which future in- 
 crease is anticipated, and land values are carried beyond 
 the point at which, under the existing conditions of 
 production, their accustomed returns would be left to 
 labor and capital. Production, therefore, begins to stop. 
 Not that there is necessarily, or even probably, an abso- 
 lute diminution in production; but that there is what in 
 a progressive community would be equivalent to an abso- 
 lute diminution of production in a stationary community 
 a failure in production to increase proportionately, 
 owing to the failure of new increments of labor and 
 capital to find employment at the accustomed rates. 
 
 This stoppage of production at some points must nec- 
 essarily show itself at other points of the industrial net- 
 work, in a cessation of demand, which would again check 
 production there, and thus the paralysis would communi- 
 cate itself through all the interlacings of industry and
 
 Chap. 1. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 263 
 
 commerce, producing everywhere a partial disjointing of 
 production and exchange, and resulting in the phe- 
 nomena that seem to show overproduction or over- 
 consumption, according to the standpoint from which 
 they are viewed. 
 
 The period of depression thus ensuing would continue 
 until (1) the speculative advance in rents had been lost; 
 or (2) the increase in the efficiency of labor, owing to the 
 growth of population and the progress of improvement, 
 had enabled the normal rent line to overtake the specu- 
 lative rent line; or (3) labor and capital had become 
 reconciled to engaging in production for smaller returns. 
 Or, most probably, all three of these causes would co- 
 operate to produce a new equilibrium, at which all the 
 forces of production would again engage, and a season of 
 activity ensue; whereupon rent would begin to advance 
 again, a speculative advance again take place, production 
 again be checked, and the same round be gone over. 
 
 In the elaborate and complicated system of production 
 which is characteristic of modern civilization, where, 
 moreover, there is no such thing as a distinct and inde- 
 pendent industrial community, but geographically or 
 politically separated communities blend and interlace 
 their industrial organizations in different modes and 
 varying measures, it is not to be expected that effect 
 should be seen to follow cause as clearly and definitely as 
 would be the case in a simpler development of industry, 
 and in a community forming a complete and distinct in- 
 dustrial whole; but, nevertheless, the phenomena actu- 
 ally presented by these alternate seasons of activity and 
 depression clearly correspond with those we have inferred 
 from the speculative advance of rent. 
 
 Deduction thus shows the actual phenomena as result- 
 ing from the principle. If we reverse the process, it is 
 as easy by induction to reach the principle by tracing up 
 the phenomena.
 
 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 These seasons of depression are always preceded by 
 seasons of activity and speculation, and on all hands the 
 connection between the two is admitted the depression 
 being looked upon as the reaction from the speculation, 
 as the headache of the morning is the reaction from the 
 debauch of the night. But as to the manner in which 
 the depression results from the speculation, there are two 
 classes or schools of opinion, as the attempts made on 
 both sides of the Atlantic to account for the present in- 
 dustrial depression will show. 
 
 One school says that the speculation produced the de- 
 pression by causing overproduction, and point to the 
 warehouses filled with goods that cannot be sold at 
 remunerative prices, to mills closed or working on half 
 time, to mines shut down and steamers laid up, to money 
 lying idly in bank vaults, and workmen compelled to 
 idleness and privation. They point to these facts as 
 showing that the production has exceeded the demand 
 for consumption, and they point, moreover, to the fact 
 that when government during war enters the field as an 
 enormous consumer, brisk times prevail, as in the United 
 States during the civil war and in England during the 
 Napoleonic struggle. 
 
 The other school says that the speculation has pro- 
 duced the depression by leading to overconsumption, 
 and point to full warehouses, rusting steamers, closed 
 mills, and idle workmen as evidences of a cessation of 
 effective demand, which, they say, evidently results from 
 the fact that people, made extravagant by a fictitious 
 prosperity, have lived beyond their means, and are now 
 obliged to retrench that is, to consume less wealth. 
 They point, moreover, to the enormous consumption of 
 wealth by wars, by the building of unremunerative rail- 
 roads, by loans to bankrupt governments, etc., as extrav- 
 agances which, though not felt at the time, just as the 
 spendthrift does not at the moment feel the impairment
 
 Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 265 
 
 of his fortune, must now be made up by a season of 
 reduced consumption. 
 
 Now, each of these theories evidently expresses one 
 side or phase of a general truth, but each of them evi- 
 dently fails to comprehend the full truth. As an ex- 
 planation of the phenomena, each is equally and utterly 
 preposterous. 
 
 For while the great masses of men want more wealth 
 than they can get, and while they are willing to give for 
 it that which is the basis and raw material of wealth 
 their labor how can there be overproduction? And 
 while the machinery of production wastes and producers 
 are condemned to unwilling idleness, how can there be 
 overconsumption ? 
 
 When, with the desire to consume more, there co-exist 
 the ability and willingness to produce more, industrial 
 and commercial paralysis cannot be charged either to 
 overproduction or to overconsumption. Manifestly, 
 the trouble is that production and consumption cannot 
 meet and satisfy each other. 
 
 How does this inability arise? It is evidently and by 
 common consent the result of speculation. But of specu- 
 lation in what? 
 
 Certainly not of speculation in things which are the 
 products of labor in agricultural or mineral productions, 
 or manufactured goods, for the effect of speculation in 
 such things, as is well shown in current treatises that 
 spare me the necessity of illustration, is simply to equal- 
 ize supply and demand, and to steady the interplay of 
 production and consumption by an action analogous to 
 that of a fly-wheel in a machine. 
 
 Therefore, if speculation be the cause of these indus- 
 trial depressions, it must be speculation in things not the 
 production of labor, but yet necessary to the exertion of 
 labor in the production of wealth of things of fixed 
 quantity; that is to say, it must be speculation in land.
 
 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 That land speculation is the true cause of industrial 
 depression is, in the United States, clearly evident. In 
 each period of industrial activity land values have stead- 
 ily risen, culminating in speculation which carried them 
 up in great jumps. This has been invariably followed by 
 a partial cessation of production, and its correlative, a 
 cessation of effective demand (dull trade), generally 
 accompanied by a commercial crash; and then has suc- 
 ceeded a period of comparative stagnation, during which 
 the equilibrium has been again slowly established, and 
 the same round been run again. This relation is 
 observable throughout the civilized world. Periods of 
 industrial activity always culminate in a speculative 
 advance of land values, followed by symptoms of checked 
 production, generally shown at first by cessation of de- 
 mand from the newer countries, where the advance in 
 land values has been greatest. 
 
 That this must be the main explanation of these 
 periods of depression, will be seen by an analysis of the 
 facts. 
 
 All trade, let it be remembered, is the exchange of 
 commodities for commodities, and hence the cessation 
 of demand for some commodities, which marks the de- 
 pression of trade, is really a cessation in the supply of 
 other commodities. That dealers find their sales declin- 
 ing and manufacturers find orders falling off, while the 
 things which they have to sell, or stand ready to make, 
 are things for which there is yet a widespread desire, 
 simply shows that the supply of other things, which in 
 the course of trade would be given for them, has de- 
 clined. In common parlance we say that "buyers have 
 no money," or that "money is becoming scarce," but in 
 talking in this way we ignore the fact that money is but 
 the medium of exchange. What the would-be buyers 
 really lack is not money, but commodities which they 
 can turn into money what is really becoming scarcer, is
 
 Chap. 1. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 267 
 
 produce of some sort. The diminution of the effective 
 demand of consumers is therefore but a result of the 
 diminution of production. 
 
 This is seen very clearly by storekeepers in a manu- 
 facturing town when the mills are shut down and opera- 
 tives thrown out of work. It is the cessation of produc- 
 tion which deprives the operatives of means to make the 
 purchases they desire, and thus leaves the storekeeper 
 with what, in view of the lessened demand, is a super- 
 abundant stock, and forces him to discharge some of his 
 clerks and otherwise reduce his demands. And the ces- 
 sation of demand (I am speaking, of course, of general 
 cases and not of any alteration in relative demand from 
 such causes as change of fashion), which has left the 
 manufacturer with superabundant stock and compelled 
 him to discharge his hands, must arise in the same way. 
 Somewhere, it may be at the other end of the world, a 
 check in production has produced a check in the demand 
 for consumption. That demand is lessened without want 
 being satisfied, shows that production is somewhere 
 checked. 
 
 People want the things the manufacturer makes as 
 much as ever, just as the operatives want the things the 
 storekeeper has to sell. But they do not have as much 
 to give for them. Production has somewhere been 
 checked, and this reduction in the supply of some things 
 has shown itself in cessation of demand for others, the 
 check propagating itself through the whole framework 
 of industry and exchange. Now, the industrial pyramid 
 manifestly rests on the land. The primary and funda- 
 mental occupations, which create a demand for all 
 others, are evidently those which extract wealth from 
 nature, and, hence, if we trace from one exchange point 
 to another, and from one occupation to another, this 
 check to production, which shows itself in decreased 
 purchasing power, we must ultimately find it in some
 
 268 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 obstacle which checks labor in expending itself on land. 
 And that obstacle, it is clear, is the speculative advance 
 in rent, or the value of land, which produces the same 
 effects, as in fact, it is, a lock-out of labor and capital by 
 land owners. This check to production, beginning at 
 the basis of interlaced industry, propagates itself from 
 exchange point to exchange point, cessation of supply 
 becoming failure of demand, until, so to speak, the 
 whole machine is thrown out of gear, and the spectacle 
 is everywhere presented of labor going to waste while 
 laborers suffer from want. 
 
 This strange and unnatural spectacle of large numbers 
 of willing men who cannot find employment is enough 
 to suggest the true cause to whomsoever can think con- 
 secutively. For, though custom has dulled us to it, it is 
 a strange and unnatural thing that men who wish to labor, 
 in order to satisfy their wants, cannot find the oppor- 
 tunity as, since labor is that which produces wealth, the 
 man who seeks to exchange labor for food, clothing, or 
 any other form of wealth, is like one who proposes to 
 give bullion for coin, or wheat for flour. We talk about 
 the supply of labor and the demand for labor, but, evi- 
 dently, these are only relative terms. The supply of 
 labor is everywhere the same two hands always come 
 into the world with one mouth, twenty-one boys to every 
 twenty girls; and the demand for labor must always 
 exist as long as men want things which labor alone can 
 procure. We talk about the "want of work," but, evi- 
 dently, it is not work that is short while want continues; 
 evidently, the supply of labor cannot be too great, nor 
 the demand for labor too small, when people suffer for 
 the lack of things that labor produces. The real trouble 
 must be that supply is somehow prevented from satisfy- 
 ing demand, that somewhere there is an obstacle which 
 prevents labor from producing the things that laborers 
 want.
 
 Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 269 
 
 Take the case of any one of these vast masses of un- 
 employed men, to whom, though he never heard of Mal- 
 thus, it to-day seems that there are too many people in 
 the world. In his own wants, in the needs of his anxious 
 wife, in the demands of his half-cared-for, perhaps even 
 hungry and shivering children, there is demand enough 
 for labor, Heaven knows! In his own willing hands is 
 the supply. Put him on a solitary island, and though cut 
 off from all the enormous advantages which the co- 
 operation, combination, and machinery of a civilized 
 community give to the productive powers of man, yet his 
 two hands can fill the mouths and keep warm the backs 
 that depend upon them. Yet where productive power is 
 as its highest development they cannot. Why? Is it 
 not because in the one case he has access to the material 
 and forces of nature, and in the other this access is 
 denied? 
 
 Is it not the fact that labor is thus shut off from 
 nature which can alone explain the state of things that 
 compels men to stand idle who would willingly supply 
 their wants by their labor? The proximate cause of en- 
 forced idleness with one set of men may be the cessation 
 of demand on the part of other men for the particular 
 things they produce, but trace this cause from point to 
 point, from occupation to occupation, and you will find 
 that enforced idleness in one trade is caused by enforced 
 idleness in another, and that the paralysis which pro- 
 duces dallness in all trades cannot be said to spring from 
 too great a supply of labor or too small a demand for 
 labor, but must proceed from the fact that supply cannot 
 meet demand by producing the things which satisfy want 
 and are the object of labor. 
 
 Now, what is necessary to enable labor to produce 
 these things, is land. When we speak of labor creating 
 wealth, we speak metaphorically. Man creates nothing. 
 The whole human race, were they to labor forever, could
 
 370 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. fook V. 
 
 not create the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam 
 could not make this rolling sphere one atom heavier or 
 one atom lighter. In producing wealth, labor, with the 
 aid of natural forces, but works up, into the forms de- 
 sired, pre-existing matter, and, to produce wealth, must, 
 therefore, have access to this matter and to these forces 
 that is to say, to land. The land is the source of all 
 wealth. It is the mine from which must be drawn the 
 ore that labor fashions. It is the substance to which 
 labor gives the form. And, hence, when labor cannot 
 satisfy its wants, may we not with certainty infer that it 
 can be from no other cause than that labor is denied 
 access to land? 
 
 When in all trades there is what we call scarcity 
 of employment; when, everywhere, labor wastes, while 
 desire is unsatisfied, must not the obstacle which pre- 
 vents labor from producing the wealth it needs, lie at 
 the foundation of the industrial structure? That foun- 
 dation is land. Milliners, optical instrument makers, 
 gilders, and polishers, are not the pioneers of new settle- 
 ments. Miners did not go to California or Australia be- 
 cause shoemakers, tailors, machinists, and printers were 
 there. But those trades followed the miners, just as 
 they are now following the gold diggers into the Black 
 Hills and the diamond diggers into South Africa. It is 
 not the storekeeper who is the cause of the farmer, but 
 the farmer who brings the storekeeper. It is not the 
 growth of the city that develops the country, but the 
 development of the country that makes the city grow. 
 And, hence, when, through all trades, men willing to 
 work cannot find opportunity to do so, the difficulty 
 must arise in the employment that creates a demand for 
 all other employments it must be because labor is shut 
 out from land. 
 
 In Leeds or Lowell, in Philadelphia or Manchester, in 
 London or New York, it may require a grasp of first
 
 Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 271 
 
 principles to see this; but where industrial development 
 has not become so elaborate, nor the extreme links of the 
 chain so widely separated, one has but to look at obvious 
 facts. Although not yet thirty years old, the city of San 
 Francisco, both in population and in commercial impor- 
 tance, ranks among the great cities of the world, and, 
 next to New York, is the most metropolitan of American 
 cities. Though not yet thirty years old, she has had for 
 some years an increasing number of unemployed men. 
 Clearly, here, it is because men cannot find employment 
 in the country that there are so many unemployed in the 
 city; for when the harvest opens they go trooping out, 
 and when it is over they come trooping back to the city 
 again. If these now unemployed men were producing 
 wealth from the land, they would not only be employing 
 themselves, but would be employing all the mechanics of 
 the city, giving custom to the storekeepers, trade to the 
 merchants, audiences to the theaters, and subscribers 
 and advertisements to the newspapers creating effective 
 demand that would be felt in New England and Old 
 England, and wherever throughout the world come the 
 articles that, when they have the means to pay for them, 
 such a population consumes. 
 
 Now, why is it that this unemployed labor cannot 
 employ itself upon the land? Not that the land is all in 
 use. Though all the symptoms that in older countries 
 are taken as showing a redundancy of population are be- 
 ginning to manifest themselves in San Francisco, it is 
 idle to talk of redundancy of population in a State that 
 with greater natural resources than France has not yet a 
 million of people. Within a few miles of San Francisco 
 is unused land enough to give employment to every man 
 who wants it. I do not mean to say that every unem- 
 ployed man could turn farmer or build himself a house, 
 if he had the land; but that enough could and would do
 
 273 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 BO to give employment to the rest. What is it, then, 
 that prevents labor from employing itself on this land? 
 Simply, that it has been monopolized and is held at 
 speculative prices, based not upon present value, but 
 upon the added value that will come with the future 
 growth of population. 
 
 What may thus be seen in San Francisco by whoever is 
 willing to see, may, I doubt not, be seen as clearly in 
 other places. 
 
 The present commercial and industrial depression, 
 which first clearly manifested itself in the United States 
 in 1872, and has spread with greater or less intensity over 
 the civilized world, is largely attributed to the undue ex- 
 tension of the railroad system, with which there are many 
 things that seem to show its relation. I am fully conscious 
 that the construction of railroads before they are actually 
 needed may divert capital and labor from more to less 
 productive employments, and make a community poorer 
 instead of richer; and when the railroad mania was at its 
 highest, I pointed this out in a political tract addressed 
 to the people of California;* but to assign to this wasting 
 of capital such a widespread industrial dead-lock seems 
 to me like attributing an unusually low tide to the draw- 
 ing of a few extra bucketfuls of water. The waste of 
 capital and labor during the civil war was enormously 
 greater than it could possibly be by the construction of 
 unnecessary railroads, but without producing any such 
 result. And, certainly, there seems to be little sense in 
 talking of the waste of capital and labor in railroads as 
 causing this depression, when the prominent feature of 
 the depression has been the superabundance of capital 
 and labor seeking employment. 
 
 Yet, that there is a connection between the rapid con- 
 
 *The Subsidy Question and the Democratic Party, 1871.
 
 Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 273 
 
 struction of railroads and industrial depression, any one 
 who understands what increased land values mean, and 
 who has noticed the effect which the construction of 
 railroads has upon land speculation, can easily see. 
 Wherever a railroad was built or projected, lands sprang 
 up in value under the influence of speculation, and thou- 
 sands of millions of dollars were added to the nominal 
 values which capital and labor were asked to pay out- 
 right, or to pay in installments, as the price of being 
 allowed to go to work and produce wealth. The in- 
 evitable result was to check production, and this check 
 to production propagated itself in a cessation of demand, 
 which checked production to the furthest verge of the 
 wide circle of exchanges, operating with accumulated 
 force in the centers of the great industrial commonwealth 
 into which commerce links the civilized world. 
 
 The primary operations of this cause can, perhaps, be 
 nowhere more clearly traced than in California, which, 
 from its comparative isolation, has constituted a pecul- 
 iarly well-defined community. 
 
 Until almost its close, the last decade was marked in 
 California by the same industrial activity which was 
 shown in the Northern States, and, in fact, throughout 
 the civilized world, when the interruption of exchanges 
 and the disarrangement of industry caused by the war 
 and the blockade of Southern ports is considered. This 
 activity could not be attributed to inflation of the cur- 
 rency or to lavish expenditures of the General Govern- 
 ment, to which in the Eastern States the comparative 
 activity of the same period has since been attributed; 
 for, in spite of legal tender laws, the Pacific Coast adhered 
 to a coin currency, and the taxation of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment took away very much more than was returned 
 in Federal expenditures. It was attributable solely to 
 normal causes, for, though placer mining was declining, 
 the Nevada silver mines were being opened, wheat and
 
 274 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 wool were beginning to take the place of gold in the 
 table of exports, and an increasing population and the 
 improvement in the methods of production and exchange 
 were steadily adding to the efficiency of labor. 
 
 With this material progress went on a steady enhance- 
 ment in land values its consequence. This steady 
 advance engendered a speculative advance, which, with 
 the railroad era, ran up land values in every direction. 
 If the population of California had steadily grown when 
 the long, costly, fever-haunted Isthmus route was the 
 principal mode of communication with the Atlantic 
 States, it must, it was thought, increase enormously with 
 the opening of a road which would bring New York 
 harbor and San Francisco Bay within seven days' easy 
 travel, and when in the State itself the locomotive took 
 the place of stage coach and freight wagon. The ex- 
 pected increase of land values which would thus accrue 
 was discounted in advance. Lots on the outskirts of 
 San Francisco rose hundreds and thousands per cent., 
 and farming land was taken up and held for high prices, 
 in whichever direction an immigrant was likely to go. 
 
 But the anticipated rush of immigrants did not take 
 place. Labor and capital could not pay so much for 
 land and make fair returns. Production was checked, 
 if not absolutely, at least relatively. As the transcon- 
 tinental railroad approached completion, instead of in- 
 creased activity symptoms of depression began to mani- 
 fest themselves; and, when it was completed, to the 
 season of activity had succeeded a period of depression 
 which has not since been fully recovered from, during 
 which wages and interest have steadily fallen. What I 
 have called the actual rent line, or margin of cultivation, 
 is thus (as well as by the steady march of improvement 
 and increase of population, which, though slower than it 
 otherwise would have been, still goes on) approaching 
 the speculative rent line, but the tenacity with which a
 
 Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 275 
 
 speculative advance in the price of land is maintained in 
 a developing community is well known.* 
 
 Now, what thus went on in California went on in every 
 progressive section of the Union. Everywhere that a 
 railroad was built or projected, land was monopolized in 
 anticipation, and the benefit of the improvement was 
 discounted in increased land values. The speculative 
 advance in rent thus outrunning the normal advance, 
 production was checked, demand was decreased, and 
 labor and capital were turned back from occupations 
 more directly concerned with land, to glut those in 
 which the value of land is a less perceptible element. It 
 is thus that the rapid extension of railroads is related to 
 the succeeding depression. 
 
 And what went on in the United States went on in a 
 greater or less obvious degree all over the progressive 
 world. Everywhere land values have been steadily in- 
 creasing with material progress, and everywhere this 
 increase begot a speculative advance. The impulse of 
 the primary cause not only radiated from the newer sec- 
 tions of the Union to the older sections, and from the 
 United States to Europe, but everywhere the primary 
 cause was acting. And, hence, a world-wide depression 
 of industry and commerce, begotten of a world-wide 
 material progress. 
 
 There is one thing which, it may seem, I have over- 
 looked, in attributing these industrial depressions to the 
 speculative advance of rent or land values as a main and 
 
 *It is astonishing how in a new country of great expectations 
 speculative prices of land will be kept up. It is common to hear the 
 expression, " There is no market for real estate; you cannot sell it at 
 any price," and yet, at the same time, if you goto buy it, unless you 
 find somebody who is absolutely compelled to sell, you must pay 
 the prices that prevailed when speculation ran high. For owners, 
 believing that land values must ultimately advance, hold on as long 
 as they can.
 
 276 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 primary cause. The operation of such a cause, though 
 it may be rapid, must be progressive resembling a pres- 
 sure, not a blow. But these industrial depressions seem 
 to come suddenly they have, at their beginning, the 
 character of a paroxysm, followed by a comparative 
 lethargy, as if of exhaustion. Everything seems to be 
 going on as usual, commerce and industry vigorous and 
 expanding, when suddenly there comes a shock, as of a 
 thunderbolt out of a clear sky a bank breaks, a great 
 manufacturer or merchant fails, and, as if a blow had 
 thrilled through the entire industrial organization, fail- 
 ure succeeds failure, and on every side workmen are 
 discharged from employment, and capital shrinks into 
 profitless security. 
 
 Let me explain what I think to be the reason of this: 
 To do so, we must take into account the manner in 
 which exchanges are made, for it is by exchanges that all 
 the varied forms of industry are linked together into one 
 mutually related and interdependent organization. To 
 enable exchanges to be made between producers far re- 
 moved by space and time, large stocks must be kept in 
 store and in transit, and this, as I have already explained, 
 I take to be the great function of capital, in addition to 
 that of supplying tools and seed. These exchanges are, 
 perhaps necessarily, largely made upon credit that is to 
 say, the advance upon one side is made before the return 
 is received on the other. 
 
 Now, without stopping to inquire as to the causes, it is 
 manifest that these advances are, as a rule, from the 
 more highly organized and later developed industries to 
 the more fundamental. The West Coast African, for 
 instance, who exchanges palm oil and cocoanuts for 
 gaudy calico and Birmingham idols, gets his return im- 
 mediately; the English merchant, on the contrary, has 
 to lay out of his goods a long while before he gets his 
 returns. The farmer can sell his crop as soon as it is
 
 Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 277 
 
 harvested, and for cash; the great manufacturer must 
 keep a large stock, send his goods long distances to 
 agents, and, generally, sell on time. Thus, as advances 
 and credits are generally from what we may call the sec- 
 ondary, to what we may call the primary industries, it 
 follows that any check to production which proceeds 
 from the latter will not immediately manifest itself in 
 the former. The system of advances and credits consti- 
 tutes, as it were, an elastic connection, which will give 
 considerably before breaking, but which, when it breaks, 
 will break with a snap. 
 
 Or, to illustrate in another way what I mean: The great 
 pyramid of Gizeh is composed of layers of masonry, the 
 bottom layer, of course, supporting all the rest. Could 
 we by some means gradually contract this bottom layer, 
 the upper part of the pyramid would for some time 
 retain its form, and then, when gravitation at length 
 overcame the adhesiveness of the material, would not 
 diminish gradually and regularly, but would break off 
 suddenly, in large pieces. Now, the industrial organiza- 
 tion may be likened to such a pyramid. What is the 
 proportion which in a given stage of social development 
 the various industries bear to each other, it is difficult, 
 and perhaps impossible, to say; but it is obvious that 
 there is such a proportion, just as in a printer's font of 
 type there is a certain proportion between the various 
 letters. Each form of industry, as it is developed by 
 division of labor, springs from and rises out of the others, 
 and all rest ultimately upon land; for, without land, 
 labor is as impotent as would be a man in void space. 
 To make the illustration closer to the condition of a 
 progressive country, imagine a pyramid composed of su- 
 perimposed layers the whole constantly growing and 
 expanding. Imagine the growth of the layer nearest the 
 ground to be checked. The others will for a time keep 
 on expanding in fact, for the moment, the tendency
 
 278 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 will be to quicker expansion, for the vital force which is 
 refused scope on the ground layer will strive to find vent 
 in those above until, at length, there is a decided over- 
 balance and a sudden crumbling along all the faces of 
 the pyramid. 
 
 That the main cause and general course of the recur- 
 ring paroxysms of industrial depression, which are becom- 
 ing so marked a feature of modern social life, are thus ex- 
 plained, is, 1 think, clear. And let the reader remember 
 that it is only the main causes and general courses of 
 such phenomena that we are seeking to trace or that, in 
 fact, it is possible to trace with any exactness. Political 
 economy can deal, and has need to deal, only with 
 general tendencies. The derivative forces are so multi- 
 form, the actions and reactions are so various, that the 
 exact character of the phenomena cannot be predicted. 
 We know that if a tree is cut through it will fall, but 
 precisely in what direction will be determined by the in- 
 clination of the trunk, the spread of the branches, the 
 impact of the blows, the quarter and force of the wind; 
 and even a bird lighting on a twig, or a frightened 
 squirrel leaping from bough to bough, will not be with- 
 out its influence. We know that an insult will arouse a 
 feeling of resentment in the human breast, but to say how 
 far and in what way it will manifest itself, would require 
 a synthesis which would build up the entire man and all 
 his surroundings, past and present. 
 
 The manner in which the sufficient cause to which I 
 have traced them explains the main features of these in- 
 dustrial depressions is in striking contrast with the con- 
 tradictory and self-contradictory attempts which have 
 been made to explain them on the current theories of the 
 distribution of wealth. That a speculative advance in 
 rent or land values invariably precedes each of these sea 
 sons of industrial depression is everywhere clear. That 
 they bear to each other the relations of cause and effect,
 
 Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION". 279 
 
 is obvious to whomsoever considers the necessary rela- 
 tions between land and labor. 
 
 And that the present depression is running its course, 
 and that, in the manner previously indicated, a new 
 equilibrium is being established, which will result in 
 another season of comparative activity, may already be 
 seen in the United States. The normal rent line and the 
 speculative rent line are being brought together: (1) By 
 the fall in speculative land values, which is very evident 
 in the reduction of rents and shrinkage of real estate 
 values in the principal cities. (2) By the increased effi- 
 ciency of labor, arising from the growth of population and 
 the utilization of new inventions and discoveries, some of 
 which almost as important as that of the use of steam we 
 seem to be on the verge of grasping. (3) By the lower- 
 ing of the habitual standard of interest and wages, which, 
 as to interest, is shown by the negotiation of a govern- 
 ment loan at four per cent., and as to wages is too gen- 
 erally evident for any special citation. When the equi- 
 librium is thus re-established, a season of renewed activ- 
 ity, culminating in a speculative advance of land values 
 will set in.* But wages and interest will not recover 
 their lost ground. The net result of all these perturba- 
 tions or wave-like movements is the gradual forcing of 
 wages and interest toward their minimum. These tem- 
 porary and recurring depressions exhibit, in fact, as was 
 noticed in the opening chapter, but intensifications of 
 the general movement which accompanies material 
 progress. 
 
 * 'Ehis was written a year ago. It is now (July, 1879) evident that 
 a new period of activity has commenced, as above predicted, and in 
 New York and Chicago real estate prices have already begun to re- 
 cover.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY AMID ADVANCING WEALTH 
 
 The great problem, of which these recurring seasons 
 of industrial depression are but peculiar manifestations, 
 is now, I think, fully solved, and the social phenomena 
 which all over the civilized world appall the philanthro- 
 pist and perplex the statesman, which hang with clouds 
 the future of the most advanced races, and suggest 
 doubts of the reality and ultimate goal of what we have 
 fondly called progress, are now explained. 
 
 TJie reason wliy, in spite of the increase of productive 
 power, wages constantly tend to a minimum which will give 
 out a bare living, is that, with increase in productive power, 
 rent tends to even greater increase, thus producing a con- 
 stant tendency to the forcing down of wages. 
 
 In every direction, the direct tendency of advancing 
 civilization is to increase the power of human labor to 
 satisfy human desires to extirpate poverty, and to ban- 
 ish want and the fear of want. All the things in which 
 progress consists, all the conditions which progressive 
 communities are striving for, have for their direct and 
 natural result the improvement of the material (and con- 
 sequently the intellectual and moral) condition of all 
 within their influence. The growth of population, the 
 increase and extension of exchanges, the discoveries of 
 science, the march of invention, the spread of education, 
 the improvement of government, and the amelioration of 
 manners, considered as material forces, have all a direct 
 tendency to increase the productive power of labor not
 
 Chap.II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 281 
 
 of some labor, but of all labor; not in some departments 
 of industry, but in all departments of industry; for the 
 law of the production of wealth in society is the law of 
 "each for all, and all for each." 
 
 But labor cannot reap the benefits which advancing 
 civilization thus brings, because they are intercepted. 
 Land being necessary to labor, and being reduced to 
 private ownership, every increase in the productive power 
 of labor but increases rent the price that labor must pay 
 for the opportunity to utilize its powers; and thus all 
 the advantages gained by the march of progress go to the 
 owners of land, and wages do not increase. Wages can- 
 not increase; for the greater the earnings of labor the 
 greater the price that labor must pay out of its earnings 
 for the opportunity to make any earnings at all. The 
 mere laborer has thus no more interest in the general 
 advance of productive power than the Cuban slave has in 
 advance in the price of sugar. And just as an advance 
 in .the price of sugar may make the condition of the 
 slave worse, by inducing the master to drive him harder, 
 so may the condition of the free laborer be positively, as 
 well as relatively, changed for the worse by the increase 
 in the productive power of his labor. For, begotten of 
 the continuous advance of rents, arises a speculative 
 tendency which discounts the effect of future improve- 
 ments by a still further advance of rent, and thus tends, 
 where this has not occurred from the normal advance of 
 rent, to drive wages down to the slave point the point 
 at which the laborer can just live. 
 
 And thus robbed of all the benefits of the increase in 
 productive power, labor is exposed to certain effects of 
 advancing civilization which, without the advantages 
 that naturally accompany them, are positive evils, and of 
 themselves tend to reduce the free laborer to the helpless 
 and degraded condition of the slave. 
 
 For all improvements which add to productive power as
 
 282 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 civilization advances consist in, or necessitate, a still fur- 
 ther subdivision of labor, and the efficiency of the whole 
 body of laborers is increased at the expense of the inde- 
 pendence of the constituents. The individual laborer 
 acquires knowledge of and skill in but an infinitesimal 
 part of the varied processes which are required to supply 
 even the commonest wants. The aggregate produce of 
 the labor of a savage tribe is small, but each member is 
 capable of an independent life. He can build his own 
 habitation, hew out or stitch together his own canoe, 
 make his own clothing, manufacture his own weapons, 
 snares, tools and ornaments. He has all the knowledge 
 of nature possessed by his tribe knows what vegetable 
 productions are fit for food, and where they may be 
 found; knows the habits and resorts of beasts, birds, 
 fishes, and insects; can pilot himself by the sun or the 
 stars, by the turning of blossoms or the mosses on the 
 trees; is, in short, capable of supplying all his wants. 
 He may be cut off from his fellows and still live; and 
 thus possesses an independent power which makes him a 
 free contracting party in his relations to the community 
 of which he is a member. 
 
 Compare with this savage the laborer in the lowest 
 ranks of civilized society, whose life is spent in pro- 
 ducing but one thing, or oftener but the infinitesimal 
 part of one thing, out of the multiplicity of things that 
 constitute the wealth of society and go to supply even 
 the most primitive wants; who not only cannot make 
 even the tools required for his work, but often works 
 with tools that he does not own, and can never hope to 
 own. Compelled to even closer and more continuous 
 labor than the savage, and gaining by it no more than 
 the savage gets the mere necessaries of life he loses 
 the independence of the savage. He is not only unable 
 to apply his own powers to the direct satisfaction of his 
 own wants, but, without the concurrence of many others,
 
 Chap.n. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 283 
 
 he is unable to apply them indirectly to the satisfaction 
 of his wants. He is a mere link in an enormous chain of 
 producers and consumers, helpless to separate himself, 
 and helpless to move, except as they move. The worse 
 his position in society, the more dependent is he on soci- 
 ety; the more utterly unable does he become to do any- 
 thing for himself. The very power of exerting his labor 
 for the satisfaction of his wants passes from his own con- 
 trol, and may be taken away or restored by the actions 
 of others, or by general causes over which he has no more 
 influence than he has over the motions of the solar sys- 
 tem. The primeval curse comes to be looked upon as a 
 boon, and men think, and talk, and clamor, and legislate 
 as though monotonous manual labor in itself were a good 
 and not an evil, an end and not a means. Under such 
 circumstances, the man loses the essential quality of 
 manhood the godlike power of modifying and control- 
 ling conditions. He becomes a slave, a machine, a com- 
 modity a thing, in some respects, lower than the 
 animal. 
 
 I am no sentimental admirer of the savage state. I do 
 not get my ideas of the untutored children of nature 
 from Rousseau, or Chateaubriand, or Cooper. I am con- 
 scious of its material and mental poverty, and its low and 
 narrow range. I believe that civilization is not only the 
 natural destiny of man, but the enfranchisement, eleva- 
 tion, and refinement of all his powers, and think that it 
 is only in such moods as may lead him to envy the cud- 
 chewing cattle, that a man who is free to the advantages 
 of civilization could look with regret upon the savage 
 state. Bat, nevertheless, I think no one who will open 
 his eyes to the facts can resist the conclusion that there 
 are in the heart of our civilization large classes with 
 whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. 
 It is my deliberate opinion that if, standing on the 
 threshold of being, one were given the choice of entering
 
 284 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 life as a Tierra del Fuegan, a black fellow of Australia, 
 an Esquimaux in the Arctic Circle, or among the lowest 
 classes in such a highly civilized country as Great Brit- 
 ain, he would make infinitely the better choice in select- 
 ing the lot of the savage. For those classes who in the 
 midst of wealth are condemned to want suffer all the 
 privations of the savage, without his sense of personal 
 freedom; they are condemned to more than his narrow- 
 ness and littleness, without opportunity for the growth 
 of his rude virtues; if their horizon is wider, it is but to 
 reveal blessings that they cannot enjoy. 
 
 There are some to whom this may seem like exaggera- 
 tion, but it is only because they have never suffered 
 themselves to realize the true condition of those classes 
 upon whom the fron heel of modern civilization presses 
 with full force. As De Tocqueville observes, in one of 
 his letters to Mme. Swetchine, "we so soon become used 
 to the thought of want that we do not feel that an evil 
 which grows greater to the sufferer the longer it lasts be- 
 comes less to the observer by the very fact of its dura- 
 tion;" and perhaps the best proof of the justice of this 
 observation is that in cities where there exists a pauper 
 class and a criminal class, where young girls shiver as 
 they sew for bread, and tattered and barefooted children 
 make a home in the streets, money is regularly raised to 
 send missionaries to the heathen! Send missionaries to 
 the heathen! it would be laughable if it were not so sad. 
 Baal no longer stretches forth his hideous, sloping arms; 
 but in Christian lands mothers slay their infants for a 
 burial fee! And I challenge the production from any 
 authentic accounts of savage life of such descriptions of 
 degradation as are to be found in official documents of 
 highly civilized countries in reports of Sanitary Com- 
 missioners and of inquiries into the condition of the 
 laboring poor. 
 
 The simple theory which I have outlined (if indeed it
 
 Chap.n. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 285 
 
 can be called a theory which is but the recognition of the 
 most obvious relations) explains this conjunction of pov- 
 erty with wealth, of low wages with high productive 
 power, of degradation amid enlightenment, of virtual 
 slavery in political liberty. It harmonizes, as results 
 flowing from a general and inexorable law, facts other- 
 wise most perplexing, and exhibits the sequence and re- 
 lation between phenomena that without reference to it 
 are diverse and contradictory. It explains why interest 
 and wages are higher in new than in older communities, 
 though the average, as well as the aggregate, production 
 of wealth is less. It explains why improvements which 
 increase the productive power of labor and capital in- 
 crease the reward of neither. It explains what is com- 
 monly called the conflict between labor and capital, while 
 proving the real harmony of interest between them. It 
 cuts the last inch of ground from under the fallacies of 
 protection, while showing why free trade fails to benefit 
 permanently the working classes. It explains why want 
 increases with abundance, and wealth tends to greater 
 and greater aggregations. It explains the periodically 
 recurring depressions of industry without recourse either 
 to the absurdity of "over-production" or the absurdity 
 of "over-consumption." It explains the enforced idle- 
 ness of large numbers of would-be producers, which 
 wastes the productive force of advanced communities, 
 without the absurd assumption that there is too little 
 work to do or that there are too many to do it. It ex- 
 plains the ill effects upon the laboring classes which 
 often follow the introduction of machinery, without 
 denying the natural advantages which the use of ma- 
 chinery gives. It explains the vice and misery which 
 show themselves amid dense population, without at- 
 tributing to the laws of the All- Wise and All-Beneficent 
 defects which belong only to the short-sighted and selfish 
 enactments of men.
 
 286 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 This explanation is in accordance with all the facts. 
 , Look over the world to-day. In countries the most 
 widely differing under conditions the most diverse as to 
 government, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to currency 
 you will find distress among the working classes; but 
 everywhere that you thus find distress and destitution in 
 the midst of wealth you will find that the land is monop- 
 olized; that instead of being treated as the common 
 property of the whole people, it is treated as the private 
 property of individuals; that, for its use by labor, large 
 revenues are extorted from the earnings of labor. Look 
 over the wgrld to-day, comparing different countries with 
 each other, and you will see that it is not the abundance 
 of capital or the productiveness of labor that makes 
 wages high or low; but the extent to which the monopo- 
 lizers of land can, in rent, levy tribute upon the earnings 
 of labor. Is it not a notorious fact, known to the most 
 ignorant, that new countries, where the aggregate wealth 
 is small, but where land is cheap, are always better coun- 
 tries for the laboring classes than the rich countries, 
 where land is dear? Wherever you find land relatively 
 low, will you not find wages relatively high? And 
 wherever land is high, will you not find wages low? As 
 land increases in value, poverty deepens and pauperism 
 appears. In the new settlements, where land is cheap, 
 you will find no beggars, and the inequalities in condi- 
 tion are very slight. In the great cities, where land is 
 so valuable that it is measured by the foot, you will find 
 the extremes of poverty and of luxury. And this dis- 
 parity in condition between the two extremes of the social 
 scale may always be measured by the price of land. 
 Land in New York is more valuable than in San Fran- 
 cisco; and in New York, the San Franciscan may see 
 squalor and misery that will make him stand aghast. 
 Land is more valuable in London than in New York;
 
 Chap. II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 287 
 
 and in London, there is squalor and destitution worse 
 than that of New York. 
 
 Compare the same country in different times, and the 
 same relation is obvious. As the result of much investi- 
 gation, Hallam says he is convinced that the wages of 
 manual labor were greater in amount in England during 
 the middle ages than they are now. Whether this is so 
 or not, it is evident that they could not have been much, 
 if any, less. The enormous increase in the efficiency of 
 labor, which even in agriculture is estimated at seven or 
 eight hundred per cent., and in many branches of indus- 
 try is almost incalculable, has only added to rent. The 
 rent of agricultural land in England is now, according to 
 Professor Rogers, 120 times as great, measured in 
 money, as it was 500 years ago, and 14 times as great, 
 measured in wheat; while in the rent of building land, 
 and mineral land, the advance has been enormously 
 greater. According to the estimate of Professor Faw- 
 cett, the capitalized rental value of the land of England 
 now amounts to 4,500,000,000, or $21,870,000,000 that 
 is to say, a few thousand of the people of England hold a 
 lien upon the labor of the rest, the capitalized value of 
 which is more than twice as great as, at the average price 
 of Southern negroes in 1860 would be the value of her 
 whole population were they slaves. 
 
 In Belgium and Flanders, in France and Germany, the 
 rent and selling price of agricultural land have doubled 
 within the last thirty years.* In short, increased power 
 of production has every where added to the value of land; 
 nowhere has it added to the value of labor; for though 
 actual wages may in some places have somewhat risen, the 
 rise is clearly attributable to other causes. In more 
 places they have fallen that is, where it has been pos- 
 sible for them to fall for there is a minimum below 
 
 * Systems of Land Tenure, published by the Cobden Club.
 
 B88 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 which laborers cannot keep up their numbers. And, 
 everywhere, wages, as a proportion of the produce, have 
 decreased. 
 
 How the Black Death brought about the great rise of 
 wages in England in the Fourteenth Century is clearly 
 discernible, in the efforts of the land holders to regulate 
 wages by statute. That that awful reduction in popula- 
 tion, instead of increasing, really reduced the effective 
 power of labor, there can be no doubt; but the lessening 
 of competition for land still more greatly reduced rent, 
 and wages advanced so largely that force and penal laws 
 were called in to keep them down. The reverse effect 
 followed the monopolization of land that went on in 
 England during the reign of Henry VIII., in the inclo- 
 sure of commons and the division of the church lands 
 between the panders and parasites who were thus en- 
 abled to found noble families. The result was the same 
 as that to which a speculative increase in land values 
 tends. According to Malthus (who, in his "Principles of 
 Political Economy," mentions the fact without connect- 
 ing it with land tenures), in the reign of Henry VII., 
 half a bushel of wheat would purchase but little more 
 than a day's common labor, but in the latter part of the 
 reign of Elizabeth, half a bushel of wheat would purchase 
 three days' common labor. I can hardly believe that the 
 reduction in wages could have been so great as this com- 
 parison would indicate; but that there was a reduction in 
 common wages, and great distress among the laboring 
 classes, is evident from the complaints of "sturdy 
 vagrants" and the statutes made to suppress them. The 
 rapid monopolization of the land, the carrying of the 
 speculative rent line beyond the normal rent line, pro- 
 duced tramps and paupers, just as like effects from like 
 causes have lately been evident in the United States. 
 
 "Land which went heretofore for twenty or forty 
 pounds a year," said Hugh Latimer, "now is let for fifty
 
 Chap.n. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 289 
 
 or a hundred. My father was a yeoman, and had no 
 lands of his own; only he had a farm at a rent of three or 
 four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and thereupon 
 he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had 
 walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty 
 kine; he was able and did find the King a harness with 
 himself and his horse when he came to the place that he 
 should receive the King's wages. I can remember that I 
 buckled his harness when he went to Blackheath Field. 
 He kept me to school; he married my sisters with five 
 pound apiece, so that he brought them up in godliness 
 and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his neighbors 
 and some alms he gave to the poor. And all this he did 
 of the same farm, where he that now hath it payeth six- 
 teen pounds rent or more by year, and is not able to do 
 anything for his Prince, for himself, nor for his children, 
 nor to give a cup of drink to the poor." 
 
 "In this way," said Sir Thomas More, referring to the 
 ejectment of small farmers which characterized this ad- 
 vance of rent, "it comes to pass that these poor wretches, 
 men, women, husbands, orphans, widows, parents with 
 little children, householders greater in number than in 
 wealth, all of these emigrate from their native fields, 
 without knowing where to go." 
 
 And so from the stuff of the Latimers and Mores 
 from the sturdy spirit that amid the flames of the Oxford 
 stake cried, "Play the man, Master Ridley!" and the 
 mingled strength and sweetness that neither prosperity 
 could taint nor the ax of the executioner abash were 
 evolved thieves and vagrants, the mass of criminality and 
 pauperism that still blights the innermost petals and preys 
 a gnawing worm at the root of England's rose. 
 
 But it were as well to cite historical illustrations of 
 the attraction of gravitation. The principle is as uni- 
 versal and as obvious. That rent must reduce wages, is 
 as clear as that the greater the subtracter the less the
 
 290 THE PEOBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 remainder. That rent does reduce wages, any one, 
 wherever situated, can see by merely looking around 
 him. 
 
 There is no mystery as to the cause which so suddenly 
 and so largely raised wages in California in 1849, and in 
 Australia in 1852. It was the discovery of the placer 
 mines in unappropriated land to which labor was free 
 that raised the wages of cooks in San Francisco restau- 
 rants to $500 a month, and left ships to rot in the harbor 
 without officers or crew until their owners would consent 
 to pay rates that in any other part of the globe seemed 
 fabulous. Had these mines been on appropriated land, 
 or had they been immediately monopolized so that rent 
 could have arisen, it would have been land values that 
 would have leaped upward, not wages. The Comstock 
 lode has been richer than the placers, but the Comstock 
 lode was readily monopolized, and it is only by virtue of 
 the strong organization of the Miners' Association and 
 the fears of the damage which it might do, that enables 
 men to get four dollars a day for parboiling themselves 
 two thousand feet underground, where the air that they 
 breathe must be pumped down to them. The wealth of 
 the Comstock lode has added to rent. The selling price 
 of these mines runs up into hundreds of millions, and it 
 has produced individual fortunes whose monthly returns 
 can be estimated only in hundreds of thousands, if not in 
 millions. Nor is there any mystery about the cause 
 which has operated to reduce wages in California from 
 the maximum of the early days to very nearly a level 
 with wages in the Eastern States, and that is still operat- 
 ing to reduce them. The productiveness of labor has not 
 decreased, on the contrary it has increased, as I have be- 
 fore shown; but, out of what it produces labor has now 
 to pay rent. As the placer deposits were exhausted, 
 labor had to resort to the deeper mines and to agricul- 
 tural land, but monopolization of these being permitted,
 
 Chap. II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 291 
 
 men now walk the streets of San Francisco ready to go to 
 work for almost anything for natural opportunities are 
 now no longer free to labor. 
 
 The truth is self-evident. Put to any one capable of 
 consecutive thought this question: 
 
 "Suppose there should arise from the English Channel 
 or the German Ocean a No-man's land on which common 
 labor to an unlimited amount should be able to make ten 
 shillings a day and which should remain unappropriated 
 and of free access, like the commons which once com- 
 prised so large a part of English soil. What would be 
 the effect upon wages in England?" 
 
 He would at once tell you that common wages 
 throughout England must soon increase to ten shillings 
 a day. 
 
 And in response to another question, "What would be 
 the effect on rents?" he would at a moment's reflection 
 say that rents must necessarily fall; and if he thought out 
 the next step he would tell you that all this would hap- 
 pen without any very large part of English labor being 
 diverted to the new natural opportunities, or the forms 
 and direction of industry being much changed; only that 
 kind of production being abandoned which now yields to 
 labor and to landlord together less than labor could se- 
 cure on the new opportunities. The great rise in wages 
 would be at the expense of rent. 
 
 Take now the same man or another some hard-headed 
 business man, who has no theories, but knows how to 
 make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in 
 ten years it will be a great city in ten years the railroad 
 will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric 
 light of the candle; it will abound with all the ma- 
 chinery and improvements that so enormously multiply 
 the effective power of labor. Will, in ten years, interest 
 be any higher?" 
 
 He will tell you, "Nol"
 
 292 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 "Will the wages of common labor be any higher; will 
 it be easier for a man who has nothing but his labor to 
 make an independent living?" 
 
 He will tell you, "No; the wages of common labor will 
 not be any higher; on the contrary, all the chances are 
 that they will be lower; it will not be easier for the mere 
 laborer to make an independent living; the chances are 
 that it will be harder." 
 
 "What, then, will be higher?" 
 
 "Kent; the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of 
 ground, and hold possession." 
 
 And if, under such circumstances, you take his advice, 
 you need do nothing more. You may sit down and 
 smoke your pipe; you may lie around like the lazzaroni 
 of Naples or the leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a 
 balloon, or down a hole in the ground; and without doing 
 one stroke of work, without adding one iota to the 
 wealth of the community, in ten years you will be rich! 
 In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion; but 
 among its public buildings will be an almshouse. 
 
 In all our long investigation we have been advancing 
 to this simple truth: That as land is necessary to the 
 exertion of labor in the production of wealth, to com- 
 mand the land which is necessary to labor, is to command 
 all the fruits of labor save enough to enable labor to 
 exist. We have been advancing as through an enemy's 
 country, in which every step must be secured, every posi- 
 tion fortified, and every by-path explored; for this simple 
 truth, in its application to social and political problems, is 
 hid from the great masses of men partly by its very 
 simplicity, and in greater part by widespread fallacies 
 and erroneous habits of thought which lead them to look 
 in every direction but the right one for an explanation 
 of the evils which oppress and threaten the civilized 
 world. And back of these elaborate fallacies and mis- 
 leading theories is an active, energetic power, a power
 
 Chap. 11. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 293 
 
 that in every country, be its political forms what they 
 may, writes laws and molds thought the power of a vast 
 and dominant pecuniary interest. 
 
 But so simple and so clear is this truth, that to see it 
 fully once is always to recognize it. There are pictures 
 which, though looked at again and again, present only a 
 confused labyrinth of lines or scroll work a landscape, 
 trees, or something of the kind until once the attention 
 is called to the fact that these things make up a face or a 
 figure. This relation once recognized, is always after- 
 ward clear. It is so in this case. In the light of this 
 truth all social facts group themselves in an orderly re- 
 lation, and the most diverse phenomena are seen to 
 spring from one great principle. It is not in the rela- 
 tions of capital and labor; it is not in the pressure of 
 population against subsistence, that an explanation of 
 the unequaled development of our civilization is to be 
 found. The great cause of inequality in the distribution 
 of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. The 
 ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which 
 ultimately determines the social, the political, and con- 
 sequently the intellectual and moral condition of a peo- 
 ple. And it must be so. For land is the habitation of 
 man, the storehouse upon which he must draw for all his 
 needs, the material to which his labor must be applied 
 for the supply of all his desires; for even the products 
 of the sea cannot be taken, the light of the sun enjoyed, 
 or any of the forces of nature utilized, without the use 
 of land or its products. On the land we are born, from 
 it we live, to it we return again children of the soil as 
 truly as is the blade of grass or the flower of the field. 
 Take away from man all that belongs to land, and he is 
 but a disembodied spirit. Material progress cannot rid 
 us of our dependence upon land; it can but add to the 
 power of producing wealth from land; and hence, when 
 land is monopolized, it might go on to infinity without
 
 294 THE PKOBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 
 
 increasing wages or improving the condition of those who 
 have but their labor. It can but add to the value of 
 land and the power which its possession gives. Every- 
 where, in all times, among all peoples, the possession of 
 land is the base of aristocracy, the foundation of great 
 fortunes, the source of power. As said the Brahmins, 
 ages ago 
 
 "To whomsoever the soil at any time belongs, to him be- 
 long the fruits of it. White parasols and elephants mad 
 with pride are the flowers of a grant of land."
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 THE EEMEDY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. INSUFFICIENCY OF REMEDIES CURRENTLY 
 
 ADVOCATED. 
 CHAPTER II. THE TRUE REMEDY.
 
 A new and fair division of the goods and rights of this world 
 should be the main object of those who conduct human affairs. 
 De Tocqueville. 
 
 When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a people, 
 small means do not merely produce small effects ; they produce no 
 effect at all. John Stuwrt Mill.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INSUFFICIENCY OP REMEDIES CURRENTLY ADVOCATED. 
 
 In tracing to its source the cause of increasing poverty 
 amid advancing wealth, we have discovered the remedy; 
 but before passing to that branch of our subject it will 
 be well to review the tendencies or remedies which are 
 currently relied on or advocated. The remedy to which 
 our conclusions point is at once radical and simple so 
 radical that, on the one side, it will not be fairly consid- 
 ered so long as any faith remains in the efficacy of less 
 caustic measures; so simple that, on the other side, its 
 real efficacy and comprehensiveness are likely to be over- 
 looked, until the effect of more elaborate measures is 
 estimated. 
 
 The tendencies and measures which current literature 
 and discussions show to be more or less relied on or ad- 
 vocated as calculated to relieve poverty and distress 
 among the masses may be divided into six classes. I do 
 not mean that there are so many distinct parties or 
 schools of thought, but merely that, for the purpose of 
 our inquiry, prevailing opinions and proposed measures 
 may be so grouped for review. Eemedies which for the 
 sake of greater convenience and clearness we shall con- 
 sider separately are often combined in thought. 
 
 There are many persons who still retain a comfortable 
 belief that material progress will ultimately extirpate 
 poverty, and there are many who look to prudential re- 
 straint upon the increase of population as the most 
 efficacious means, but the fallacy of these views has al-
 
 298 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 ready been sufficiently shown. Let us now consider what 
 may be hoped for: 
 
 I. From greater economy in government. 
 
 II. From the better education of the working classes 
 and improved habits of industry and thrift. 
 
 III. From combinations of workmen for the advance 
 of wages. 
 
 IV. From the co-operation of labor and capital. 
 
 V. From governmental direction and interference. 
 
 VI. From a more general distribution of land. 
 
 Under these six heads I think we may in essential form 
 review all hopes and propositions for the relief of social 
 distress short of the simple but far-reaching measure 
 which I shall propose. 
 
 /. From Greater Economy in Government. 
 
 Until a very few years ago it was an article of faith 
 with Americans a belief shared by European liberals 
 that the poverty of the down-trodden masses of the Old 
 "World was due to aristocratic and monarchical institu- 
 tions. This belief has rapidly passed away with the ap- 
 pearance in the United States, under republican institu- 
 tions, of social distress of the same kind, if not of the 
 same intensity, as that prevailing in Europe. But social 
 distress is still largely attributed to the immense burdens 
 which existing governments impose the great debts, 
 the military and naval establishments, the extravagance 
 which is characteristic as well of republican as of mo- 
 narchical rulers, and especially characteristic of the ad- 
 ministration of great cities. To these must be added, in 
 the United States, the robbery involved in the protective 
 tariff, which for every twenty-five cents it puts in the 
 treasury takes a dollar and it may be four or five out of 
 the pocket of the consumer. Now, there seems to be an 
 evident connection between the immense sums thus 
 taken from the people and the privations of the lower
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 299 
 
 classes, and it is upon a superficial view natural to sup- 
 pose that a reduction in the enormous burdens thus 
 uselessly imposed would make it easier for the poorest to 
 get a living. But a consideration of the matter in the 
 light of the economic principles heretofore traced out 
 will show that this would not be the effect. A reduction 
 in the amount taken from the aggregate produce of a 
 community by taxation would be simply equivalent to 
 an increase in the power of net production. It would in 
 effect add to the productive power of labor just as do the 
 increasing density of population and improvement in the 
 arts. And as the advantage in the one case goes, and 
 must go, to the owners of land, in increased rent, so 
 would the advantage in the other. 
 
 From the produce of the labor and capital of England 
 are now supported the burden of an immense debt, an 
 Established Church, an expensive royal family, a large 
 number of sinecurists, a great army and great navy. 
 Suppose the debt repudiated, the Church disestablished, 
 the royal family set adrift to make a living for them- 
 selves, the sinecurists cut off, the army disbanded, the 
 officers and men of the navy discharged and the ships 
 sold. An enormous reduction in taxation would thus 
 become possible. There would be a great addition to 
 the net produce which remains to be distributed among 
 the parties to production. But it would be only such an 
 addition as improvement in the arts has been for a long 
 time constantly making, and not so great an addition as 
 steam and machinery have made within the last twenty 
 or thirty years. And as these additions have not allevi- 
 ated pauperism, but have only increased rent, so would 
 this. English land owners would reap the whole ben- 
 efit. I will not dispute that if all these things could be 
 done suddenly, and without the destruction and expense 
 involved in a revolution, there might be a temporary im- 
 provement in the condition of the lowest class; but such
 
 300 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 a sudden and peaceable reform is manifestly impossible. 
 And if it were, any temporary improvement would, by 
 the process we now see going on in the United States, 
 be ultimately swallowed up by increased land values. 
 
 And, so, in the United States, if we were to reduce 
 public expenditures to the lowest possible point, and meet 
 them by revenue taxation, the benefit could certainly 
 not be greater than that which railroads have brought. 
 There would be more wealth left in the hands of the peo- 
 ple as a whole, just as the railroads have put more wealth 
 in the hands of the people as a whole, but the same in- 
 exorable laws would operate as to its distribution. The 
 condition of those who live by their labor would not ulti- 
 mately be improved. 
 
 A dim consciousness of this pervades or, rather, is 
 beginning to pervade the masses, and constitutes one 
 of the grave political difficulties that are closing in 
 around the American republic. Those who have nothing 
 but their labor, and especially the proletarians of the 
 cities a growing class care little about the prodigality 
 of government, and in many cases are disposed to look 
 upon it as a good thing '"'furnishing employment," or 
 "putting money in circulation." Tweed, who robbed 
 New York as a guerrilla chief might levy upon a cap- 
 tured town (and who was but a type of the new banditti 
 who are grasping the government of all our cities), was 
 undoubtedly popular with a majority of the voters, 
 though his thieving was notorious, and his spoils were 
 blazoned in big diamonds and lavish personal expendi- 
 ture. After his indictment, he was triumphantly elected 
 to the Senate; and, even when a recaptured fugitive, 
 was frequently cheered on his way from court to prison. 
 He had robbed the public treasury of many millions, but 
 the proletarians felt that he had not robbed them. And 
 the verdict of political economy is the same as theirs. 
 
 Let me be clearly understood. I do not say that gov-
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 301 
 
 ernmental economy is not desirable; but simply that re- 
 duction in the expenses of government can have no 
 direct effect in extirpating poverty and increasing wages, 
 so long as land is monopolized. 
 
 Although this is true, yet even with sole reference to 
 the interests of the lowest class, no effort should be 
 spared to keep down useless expenditures. The more 
 complex and extravagant government becomes, the more 
 it gets to be a power distinct from and independent of 
 the people, and the more difficult does it become to bring 
 questions of real public policy to a popular decision. 
 Look at our elections in the United States upon what 
 do they turn? The most momentous problems are press- 
 ing upon us, yet so great is the amount of money in poli- 
 tics, so large are the personal interests involved, that the 
 most important questions of government are but little 
 considered. The average American voter has prejudices, 
 party feelings, general notions of a certain kind, but he 
 gives to the fundamental questions of government not 
 much more thought than a street-car horse does to the 
 profits of the line. Were this not the case, so many hoary 
 abuses could not have survived and so many new ones 
 been added. Anything that tends to make government 
 simple and inexpensive tends to put it under control of 
 the people and to bring questions of real importance to 
 the front. But no reduction in the expenses of govern- 
 ment can of itself cure or mitigate the evils that arise 
 from a constant tendency to the unequal distribution of 
 wealth. 
 
 77. From the Diffusion of Education and Improved 
 Habits of Industry and Thrift. 
 
 There is, and always has been, a widespread belief 
 among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and 
 suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, 
 frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once
 
 302 THE REMEDY. Bok VI. 
 
 soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its sug- 
 gestion of superiority, is probably even more prevalent 
 in countries like the United States, where all men are 
 politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of 
 society, the differentiation into classes has been of indi- 
 viduals rather than of families, than it is in older coun- 
 tries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and 
 are more sharply, drawn. It is but natural for those who 
 can trace their own better circumstances to the superior 
 industry and frugality that gave them a start, and the 
 superior intelligence that enabled them to take advantage 
 of every opportunity,* to imagine that those who remain 
 poor do so simply from lack of these qualities. 
 
 But whoever has grasped the laws of the distribution 
 of wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced 
 out, will see the mistake in this notion. The fallacy is 
 similar to that which would be involved in the assertion 
 that every one of a number of competitors might win a 
 race. That anyone might is true; that every one might 
 is impossible. 
 
 For, as soon ns land acquires a value, wages, as we 
 have seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or prod- 
 uct of labor, but upon what is left to labor after rent is 
 taken out; and when land is all monopolized, as it is 
 everywhere except in the newest communities, rent must 
 drive wages down to the point at which the poorest paid 
 class will be just able to live and reproduce, and thus 
 wages are forced to a minimum fixed by what is called 
 the standard of comfort that is, the amount of neces- 
 saries and comforts which habit leads the working classes 
 to demand as the lowest on which they will consent to 
 maintain their numbers. This being the case, industry, 
 
 * To say nothing of superior want of conscience, which is often 
 the determining quality which makes a millionaire out of one who 
 otherwise might have been a poor man.
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENT OF PBOPOSED EEMEDIES. 303 
 
 skill, frugality, and intelligence can avail the individual 
 only in so far as they are superior to the general level 
 just as in a race speed can avail the runner only in so far 
 as it exceeds that of his competitors. If one man work 
 harder, or with superior skill or intelligence than ordi- 
 nary, he will get ahead; but if the average of industry, 
 skill, or intelligence be brought up to the higher point, 
 the increased intensity of application will secure but the 
 old rate of wages, and he who would get ahead must 
 work harder still. 
 
 One individual may save money from his wages by liv- 
 ing as Dr. Franklin did when, during his apprenticeship 
 and early journeyman days, he concluded to practice 
 vegetarianism; and many poor families might be made 
 more comfortable by being taught to prepare the cheap 
 dishes to which Franklin tried to limit the appetite of his 
 employer Keimer, as a condition to his acceptance of the 
 position of confuter of opponents to the new religion of 
 which Keimer wished to become the prophet,* but if the 
 working classes generally came to live in that way, wages 
 would ultimately fall in proportion, and whoever wished 
 to get ahead by the practice of economy, or to mitigate 
 poverty by teaching it, would be compelled to devise 
 some still cheaper mode of keeping soul and body to- 
 gether. If, under existing conditions, American me- 
 chanics would come down to the Chinese standard of 
 living, they would ultimately have to come down to the 
 Chinese standard of wages; or if English laborers would 
 content themselves with the rice diet and scanty clothing 
 of the Bengalee, labor would soon be as ill paid in Eng- 
 land as in Bengal. The introduction of the potato into 
 Ireland was expected to improve the condition of the 
 poorer classes, by increasing the difference between the 
 
 * Franklin, in his inimitable way, relates how Keimer finally broke 
 his resolution and ordering a roast pig invited two lady friends to 
 dine with him, but the pig being brought in before the company ar- 
 rived, Keimer could not resist the temptation and ate it all himself.
 
 304 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 wages they received and the cost of their living. The 
 consequences that did ensue were a rise of rent and a 
 lowering of wages, and, with the potato blight, the rav- 
 ages of famine among a population that had already re- 
 duced its standard of comfort so low that the next step 
 was starvation. 
 
 And, so, if one individual work more hours than the 
 average, he will increase his wages; hut the wages of all 
 cannot be increased in this way. It is notorious that in 
 occupations where working hours are long, wages are not 
 higher than where working hours are shorter; generally 
 the reverse, for the longer the working day, the more 
 helpless does the laborer become the less time has he to 
 look around him and develop other powers than those 
 called forth by his work; the less becomes his ability to 
 change his occupation or to take advantage of circum- 
 stances. And, so, the individual workman who gets his 
 wife and children to assist him may thus increase his in- 
 come; but in occupations where it has become habitual 
 for the wife and children of the laborer to supplement his 
 work, it is notorious that the wages earned by the whole 
 family do not on the average exceed those of the head of 
 the family in occupations where it is usual for him only 
 to work. Swiss family labor in watch making competes 
 in cheapness with American machinery. The Bohemian 
 cigar makers of New York, who work, men, women, and 
 children, in their tenement-house rooms, have reduced 
 the prices of cigar making to less than the Chinese in 
 San Francisco were getting. 
 
 These general facts are well known. They are fully 
 recognized in standard politico -economic works, where, 
 however, they are explained upon the Malthusian theory 
 of the tendency of population to multiply up to the 
 limit of subsistence. The true explanation, as I have 
 sufficiently shown, is in the tendency of rent to reduce 
 wages.
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 305 
 
 As to the effects of education, it may be worth while 
 to say a few words specially, for there is a prevailing dis- 
 position to attribute to it something like a magical influ- 
 ence. Now, education is only education in so far as it 
 enables a man more effectively to use his natural powers, 
 and this is something that what we call education in very 
 great part fails to do. I remember a little girl, pretty 
 well along in her school geography and astronomy, who 
 was much astonished to find that the ground in her 
 mother's back yard was really the surface of the earth, 
 and, if you talk with them, you will find that a good deal 
 of the knowledge of many college graduates is much like 
 that of the little girl. They seldom think any better, 
 and sometimes not so well as men who have never been 
 to college. 
 
 A gentleman who had spent many years in Australia, 
 and knew intimately the habits of the aborigines (Rev. 
 Dr. Bleesdale), after giving some instances of their won- 
 derful skill in the use of their weapons, in foretelling 
 changes in the wind and weather and in trapping the 
 shyest birds, once said to me: "I think it a great mis- 
 take to look on these black fellows as ignorant. Their 
 knowledge is different from ours, but in it they are gen- 
 erally better educated. As soon as they begin to toddle, 
 they are taught to play with little boomerangs and other 
 weapons, to observe and to judge, and, when they are 
 old enough to take care of themselves, they are fully able 
 to do so are, in fact, in reference to the nature of their 
 knowledge, what I should call well-educated gentlemen; 
 which is more than I can say for many of our young fel- 
 lows who have had what we call the best advantages, but 
 who enter upon manhood unable to do anything either 
 for themselves or for others." 
 
 Be this as it may, it is evident that intelligence, which 
 is or should be the aim of education, until it induces and 
 enables the masses to discover and remove the cause of
 
 306 THE KEMEDY. Book VL 
 
 the unequal distribution of wealth, can operate upon 
 wages only by increasing the effective power of labor. It 
 has the same effect as increased skill or industry. And 
 it can raise the wages of the individual only in so far as 
 it renders him superior to others. "When to read and 
 write were rare accomplishments, a clerk commanded 
 high respect and large wages, but now the ability to read 
 and write has become so nearly universal as to give no 
 advantage. Among the Chinese the ability to read and 
 write seems absolutely universal, but wages in China 
 touch the lowest possible point. The diffusion of intel- 
 ligence, except as it may make men discontented with a 
 state of things which condemns producers to a life of toil 
 while non-producers loll in luxury, cannot tend to raise 
 wages generally, or in any way improve the condition of 
 the lowest class the "mud-sills" of society, as a South- 
 ern Senator once called them who must rest on the soil, 
 no matter how high the superstructure may be carried. 
 No increase of the effective power of labor can increase 
 general wages, so long as rent swallows up all the gain. 
 This is not merely a deduction from principles. It is the 
 fact, proved by experience. The growth of knowledge 
 and the progress of invention have multiplied the effective 
 power of labor over and over again without increasing 
 wages. In England there are over a million paupers. 
 In the United States almshouses are increasing and 
 wages are decreasing. 
 
 It is true that greater industry and skill, greater pru- 
 dence, and a higher intelligence, are, as a rule, found 
 associated with a better material condition of the work- 
 ing classes; but that this is effect, not cause, is shown by 
 the relation of the facts. Wherever the material condi- 
 tion of the laboring classes has been improved, improve- 
 ment in their personal qualities has followed, and wher- 
 ever their material condition has been depressed, deterio- 
 ration in these qualities has been the result; but nowhere
 
 Chap,l. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 307 
 
 can improvement in material condition be shown as the 
 result of the increase of industry, skill, prudence, or in- 
 telligence in a class condemned to toil for a bare living, 
 though these qualities when once attained (or, rather, 
 their concomitant the improvement in the standard of 
 comfort) offer a strong, and, in many cases, a sufficient, 
 resistance to the lowering of material condition. 
 
 The fact is, that the qualities that raise man above the 
 animal are superimposed on those which he shares with 
 the animal, and that it is only as he is relieved from the 
 wants of his animal nature that his intellectual and moral 
 nature can grow. Compel a man to drudgery for the 
 necessities of animal existence, and he will lose the in- 
 centive to industry the progenitor of skill and will 
 do only what he is forced to do. Make his condition 
 such that it cannot be much worse, while there is little 
 hope that anything he can do will make it much better, 
 and he will cease to look beyond the day. Deny him 
 leisure and leisure does not mean the want of employ- 
 ment, but the absence of the need which forces to uncon- 
 genial employment and you cannot, even by running 
 the child through a common school and supplying the 
 man with a newspaper, make him intelligent. 
 
 It is true that improvement in the material condition 
 of a people or class may not show immediately in mental 
 and moral improvement. Increased wages may at first 
 be taken out in idleness and dissipation. But they will 
 ultimately bring increased industry, skill, intelligence, 
 and thrift. Comparisons between different countries; 
 between different classes in the same country; between 
 the same people at different periods; and between the 
 same people when their conditions are changed by emi- 
 gration, show, as an invariable result, that the personal 
 qualities of which we are speaking appear as material 
 conditions are improved, and disappear as material con- 
 ditions are depressed. Poverty is the Slough of Despond
 
 308 THE REMEDY. Book VL 
 
 which Bunyan saw in his dream, and into which good 
 books may be tossed forever without result. To make 
 people industrious, prudent, skillful, and intelligent, 
 they must be relieved from want. If you would have the 
 slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must first 
 make him free. 
 
 III. From Combinations of Workmen. 
 
 . It is evident from the laws of distribution, as pre- 
 viously traced, that combinations of workmen can ad- 
 vance wages, and this not at the expense of other work- 
 men, as is sometimes said, nor yet at the expense of 
 capital, as is generally believed; but, ultimately, at the 
 expense of rent. That no general advance in wages can 
 be secured by combination; that any advance in particu- 
 lar wages thus secured must reduce other wages or the 
 profits of capital, or both are ideas that spring from the 
 erroneous notion that wages are drawn from capital. 
 The fallacy of these ideas is demonstrated, not alone by 
 the laws of distribution as we have worked them out, but 
 by experience, so far as it has gone. The advance of 
 wages in particular trades by combinations of workmen, 
 of which there are many examples, has nowhere shown 
 any effect in lowering wages in other trades, or in reduc- 
 ing the rate of profits. Except as it may affect his fixed 
 capital or current engagements, a diminution of wages 
 can benefit, and an increase of wages injure an employer 
 only in so far as it gives him an advantage or puts 
 him at a disadvantage as compared with other employers. 
 The employer who first succeeds in reducing the wages 
 of his hands, or is first compelled to pay an advance, 
 gains an advantage, or is put at a disadvantage in regard 
 to his competitors, which ceases when the movement in- 
 cludes them also. So far, however, as the change in 
 wages affects his contracts or stock on hand, by changing 
 the relative cost of production, it may be to him a real
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 309 
 
 gain or loss, though this gain or loss, being purely rela- 
 tive, disappears when the whole community is consid- 
 ered. And, if the change in wages works a change in 
 relative demand, it may render capital fixed in machin- 
 ery, buildings, or otherwise, more or less profitable. 
 But, in this, a new equilibrium is soon reached; for, 
 especially in a progressive country, fixed capital is only 
 somewhat less mobile than circulating capital. If there 
 is too little in a certain form, the tendency of capital to 
 assume that form soon brings it up to the required 
 amount; if there is too much, the cessation of increment 
 soon restores the level. 
 
 But, while a change in the rate of wages in any par- 
 ticular occupation may induce a change in the relative 
 demand for labor, it can produce no change in the ag- 
 gregate demand. For instance, let us suppose that a 
 combination of the workmen engaged in any particular 
 manufacture raise wages in one country, while a combi- 
 nation of employers reduce wages in the same manufac- 
 ture in another country. If the change be great 
 enough, the demand, or part of the demand, in the first 
 country will now be supplied by importation of such 
 manufactures from the second. But, evidently, this in- 
 crease in importations of a particular kind must neces- 
 sitate either a corresponding decrease in importations of 
 other kinds, or a corresponding increase in exportations. 
 For, it is only with the produce of its labor and capital 
 that one country can demand, or can obtain, in exchange, 
 the produce of the labor and capital of another. The 
 idea that the lowering of wages can increase, or the in- 
 crease of wages can diminish, the trade of a country, is 
 as baseless as the idea that the prosperity of a country 
 can be increased by taxes on imports, or diminished by 
 the removal of restrictions on trade. If all wages in any 
 particular country were to be doubled, that country 
 would continue to export and import the same things,
 
 310 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 and in the same proportions; for exchange is determined 
 not by absolute, but by relative, cost of production. 
 But, if wages in some branches of production were 
 doubled, and in others not increased, or not increased so 
 much, there would be a change in the proportion of the 
 various things imported, but no change in the proportion 
 between exports and imports. 
 
 While most of the objections made to the combination 
 of workmen for the advance of wages are thus baseless, 
 while the success of such combinations cannot reduce 
 other wages, or decrease the profits of capital, or injuri- 
 ously affect national prosperity, yet so great are the diffi- 
 culties in the way of the effective combinations of labor- 
 ers, that the good that can be accomplished by them is 
 extremely limited, while there are inherent disadvantages 
 in the process. 
 
 To raise wages in a particular occupation or occupa- 
 tions, which is all that any combination of workmen yet 
 made has been equal to attempting, is manifestly a task 
 the difficulty of which progressively increases. For the 
 higher are wages of any particular kind raised above their 
 normal level with other wages, the stronger are the tend- 
 encies to bring them back. Thus, if a printers' union, 
 by a successful or threatened strike, raise the wages of 
 typesetting ten per cent, above the normal rate as com- 
 pared with other wages, relative demand and supply are 
 at once affected. On the one hand, there is a tendency 
 to a diminution of the amount of typesetting called for; 
 and, on the other, the higher rate of wages tends to in- 
 crease the number of compositors in ways the strongest 
 combination cannot altogether prevent. If the increase 
 be twenty per cent., these tendencies are much stronger; 
 if it is fifty per cent., they become stronger still, and so 
 on. So that practically even in countries like England, 
 where the lines between different trades are much more 
 distinct and difficult to pass than in countries like the
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 311 
 
 United States that which trades' unions, even when 
 supporting each other, can do in the way of raising wages 
 is comparatively little, and this little, moreover, is con- 
 fined to their own sphere, and does not affect the lower 
 stratum of unorganized laborers, whose condition most 
 needs alleviation and ultimately determines that of all 
 above them. The only way by which wages could be 
 raised to any extent and with any permanence by this 
 method would be by a general combination, such as was 
 aimed at by the Internationals, which should include 
 laborers of all kinds. But such a combination may be 
 set down as practically impossible, for the difficulties of 
 combination, great enough in the most highly paid and 
 smallest trades, become greater and greater as we descend 
 in the industrial scale. 
 
 Nor, in the struggle of endurance, which is the only 
 method which combinations not to work for less than a 
 certain minimum have of effecting the increase of wages, 
 must it be forgotten who are the real parties pitted 
 against each other. It is not labor and capital. It is 
 laborers on the one side and the owners of land on the 
 other. If the contest were between labor and capital, it 
 would be on much more equal terms. For the power of 
 capital to stand out is only some little greater than that 
 of labor. Capital not only ceases to earn anything when 
 not used, but it goes to waste for in nearly all its forms 
 it can be maintained only by constant reproduction. But 
 land will not starve like laborers or go to waste like capi- 
 tal its owners can wait. They may be inconvenienced, 
 it is true, but what is inconvenience to them, is destruc- 
 tion to capital and starvation to labor. 
 
 The agricultural laborers in certain parts of England 
 are now endeavoring to combine for the purpose of secur- 
 ing an increase in their miserably low wages. If it was 
 capital that was receiving the enormous difference be- 
 tween the real produce of their labor and the pittance
 
 312 THE REMEDY. Book VL 
 
 they get out of it, they would have but to make an 
 effective combination to secure success; for the farmers, 
 who are their direct employers, can afford to go without 
 labor but little, if any, better than the laborers can afford 
 to go without wages. But the farmers cannot yield 
 much without a reduction of rent; and thus it is between 
 the land owners and the laborers that the real struggle 
 must come. Suppose the combination to be so thorough 
 as to include all agricultural laborers, and to prevent 
 from doing so all who might be tempted to take their 
 places. The laborers refuse to work except at a consid- 
 erable advance of wages; the farmers can give it only by 
 securing a considerable reduction of rent, and have no 
 way to back their demands except as the laborers back 
 theirs, by refusing to go on with production. If culti- 
 vation thus comes to a dead-lock, the land owners would 
 lose only their rent, while the land improved by lying 
 fallow. But the laborers would starve. And if English 
 laborers of all kinds were united in one grand league for 
 a general increase of wages, the real contest would be the 
 same, and under the same conditions. For wages could 
 not be increased except to the decrease of rent; and in a 
 general dead-lock, land owners could live, while laborers 
 of all sorts must starve or emigrate. The owners of the 
 land of England are by virtue of their ownership the 
 masters of England. So true is it that "to whomsoever 
 the soil at any time belongs, to him belong the fruits of 
 it." The white parasols and the elephants mad with 
 pride passed with the grant of English land, and the peo- 
 ple at large can never regain their power until that grant 
 is resumed. What is true of England, is universally 
 true. 
 
 It may be said that such a dead-lock in production 
 could never occur. This is true; but true only because 
 no such thorough combination of labor as might produce 
 it is possible. But the fixed and definite nature of land
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 313 
 
 enables land owners to combine much more easily and 
 efficiently than either laborers or capitalists. How easy 
 and efficient their combination is, there are many his- 
 torical examples. And the absolute necessity for the use 
 of land, and the certainty in all progressive countries 
 that it must increase in value, produce among land 
 owners, without any formal combination, all the effects 
 that could be produced by the most rigorous combination 
 among laborers or capitalists. Deprive a laborer of op- 
 portunity of employment, and he will soon be anxious to 
 get work on any terms, but when the receding wave of 
 speculation leaves nominal land values clearly above real 
 values, whoever has lived in a growing country knows 
 with what tenacity land owners hold on. 
 
 And, besides these practical difficulties in the plan of 
 forcing by endurance an increase of wages, there are in 
 such methods inherent disadvantages which workingmen 
 should not blink. I speak without prejudice, for I am 
 still an honorary member of the union which, while 
 working at my trade, I always loyally supported. But, 
 see: The methods by which a trade union can alone act 
 are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily 
 tyrannical. A strike, which is the only recourse by 
 which a trade union can enforce its demands, is a de- 
 structive contest just such a contest as that to which 
 an eccentric, called "The Money King," once, in the 
 early days of San Francisco, challenged a man who 
 had taunted him with meanness, that they should go 
 down to the wharf and alternately toss twenty-dollar 
 pieces into the bay until one gave in. The struggle of 
 endurance involved in a strike is, really, what it has 
 often been compared to a war; and, like all war, it 
 lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like 
 the organization for war, be tyrannical. As even the 
 man who would fight for freedom, must, when he enters 
 an army, give up his personal freedom and become a
 
 314 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 mere part in a great machine, so must it be with work- 
 men who organize for a strike. These combinations are, 
 therefore, necessarily destructive of the very things 
 which workmen seek to gain through them wealth and 
 freedom. 
 
 There is an ancient Hindoo mode of compelling the 
 payment of a just debt, traces of something akin to 
 which Sir Henry Maine has found in the laws of the 
 Irish Brehons. It is called, sitting dliarna the creditor 
 seeking enforcement of his debt by sitting down at the 
 door of the debtor, and refusing to eat or drink until he 
 is paid. 
 
 Like this is the method of labor combinations. In 
 their strikes, trades' unions sit dliarna. But, unlike the 
 Hindoo, they have not the power of superstition to back 
 them. 
 
 I V. From Co-operation. 
 
 It is now, and has been for some time, the fashion to 
 preach co-operation as the sovereign remedy for the 
 grievances of the working classes. But, unfortunately 
 for the efficacy of co-operation as a remedy for social 
 evils, these evils, as we have seen, do not arise from any 
 conflict between labor and capital; and if co-operation 
 were universal, it could not raise wages or relieve pov- 
 erty. This is readily seen. 
 
 Co-operation is of two kinds co-operation in supply 
 and co-operation in production. Now, co-operation in 
 supply, let it go as far as it may in excluding middlemen, 
 only reduces the cost of exchanges. It is simply a device 
 to save labor and eliminate risk, and its effect upon dis- 
 tribution can be only that of the improvements and 
 inventions which have in modern times so wonderfully 
 cheapened and facilitated exchanges viz., to increase 
 rent. And co-operation in production is simply a rever- 
 sion to that form of wages which still prevails in the
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 315 
 
 whaling service, and is there termed a "lay." It is the 
 substitution of proportionate wages for fixed wages a 
 substitution of which there are occasional instances in 
 almost all employments; or, if the management is left to 
 the workmen, and the capitalist but takes his proportion 
 of the net produce, it is simply the system that has pre- 
 vailed to a large extent in European agriculture since 
 the days of the Eoman Empire the colonial or metayer 
 system. All that is claimed for co-operation in produc- 
 tion is, that it makes the workman more active and in- 
 dustrious in other words, that it increases the efficiency 
 of labor. Thus its effect is in the same direction as the 
 steam engine, the cotton gin, the reaping machine in 
 short, all the things in which material progress consists, 
 and it can produce only the same result viz., the in- 
 crease of rent. 
 
 It is a striking proof of how first principles are ignored 
 in dealing with social problems, that in current economic 
 and semi-economic literature so much importance is at- 
 tached to co-operation as a means for increasing wages 
 and relieving poverty. That it can have no such general 
 tendency is apparent. 
 
 Waiving all the difficulties that under present condi- 
 tions beset co-operation either of supply or of production, 
 and supposing it so extended as to supplant present 
 methods that co-operative stores made the connection 
 between producer and consumer with the minimum of 
 expense, and co-operative workshops, factories, farms, 
 and mines, abolished the employing capitalist who pays 
 fixed wages, and greatly increased the efficiency of labor 
 what then? Why, simply that it would become pos- 
 sible to produce the same amount of wealth with less 
 labor, and consequently that the owners of land, the 
 source of all wealth, could command a greater amount of 
 wealth for the use of their land. This is not a matter 
 of mere theory; it is proved by experience and by exist-
 
 316 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 ing facts. Improved methods and improved machinery 
 have the same effect that co-operation aims at of reduc- 
 ing the cost of bringing commodities to the consumer 
 and increasing the efficiency of labor, and it is in these 
 respects that the older countries have the advantage of 
 new settlements. But, as experience has amply shown, 
 improvements in the methods and machinery of produc- 
 tion and exchange have no tendency to improve the con- 
 dition of the lowest class, and wages are loAver and pov- 
 erty deeper where exchange goes on at the minimum of 
 cost and production has the benefit of the best machinery. 
 The advantage but adds to rent. 
 
 But suppose co-operation between producers and land 
 owners? That would simply amount to the payment of 
 rent in kind the same system under which much land is 
 rented in California and the Southern States where the 
 land owner gets a share of the crop. Save as a matter 
 of computation it in no wise differs from the system 
 which prevails in England of a fixed money rent. Call 
 it co-operation, if you choose, the terms of the co-opera- 
 tion would still be fixed by the laws which determine 
 rent, and wherever land was monopolized, increase in 
 productive power would simply give the owners of the 
 land the power to demand a larger share. 
 
 That co-operation is by so many believed to be the solu- 
 tion of the "labor question" arises from the fact that, 
 where it has been tried, it has in many instances im- 
 proved perceptibly the condition of those immediately 
 engaged in it. But this is due simply to the fact that 
 these cases are isolated. Just as industry, economy, or 
 skill may improve the condition of the workmen who 
 possess them in superior degree, but cease to have this 
 effect when improvement in these respects becomes gen- 
 eral, so a special advantage in procuring supplies, or a 
 special efficiency given to some labor, may secure advan- 
 tages which would be lost as soon as these improvements
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 317 
 
 became so general as to affect the general relations of dis- 
 tribution. And the truth is, that, save possibly in edu- 
 cational effects, co-operation can produce no general 
 results that competition will not produce. Just as the 
 cheap-for-cash stores have a similar effect upon prices as 
 the co-operative supply associations, so does competition 
 in production lead to a similar adjustment of forces and 
 division of proceeds as would co-operative production. 
 That increasing productive power does not add to the 
 reward of labor, is not because of competition, but be- 
 cause competition is one-sided. Land, without which 
 there can be no production, is monopolized, and the 
 competition of producers for its use forces wages to a 
 minimum and gives all the advantage of increasing pro- 
 ductive power to land owners, in higher rents and 
 increased land values. Destroy this monopoly, and com- 
 petition could exist only to accomplish the end which 
 co-operation aims at to give to each what he fairly 
 earns. Destroy this monopoly, and industry must be- 
 come the co-operation of equals. 
 
 V. From Governmental Direction and Interference. 
 
 The limits within which I wish to keep this book will 
 not permit an examination in detail of the methods in 
 which it is proposed to mitigate or extirpate poverty by 
 governmental regulation of industry and accumulation, 
 and which in their most thorough-going form are called 
 socialistic. Nor is it necessary, for the same defects 
 attach to them all. These are the substitution of gov- 
 ernmental direction for the play of individual action, and 
 the attempt to secure by restriction what can better be 
 secured by freedom. As to the truths that are involved 
 in socialistic ideas I shall have something to say here- 
 after; but it is evident that whatever savors of regulation 
 and restriction is in itself bad, and should not be re-
 
 318 THE KEMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 sorted to if any other mode of accomplishing the same 
 end presents itself. For instance, to take one of the 
 simplest and mildest of the class of measures I refer to 
 a graduated tax on incomes. The object at which it 
 aims, the reduction or prevention of immense concen- 
 trations of wealth, is good; but this means involves the 
 employment of a large number of officials clothed with 
 inquisitorial powers; temptations to bribery, and per- 
 jury, and all other means of evasion, which beget a 
 demoralization of opinion, and put a premium upon un- 
 scrupulousness and a tax upon conscience; and, finally, 
 just in proportion as the tax accomplishes its effect, a 
 lessening in the incentive to the accumulation of wealth, 
 which is one of the strong forces of industrial progress. 
 While, if the elaborate schemes for regulating every- 
 thing and finding a place for everybody could be carried 
 out, we should have a state of society resembling that of 
 ancient Peru, or that which, to their eternal honor, the 
 Jesuits instituted and so long maintained in Paraguay. 
 
 I will not say that such a state as this is not a better 
 social state than that to which we now seem to be tend- 
 ing, for in ancient Peru, though production went on 
 under the greatest disadvantages, from the want of iron 
 and the domestic animals, yet there was no such thing as 
 want, and the people went to their work with songs. 
 But this it is unnecessary to discuss. Socialism in any- 
 thing approaching such a form, modern society cannot 
 successfully attempt. The only force that has ever 
 proved competent for it a strong and definite religious 
 faith is wanting and is daily growing less. We have 
 passed out of the socialism of the tribal state, and cannot 
 re-enter it again except by a retrogression that would 
 involve anarchy and perhaps barbarism. Our govern- 
 ments, as is already plainly evident, would break down 
 in the attempt. Instead of an intelligent award of 
 duties and earnings, we should have a Roman distribu-
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. ' 319 
 
 tion of Sicilian corn, and the demagogue would soon 
 become the Imperator. 
 
 The ideal of socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I 
 am convinced, possible of realization; but such a state 
 of society cannot be manufactured it must grow. Soci- 
 ety is an organism, not a machine. It can live only by 
 the individual life of its parts. And in the free and nat- 
 ural development of all the parts will be secured the 
 harmony of the whole. All that is necessary to social 
 regeneration is included in the motto of those Russian 
 patriots sometimes called Nihilists "Land and Liberty !" 
 
 VI. From a More General Distribution of Land. 
 
 There is a rapidly growing feeling that the tenure of 
 land is in some manner connected with the social dis- 
 tress which manifests itself in the most progressive 
 countries; but this feeling as yet mostly shows itself in 
 propositions which look to the more general division of 
 landed property in England, free trade in land, tenant 
 right, or the equal partition of landed estates among 
 heirs; in the United States, restrictions upon the size of 
 individual holdings. It has been also proposed in Eng- 
 land that the state should buy out the landlords, and in 
 the United States that grants of money should be made 
 to enable the settlements of colonies upon public lands. 
 The former proposition let us pass for the present; the 
 latter, so far as its distinctive feature is concerned, falls 
 into the category of the measures considered in the last 
 section. It needs no argument to show to what abuses 
 and demoralization grants of public money or credit 
 would lead. 
 
 How what the English writers call "free trade in land" 
 the removal of duties and restrictions upon convey- 
 ances could facilitate the division of ownership in agri- 
 cultural land, I cannot see, though it might to some
 
 320 THE KEMEDT. Book VI. 
 
 extent have that effect as regards town property. The 
 removal of restrictions upon buying and selling would 
 merely permit the ownership of land to assume more 
 quickly the form to which it tends. Now, that the tend- 
 ency in Great Britain is to concentration is shown by the 
 fact that, in spite of the difficulties interposed by the 
 cost of transfer, land ownership has been and is steadily 
 concentrating there, and that this tendency is a general 
 one is shown by the fact that the same process of con- 
 centration is observable in the United States. I say 
 this unhesitatingly in regard to the United States, al- 
 though statistical tables are sometimes quoted to show a 
 different tendency. But how, in such a country as the 
 United States, the ownership of land may be really con- 
 centrating, while census tables show rather a diminution 
 in the average size of holdings, is readily seen. As land 
 is brought into use, and, with the growth of population, 
 passes from a lower to a higher or intenser use, the size 
 of holdings tends to diminish. A small stock range 
 would be a large farm, a small farm would be a large 
 orchard, vineyard, nursery, or vegetable garden, and a 
 patch of land which would be small even for these pur- 
 poses would make a very large city property. Thus, 
 the growth of population, which puts land to higher or 
 intenser uses, tends naturally to reduce the size of hold- 
 ings, by a process very marked in new countries; but 
 with this may go on a tendency to the concentration of 
 land ownership, which, though not revealed by tables 
 which show the average size of holdings, is just as clearly 
 seen. Average holdings of one acre in a city may show a 
 much greater concentration of land ownership than aver- 
 age holdings of 640 acres in a newly settled township. I 
 refer to this to show the fallacy in the deductions drawn 
 from the tables which are frequently paraded in the 
 United States to show that land monopoly is an evil that 
 will cure itself. On the contrary, it is obvious that the
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 321 
 
 proportion of land owners to the whole population is 
 constantly decreasing. 
 
 And that there is in the United States, as there is in 
 Great Britain, a strong tendency to the concentration of 
 land ownership in agriculture is clearly seen. As, in 
 England and Ireland, small farms are being thrown into 
 larger ones, so in New England, according to the reports 
 of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the 
 size of farms increasing. This tendency is even more 
 clearly noticeable in the newer States and Territories. 
 Only a few years ago a farm of 320 acres would, under 
 the system of agriculture prevailing in the northern 
 parts of the Union, have anywhere been a large one, 
 probably as much as one man could cultivate to advan- 
 tage. In California now there are farms (not cattle 
 ranges) of five, ten, twenty, forty and sixty thousand 
 acres, while the model farm of Dakota embraces 100,000 
 acres. The reason is obvious. It is the application of 
 machinery to agriculture and the general tendency to 
 production on a large scale. The same tendency which 
 substitutes the factory, with its army of operatives, for 
 many independent hand-loom weavers, is beginning to 
 exhibit itself in agriculture. 
 
 Now, the existence of this tendency shows two things: 
 first, that any measures which merely permit or facilitate 
 the greater subdivision of land would be inoperative; 
 and, second, that any measures which would compel it 
 would have a tendency to check production. If land in 
 large bodies can be cultivated more cheaply than land in 
 small bodies, to restrict ownership to small bodies will 
 reduce the aggregate production of wealth, and, in so 
 far as such restrictions are imposed and take effect, will 
 they tend to diminish the general productiveness of labor 
 and capital. 
 
 The effort, therefore, to secure a fairer division of 
 wealth by such restrictions is liable to the drawback of
 
 322 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 lessening the amount to be divided. The device is like 
 that of the monkey, who, dividing the cheese between 
 the cats, equalized matters by taking a bite off the biggest 
 piece. 
 
 But there is not merely this objection, which weighs 
 against every proposition to restrict the ownership of 
 land, with a force that increases with the efficiency of 
 the proposed measure. There is the further and fatal 
 objection that restriction will not secure the end which 
 is alone worth aiming at a fair division of the produce. 
 It will not reduce rent, and therefore cannot increase 
 wages. It may make the comfortable classes larger, but 
 will not improve the condition of those in the lowest 
 class. 
 
 If what is known as the Ulster tenant right were ex- 
 tended to the whole of Great Britain, it would be but to 
 carve out of the estate of the landlord an estate for the 
 tenant. The condition of the laborer would not be a 
 whit improved. If landlords were prohibited from ask- 
 ing an increase of rent from their tenants and from 
 ejecting a tenant so long as the fixed rent was paid, the 
 body of the producers would gain nothing. Economic 
 rent would still increase, and would still steadily lessen 
 the proportion of the produce going to labor and capital. 
 The only difference would be that the tenants of the first 
 landlords, who would become landlords in their turn, 
 would profit by the increase. 
 
 If by a restriction upon the amount of land any one 
 individual might hold, by the regulation of devises and 
 successions, or by cumulative taxation, the few thousand 
 land holders of Great Britain should be increased by two 
 or three million, these two or three million people would 
 be gamers. But the rest of the population would gain 
 nothing. They would have no more share in the ad- 
 vantages of land ownership than before. And if, what 
 is manifestly impossible, a fair distribution of the land
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 323 
 
 were made among the whole population, giving to each 
 his equal share, and laws enacted which would interpose 
 a barrier to the tendency to concentration by forbidding 
 the holding by any one of more than the fixed amount, 
 what would become of the increase of population? 
 
 Just what may be accomplished by the greater division 
 of land may be seen in those districts of France and 
 Belgium where minute division prevails. That such a 
 division of land is on the whole much better, and that it 
 gives a far more stable basis to the state than that which 
 prevails in England, there can be no doubt. But that it 
 does not make wages any higher or improve the condi- 
 tion of the class who have only their labor, is equally 
 clear. These French and Belgian peasants practice a 
 rigid economy unknown to any of the English-speaking 
 peoples. And if such striking symptoms of the poverty 
 and distress of the lowest class are not apparent as on 
 the other side of the channel, it must, I think, be at- 
 tributed, not only to this fact, but to another fact, which 
 accounts for the continuance of the minute division of 
 the land that material progress has not been so rapid. 
 
 Neither has population increased with the same rapid- 
 ity (on the contrary it has been nearly stationary), nor 
 have improvements in the modes of production been so 
 great. Nevertheless, M. de Laveleye, all of whose pre- 
 possessions are in favor of small holdings, and whose 
 testimony will therefore carry more weight than that of 
 English observers, who may be supposed to harbor a 
 prejudice for the system of their own country, states in 
 his paper on the Land Systems of Belgium and Holland, 
 printed by the Cobden Club, that the condition of the 
 laborer is worse under this system of the minute division 
 of land than it is in England; while the tenant farmers 
 for tenancy largely prevails even where the morcell- 
 ment is greatest are rack-rented with a mercilessness 
 unknown in England, and even in Ireland, and the
 
 324 THE KEMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 franchise "so far from raising them in the social scale, 
 is but a source of mortification and humiliation to them, 
 for they are forced to vote according to the dictates of 
 the landlord instead of following the dictates of their 
 own inclination and convictions." 
 
 But while the subdivision of land can thus do nothing 
 to cure the evils of land monopoly, while it can have no 
 effect in raising wages or in improving the condition of 
 the lowest classes, its tendency is to prevent the adop- 
 tion or even advocacy of more thorough-going measures, 
 and to strengthen the existing unjust system by interest- 
 ing a larger number in its maintenance. M. de Laveleye, 
 in concluding the paper from which I have quoted, 
 urges the greater division of land as the surest means of 
 securing the great land owners of England from some- 
 thing far more radical. Although in the districts where 
 land is so minutely divided, the condition of the laborer 
 is, he states, the worst in Europe and the renting 
 farmer is much more ground down by his landlord than 
 the Irish tenant, yet "feelings hostile to social order," 
 M. de Laveleye goes on to say, "do not manifest them- 
 selves," because 
 
 "The tenant, although ground down by the constant rise of rents, 
 lives among his equals, peasants like himself who have tenants whom 
 they use just as the large land holder does his. His father, his 
 brother, perhaps the man himself, possesses something like an acre 
 of land, which he lets at as high a rent as he can get. In the public 
 house peasant proprietors will boast of the high rents they get for 
 their lands, just as they might boast of having sold their pigs or po- 
 tatoes very dear. Letting at as high a rent as possible comes thus to 
 seem to him to be quite a matter of course, and he never dreams of 
 finding fault with either the land owners as a class or with property 
 in land. His mind is not likely to dwell on the notion of a caste of 
 domineering landlords, of "bloodthirsty tyrants," fattening on the 
 sweat of impoverished tenants and doing no work themselves; for 
 those who drive the hardest bargains are not the great land owners 
 but his own fellows. Thus, the distribution of a number of small 
 properties among the peasantry forms a kind of rampart and safe-
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PKOPOSED REMEDIES. 325 
 
 guard for the holders of large estates, and peasant property may 
 without exaggeration be called the lightning conductor that averts 
 from society dangers which might otherwise lead to violent catas- 
 trophes. 
 
 "The concentration of land in large estates among a small num- 
 ber of families is a sort of provocation of leveling legislation. The 
 position of England, so enviable in many respects, seems to me to be 
 in this respect full of danger for the future." 
 
 To me, for the very same reason that M. de Laveleye 
 expresses, the position of England seems full of hope. 
 
 Let us abandon all attempt to get rid of the evils of 
 land monopoly by restricting land ownership. An equal 
 distribution of land is impossible, and anything short of 
 that would be only a mitigation, not a cure, and a mitiga- 
 tion that would prevent the adoption of a cure. Nor is 
 any remedy worth considering that does not fall in with 
 the natural direction of social development, and swim, 
 so to speak, with the current of the times. That con- 
 centration is the order of development there can be no 
 mistaking the concentration of people in large cities, 
 the concentration of handicrafts in large factories, the 
 concentration of transportation by railroad and steam- 
 ship lines, and of agricultural operations in large fields. 
 The most trivial businesses are being concentrated in the 
 same way errands are run and carpet sacks are carried 
 by corporations. All the currents of the time run to 
 concentration. To resist it successfully we must throt- 
 tle steam and discharge electricity from human service.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE TRUE REMEDY. 
 
 We have traced the unequal distribution of wealth 
 which is the curse and menace of modern civilization to 
 the institution of private property in land. We have 
 seen that so long as this institution exists no increase in 
 productive power can permanently benefit the masses; 
 but, on the contrary, must tend still further to depress 
 their condition. We have examined all the remedies, 
 short of the abolition of private property in land, which 
 are currently relied on or proposed for the relief of pov- 
 erty and the better distribution of wealth, and have 
 found them all inefficacious or impracticable. 
 
 There is but one way to remove an evil and that is, 
 to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth in- 
 creases, and wages are forced down while productive 
 power grows, because land, which is the source of all 
 wealth and the field of all labor, is monopolized. To ex- 
 tirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands 
 they should be, the full earnings of the laborer, we must 
 therefore substitute for the individual ownership of land 
 a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the 
 cause of the evil in nothing else is there the slightest 
 hope. 
 
 This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal 
 distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, 
 and for all the evils which flow from it: 
 
 We must make land common property. 
 
 We have reached this conclusion by an examination in
 
 Ckap.IL THE TBUE REMEDY. 327 
 
 which every step has been proved and secured. In the 
 chain of reasoning no link is wanting and no link is 
 weak. Deduction and induction have brought us to the 
 same truth that the unequal ownership of land neces- 
 sitates the unequal distribution of wealth. And as in 
 the nature of things unequal ownership of land is in- 
 separable from the recognition of individual property in 
 land, it necessarily follows that the only remedy for the 
 unjust distribution of wealth is in making land common 
 property. 
 
 But this is a truth which, in the present state of so- 
 ciety, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must 
 fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, there- 
 fore, to meet the objections of those who, even when 
 driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be 
 practically applied. 
 
 In doing this we shall bring our previous reasoning to 
 a new and crucial test. Just as we try addition by sub- 
 traction and multiplication by division, so may we, by 
 testing the sufficiency of the remedy, prove the correct- 
 ness of our conclusions as to the cause of the evil. 
 
 The laws of the universe are harmonious. And if the 
 remedy to which we have been led is the true one, it 
 must be consistent with justice; it must be practicable 
 of application; it must accord with the tendencies of 
 social development and must harmonize with other 
 reforms. 
 
 All this I propose to show. I propose to meet all 
 practical objections that can be raised, and to show that 
 this simple measure is not only easy of application; but 
 that it is a sufficient remedy for all the evils which, as 
 modern progress goes on, arise from the greater and 
 greater inequality in the distribution of wealth that it 
 will substitute equality for inequality, plenty for want, 
 justice for injustice, social strength for social weakness, 
 and will open the way to grander and nobler advances of 
 civilization.
 
 328 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 
 
 I thus propose to show that the laws of the universe do 
 not deny the natural aspirations of the human heart; 
 that the progress of society might be, and, if it is to con- 
 tinue, must be, toward equality, not toward inequality; 
 and that the economic harmonies prove the truth per- 
 ceived by the Stoic Emperor 
 
 "We are made for co-operation like feet, like hands, 
 like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth."
 
 BOOK VII. 
 
 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IS LAND. 
 
 CHAPTER II. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS THE ULTI- 
 MATE RESULT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 
 IN LAND. 
 
 CHAPTER III. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSA- 
 TION. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CON- 
 SIDERED. 
 
 CHAPTER V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED 
 STATES.
 
 Justice is a relation of congruity which really subsists between 
 two things. This relation is always the same, whatever being con- 
 siders it, whether it be God, or an angel, or lastly a man. Montesquieu,
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE INJUSTICE OF PEIVATE PEOPEETY IN LAND. 
 
 When it is proposed to abolish private property in land 
 the first question that will arise is that of justice. 
 Though often warped by habit, superstition, and self- 
 ishness into the most distorted forms, the sentiment of 
 justice is yet fundamental to the human mind, and 
 whatever dispute arouses the passions of men, the con- 
 flict is sure to rage, not so much as to the question "Is it 
 wise?" as to the question "Is it right?" 
 
 This tendency of popular discussions to take an ethical \ 
 form has a cause. It springs from a law of the human 
 mind; it rests upon a vague and instinctive recognition 
 of what is probably the deepest truth we can grasp. 
 That alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring 
 which is right. In the narrow scale of individual actions 
 and individual life this truth may be often obscured, but j 
 in the wider field of national life it everywhere stands 
 out. 
 
 I bow to this arbitrament, and accept this test. If 
 our inquiry into the cause which makes low wages and 
 pauperism the accompaniments of material progress has 
 led us to a correct conclusion, it will bear translation 
 from terms of political economy into terms of ethics, and 
 as the source of social evils show a wrong. If it will not 
 do this, it is disproved. If it will do this, it is proved 
 by the final decision. If private property in land be 
 just, then is the remedy I propose a false one; if, on the 
 contrary, private property in land be unjust, then is this 
 remedy the true one.
 
 332 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 What constitutes the rightful basis of property? What 
 is it that enables a man justly to say of a thing, "It is 
 mine?" From what springs the sentiment which ac- 
 knowledges his exclusive right as against all the world? 
 Is it not, primarily, the right of a man to himself to the 
 use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of the fruits of 
 his own exertions? Is it not this individual right, which 
 springs from and is testified to by the natural facts of in- 
 dividual organization the fact that each particular pair 
 of hands obey a particular brain and are related to a par- 
 ticular stomach; the fact that each man is a definite, 
 coherent, independent whole which alone justifies indi- 
 vidual ownership? As a man belongs to himself, so his 
 labor when put in concrete form belongs to him. 
 
 And for this reason, that which a man makes or pro- 
 duces is his own, as against all the world to enjoy or to 
 destroy, to use, to exchange, or to give. No one else 
 can rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it in- 
 volves no wrong to any one else. Thus there is to every- 
 thing produced by human exertion a clear and indis- 
 putable title to exclusive possession and enjoyment, 
 which is perfectly consistent with justice, as it descends 
 from the original producer, in whom it vested by natural 
 law. The pen with which I am writing is justly mine. 
 No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it, for 
 in me is the title of the producers who made it. It has 
 become mine, because transferred to me by the stationer, 
 to whom it was transferred by the importer, who ob- 
 tained the exclusive right to it by transfer from the man- 
 ufacturer, in whom, by the same process of purchase, 
 vested the rights of those who dug the material from 
 the ground and shaped it into a pen. Thus, my ex- 
 clusive right of ownership in the pen springs from the 
 natural right of the individual to the use of his own 
 faculties. 
 Now, this is not only the original source from which
 
 Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 333 
 
 all ideas of exclusive ownership arise as is evident from 
 the natural tendency of the mind to revert to it when 
 the idea of exclusive ownership is questioned, and the 
 manner in which social relations develop but it is neces- 
 sarily the only source. There can be to the ownership 
 of anything no rightful title which is not derived from 
 the title of the producer and does not rest upon the 
 natural right of the man to himself. There can be no 
 other rightful title, because (1st) there is no other 
 natural right from which any other title can be derived, 
 and (2d) because the recognition of any other title is in- 
 consistent with and destructive of this. 
 
 For (1st) what other right exists from which the right 
 to the exclusive possession of anything can be derived, 
 save the right of a man to himself? With what other 
 power is man by nature clothed, save the power of exert- 
 ing his own faculties? How can he in any other way act 
 upon or affect material things or other men? Paralyze 
 the motor nerves, and your man has no more external 
 influence or power than a log or stone. From what else, 
 then, can the right of possessing and controlling things 
 be derived? If it spring not from man himself, from 
 what can it spring? Nature acknowledges no ownership 
 or control in man save as the result of exertion. In no 
 other way can her treasures be drawn forth, her powers 
 directed, or her forces utilized or controlled. She makes 
 no discriminations among men, but is to all absolutely 
 impartial. She knows no distinction between master 
 and slave, king and subject, saint and sinner. All men 
 to her stand upon an equal footing and have equal 
 rights. She recognizes no claim but that of labor, and 
 recognizes that without respect to the claimant. If a 
 pirate spread his sails, the wind will fill them as well as it 
 will fill those of a peaceful merchantman or missionary 
 bark; if a king and a common man be thrown overboard, 
 neither can keep his head above water except by swim-
 
 334 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 ming; birds will not come to be shot by the proprietor of 
 the soil any quicker than they will come to be shot by 
 the poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook in 
 utter disregard as to whether it is offered them by a good 
 little boy who goes to Sunday-school, or a bad little boy 
 who plays truant; grain will grow only as the ground is 
 prepared and the seed is sown; it is only at the call of 
 labor that ore can be raised from the mine; the sun 
 shines and the rain falls, alike upon just and unjust. 
 The laws of nature are the decrees of the Creator. 
 There is written in them no recognition of any right save 
 that of labor; and in them is written broadly and clearly 
 the equal right of all men to the use and enjoyment of 
 nature; to apply to her by their exertions, and to receive 
 and possess her reward. Hence, as nature gives only to 
 labor, the exertion of labor in production is the only 
 title to exclusive possession. 
 
 2d. This right of ownership that springs from labor 
 excludes the possibility of any other right of ownership. 
 If a man be rightfully entitled to the produce of his labor, 
 then no one can be rightfully entitled to the ownership 
 of anything which is not the produce of his labor, or the 
 labor of some one else from whom the right has passed 
 to him. If production give to the producer the right to 
 exclusive possession and enjoyment, there can rightfully 
 be no exclusive possession and enjoyment of anything 
 not the production of labor, and the recognition of pri- 
 vate property in land is a wrong. For the right to the 
 produce of labor cannot be enjoyed without the right to 
 the free use of the opportunities offered by nature, and 
 to admit the right of property in these is to deny the 
 right of property in the produce of labor. When non- 
 producers can claim as rent a portion of the wealth 
 created by producers, the right of the producers to the 
 fruits of their labor is to that extent denied. 
 
 There is no escape from this position. To affirm that
 
 Chap. L INJUSTICE OF PEIVATE PKOPERTY IN LAND. 335 
 
 a man can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in his 
 own labor when embodied in material things, is to deny 
 that any one can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in 
 land. To affirm the rightfulness of property in land, is to 
 affirm a claim which has no warrant in nature, as against 
 a claim founded in the organization of man and the laws 
 of the material universe. 
 
 What most prevents the realization of the injustice of 
 private property in land is the habit of including all the 
 things that are made the subject of ownership in one 
 category, as property, or, if any distinction is made, 
 drawing the line, according to the unphilosophical dis- 
 tinction of the lawyers, between personal property and 
 real estate, or things movable and things immovable. 
 The real and natural distinction is between things which 
 are the produce of labor and things which are the gratu- 
 itous offerings of nature; or, to adopt the terms of polit- 
 ical economy, between wealth and land. 
 
 These two classes of things are in essence and relations 
 widely different, and to class them together as property 
 is to confuse all thought when we come to consider the 
 justice or the injustice, the right or the wrong of prop- 
 erty. 
 
 A house and the lot on which it stands are alike prop- 
 erty, as being the subject of ownership, and are alike 
 classed by the lawyers as real estate. Yet in nature and 
 relations they differ widely. The one is produced by 
 human labor, and belongs to the class in political econ- 
 omy styled wealth. The other is a part of nature, and 
 belongs to the class in political economy styled land. 
 
 The essential character of the one class of things is 
 that they embody labor, are brought into being by 
 human exertion, their existence or non-existence, their 
 increase or diminution, depending on man. The essential 
 character of the other class of things is that they do not 
 embody labor, and exist irrespective of human exertion
 
 336 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 and irrespective of man; they are the field or environ- 
 ment in which man finds himself; the storehouse from 
 which his needs must be supplied, the raw material upon 
 which, and the forces with which alone his labor can act. 
 
 The moment this distinction is realized, that moment 
 is it seen that the sanction which natural justice gives to 
 one species of property is denied to the other; that the 
 rightfulness which attaches to individual porperty in the 
 produce of labor implies the wroogfulness of individual 
 property in land; that, whereas the recognition of the 
 one places all men upon equal terms, securing to each 
 the due reward of his labor, the recognition of the other 
 is the denial of the equal rights of men, permitting those 
 who do not labor to take the natural reward of those 
 who do. 
 
 Whatever may be said for the institution of private 
 property in land, it is therefore plain that it cannot be 
 defended on the score of justice. 
 
 The equal right of all men to the use of land is as 
 clear as their equal right to breathe the air it is a right 
 proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot 
 suppose that some men have a right to be in this world 
 and others no right. 
 
 If we are all here by the equal permission of the Crea- 
 tor, we are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment 
 of his bounty with an equal right to the use of all that 
 nature so impartially offers.* This is a right which is 
 
 * In saying that private property in land can, in the ultimate an- 
 alysis, be justified only on the theory that some men have a better 
 right to existence than others, I am stating only what the advocates 
 of the existing system have themselves perceived. What gave to 
 Malthus his popularity among the ruling classes what caused his 
 illogical book to be received as a new revelation, induced sovereigns 
 to send him decorations, and the meanest rich man in England to 
 propose to give him a living, was the fact that he furnished a plaus-
 
 Chap. 1. INJUSTICE OF PKIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 337 
 
 natural and inalienable; it is a right which vests in every 
 human being as he enters the world, and which during 
 his continuance in the world can be limited only by the 
 equal rights of others. There is in nature no such thing 
 as a fee simple in land. There is on earth no power 
 which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive owner- 
 ship in land. If all existing men were to unite to grant 
 away their equal rights, they could not grant away the 
 right of those who follow them. For what are we but 
 tenants for a day? Have we made the earth, that we 
 should determine the rights of those who after us shall 
 tenant it in their turn? The Almighty, who created the 
 earth for man and man for the earth, has entailed it upon 
 all the generations of the children of men by a decree 
 written upon the constitution of all things a decree 
 which no human action can bar and no prescription de- 
 termine. Let the parchments be ever so many, or pos- 
 session ever so long, natural justice can recognize no 
 right in one man to the possession and enjoyment of land 
 that is not equally the right of all his fellows. Though 
 his titles have been acquiesced in by generation after 
 generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of West- 
 minster the poorest child that is born in London to-day 
 
 ible reason for the assumption that some have a better right to ex- 
 istence than others an assumption which is necessary for the justi- 
 fication of private property in land, and which Malthus clearly states 
 in the declaration ttiafr the tendency of population is constantly to 
 bring into the world human beings for whom nature refuses to pro- 
 vide, and who consequently "have not the slightest right to any share 
 in the existing store of the necessaries of life;" whom she tells as in- 
 terlopers to begone, "and does not hesitate to extort by force obedi- 
 ence to her mandates," employing for that purpose "hunger and 
 pestilence, war and crime, mortality and neglect of infantine life, 
 prostitution and syphilis." And to-day this Malthusian doctrine is 
 the ultimate defense upon which those who justify private property 
 in land fall back. In no other way can it be logically defended.
 
 338 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 has as much right as has his eldest son.* Though the 
 sovereign people of the State of New York consent to the 
 lauded possessions of the Astors, the puniest infant that 
 comes wailing into the world in the squalidest room of 
 the most miserable tenement house, becomes at that mo- 
 ment seized of an equal right with the millionaires. And 
 it is robbed if the right is denied. 
 
 Our previous conclusions, irresistible in themselves, 
 thus stand approved by the highest and final test. 
 Translated from terms of political economy into terms of 
 ethics they show a wrong as the source of the evils which 
 increase as material progress goes on. 
 
 The masses of men, who in the midst of abundance 
 suffer want; who, clothed with political freedom, are con- 
 demned to the wages of slavery; to whose toil labor-saving 
 inventions bring no relief, but rather seem to rob them 
 of a privilege, instinctively feel that "there is something 
 wrong." And they are right. 
 
 The wide-spreading social evils which everywhere op- 
 press men amid an advancing civilization spring from a 
 great primary wrong the appropriation, as the exclusive 
 property of some men, of the land on which and from 
 which all must live. From this fundamental injustice 
 flow all the injustices which distort and endanger modern 
 development, which condemn the producer of wealth to 
 
 * This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and enjoy- 
 ment of land is so apparent that it has been recognized by men 
 wherever force or habit has not blunted first perceptions. To give 
 but one instance: The white settlers of New Zealand found them- 
 selves unable to get from the Maoris what the latter considered a 
 complete title to land, because, although a whole tribe might have 
 consented to a sale, they would still claim with every new child born 
 among them an additional payment on the ground that they had 
 parted with only their own rights, and could not sell those of the un- 
 born. The government was obliged to step in and settle the matter 
 by buying land for a tribal annuity, in which every child that is born 
 acquires a share.
 
 Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PEIVATE PROPERTY IN" LAND. 339 
 
 poverty and pamper the non-producer in luxury, which 
 rear the tenement house with the palace, plant the 
 brothel behind the church, and compel us to build pris- 
 ons as we open new schools. 
 
 There is nothing strange or inexplicable in the phe- 
 nomena that are now perplexing the world. It is not 
 that material progress is not in itself a good; it is not 
 that nature has called into being children for whom she 
 has failed to provide; it is not that the Creator has left 
 on natural laws a taint of injustice at which even the 
 human mind revolts, that material progress brings such 
 bitter fruits. That amid our highest civilization men 
 faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of 
 nature, but to the injustice of man. Vice and misery, 
 poverty and pauperism, are not the legitimate results of 
 increase of population and industrial development; they 
 only follow increase of population and industrial develop- 
 ment because land is treated as private property they 
 are the direct and necessary results of the violation of 
 the supreme law of justice, involved in giving to some 
 men the exclusive possession of that which nature pro- 
 vides for all men. 
 
 The recognition of individual proprietorship of land is 
 the denial of the natural rights of other individuals it is 
 a wrong which must show itself in the inequitable divi- 
 sion of wealth. For as labor cannot produce without the 
 use of land, the denial of the equal right to the use of 
 land is necessarily the denial of the right of labor to its 
 own produce. If one man can command the land upon 
 which others must labor, he can appropriate the produce 
 of their labor as the price of his permission to labor. 
 The fundamental law of nature, that her enjoyment by 
 man shall be consequent upon his exertion, is thus vio- 
 lated, The one receives without producing; the others 
 produce without receiving. The one is unjustly enriched; 
 the others are robbed. To this fundamental wrong we
 
 340 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Boole V1L 
 
 have traced the unjust distribution of wealth which is 
 separating modern society into the very rich and the very 
 poor. It is the continuous increase of rent the price 
 that labor is compelled to pay for the use of land, which 
 strips the many of the wealth they justly earn, to pile it 
 up in the hands of the few, who do nothing to earn it. 
 
 Why should they who suffer from this injustice hesi- 
 tate for one moment to sweep it away? Who are the land 
 holders that they should thus be permitted to reap 
 where they have not sown? 
 
 Consider for a moment the utter asburdity of the titles 
 by which we permit to be gravely passed from John Doe 
 to Kichard Roe the right exclusively to possess the earth, 
 giving absolute dominion as against all others. In Cali- 
 fornia our land titles go back to the Supreme Government 
 of Mexico, who took from the Spanish King, who took 
 from the Pope, when he by a stroke of the pen divided 
 lands yet to be discovered between the Spanish or Por- 
 tuguese or if you please they rest upon conquest. In 
 the Eastern States they go back to treaties with Indians 
 and grants from English Kings; in Louisiana to the Gov- 
 ernment of France; in Florida to the Government of 
 Spain; while in England they go back to the Norman 
 conquerors. Everywhere, not to a right which obliges, 
 but to a force which compels. And when a title rests 
 but on force, no complaint can be made when force an- 
 nuls it. Whenever the people, having the power, choose 
 to annul those titles, no objection can be made in the 
 name of justice. There have existed men who had the 
 power to hold or to give exclusive possession of portions 
 of the earth's surface, but when and where did there 
 exist the human being who had the right? 
 
 The right to exclusive ownership of anything of human 
 production is clear. No matter how many the hands 
 through which it has passed, there was, at the beginning 
 of the line, human labor some one who, having procured
 
 Chap. L INJUSTICE OF PEIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 341 
 
 or produced it by his exertions, had to it a clear title as 
 against all the rest of mankind, and which could justly 
 pass from one to another by sale or gift. But at the end 
 of what string of conveyances or grants can be shown or 
 supposed a like title to any part of the material universe? 
 To improvements such an original title can be shown; 
 but it is a title only to the improvements, and not to the 
 land itself. If I clear a forest, drain a swamp, or fill a 
 morass, all I can justly claim is the value given by these 
 exertions. They give me no right to the land itself, no 
 claim other than to my equal share with every other 
 member of the community in the value which is added to 
 it by the growth of the community. 
 
 But it will be said: There are improvements which in 
 time become indistinguishable from the land itself! Very 
 well; then the title to the improvements becomes blended 
 with the title to the land; the individual right is lost in 
 the common right. It is the greater that swallows up 
 the less, not the less that swallows up the greater. Na- 
 ture does not proceed from man, but man from nature, 
 and it is into the bosom of nature that he and all his 
 works must return again. 
 
 Yet, it will be said: As every man has a right to the 
 use and enjoyment of nature, the man who is using land 
 must be permitted the exclusive right to its use in order 
 that he may get the full benefit of his labor. But there 
 is no difficulty in determining where the individual right 
 ends and the common right begins. A delicate and ex- 
 act test is supplied by value, and with its aid there is no 
 difficulty, no matter how dense population may become, 
 in determining and securing the exact rights of each, the 
 equal rights of all. The value of land, as we have seen, 
 is the price of monopoly. It is not the absolute, but the 
 relative, capability of land that determines its value. No 
 matter what may be its intrinsic qualities, land that is no 
 better than other land which may be had for the using
 
 342 JUSTICE OP THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 can have no value. And the value of land always meas- 
 ures the difference between it and the best land that may 
 be had for the using. Thus, the value of land expresses 
 in exact and tangible form the right of the community in 
 land held by an individual; and rent expresses the exact 
 amount which the individual should pay to the commu- 
 nity to satisfy the equal rights of all other members of 
 the community. Thus, if we concede to priority of pos- 
 session the undisturbed use of land, confiscating rent for 
 the benefit of the community, we reconcile the fixity of 
 tenure which is necessary for improvement with a full 
 and complete recognition of the equal rights of all to the 
 use of land. 
 
 As for the deduction of a complete and exclusive indi- 
 vidual right to land from priority of occupation, that is, 
 if possible, the most absurd ground on which land owner- 
 ship can be defended. Priority of occupation give exclu- 
 sive and perpetual title to the surface of a globe on 
 which, in the order of nature, countless generations suc- 
 ceed each other! Had the men of the last generation 
 any better right to the use of this world than we of this? 
 or the men of a hundred years ago? or of a thousand 
 years ago? Had the mound-builders, or the cave-dwell- 
 ers, the contemporaries of the mastodon and the three- 
 toed horse, or the generations still further back, who, in 
 dim seons that we can think of only as geologic periods, 
 followed each other on the earth we now tenant for our 
 little day? 
 
 Has the first comer at a banquet the right to turn back 
 all the chairs and claim that none of the other guests 
 shall partake of the food provided, except as they make 
 terms with him? Does the first man who presents a 
 ticket at the door of a theater, and passes in, acquire by 
 his priority the right to shut the doors and have the per- 
 formance go on for him alone? Does the first passenger 
 who enters a railroad car obtain the right to scatter his
 
 Chap. T. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 343 
 
 baggage over all the seats and compel the passengers who 
 come in after him to stand up? 
 
 The cases are perfectly analogous. We arrive and we 
 depart, guests at a banquet continually spread, specta- 
 tors and participants in an entertainment where there is 
 room for all who come; passengers from station to sta- 
 tion, on an orb that whirls through space our rights o 
 take and possess cannot be exclusive; they must be 
 bounded everywhere by the equal rights of others. Just 
 as the passenger in a railroad car may spread himself 
 and his baggage over as many seats as he pleases, until 
 other passengers come in, so may a settler take and use 
 as much land as he chooses, until it is needed by others 
 a fact which is shown by the land acquiring a value when 
 his right must be curtailed by the equal rights of the 
 others, and no priority of appropriation can give a right 
 which will bar these equal rights of others. If this were 
 not the case, then by priority of appropriation one man 
 could acquire and could transmit to whom he pleased, 
 not merely the exclusive right to 160 acres, or to 640 
 acres, but to a whole township, a whole State, a whole 
 continent. 
 
 And to this manifest absurdity does the recognition of 
 individual right to land come when carried to its ultimate 
 that any one human being, could he concentrate in 
 himself the individual rights to the land of any country, 
 could expel therefrom all the rest of its inhabitants; and 
 could he thus concentrate the individual rights to the 
 whole surface of the globe, he alone of all the teeming 
 population of the earth would have the right to live. 
 
 And what upon this supposition would occur is, upon a 
 smaller scale, realized in actual fact. The territorial 
 lords of Great Britain, to whom grants of land have given 
 the "white parasols and elephants mad with pride," have 
 over and over again expelled from large districts the na- 
 tive population, whose ancestors had lived on the land
 
 344 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 
 
 from immemorial times driven them off to emigrate, to 
 become paupers, or to starve. And on uncultivated 
 tracts of land in the ne w State of California may be seen the 
 blackened chimneys of homes from which settlers have 
 been driven by force of laws which ignore natural right, 
 and great stretches of land which might be populous are 
 desolate, because the recognition of exclusive ownership 
 has put it in the power of one human creature to forbid 
 his fellows from using it. The comparative handful of 
 proprietors who own the surface of the British Islands 
 would be doing only what English law gives them full 
 power to do, and what many of them have done on a 
 smaller scale already, were they to exclude the millions 
 of British people from their native islands. And such 
 an exclusion, by which a few hundred thousand should 
 at will banish thirty million people from their native 
 country, while it would be more striking, would not be a 
 whit more repugnant to natural right than the spectacle 
 now presented, of the vast body of the British people be- 
 ing compelled to pay such enormous sums to a few of 
 their number for the privilege of being permitted to live 
 upon and use the land which they so fondly call their 
 own; which is endeared to them by memories so tender 
 and so glorious, and for which they are held in duty 
 bound, if need be, to spill their blood and lay down their 
 lives. 
 
 I refer only to the British Islands, because, land own- 
 ership being more concentrated there, they afford a more 
 striking illustation of what private property in land nec- 
 essarily involves. "To whomsoever the soil at any time 
 belongs, to him belong the fruits of it," is a truth that 
 becomes more and more apparent as population becomes 
 denser and invention and improvement add to produc- 
 tive power; but it is everywhere a truth as much in our 
 new States as in the British Islands or by the banks of 
 the Indus.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS THE ULTIMATE RESULT 
 OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 If chattel slavery be unjust, then is private property in 
 land unjust. 
 
 For let the circumstances be what they may the own- 
 ership of land will always give the ownership of men, to 
 a degree measured by the necessity (real or artificial) for 
 the use of land. This is but a statement in different 
 form of the law of rent. 
 
 And when that necessity is absolute when starvation 
 is the alternative to the use of land, then does the own- 
 ership of men involved in the ownership of land become 
 absolute. 
 
 Place one hundred men on an island from which there 
 is no escape, and whether you make one of these men the 
 absolute owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute 
 owner of the soil of the island, will make no difference 
 either to him or to them. 
 
 In the one case, as the other, the one will be the abso- 
 lute master of the ninety-nine his power extending even 
 to life and death, for simply to refuse them permission to 
 live upon the island would be to force them into the sea. 
 
 Upon a larger scale, and through more complex rela- 
 tions, the same cause must operate in the same way and 
 to the same end the ultimate result, the enslavement of 
 laborers, becoming apparent just as the pressure increases 
 which compels them to live on and from land which is 
 treated as the exclusive property of others. Take a 
 country in which the soil is divided among a number of
 
 346 JUSTICE OP THE EEMEDY. Book Vll. 
 
 proprietors, instead of being in the hands of one, and in 
 which, as in modern production, the capitalist has been 
 specialized from the laborer, and manufactures and ex- 
 change, in all their many branches, have been separated 
 from agriculture. Though less direct and obvious, the 
 relations between the owners of the soil and the laborers 
 will, with increase of population and the improvement of 
 the arts, tend to the same absolute mastery on the one 
 hand and the same abject helplessness on the other, as in 
 the case of the island we have supposed. Kent will ad- 
 vance, while wages will fall. Of the aggregate produce, 
 the land owner will get a constantly increasing, the 
 laborer a constantly diminishing share. Just as removal 
 to cheaper land becomes difficult or impossible, laborers, 
 no matter what they produce, will be reduced to a bare 
 living, and the free competition among them, where land 
 is monopolized, will force them to a condition which, 
 though they may be mocked with the titles and insignia 
 of freedom, will be virtually that of slavery. 
 
 There is nothing strange in the fact that, in spite of 
 the enormous increase in productive power which this 
 century has witnessed, and which is still going on, the 
 wages of labor in the lower and wider strata of industry 
 should everywhere tend to the wages of slavery just 
 enough to keep the laborer in working condition. For 
 the ownership of the land on which and from which a 
 man must live is virtually the ownership of the man 
 himself, and in acknowledging the right of some individ- 
 uals to the exclusive use and enjoyment of the earth, we 
 condemn other individuals to slavery as fully and as com- 
 pletely as though we had formally made them chattels. 
 
 In a simpler form of society, where production chiefly 
 consists in the direct application of labor to the soil, the 
 slavery that is the necessary result of according to some 
 the exclusive right to the soil from which all must live, 
 is plainly seen in helotism, in villeinage, in serfdom.
 
 Ckap.n. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABOKEES. 347 
 
 Chattel slavery originated in the capture of prisoners 
 in war, and, though it has existed to some extent in 
 every part of the globe, its area has been small, its effects 
 trivial, as compared with the forms of slavery which have 
 originated in the appropriation of land. No people as a 
 mass have ever been reduced to chattel slavery to men of 
 their own race, nor yet on any large scale has any people 
 ever been reduced to slavery of this kind by conquest. 
 The general subjection of the many to the few, which we 
 meet with wherever society has reached a certain develop- 
 ment, has resulted from the appropriation of land as in- 
 dividual property. It is the ownership of the soil that 
 everywhere gives the ownership of the men that live 
 upon it. It is slavery of this kind to which the enduring 
 pyramids and the colossal monuments of Egypt yet bear 
 witness, and of the institution of which we have, perhaps, 
 a vague tradition in the biblical story of the famine dur- 
 ing which the Pharaoh purchased up the lands of the 
 people. It was slavery of this kind to which, in the 
 twilight of history, the conquerors of Greece reduced the 
 original inhabitants of that peninsula, transforming them 
 into helots by making them pay rent for their lauds. It 
 was the growth of the latifundia, or great landed estates, 
 which transmuted the population of ancient Italy, from 
 a race of hardy husbandmen, whose robust virtues con- 
 quered the world, into a race of cringing bondsmen; it 
 was the appropriation of the land as the absolute prop- 
 erty of their chieftains which gradually turned the de- 
 scendants of free and equal Gallic, Teutonic and Hunnish 
 warriors iato colonii and villains, and which changed the 
 independent burghers of Sclavonic village communities 
 into the boors of Russia and the serfs of Poland; which 
 instituted the feudalism of China and Japan, as well as 
 that of Europe, and which made the High Chiefs of 
 Polynesia the all but absolute masters of their fellows. 
 How it came to pass that the Aryan shepherds and warriors
 
 348 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 
 
 who, as comparative philology tells us, descended from the 
 common birthplace of the Indo-Germanic race into the 
 lowlands of India, were turned into the suppliant and 
 cringing Hindoo, the Sanscrit verse which I have before 
 quoted gives us a hint. The white parasols and the ele- 
 phants mad with pride of the Indian Eajah are the flow- 
 ers of grants of land. And could we find the key to the 
 records of the long-buried civilizations that lie entombed 
 in the gigantic ruins of Yucatan and Guatemala, telling 
 at once of the pride of a ruling class and the unrequited 
 toil to which the masses were condemned, we should read, 
 in all human probability, of a slavery imposed upon the 
 great body of the people through the appropriation of 
 the land as the property of a few of another illustration 
 of the universal truth that they who possess the land are 
 masters of the men who dwell upon it. 
 
 The necessary relation between labor and land, the ab- 
 solute power which the ownership of land gives over men 
 who cannot live but by using it, explains what is other- 
 wise inexplicable the growth and persistence of institu- 
 tions, manners, and ideas so utterly repugnant to the 
 natural sense of liberty and equality. 
 
 When the idea of individual ownership, which so justly 
 and naturally attaches to things of human production, is 
 extended to land, all the rest is a mere matter of develop- 
 ment. The strongest and most cunning easily acquire a 
 superior share in this species of property, which is to be 
 had, not by production, but by appropriation, and in be- 
 coming lords of the land they become necessarily lords of 
 their fellow-men. The ownership of land is the basis of 
 aristocracy. It was not nobility that gave land, but the 
 possession of land that gave nobility. All the enormous 
 privileges of the nobility of medieval Europe flowed from 
 their position as the owners of the soil. The simple 
 principle of the ownership of the soil produced, on the 
 one side, the lord, on the other, the vassal the one hav-
 
 Chap.H. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABOBERS. 349 
 
 ing all rights, the other none. The right of the lord to 
 the soil acknowledged and maintained, those who lived 
 upon it could do so only upon his terms. The manners 
 and conditions of the times made those terms include 
 services and servitudes, as well as rents in produce or 
 money, but the essential thing that compelled them was 
 the ownership of land. This power exists wherever the 
 ownership of land exists, and can be brought out wher- 
 ever the competition for the use of land is great enough 
 to enable the landlord to make his own terms. The 
 English land owner of to-day has, in the law which rec- 
 ognizes his exclusive right to the land, essentially all the 
 power which his predecessor the feudal baron had. He 
 might command rent in services or servitudes. He might 
 compel his tenants to dress themselves in a particular way, 
 to profess a particular religion, to send their children to a 
 particular school, to submit their differences to his decision, 
 to fall upon their knees when he spoke to them, to follow 
 him around dressed in his livery, or to sacrifice to him 
 female honor, if they would prefer these things to being 
 driven off his laud. He could demand, in short, any terms 
 on which men would still consent to live on his land, and 
 the law could not prevent him so long as it did not qual- 
 ify his ownership, for compliance with them would as- 
 sume the form of a free contract or voluntary act. And 
 English landlords do exercise such of these powers as in 
 the manners of the times they care to. Having shaken 
 off the obligation of providing for the defense of the 
 country, they no longer need the military service of their 
 tenants, and the possession of wealth and power being 
 now shown in other ways than by long trains of attend- 
 ants, they no longer care for personal service. But they 
 habitually control the votes of their tenants, and dictate 
 to them in many little ways. That "right reverend 
 father in God," Bishop Lord Plunkett, evicted a num- 
 ber of his poor Irish tenants because they would not send
 
 350 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 their children to Protestant Sunday-schools; and to that 
 Earl of Leitrim for whom Nemesis tarried so long before 
 she sped the bullet of an assassin, even darker crimes are 
 imputed; while, at the cold promptings of greed, cottage 
 after cottage has been pulled down and family after 
 family forced into the roads. The principle that permits 
 this is the same principle that in ruder times and a sim- 
 pler social state enthralled the great masses of the com- 
 mon people and placed such a wide gulf between noble 
 and peasant. Where the peasant was made a serf, it was 
 simply by forbidding him to leave the estate on which he 
 was born, thus artificially producing the condition we 
 supposed on the island. In sparsely settled countries 
 this is necessary to produce absolute slavery, but where 
 land is fully occupied, competition may produce substan- 
 tially the same conditions. Between the condition of the 
 rack-rented Irish peasant and the Russian serf, the ad- 
 vantage was in many things on the side of the serf. The 
 serf did not starve. 
 
 Now, as I think I have conclusively proved, it is the 
 same cause which has in every age degraded and enslaved 
 the laboring masses that is working in the civilized 
 world to-day. Personal liberty that is to say, the lib- 
 erty to move about is everywhere conceded, while of 
 political and legal inequality there are in the United 
 States no vestiges, and in the most backward civilized 
 countries but few. But the great cause of inequality re- 
 mains, and is manifesting itself in the unequal distribu- 
 tion of wealth. The essence of slavery is that it takes 
 from the laborer all he produces save enough to support 
 an animal existence, and to this minimum the wages of 
 free labor, under existing conditions, unmistakably tend. 
 Whatever be the increase of productive power, rent 
 steadily tends to swallow up the gain, and more than the 
 gain.
 
 Chap.n. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. 351 
 
 Thus the condition of the masses in every civilized 
 country is, or is tending to become, that of virtual slav- 
 ery under the forms of freedom. And it is probable that 
 of all kinds of slavery this is the most cruel and relent- 
 less. For the laborer is robbed of the produce of his 
 labor and compelled to toil for a mere subsistence; but 
 his taskmasters, instead of human beings, assume the 
 form of imperious necessities. Those to whom his labor 
 is rendered and from whom his wages are received are 
 often driven in their turn contact between the laborers 
 and the ultimate beneficiaries of their labor is sundered, 
 and individuality is lost. The direct responsibility of 
 master to slave, a responsibility which exercises a soften- 
 ing influence upon the great majority of men, does not 
 arise; it is not one human being who seems to drive 
 another to unremitting and ill-requited toil, but "the 
 inevitable laws of supply and demand," for which no one 
 in particular is responsible. The maxims of Cato the 
 Censor maxims which were regarded with abhorrence 
 even in an age of cruelty and universal slaveholding 
 that after as much work as possible is obtained from a 
 slave he should be turned out to die, become the common 
 rule; and even the selfish interest which prompts the 
 master to look after the comfort and well-being of the 
 slave is lost. Labor has become a commodity, and the 
 laborer a machine. There are no masters and slaves, no 
 owners and owned, but only buyers and sellers. The 
 higgling of the market takes the place of every other 
 sentiment. 
 
 When the slaveholders of the South looked upon the 
 condition of the free laboring poor in the most advanced 
 civilized countries, it is no wonder that they easily per- 
 suaded themselves of the divine institution of slavery. 
 That the field hands of the South were as a class better 
 fed, better lodged, better clothed; that they had less anxi-
 
 352 JUSTICE OP THE REMEDY. Book VH 
 
 ety and more of the amusements and enjoyments of life 
 than the agricultural laborers of England there can be 
 no doubt; and even in the Northern cities, visiting slave- 
 holders might see and hear of things impossible under 
 what they called their organization of labor. In the 
 Southern States, during the days of slavery, the master 
 who would have compelled his negroes to work and live 
 as large classes of free white men and women are com- 
 pelled in free countries to work and live, would have been 
 deemed infamous, and if public opinion had not restrained 
 him, his own selfish interest in the maintenance of the 
 health and strength of his chattels would. But in Lon- 
 don, New York, and Boston, among people who have given, 
 and would give again, money and blood to free the slave, 
 where no one could abuse a beast in, public without arrest 
 and punishment, barefooted and ragged children may be 
 seen running around the streets even in the winter time, 
 and in squalid garrets and noisome cellars women work 
 away their lives for wages that fail to keep them in proper 
 warmth and nourishment. Is it any wonder that to the 
 slaveholders of the South the demand for the abolition 
 of slavery seemed like the cant of hypocrisy? 
 
 And now that slavery has been abolished, the planters 
 of the South find they have sustained no loss. Their 
 ownership of the land upon which the freedmen must 
 live gives them practically as much command of labor as 
 before, while they are relieved of responsibility, sometimes 
 very expensive. The negroes as yet have the alternative 
 of emigrating, and a great movement of that kind seems 
 now about commencing, but as population increases and 
 land becomes dear, the planters will get a greater propor- 
 tionate share of the earnings of their laborers than they 
 did under the system of chattel slavery, and the laborers 
 a less share for under the system of chattel slavery the 
 slaves always got at least enough to keep them in good
 
 Chap. D. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. 353 
 
 physical health, but in such countries as England there 
 are large classes of laborers who do not get that.* 
 
 The influences which, wherever there is personal rela- 
 tion between master and slave, slip in to modify chattel 
 slavery, and to prevent the master from exerting to its 
 fullest extent his power over the slave, also showed them- 
 selves in the ruder forms of serfdom that characterized 
 the earlier periods of European development, and aided 
 by religion, and, perhaps, as in chattel slavery, by the 
 more enlightened but still selfish interests of the lord, 
 and hardening into custom, universally fixed a limit to 
 what the owner of the land could extort from the serf or 
 peasant, so that the competition of men without means 
 of existence bidding against each other for access to the 
 means of existence, was nowhere suffered to go to its full 
 length and exert its full power of deprivation and degra- 
 dation. The helots of Greece, the metayers of Italy, the 
 serfs of Russia and Poland, the peasants of feudal Eu- 
 rope, rendered to their landlords a fixed proportion either 
 of their produce or their labor, and were not generally 
 squeezed past that point. But the influences which thus 
 stepped in to modify the extortive power of land owaer- 
 ship, and which may still be seen on English estates 
 where the landlord and his family deem it their duty to 
 send medicines and comforts to the sick and infirm, and 
 to look after the well-being of their cottagers, just as the 
 Southern planter was accustomed to look after his 
 negroes, are lost in the more refined and less obvious 
 form which serfdom assumes in the more complicated 
 processes of modern production, which separates so 
 
 * One of the anti-slavery agitators (Col. J. A. Collins) on a visit 
 to England addressed a large audience in a Scotch manufacturing 
 town, and wound up as he had been used to in the United States, 
 by giving the ration which in the slave codes of some of the States 
 fixed the minimum of maintenance for a slave. He quickly discov 
 ered that to many of his hearers it was an anti-climax.
 
 354 JUSTICE OP THE REMEDY. Book Vn. 
 
 widely and by so many intermediate gradations the indi- 
 vidual whose labor is appropriated from him who appro- 
 priates it, and makes the relations between the members 
 of the two classes not direct and particular, but indirect 
 and general. In modern society, competition has free 
 play to force from the laborer the very utmost he can 
 give, and with what terrific force it is acting may be seen 
 in the condition of the lowest class in the centers of 
 wealth and industry. That the condition of this lowest 
 class is not yet more general, is to be attributed to the 
 great extent of fertile land which has hitherto been open 
 on this continent, and which has not merely afforded an 
 escape for the increasing population of the older sections 
 of the Union, but has greatly relieved the pressure in 
 Europe in one country, Ireland, the emigration having 
 been so great as actually to reduce the population. This 
 avenue of relief cannot last forever. It is already fast 
 closing up, and as it closes, the pressure must become 
 harder and harder. 
 
 It is not without reason that the wise crow in the 
 Eamayana, the crow Bushanda, "who has lived in every 
 part of the universe and knows all events from the begin- 
 nings of time," declares that, though contempt of worldly 
 advantages is necessary to supreme felicity, yet the keen- 
 est pain possible is inflicted by extreme poverty. The 
 poverty to which in advancing civilization great masses 
 of men are condemned, is not the freedom from distrac- 
 tion and temptation which sages have sought and philos- 
 ophers have praised; it is a degrading and embruting 
 slavery, that cramps the higher nature, dulls the finer 
 feelings, and drives men by its pain to acts which the 
 brutes would refuse. It is into this helpless, hopeless 
 poverty, that crushes manhood and destroys womanhood, 
 that robs even childhood of its innocence and joy, that 
 the working classes are being driven by a force which acts 
 upon them like a resistless and unpitying machine. The
 
 Chap. II. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. 355 
 
 Boston collar manufacturer who pays his girls two cents 
 an hour may commiserate their condition, but he, as 
 they, is governed by the law of competition, and cannot 
 pay more and carry on his business, for exchange is not 
 governed by sentiment. And so, through all interme- 
 diate gradations, up to those who receive the earnings of 
 labor without return, in the rent of land, it is the inex- 
 orable laws of supply and demand, a power with which 
 the individual can no more quarrel or dispute than with 
 the winds and the tides, that seem to press down the 
 lower classes into the slavery of want. 
 
 But in reality, the cause is that which always has and 
 always must result in slavery the monopolization by 
 some of what nature has designed for all. 
 
 Our boasted freedom necessarily involves slavery, so 
 long as we recognize private property in land. Until 
 that is abolished, Declarations of Independence and Acts 
 of Emancipation are in vain. So long as one man can 
 claim the exclusive ownership of the land from which 
 other men must live, slavery will exist, and as material 
 progress goes on, must grow and deepen! 
 
 This and in previous chapters of this book we have 
 traced the process, step by step is what is going on in 
 the civilized world to-day. Private ownership of land is 
 the nether millstone. Material progress is the upper 
 millstone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, 
 the working classes are being ground.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 
 
 The truth is, and from this truth there can be no 
 escape, that there is and can be no just title to an ex- 
 clusive possession of the soil, and that private property 
 in land is a bold, bare, enormous wrong, like that of 
 chattel slavery. 
 
 The majority of men in civilized communities do not 
 recognize this, simply because the majority of men do 
 not think. With them whatever is, is right, until its 
 wrongfulness has been frequently pointed out, and in 
 general they are ready to crucify whoever first attempts 
 this. 
 
 But it is impossible for any one to study political 
 economy, even as at present taught, or to think at all 
 upon the production and distribution of wealth, without 
 seeing that property in land differs essentially from prop- 
 erty in things of human production, and that it has no 
 warrant in abstract justice. 
 
 This is admitted, either expressly or tacitly, in every 
 standard work on political economy, but in general merely 
 by vague admission or omission. Attention is in general 
 called away from the truth, as a lecturer on moral philos- 
 ophy in a slave-holding community might call away at- 
 tention from too close a consideration of the natural 
 rights of men, and private property in land is accepted 
 without comment, as an existing fact, or is assumed to 
 be necessary to the proper use of land and the existence 
 of the civilized state. 
 
 The examination through which we have passed has
 
 Chap. m. CLAIM OP LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 357 
 
 proved conclusively that private property in land cannot 
 be justified on the ground of utility that, on the con- 
 trary, it is the great cause to which are to be traced the 
 poverty, misery, and degradation, the social disease and 
 the political Aveakness which are showing themselves so 
 menacingly amid advancing civilization. Expediency, 
 therefore, joins justice in demanding that we abolish it. 
 
 "When expediency thus joins justice in demanding that 
 we abolish an institution that has no broader base or 
 stronger ground than a mere municipal regulation, what 
 reason can there be for hesitation? 
 
 The consideration that seems to cause hesitation, even 
 on the part of those who see clearly that land by right is 
 common property, is the idea that having permitted land 
 to be treated as private property for so long, we should in 
 abolishing it be doing a wrong to those who have been 
 suffered to base their calculations upon its permanence; 
 that having permitted land to be held as rightful prop- 
 erty, we should by the resumption of common rights be 
 doing injustice to those who have purchased it with what 
 was unquestionably their rightful property. Thus, it is 
 held that if we abolish private property in land, justice 
 requires that we should fully compensate those who now 
 possess it, as the British Government, in abolishing the 
 purchase and sale of military commissions, felt itself 
 bound to compensate those who held commissions which 
 they had purchased in the belief that they could sell them 
 again, or as in abolishing slavery in the British West 
 Indies $100,000,000 was paid the slaveholders. 
 
 Even Herbert Spencer, who in his "Social Statics" has 
 ?jo clearly demonstrated the invalidity of every title by 
 which the exclusive possession of land is claimed, gives 
 countenance to this idea (though it seems to me incon- 
 sistently) l>j declaring that justly to estimate and liquidate 
 the claims of the present landholders "who have either 
 f>y their own acts or by the acts of their ancestors given
 
 358 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 for their estates equivalents of honestly-earned wealth," 
 to be "one of the most intricate problems society will 
 one day have to solve." 
 
 It is this idea that suggests the proposition, which 
 finds advocates in Great Britain, that the government 
 shall purchase at its market price the individual proprie- 
 torship of the land of the country, and it was this idea 
 which led John Stuart Mill, although clearly perceiving 
 the essential injustice of private property in land, to 
 advocate, not a full resumption of the land, but only a 
 resumption of accruing advantages in the future. His 
 plan was that a fair and even liberal estimate should be 
 made of the market value of all the land in the kingdom, 
 and that future additions to that value, not due to the 
 improvements of the proprietor, should be taken by the 
 state. 
 
 To say nothing of the practical difficulties which such 
 cumbrous plans involve, in the extension of the functions 
 of government which they would require and the corrup- 
 tion they would beget, their inherent and essential defect 
 lies in the impossibility of bridging over by any compro- 
 mise the radical difference between wrong and right. 
 Justin proportion as the interests of the land holders are 
 conserved, just in that proportion must general interests 
 and general rights be disregarded, and if land holders are 
 to lose nothing of their special privileges, the people at 
 large can gain nothing. To buy up individual property 
 rights would merely be to give the land holders in another 
 form a claim of the same kind and amount that their 
 possession of land now gives them; it would be to raise 
 for them by taxation the same proportion of the earnings 
 of labor and capital that they are now enabled to appro- 
 priate in rent. Their unjust advantage would be pre- 
 served and the unjust disadvantage of the non-landhold- 
 ers would be continued. To be sure there would be a 
 gain to the people at large when the advance of rents had
 
 Chap. in. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 359 
 
 made the amount which the land holders would take under 
 the present system greater than the interest upon the 
 purchase price of the land at present rates, but this would 
 be only a future gain, and in the meanwhile there would 
 not only be no relief, but the burden imposed upon labor 
 and capital for the benefit of the present land holders 
 would be much increased. For one of the elements in the 
 present market value of land is the expectation of future 
 increase of value, and thus, to buy up the lands at market 
 rates and pay interest upon the purchase money would 
 be to saddle producers not only with the payment of 
 actual rent, but with the payment in full of speculative 
 rent. Or to put it in another way: The land would be 
 purchased at prices calculated upon a lower than the or- 
 dinary rate of interest (for the prospective increase in 
 land values always makes the market price of land much 
 greater than would be the price of anything else yielding 
 the same present return), and interest upon the purchase 
 money would be paid at the ordinary rate. Thus, not 
 only all that the land yields them now would have to be 
 paid the land owners, but a considerably larger amount. 
 It would be, virtually, the state taking a perpetual lease 
 from the present land holders at a considerable advance 
 in rent over what they now receive. For the present the 
 state would merely become the agent of the land holders 
 in the collection of their rents, and would have to pay 
 over to them not only what they received, but considerably 
 more. 
 
 Mr. Mill's plan for nationalizing the future "unearned 
 increase in the value of land," by fixing the present 
 market value of all lands and appropriating to the state 
 future increase in value, would not add to the injustice 
 of the present distribution of wealth, but it would not 
 remedy it. Further speculative advance of rent would 
 cease, and in the future the people at large would gain 
 the difference between the increase of rent and the
 
 360 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VJL 
 
 amount at which that increase was estimated in fixing 
 the present value of land, in which, of course, prospec- 
 tive, as well as present, value is an element. But it 
 would leave, for all the future, one class in possession of 
 the enormous advantage over others which they now 
 have. All that can be said of this plan is, that it might 
 be better than nothing. 
 
 Such inefficient and impracticable schemes may do to 
 talk about, where any proposition more efficacious would 
 not at present be entertained, and their discussion is a 
 hopeful sign, as it shows the entrance of the thin end of 
 the wedge of truth. Justice in men's mouths is cring- 
 ingly humble when she first begins a protest against a 
 time-honored wrong, and we of the English-speaking 
 nations still wear the collar of the Saxon thrall, and have 
 been educated to look upon the "vested rights" of land 
 owners with all the superstitious reverence that ancient 
 Egyptians looked upon the crocodile. But when the 
 times are ripe for them, ideas grow, even though insig- 
 nificant in their first appearance. One day, the Third 
 Estate covered their heads when the king put on his hat. 
 A little while thereafter, and the head of a son of St. 
 Louis rolled from the scaffold. The anti-slavery move- 
 ment in the United States commenced with talk of com- 
 pensating owners, but when four millions of slaves were 
 emancipated, the owners got no compensation, nor did 
 they clamor for any. And by the time the people of any 
 such country as England or the United States are suffi- 
 ciently aroused to the injustice and disadvantages of indi- 
 vidual ownership of land to induce them to attempt its 
 nationalization, they will be sufficiently aroused to nation- 
 alize it in a much more direct and easy way than by pur- 
 chase. They will not trouble themselves about compen- 
 sating the proprietors of land. 
 
 Nor is it right that there should be any concern about 
 the proprietors of land. That such a man as John Stuart
 
 Chap. III. CLAIM OF LAND OWNEKS TO COMPENSATION. 361 
 
 Mill should have attached so much importance to the 
 compensation of land owners as to have urged the confis- 
 cation merely of the future increase in rent, is explain- 
 able only by his acquiescence in the current doctrines that 
 wages are drawn from capital and that population con- 
 stantly tends to press upon subsistence. These blinded 
 him as to the full effects of the private appropriation of 
 land. He saw that "the claim of the land holder is alto- 
 gether subordinate to the general policy of the state/' 
 and that "when private property in land is not expedi- 
 ent, it is unjust,"* but, entangled in the toils of the Mal- 
 thusian doctrine, he attributed, as he expressly states in 
 a paragraph I have previously quoted, the want and suf- 
 fering that he saw around him to "the niggardliness of 
 nature, not to the injustice of man," and thus to him the 
 nationalization of land seemed comparatively a little 
 thing, that could accomplish nothing toward the eradica- 
 tion of pauperism and the abolition of want ends that 
 could be reached only as men learned to repress a natural 
 instinct. Great as he was and pure as he was warm 
 heart and noble mind he yet never saw the true har- 
 mony of economic laws, nor realized how from this one 
 great fundamental wrong flow want and misery, and vice 
 and shame. Else he could never have written this sen- 
 tence: "The land of Ireland, the land of every country, 
 belongs to the people of that country. The individuals 
 called land owners have no right in morality and justice 
 to anything but the rent, or compensation for its salable 
 value." 
 
 In the name of the Prophet figs! If the land of any 
 country belong to the people of that country, what right, 
 in morality and justice, have the individuals called land 
 owners to the rent? If the land belong to the people, 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. 3, Sec. 6.
 
 362 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 why in the name of morality and justice should the peo- 
 ple pay its salable value for their own? 
 
 Herbert Spencer says:* "Had we to deal with the 
 parties who originally robbed the human race of its heri- 
 tage, we might make short work of the matter?" Why 
 not make short work of the matter anyhow? For this 
 robbery is not like the robbery of a horse or a sum of 
 money, that ceases with the act. It is a fresh and con- 
 tinuous robbery, that goes on every day and every hour. 
 It is not from the produce of the past that rent is 
 drawn; it is from the produce of the present. It is a 
 toll levied upon labor constantly and continuously. 
 Every blow of the hammer, every stroke of the pick, 
 every thrust of the shuttle, every throb of the steam 
 engine, pay it tribute. It levies upon the earnings of 
 the men who, deep under ground, risk their lives, and of 
 those who over white surges hang to reeling masts; it 
 claims the just reward of the capitalist and the fruits of 
 the inventor's patient effort; it takes little children from 
 play and from school, and compels them to work before 
 
 * Social Statics, page 142. [It may be well to say in the new re- 
 print of this book (1897) that this and all other references to Herbert 
 Spencer's " Social Statics " are from the edition of that book pub 
 lishedbyD. Appleton & Co., New York, with his consent, from 1864 
 to 1892. At that time " Social Statics " was repudiated, and a new 
 edition under the name of "Social Statics, abridged and revised," has 
 taken its place. From this, all that the first Social Statics had said 
 in denial of property in land has been eliminated, and it of course 
 contains nothing here referred to. Mr. Spencer has also been driven 
 by the persistent heckling of the English single tax men, who 
 insisted on asking him the questions suggested in the first Social 
 Statics, to bring out a small volume, entitled "Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 on the Land Question," in which are reprinted in parallel columns 
 Chapter IX of Social Statics, with what he considers valid answers 
 to himself as given in " Justice," 1891. This has also been reprinted 
 by D. Appleton & Co., and constitutes, I think, the very funniest an- 
 swer to himself ever made by a man who claimed to be a philoso- 
 pher.]
 
 Chap. III. CLAIM OF LAND OWNEKS TO COMPENSATION. 363 
 
 their bones are hard or their muscles are firm; it robs the 
 shivering of warmth; the hungry, of food; the sick, of 
 medicine; the anxious, of peace. It debases, and em- 
 brutes, and embitters. It crowds families of eight and 
 ten into a single squalid room; it herds like swine agri- 
 cultural gangs of boys and girls; it fills the gin palace 
 and groggery with those who have no comfort in their 
 homes; it makes lads who might be useful men candi- 
 dates for prisons and penitentiaries; it fills brothels with 
 girls who might have known the pure joy of motherhood; 
 it sends greed and all evil passions prowling through so- 
 ciety as a hard winter drives the wolves to the abodes of 
 men; it darkens faith in the human soul, and across the 
 reflection of a just and merciful Creator draws the veil of 
 a hard, and blind, and cruel fate! 
 
 It is not merely a robbery in the past; it is a robbery 
 in the present a robbery that deprives of their birth- 
 right the infants that are now coming into the world! 
 Why should we hesitate about making short work of such 
 a system? Because I was robbed yesterday, and the day 
 before, and the day before that, is it any reason that I 
 should suffer myself to be robbed to-day and to-morrow? 
 any reason that I should conclude that the robber has 
 acquired a vested right to rob me? 
 
 If the land belong to the people, why continue to per- 
 mit land owners to take the rent, or compensate them in 
 any manner for the loss of rent? Consider what rent is. 
 It does not arise spontaneously from land; it is due to 
 nothing that the land owners have done. It represents 
 a value created by the whole community. Let the land 
 holders have, if you please, all that the possession of the 
 land would give them in the absence of the rest of the 
 community. But rent, the creation of the whole com- 
 munity, necessarily belongs to the whole community. 
 
 Try the case of the land holders by the maxims of the 
 common law by which the rights of man and man are de-
 
 364 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 
 
 termined. The common law we are told is the perfection 
 of reason, and certainly the land owners cannot complain 
 of its decision, for it has been built up by and for land 
 owners. Now what does the law allow to the innocent 
 possessor when the land for which he paid his money is 
 adjudged rightfully to belong to another? Nothing at 
 all. That he purchased in good faith gives him no right 
 or claim whatever. The law does not concern itself with 
 the ''intricate question of compensation" to the innocent 
 purchaser. The law does not say, as John Stuart Mill 
 says: "The land belongs to A, therefore B who has 
 thought himself the owner has no right to anything but 
 the rent, or compensation for its salable value." For 
 that would be indeed like a famous fugitive slave case 
 decision in which the Court was said to have given the 
 law to the North and the nigger to the South. The law 
 simply says: "The land belongs to A, let the Sheriff put 
 him in possession!" It gives the innocent purchaser of 
 a wrongful title no claim, it allows him no compensation. 
 And not only this, it takes from him all the improve- 
 ments that he has in good faith made upon the land. 
 You may have paid a high price for land, making every 
 exertion to see that the title is good; you may have held 
 it in undisturbed possession for years without thought or 
 hint of an adverse claimant; made it fruitful by your toil 
 or erected upon it a costly building of greater value than 
 the land itself, or a modest home in which you hope, sur- 
 rounded by the fig-trees you have planted and the vines 
 you have dressed, to pass your declining days; yet if 
 Quirk, Gammon & Snap can mouse out a technical flaw 
 in your parchments or hunt up some forgotten heir who 
 never dreamed of his rights, not merely the land, but all 
 your improvements, may be taken away from you. And 
 not merely that. According to the common law, when 
 you have surrendered the land and given up your im- 
 provements, you may be called upon to account for the
 
 Chap. Ill CLAIM OF LAND OAVNERS TO COMPENSATION. 365 
 
 profits you derived from the land during the time you 
 had it. 
 
 Now if we apply to this case of The People vs. The Land 
 Owners the same maxims of justice that have been for- 
 mulated by land owners into law, and are applied every day 
 in English and American courts to disputes between man 
 and man, we shall not only not think of giving the land 
 holders any compensation for the land, but shall take all 
 the improvements and whatever else they may have as 
 well. 
 
 But I do not propose, and I do not suppose that any 
 one else will propose, to go so far. It is sufficient if the 
 people resume the ownership of the land. Let the land 
 owners retain their improvements and personal property 
 in secure possession. 
 
 And in this measure of justice would be no oppression, 
 no injury to any class. The great cause of the present 
 unequal distribution of wealth, with the suffering, deg- 
 radation, and waste that it entails, would be swept away. 
 Even land holders would share in the general gain. The 
 gain of even the large land holders would be a real one. 
 The gain of the small land holders would be enormous. 
 For in welcoming Justice, men welcome the handmaid of 
 Love. Peace and Plenty follow in her train, bringing 
 their good gifts, not to some, but to all. 
 
 How true this is, we shall hereafter see. 
 
 If in this chapter I have spoken of justice and expedi- 
 ency as if justice were one thing and expediency another, 
 it has been merely to meet the objections of those who so 
 talk. In justice is the highest and truest expediency.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PEIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 What more than anything else prevents the realization 
 t>f the essential injustice of private property in land and 
 stands in the way of a candid consideration of any prop- 
 osition for abolishing it, is that mental habit which 
 makes anything that has long existed seem natural and 
 necessary. 
 
 "We are so used to the treatment of land as individual 
 property, it is so thoroughly recognized in our laws, man- 
 ners, and customs, that the vast majority of people never 
 think of questioning it; but look upon it as necessary to 
 the use of land. They are unable to conceive, or at least 
 it does not enter their heads to conceive, of society as ex- 
 isting or as possible without the reduction of land to 
 private possession. The first step to the cultivation or 
 improvement of land seems to them to get for it a par- 
 ticular owner, and a man's land is looked on by them as 
 fully and as equitably his, to sell, to lease, to give, or to 
 bequeath, as his house, his cattle, his goods, or his fur- 
 niture. The "sacredness of property" has been preached 
 so constantly and effectively, especially by those "con- 
 servators of ancient barbarism," as Voltaire styled the 
 lawyers, that most people look upon the private owner- 
 ship of land as the very foundation of civilization, and if 
 the resumption of land as common property is suggested, 
 think of it at first blush either as a chimerical vagary, 
 which never has and never can be realized, or as a prop- 
 osition to overturn society from its base and bring about 
 a reversion to barbarism.
 
 Chap.ir. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED. 367 
 
 If it were true that land had always been treated as 
 private property, that would not prove the justice or 
 necessity of continuing so to treat it, any more than the 
 universal existence of slavery, which might once have 
 been safely affirmed, would prove the justice or necessity 
 of making property of human flesh and blood. 
 
 Not long ago monarchy seemed all but universal, and 
 not only the kings but the majority of their subjects 
 really believed that no country could get along without a 
 king. Yet, to say nothing of America, France now gets 
 along without a king; the Queen of England and Em- 
 press of India has about as much to do with governing 
 her realms as the wooden figurehead of a ship has in 
 determining its course, and the other crowned heads 
 of Europe sit, metaphorically speaking, upon barrels of 
 nitro-glycerine. 
 
 Something over a hundred years ago, Bishop Butler, 
 author of the famous Analogy, declared that "a constitu- 
 tion of civil government without any religious establish- 
 ment is a chimerical project of which there is no exam- 
 ple." As for there being no example, he was right. No 
 government at that time existed, nor would it have been 
 easy to name one that ever had existed, without some 
 sort of an established religion; yet in the United States 
 we have since proved by the practice of a century that it 
 is possible for a civil government to exist without a state 
 church. 
 
 But while, were it true, that land had always and 
 everywhere been treated as private property would not 
 prove that it should always be so treated, this is not true. 
 On the contrary, the common right to land has every- 
 where been primarily recognized, and private ownership 
 has nowhere grown up save as the result of usurpation. 
 The primary and persistent perceptions of mankind are 
 that all have an equal right to land, and the opinion that 
 private property in land is necessary to society is but an
 
 368 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 offspring of ignorance that cannot look beyond its imme- 
 diate surroundings an idea of comparatively modern 
 growth, as artificial and as baseless as that of the right 
 divine of kings. 
 
 The observations of travelers, the researches of the 
 critical historians who within a recent period have done 
 so much to reconstruct the forgotten records of the peo- 
 ple, the investigations of such men as Sir Henry Maine, 
 Emile de Laveleye, Professor Nasse of Bonn, and others, 
 into the growth of institutions, prove that wherever hu- 
 man society has formed, the common right of men to the 
 use of the earth has been recognized, and that nowhere 
 has unrestricted individual ownership been freely adopted. 
 Historically, as ethically, private property in land is rob- 
 bery. It nowhere springs from contract; it can nowhere 
 be traced to perceptions of justice or expediency; it has 
 everywhere had its birth in war and conquest, and in the 
 selfish use which the cunning have made of superstition 
 and law. 
 
 Wherever we can trace the early history of society, 
 whether in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in America, or in 
 Polynesia, land has been considered, as the necessary re- 
 lations which human life has to it would lead to its con- 
 sideration as common property, in which the rights of 
 all who had admitted rights were equal. That is to say, 
 that all members of the community, all citizens, as we 
 should say, had equal rights to the use and enjoyment of 
 the land of the community. This recognition of the 
 common right to land did not prevent the full recogni- 
 tion of the particular and exclusive right in things which 
 are the result of labor, nor was it abandoned when the 
 development of agriculture had imposed the necessity of 
 recognizing exclusive possession of laud in order to secure 
 the exclusive enjoyment of the results of the labor ex- 
 pended in cultivating it. The division of land between 
 the industrial units, whether families, joint families, or
 
 Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED. 369 
 
 individuals, went only as far as was necessary for that 
 purpose, pasture and forest lands being retained as com- 
 mon, and equality as to agricultural land being secured, 
 either by a periodical re-division, as among the Teutonic 
 races, or by the prohibition of alienation, as in the law of 
 Moses. 
 
 This primary adjustment still exists, in more or less 
 intact form, in the village communities of India, Russia, 
 and the Sclavonic countries yet, or until recently, sub- 
 jected to Turkish rule; in the mountain cantons of Swit- 
 zerland; among the Kabyles in the north of Africa, and 
 the Kaffirs in the south; among the native population of 
 Java, and the aborigines of New Zealand that is to say, 
 wherever extraneous influences have left intact the form 
 of primitive social organization. That it everywhere ex- 
 isted has been within late years abundantly proved by the 
 researches of many independent students and observers, 
 and which are, to my knowledge, best summarized in the 
 "Systems of Land Tenures in Various Countries," pub- 
 lished under authority of the Cobden Club, and in M. 
 Emile de Laveleye's "Primitive Property," to which I 
 would refer the reader who desires to see this truth dis- 
 played in detail. 
 
 "In all primitive societies," says M. de Laveleye, as 
 the result of an investigation which leaves no part of the 
 world unexplored "in all primitive societies, the soil 
 was the joint property of the tribes and was subject to 
 periodical distribution 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 
 intelligence; no one, at any rate, was destitute of the 
 means of subsistence, and inequality increasing from 
 generation to generation was provided against." 
 
 If M. de Laveleye be right in this conclusion, and that 
 he is right there can be no doubt, how, it will be asked, 
 has the reduction of land to private ownership become so 
 general?
 
 370 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 The causes which have operated to supplant this orig- 
 inal idea of the equal right to the use of land by the idea 
 of exclusive and unequal rights may, I think, be every- 
 where vaguely but certainly traced. They are every- 
 where the same which have led to the denial of equal 
 personal rights and to the establishment of privileged 
 classes. 
 
 These causes may be summarized as the concentration 
 of power in the hands of chieftains and the military 
 class, consequent on a state of warfare, which enabled 
 them to monopolize common lands; the effect of con- 
 quest, in reducing the conquered to a state of predial 
 slavery, and dividing their lands among the conquerors, 
 and in disproportionate share to the chiefs; the differ- 
 entiation and influence of a sacerdotal class, and the 
 differentiation and influence of a class of professional 
 lawyers, whose interests were served by the substitution 
 of exclusive, in place of common, property in land* 
 inequality once produced always tending to greater 
 inequality, by the law of attraction. 
 
 It was the struggle between this idea of equal rights to 
 the soil and the tendency to monopolize it in individual 
 possession, that caused the internal conflicts of Greece 
 and Home; it was the check given to this tendency in 
 Greece by such institutions as those of Lycurgus and 
 Solon, and in Eome by the Licinian Law and subsequent 
 divisions of land that gave to each their days of 
 strength and glory; and it was the final triumph of this 
 tendency that destroyed both. Great estates ruined 
 Greece, as afterward "great estates ruined Italy, "f and 
 
 * The influence of the lawyers has been very marked in Europe, 
 both on the continent and in Great Britain, in destroying all vestiges 
 of the ancient tenure, and substituting the idea of the Roman law, 
 exclusive ownership. 
 
 fLatifundia perdiderc Italiam. Pliny.
 
 Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED. 371 
 
 as the soil, in spite of the warnings of great legislators 
 and statesmen, passed finally into the possession of a few, 
 population declined, art sank, the intellect became emas- 
 culate, and the race in which humanity had attained its 
 most splendid development became a by-word and re- 
 proach among men. 
 
 The idea of absolute individual property in land, which 
 modern civilization derived from Rome, reached its full 
 development there in historic times. When the future 
 mistress of the world first looms up, each citizen had his 
 little homestead plot, which was inalienable, and the gen- 
 eral domain "the corn-land which was of public right" 
 was subject to common use, doubtless under regula- 
 tions or customs which secured equality, as in the Teu- 
 tonic mark and Swiss allmend. It was from this public 
 domain constantly extended by conquest, that the patri- 
 cian families succeeded in carving their great estates. 
 These great estates by the power with which the great 
 attracts the less, in spite of temporary checks by legal 
 limitation and recurring divisions, finally crushed out all 
 the small proprietors, adding their little patrimonies to 
 the latifundia of the enormously rich, while they them- 
 selves were forced into the slave gangs, became rent-pay- 
 ing colonii, or else were driven into the freshly conquered 
 foreign provinces, where land was given to the veterans 
 of the legions; or to the metropolis, to swell the ranks of 
 the proletariat who had nothing to sell but their votes. 
 
 Csesarism, soon passing into an unbridled despotism of 
 the Eastern type, was the inevitable political result, and 
 the empire, even while it embraced the world, became in 
 reality a shell, kept from collapse only by the healthier 
 life of the frontiers, where the land had been divided 
 among military settlers or the primitive usages longer 
 survived. But the latifundia, which had devoured the 
 strength of Italy, crept steadily outward, carving the 
 surface of Sicily, Africa, Spain, and Gaul into great
 
 372 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book TIL 
 
 estates cultivated by slaves or tenants. The hardy vir- 
 tues born of personal independence died out, an exhaus- 
 tive agriculture impoverished the soil, and wild beasts 
 supplanted men, until at length, with a strength nur- 
 tured in equality, the barbarians broke through; Rome 
 perished; and of a civilization once so proud nothing was 
 left but ruins. 
 
 Thus came to pass that marvelous thing, which at the 
 time of Rome's grandeur would have seemed as impos- 
 sible as it seems now to us that the Comanches or Flat- 
 heads should conquer the United States, or the Lap- 
 landers should desolate Europe. The fundamental cause 
 is to be sought in the tenure of land. On the one hand, 
 the denial of the common right to land had resulted in 
 decay; on the other, equality gave strength. 
 
 "Freedom," says M. de Laveleye ("Primitive Prop- 
 erty," p. 116), "freedom, and, as a consequence, the 
 ownership of an undivided share of the common prop- 
 erty, to which the head of every family in the clan was 
 equally entitled, were in the German village essential 
 rights. This system of absolute equality impressed a re- 
 markable character on the individual, which explains 
 how small bands of barbarians made themselves masters 
 of the Roman Empire, in spite of its skillful adminis- 
 tration, its perfect centralization and its civil law, which 
 has preserved the name of written reason." 
 
 It was, on the other hand, that the heart was eaten out 
 of that great empire. "Rome perished," says Professor 
 Seeley, "from the failure of the crop of men." 
 
 In his lectures on the "History of Civilization in Eu- 
 rope," and more elaborately in his lectures on the "His- 
 tory of Civilization in France," 1^ Guizot has vividly de- 
 scribed the chaos that in Europe succeeded the fall of the 
 Roman Empire a chaos which, as he says, "carried all 
 things in its bosom," and from which the structure of 
 modern society was slowly evolved. It is a picture which
 
 Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED. 373 
 
 cannot be compressed into a few lines, but suffice it to 
 say that the result of this infusion of rude but vigorous 
 life into Komanized society was a disorganization of the 
 German, as well as the Koman structure both a blend- 
 ing and an admixture of the idea of common rights in 
 the soil with the idea of exclusive property, substantially 
 as occurred in those provinces of the Eastern Empire sub- 
 sequently overrun by the Turks. The feudal system, 
 which was so readily adopted and so widely spread, was 
 the result of such a blending; but underneath, and side 
 by side with the feudal system, a more primitive organiza- 
 tion, based on the common rights of the cultivators, took 
 root or revived, and has left its traces all over Europe. 
 This primitive organization, which allots equal shares of 
 cultivated ground and the common use of uncultivated 
 ground, and which existed in Ancient Italy as in Saxon 
 England, has maintained itself beneath absolutism and 
 serfdom in Eussia, beneath Moslem oppression in Servia, 
 and in India has been swept, but not entirely destroyed, 
 by wave after wave of conquest, and century after cen- 
 tury of oppression. 
 
 The feudal system, which is not peculiar to Europe, 
 but seems to be the natural result of the conquest of a 
 settled country by a race among whom equality and indi- 
 viduality are yet strong, clearly recognized, in theory at 
 least, that the land belongs to society at large, not to the 
 individual. Kude outcome of an age in which might 
 stood for right as nearly as it ever can (for the idea of 
 right is ineradicable from the human mind, and must in 
 some shape show itself even in the association of pirates 
 and robbers), the feudal system yet admitted in no one 
 the uncontrolled and exclusive right to land. A fief was 
 essentially a trust, and to enjoyment was annexed obliga- 
 tion. The sovereign, theoretically the representative of 
 the collective power and rights of the whole people, was 
 in feudal view the only absolute owner of land. And
 
 374 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book V1L 
 
 though land was granted to individual possession, yet in 
 its possession were involved duties, by which the enjoyer 
 of its revenues was supposed to render back to the com- 
 monwealth an equivalent for the benefits which from the 
 delegation of the common right he received. 
 
 In the feudal scheme the crown lands supported public 
 expenditures which are now included in the civil list; the 
 church lands defrayed the cost of public worship and in- 
 struction, of the care of the sick and of the destitute, 
 and maintained a class of men who were supposed to be, 
 and no doubt to a great extent were, devoting their lives 
 to purposes of public good; while the military tenures 
 provided for the public defense. In the obligation under 
 which the military tenant lay to bring into the field such 
 and such a force when need should be, as well, as in the 
 aid he had to give when the sovereign's eldest son was 
 knighted, his daughter married, or the sovereign himself 
 made prisoner of war, was a rude and inefficient recogni- 
 tion, but still unquestionably a recognition, of the fact, 
 obvious to the natural perceptions of all men, that land 
 is not individual but common property. 
 
 Nor yet was the control of the possessor of land allowed 
 to extend beyond his own life. Although the principle 
 of inheritance soon displaced the principle of selection, 
 as where power is concentrated it always must, yet feudal 
 law required that there should always be some represen- 
 tative of a fief, capable of discharging the duties as well 
 as of receiving the benefits which were annexed to a 
 landed estate, and who this should be was not left to in- 
 dividual caprice, but rigorously determined in advance. 
 Hence wardship and other feudal incidents. The system 
 of primogeniture and its outgrowth, the entail, were in 
 their beginnings not the absurdities they afterward 
 became. 
 
 The basis of the feudal system was the absolute own- 
 ership of the land, an idea which the barbarians readily
 
 Chap. IV. PEOPERTT I2f LA>H> CONSIDERED. 375 
 
 acquired in the midst of a conquered population to whom 
 it was familiar; but over this, feudalism threw a superior 
 right, and the process of infeudation consisted of bring- 
 ing individual dominion into subordination to the supe- 
 rior dominion, which represented the larger community 
 or nation. Its units were the land owners, who by virtue 
 of their ownership were absolute lords on their own do- 
 mains, and who there performed the office of protection 
 which M. Taine has so graphically described, though per- 
 haps with too strong a coloring, in the opening chapter 
 of his "Ancient Kegime." The work of the feudal sys- 
 tem was to bind together these units into nations, and to 
 subordinate the powers and rights of the individual lords 
 of land to the powers and rights of collective society, as 
 represented by the suzerain or king. 
 
 Thus the feudal system, in its rise and development, 
 was a triumph of the idea of the common right to land, 
 changing an absolute tenure into a conditional tenure, 
 and imposing peculiar obligations in return for the priv- 
 ilege of receiving rent. And during the same time, the 
 power of land ownership wa trenched, as it were, from 
 below, the tenancy at will of the cultivators of the soil 
 very generally hardening into tenancy by custom, and 
 the rent which the lord could exact from the peasant 
 becoming fixed and certain. 
 
 And amid the feudal system there remained, or there 
 grew up, communities of cultivators, more or less subject 
 to feudal dues, who tilled the soil as common property; 
 and although the lords, where and when they had the 
 power, claimed pretty much all they thought worth 
 claiming, yet the idea of common right was strong 
 enough to attach itself by custom to a considerable part 
 of the land. The commons, in feudal ages, must have 
 embraced a very large proportion of the area of most Eu- 
 ropean countries. For in France (although the appro- 
 priations of these lands by the aristocracy, occasionally
 
 376 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book V1L 
 
 checked and rescinded by royal edict, had gone on for 
 some centuries prior to the Revolution, and during the 
 Revolution and First Empire large distributions and sales 
 were made), the common or communal lands still 
 amount, according to M. de Laveleye, to 4,000,000 hec- 
 tares, or 9,884,400 acres. The extent of the common 
 land of England during the feudal ages may be inferred 
 from the fact that though inclosures by the landed aris- 
 tocracy began during the reign of Henry VII., it is stated 
 that no less than 7,660,413 acres of common lands were 
 inclosed under Acts passed between 1710 and 1843, of 
 which 600,000 acres have been inclosed since 1845; and 
 it is estimated that there still remain 2,000,000 acres of 
 common in England, though of course the most worth- 
 less parts of the soil. 
 
 In addition to these common lands, there existed in 
 France, until the Revolution, and in parts of Spain, until 
 our own day, a custom having all the force of law, by 
 which cultivated lands, after the harvest had been 
 gathered, became common for purposes of pasturage or 
 travel, until the time had come to use the ground again; 
 and in some places a custom by which any one had the 
 right to go upon ground which its owner neglected to cul- 
 tivate, and there to sow and reap a crop in security. And 
 if he chose to use manure for the first crop, he acquired 
 the right to sow and gather a second crop without let or 
 hindrance from the owner. 
 
 It is not merely the Swiss allmend, theDitmarsh mark, 
 the Servian and Russian village communities; not merely 
 the long ridges which on English ground, now the ex- 
 clusive property of individuals, still enable the antiqua- 
 rian to trace out the great fields in ancient time devoted 
 to the triennial rotation of crops, and in which each vil- 
 lager was annually allotted his equal plot; not merely the 
 documentary evidence which careful students have within 
 late years drawn from old records; but the very institu-
 
 Chap. IF. PEOPEETY IN LAND CONSIDEEED. 377 
 
 tions under which modern civilization has developed, 
 which prove the universality and long persistence of the 
 recognition of the common right to the use of the soil. 
 
 There still remain in our legal systems survivals that 
 have lost their meaning, that, like the still existing re- 
 mains of the ancient commons of England, point to this. 
 The doctrine of eminent domain, existing as well in Mo- 
 hammedan law, which makes the sovereign theoretically 
 the only absolute owner of land, springs from nothing 
 but the recognition of the sovereign as the representative 
 of the collective rights of the people; primogeniture and 
 entail, which still exist in England, and which existed 
 in some of the American States a hundred years ago, are 
 but distorted forms of what was once an outgrowth of 
 the apprehension of land as common property. The very 
 distinction made in legal terminology between real and 
 personal property is but the survival of a primitive dis- 
 tinction between what was originally looked upon as com- 
 mon property and what from its nature was always con- 
 sidered the peculiar property of the individual. And the 
 greater care and ceremony which are yet required for the 
 transfer of land is but a survival, now meaningless and 
 useless, of the more general and ceremonious consent once 
 required for the transfer of rights which were looked 
 upon, not as belonging to any one member, but to every 
 member of a family or tribe. 
 
 The general course of the development of modern 
 civilization since the feudal period has been to the sub- 
 version of these natural and primary ideas of collective 
 ownership in the soil. Paradoxical as it may appear, the 
 emergence of liberty from feudal bonds has been accom- 
 panied by a tendency in the treatment of land to the form 
 of ownership which involves the enslavement of the work- 
 ing classes, and which is now beginning to be strongly 
 felt all gver the civilized world, in the pressure of an iron 
 yoke, which cannot be relieved by any extension of mere
 
 378 JUSTICE OP THE fcEtfEDY. Book VU. 
 
 political power or personal liberty, and which political 
 economists mistake for the pressure of natural laws, and 
 workmen for the oppressions of capital. 
 
 This is clear that in Great Britain to-day the right of 
 the people as a whole to the soil of their native country is 
 much less fully acknowledged than it was in feudal 
 times. A much smaller proportion of the people own the 
 soil, and their ownership is much more absolute. The 
 commons, once so extensive and so largely contributing to 
 the independence and support of the lower classes, have, 
 all but a small remnant of yet worthless land, been ap- 
 propriated to individual ownership and inclosed; the 
 great estates of the church, which were essentially com- 
 mon property devoted to a public purpose, have been di- 
 verted from that trust to enrich individuals; the dues of 
 the military tenants have been shaken off, and the cost of 
 maintaining the military establishment and paying the 
 interest upon an immense debt accumulated by wars has 
 been saddled upon the whole people, in taxes upon the 
 necessaries and comforts of life. The crown lands have 
 mostly passed into private possession, and for the sup- 
 port of the royal family and all the petty princelings who 
 marry into it, the British workman must pay in the 
 price of his mug of beer and pipe of tobacco. The Eng- 
 lish yeoman the sturdy breed who won Crecy, and Poic- 
 tiers, and Agincourt is as extinct as the mastodon. The 
 Scottish clansman, whose right to the soil of his native 
 hills was then as undisputed as that of his chieftain, has 
 been driven out to make room for the sheep ranges or 
 deer parks of that chieftain's descendant; the tribal right 
 of the Irishman has been turned into a tenancy-at-will. 
 Thirty thousand men have legal power to expel the 
 whole population from five-sixths of the British Islands, 
 and the vast majority of the British people have no right 
 whatever to their native land save to walk the streets or 
 trudge the roads. To them may be fittingly applied the
 
 Chap. IV. PBOPEBTY IN LAND CONSIDERED. 379 
 
 words of a Tribune of the Roman People: "Men of Rome," 
 said Tiberius Gracchus "men of Rome, you are called 
 the lords of the world, yet have no right to a square foot 
 of its soil ! The wild beasts have their dens, but the sol- 
 diers of Italy have only water and air!" 
 
 The result has, perhaps, been more marked in England 
 than anywhere else, but the tendency is observable every- 
 where, having gone further in England owing to circum- 
 stances which have developed it with greater rapidity. 
 
 The reason, I take it, that with the extension of the 
 idea of personal freedom has gone on an extension of the 
 idea of private property in land, is that as in the progress 
 of civilization the grosser forms of supremacy connected 
 with land ownership were dropped, or abolished, or be- 
 came less obvious, attention was diverted from the more 
 insidious, but really more potential forms, and the land 
 owners were easily enabled to put property in land on 
 the same basis as other property. 
 
 The growth of national power, either in the form of 
 royalty or parliamentary government, stripped the great 
 lords of individual power and importance, and of their 
 jurisdiction and power over persons, and so repressed 
 striking abuses, as the growth of Eoman Imperialism 
 repressed the more striking cruelties of slavery. The 
 disintegration of the large feudal estates, which, until 
 the tendency to concentration arising from the modern 
 tendency to production upon a large scale is strongly felt, 
 operated to increase the number of land owners, and the 
 abolition of the restraints by which land owners when 
 population was sparser endeavored to compel laborers to 
 remain on their estates also contributed to draw away at- 
 tention from the essential injustice involved in private 
 property in land; while the steady progress of legal ideas 
 drawn from the Roman law, which has been the great 
 mine and storehouse of modern jurisprudence, tended to 
 level the natural distinction between property in land
 
 380 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book V1L 
 
 and property in other things. Thus, with the extension 
 of personal liberty, went on an extension of individual 
 proprietorship in land. 
 
 The political power of the barons was, moreover, not 
 broken by the revolt of the classes who could clearly feel 
 the injustice of land ownership. Such revolts took place, 
 again and again; but again and again were they repressed 
 with terrific cruelties. What broke the power of the 
 barons was the growth of the artisan and trading classes, 
 between whose wages and rent there ia not the same 
 obvious relation. These classes, too, developed under a 
 system of close guilds and corporations, which, as I have 
 previously explained in treating of trade combinations 
 and monopolies, enabled them somewhat to fence them- 
 selves in from the operation of the general law of wages, 
 and which were much more easily maintained than now, 
 when the effect of improved methods of transportation, 
 and the diffusion of rudimentary education and of cur- 
 rent news, is steadily making population more mobile. 
 These classes did not see, and do not yet see, that the 
 tenure of land is the fundamental fact which must ulti- 
 mately determine the conditions of industrial, social, and 
 political life. And so the tendency has been to assimi- 
 late the idea of property in land with that of property in 
 things of human production, and even steps backward 
 have been taken, and been hailed, as steps in advance. 
 The French Constituent Assembly, in 1789, thought it 
 was sweeping away a relic of tyranny when it abolished 
 tithes and imposed the support of the clergy on general 
 taxation. The Abbe Sieyds stood alone when he told 
 them that they were simply remitting to the proprietors 
 a tax which was one of the conditions on which they held 
 their lands, and reimposing it on the labor of the nation. 
 But in vain. The Abbe Sieys, being a priest, was looked 
 on as defending the interests of his order, when in truth 
 he was defending the rights of man. In those tithes,
 
 Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED. 381 
 
 the French people might have retained a large public rev- 
 enue which would not have taken one centime from the 
 wagas of labor or the earnings of capital. 
 
 And so the abolition of the military tenures in England 
 by the Long Parliament, ratified after the accession of 
 Charles IE., though simply an appropriation of public 
 revenues by the feudal land holders, who thus got rid of 
 the consideration on which they held the common prop- 
 erty of the nation, and saddled it on the people at large, 
 in the taxation of all consumers, has long been charac- 
 terized, and is still held up in the law books, as a triumph 
 of the spirit of freedom. Yet here is the source of the 
 immense debt and heavy taxation of England. Had the 
 form of these feudal dues been simply changed into one 
 better adapted to the changed times, English wars need 
 never have occasioned the incurring of debt to the 
 amount of a single pound, and the labor and capital of 
 England need not have been taxed a single farthing for 
 the maintenance of a military establishment. All this 
 would have come from rent, which the land holders since 
 that time have appropriated to themselves from the tar 
 which land ownership levies on the earnings of labor and 
 capital. The land holders of England got their land on 
 terms which required them even in the sparse population 
 of Norman days to put in the field, upon call, sixty thou- 
 sand perfectly equipped horsemen,* and on the further 
 condition of various fines and incidents which amounted 
 to a considerable part of the rent. It would probably be 
 a low estimate to put the pecuniary value of these vari- 
 ous services and dues at one-half the rental value of the 
 land. Had the land holders been kept to this contract 
 
 * Andrew Bisset, in "The Strength of Nations," London, 1859, a 
 suggestive work in which he calls the attention of the English people 
 to this measure by which the land owners avoided the payment of 
 their rent to the nation, disputes the statement of Blackstone that a 
 knight's service was but for 40 days, and says it was during necessity.
 
 382 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 and no land been permitted to be inclosed except upon 
 similar terms, the income accruing to the nation from 
 English land would to-day be greater by many millions 
 than the entire public revenues of the United Kingdom. 
 England to-day might have enjoyed absolute free trade. 
 There need not have been a customs duty, an excise, 
 license, or income tax, yet all the present expenditures 
 could be met, and a large surplus remain to be devoted 
 to any purpose which would conduce to the comfort or 
 well-being of the whole people. 
 
 Turning back, wherever there is light to guide us, we 
 may everywhere see that in their first perceptions, all 
 peoples have recognized the common ownership in land, 
 and that private property is an usurpation, a creation of 
 force and fraud. 
 
 As Madame de Stael said, "Liberty is ancient." Jus- 
 tice, if we turn to the most ancient records, will always be 
 found to have the title of prescription.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 In the earlier stages of civilization we see that land is 
 everywhere regarded as common property. And, turn- 
 ing from the dim past to our own times, we may see that 
 natural perceptions are still the same, and that when 
 placed under circumstances in which the influence of ed- 
 ucation and habit is weakened, men instinctively recog- 
 nize the equality of right to the bounty of nature. 
 
 The discovery of gold in California brought together 
 in a new country men who had been used to look on land 
 as the rightful subject of individual property, and of 
 whom probably not one in a thousand had ever dreamed 
 of drawing any distinction between property in land and 
 property in anything else. But, for the first time in the 
 history of the Anglo-Saxon race, these men were brought 
 into contact with land from which gold could be obtained 
 by the simple operation of washing it out. 
 
 Had the land with which they were thus called upon to 
 deal been agricultural, or grazing, or forest land, of 
 peculiar richness; had it been land which derived peculiar 
 value from its situation for commercial purposes, or by 
 reason of the water power which it afforded; or even had 
 it contained rich mines of coal, iron or lead, the land 
 system to which they had been used would have been 
 applied, and it would have been reduced to private owner- 
 ship in large tracts, as even the pueblo lands of San Fran- 
 cisco, really the most valuable in the State, which by 
 Spanish law had been set apart to furnish homes for the 
 future residents of that city, were reduced, without any
 
 384 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book V1L 
 
 protest worth speaking of. But the novelty of the case 
 broke through habitual ideas, and threw men back upon 
 first principles, and it was by common consent declared 
 that this gold-bearing land should remain common prop- 
 erty, of which no one might take more than he could rea- 
 sonably use, or hold for a longer time than he continued 
 to use it. This perception of natural justice was ac- 
 quiesced in by the General Government and the courts, 
 and while placer mining remained of importance, no at- 
 tempt was made to overrule this reversion to primitive 
 ideas. The title to the land remained in the govern- 
 ment, and no individual could acquire more than a pos- 
 sessory claim. The miners in each district fixed tlie 
 amount of ground an individual could take and the 
 amount of work that must be done to constitute use. If 
 this work were not done, any one could re-locate the 
 ground. Thus, no one was allowed to forestall or to lock 
 tip natural resources. Labor was acknowledged as the 
 creator of wealth, was given a free field, and secured in 
 its reward. The device would not have assured complete 
 equality of rights under the conditions that in most coun- 
 tries prevail; but under the conditions that there and 
 then existed a sparse population, an unexplored coun- 
 try, and an occupation in its nature a lottery, it secured 
 substantial justice. One man might strike an enormously 
 rich deposit, and others might vainly prospect for months 
 and years, but all had an equal chance. No one was al- 
 lowed to play the dog in the manger with the bounty of 
 the Creator. The essential idea of the mining regula- 
 tions was to prevent forestalling and monopoly. Upon 
 the same principle are based the mining laws of Mexico; 
 and the same principle was adopted in Australia, in Brit- 
 ish Columbia, and in the diamond fields of South Africa, 
 for it accords with natural perceptions of justice. 
 
 With the decadence of placer mining iu California, the 
 accustomed idea of private property finally prevailed in
 
 Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 385 
 
 the passage of a law permitting the patenting of mineral 
 lands. The only effect is to lock up opportunities to 
 give the owner of mining ground the power of saying that 
 no one else may use what he does not choose to use him- 
 self. And there are many cases in which mining ground 
 is thus withheld from use for speculative purposes, just 
 as valuable building lots and agricultural land are with- 
 held from use. But while thus preventing use, the ex- 
 tension to mineral land of the same principle of private 
 ownership which marks the tenure of other lands has 
 done nothing for the security of improvements. The 
 greatest expenditures of capital in opening and develop- 
 ing mines expenditures that in some cases amounted to 
 millions of dollars were made upon possessory titles. 
 
 Had the circumstances which beset the first English 
 settlers in North America been such as to call their at- 
 tention de novo to the question of land ownership, there 
 can be no doubt that they would have reverted to first 
 principles, just as they reverted to first principles in 
 matters of government; and individual land ownership 
 would have been rejected, just as aristocracy and mon- 
 archy were rejected. But while in the country from 
 which they came this system had not yet fully developed 
 itself, nor its effects been fully felt, the fact that in the 
 new country an immense continent invited settlement 
 prevented any question of the justice and policy of 
 private property in land from arising. For in a new K 
 country, equality seems sufficiently assured if no one is 
 permitted to take land to the exclusion of the rest. At 
 first no harm seems to be done by treating this land as 
 absolute property. There is plenty of land left for those 
 who choose to take it, and the slavery that in a later 
 stage of development necessarily springs from the in- 
 dividual ownership of land is not felt. 
 
 In Virginia and to the South, where the settlement 
 had an aristocratic character, the natural complement of
 
 386 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 
 
 the large estates into which the land was carved was 
 introduced in the shape of negro slaves. But the first 
 settlers of New England divided the land as, twelve cen- 
 turies before, their ancestors had divided the land of 
 Britain, giving to each head of a family his town lot and 
 his seed lot, while beyond lay the free common. So far 
 as concerned the great proprietors whom the English 
 kings by letters patent endeavored to create, the settlers 
 saw clearly enough the injustice of the attempted monop- 
 oly, and none of these proprietors got much from their 
 grants; but the plentifulness of land prevented attentior 
 from being called to the monopoly which individual land 
 ownership, even when the tracts are small, must involve 
 when land becomes scarce. And so it has come to pass 
 that the great republic of the modern world has adopted 
 at the beginning of its career an institution that ruined 
 the republics of antiquity; that a people who proclaim 
 the inalienable rights of all men to life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness have accepted without question a 
 principle which, in denying the equal and inalienable 
 right to the soil, finally denies the equal right to life and 
 liberty; that a people who at the cost of a bloody war 
 have abolished chattel slavery, yet permit slavery in a 
 more widespread and dangerous form to take root. 
 
 The continent has seemed so wide, the area over which 
 population might yet pour so vast, that familiarized by 
 habit with the idea of private property in land, we have 
 not realized its essential injustice. For not merely has 
 this background of unsettled land prevented the full effect 
 of private appropriation from being felt, even in the older 
 sections, but to permit a man to take more land than he 
 could use, that he might compel those who afterwards 
 needed it to pay him for the privilege of using it, has not 
 seemed so unjust when others in their turn might do the 
 same thing by going further on. And more than this, 
 the very fortunes that have resulted from the appropria-
 
 Chap. V. PBOPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 387 
 
 tion of land, and that have thus really been drawn from 
 taxes levied upon the wages of labor, have seemed, and 
 have been heralded, as prizes held out to the laborer. 
 In all the newer States, and even to a considerable extent 
 in the older ones, our landed aristocracy is yet in its first 
 generation. Those who have profited by the increase in 
 the value of land have been largely men who began life 
 without a cent. Their great fortunes, many of them 
 running up high into the millions, seem to them, and to 
 many others, as the best proofs of the justice of existing 
 social conditions in rewarding prudence, foresight, in- 
 dustry, and thrift; whereas, the truth is that these for- 
 tunes are but the gains of monopoly, and are necessarily 
 made at the expense of labor. But the fact that those 
 thus enriched started as laborers hides this, and the 
 same feeling which leads every ticket holder in a lottery 
 to delight in imagination in the magnitude of the prizes 
 has prevented even the poor from quarreling with a 
 system which thus made many poor men rich. 
 
 In short, the American people have failed to see the 
 essential injustice of private property in land, because as 
 yet they have not felt its full effects. This public 
 domain the vast extent of land yet to be reduced to 
 private possession, the enormous common to which the 
 faces of the energetic were always turned, has been the 
 great fact that, since the days when the first settlements 
 began to fringe the Atlantic Coast, has formed our 
 national character and colored our national thought. It 
 is not that we have eschewed a titled aristocracy and 
 abolished primogeniture; that we elect all our officers 
 from school director up to president; that our laws run 
 in the name of tile people, instead of in the name of a 
 prince; that the State knows no religion, and our judges 
 wear no wigs that we have been exempted from the ills 
 that Fourth of July orators used to point to as character- 
 istic of the effete despotisms of the Old World. The
 
 388 JUSTICE OF THE BEMEDY. Book VII. 
 
 general intelligence, the general comfort, the active in- 
 vention, the power of adaptation and assimilation, the 
 free, independent spirit, the energy and hopefulness that 
 have marked our people, are not causes, but results they 
 have sprung from unfenced land. This public domain 
 has been the transmuting force which has turned the 
 thriftless, unambitious European peasant into the self- 
 reliant Western farmer; it has given a consciousness of 
 freedom even to the dweller in crowded cities, and has 
 been a well-spring of hope even to those who have never 
 thought of taking refuge upon it. The child of the 
 people, as he grows to manhood in Europe, finds all the 
 best seats at the banquet of life marked "taken," and 
 must struggle with his fellows for the crumbs that fall, 
 without one chance in a thousand of forcing or sneaking 
 his way to a seat. In America, whatever his condition, 
 there has always been the consciousness that the public 
 domain lay behind him; and the knowledge of this fact, 
 acting and reacting, has penetrated our whole national 
 life, giving to it generosity and independence, elasticity 
 and ambition. All that we are proud of in the American 
 character; all that makes our conditions and institutions 
 better than those of older countries, we may trace to the 
 fact that land has been cheap in the United States, be- 
 cause new soil has been open to the emigrant. 
 
 But our advance has reacned the Pacific. Further 
 west we cannot go, and increasing population can but 
 expand north and south and fill up what has been passed 
 over. North, it is already filling up the valley of the 
 Red River, pressing into that of the Saskatchewan and 
 pre-empting Washington Territory; south, it is covering 
 Western Texas and taking up the arable valleys of New 
 Mexico and Arizona. 
 
 The republic has entered upon a new era, an era in 
 which the monopoly of the land will tell with accelerat- 
 ing effect. The great fact which has been so potent is
 
 Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 389 
 
 ceasing to be. The public domain is almost gone a 
 very few years will end its influence, already rapidly fail- 
 ing. I do not mean to say that there will be no public 
 domain. For a long time to come there will be millions 
 of acres of public lands carried on the books of the Land 
 Department. But it must be remembered that the best 
 part of the continent for agricultural purposes is already 
 overrun, and that it is the poorest land that is left. It 
 must be remembered that what remains comprises the 
 great mountain ranges, the sterile deserts, the high 
 plains fit only for grazing. And it must be remembered 
 that much of this land which figures in the reports as 
 open to settlement is unsurveyed land, which has been 
 appropriated by possessory claims or locations which do 
 not appear until the land is returned as surveyed. Cali- 
 fornia figures on the books of the Land Department as 
 the greatest land State of the Union, containing nearly 
 100,000,000 acres of public land something like one- 
 twelfth of the whole public domain. Yet so much of 
 this is covered by railroad grants or held in the way of 
 which I have spoken; so much consists of untillable 
 mountains or plains which require irrigation; so much is 
 monopolized by locations which command the water, that 
 as a matter of fact it is difficult to point the immigrant 
 to any part of the State where he can take up a farm on 
 which he can settle and maintain a family, and so men, 
 weary of the quest, end by buying land or renting it on 
 shares. It is not that there is any real scarcity of land 
 in California for, an empire in herself, California will 
 some day maintain a population as large as that of France 
 but appropriation has got ahead of the settler and 
 manages to keep just ahead of him. 
 
 Some twelve or fifteen years ago the late Ben Wade of 
 Ohio said, in a speech in the United States Senate, that 
 by the close of this century every acre of ordinary agricul- 
 tural land in the United States would be worth $50 in
 
 390 JUSTICE OP THE KEMEDY. Book VtL 
 
 gold. It is already clear that if he erred at all, it was in 
 overstating the time. In the twenty-one years that re- 
 main of the present century, if our population keep on 
 increasing at the rate which it has maintained since the 
 institution of the government, with the exception of the 
 decade which included the civil war, there will be an 
 addition to our present population of something like 
 forty-five millions, an addition of some seven millions 
 more than the total population of the United States as 
 shown by the census of 1870, and nearly half as much 
 again as the present population of Great Britain. There 
 is no question about the ability of the United States to 
 support such a population and many hundreds of mil- 
 lions more, and, under proper social adjustments, to 
 support them in increased comfort; but in view of such 
 an increase of population, what becomes of the unappro- 
 priated public domain? Practically there will soon cease 
 to be any. It will be a very long time before it is all in 
 use; but it will be a very short time, as we are going, be- 
 fore all that men can turn to use will have an owner. 
 
 But the evil effects of making the land of a whole peo- 
 ple the exclusive property of some do not wait for the 
 final appropriation of the public domain to show them- 
 selves. It is not necessary to contemplate them in the 
 future; we may see them in the present. They have 
 grown with our growth, and are still increasing. 
 
 We plow new fields, we open new mines, we found 
 new cities; we drive back the Indian and exterminate 
 the buffalo; we girdle the land with iron roads and lace 
 the air with telegraph wires; we add knowledge to 
 knowledge, and utilize invention after invention; we 
 build schools and endow colleges; yet it becomes no 
 easier for the masses of our people to make a living. 
 On the contrary, it is becoming harder. The wealthy class 
 is becoming more wealthy; but the poorer class is be- 
 coming more dependent. The gulf between the em-
 
 Chap. V. PBOPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 391 
 
 ployed and the employer is growing wider; social con- 
 trasts are becoming sharper; as liveried carriages appear, 
 so do barefooted children. We are becoming used to 
 talk of the working classes and the propertied classes; 
 beggars are becoming so common that where it was once 
 thought a crime little short of highway robbery to refuse 
 food to one who asked for it, the gate is now barred and 
 the bulldog loosed, while laws are passed against vagrants 
 which suggest those of Henry VIII. 
 
 "We call ourselves the most progressive people on earth. 
 But what is the goal of our progress, if these are its 
 wayside fruits? 
 
 These are the results of private property in land the 
 effects of a principle that must act with increasing and 
 increasing force. It is not that laborers have increased 
 faster than capital; it is not that population is pressing 
 against subsistence; it is not that machinery has made 
 "work scarce;" it is not that there is any real antagonism 
 between labor and capital it is simply that land is becom- 
 ing more valuable; that the terms on which labor can 
 obtain access to the natural opportunities which alone 
 enable it to produce are becoming harder and harder. 
 The public domain is receding and narrowing. Property 
 in land is concentrating. The proportion of our people 
 who have no legal right to the land on which they live is 
 becoming steadily larger. 
 
 Says the New York World'. "A non-resident pro- 
 prietary, like that of Ireland, is getting to be the char- 
 acteristic of large farming districts in New England, 
 adding yearly to the nominal value of leasehold farms; 
 advancing yearly the rent demanded, and steadily de- 
 grading the character of the tenantry." And the 
 Nation, alluding to the same section, says: "Increased 
 nominal value of land, higher rents, fewer farms occu- 
 pied by owners; diminished product; lower wages; a 
 more ignorant population; increasing number of women
 
 392 JUSTICE OF THE EEMEDY. Book VIL 
 
 employed at hard, outdoor labor (surest sign of a de 
 clining civilization), and a steady deterioration in the 
 style of farming these are the conditions described by a 
 cumulative mass of evidence that is perfectly irresistible." 
 
 The same tendency is observable in the new States, 
 where the large scale of cultivation recalls the latifundia 
 that ruined ancient Italy. In California a very large 
 proportion of the farming land is rented from year to 
 year, at rates varying from a fourth to even half the 
 crop. 
 
 The harder times, the lower wages, the increasing 
 poverty perceptible in the United States are but results 
 of the natural laws we have traced laws as universal and 
 as irresistible as that of gravitation. We did not estab- 
 lish the republic when, in the face of principalities and 
 powers, we flung the declaration of the inalienable rights 
 of man; we shall never establish the republic until we 
 practically carry out that declaration by securing to the 
 poorest child born among us an equal right to his native 
 soil! We did not abolish slavery when we ratified the 
 Fourteenth Amendment; to abolish slavery we must 
 abolish private property in land! Unless we come back 
 to first principles, unless we recognize natural percep- 
 tions of equity, unless we acknowledge the equal right of 
 all to laud, our free institutions will be in vain; our com- 
 mon schools will be in vain; our discoveries and inven- 
 tions will but add to the force that presses the masses 
 ''own I
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE EEMEDY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT 
 WITH THE BEST USE OF LAND. 
 
 CHAPTER II. HOW EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE 
 ASSERTED AND SECURED. 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS 
 OF TAXATION. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS.
 
 Why hesitate ? Ye are full-bearded men, 
 
 With God-implanted will, and courage if 
 
 Ye dare but show it. Never yet was will 
 
 But found some way or means to work it out, 
 
 Nor e'er did Fortune frown on him who dared. 
 
 Shall we in presence of this grievous wrong, 
 
 In this supremest moment of all time, 
 
 Stand trembling, cowering, when with one bold stroke 
 
 These groaning millions might be ever free ? 
 
 And that one stroke so just, so greatly good, 
 
 So level with the happiness of man, 
 
 That all the angels will applaud the deed. 
 
 E. R. Taylor.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT WITH THE 
 BEST USE OF LAND. 
 
 There is a delusion resulting from the tendency to 
 confound the accidental with the essential a delusion 
 which the law writers have done their best to extend, 
 and political economists generally have acquiesced in, 
 rather than endeavored to expose that private property 
 in land is necessary to the proper use of land, and that 
 again to make land common property would be to destroy 
 civilization and revert to barbarism. 
 
 This delusion may be likened to the idea which, ac- 
 cording to Charles Lamb, so long prevailed among the 
 Chinese after the savor of roast pork had been accident- 
 ally discovered by the burning down of Ho-ti's hut that 
 to cook a pig it was necessary to set fire to a house. But, 
 though in Lamb's charming dissertation it was required 
 that a sage should arise to teach people that they might 
 roast pigs without burning down houses, it does not take 
 a sage to see that what is required for the improvement 
 of land is not absolute ownership of the land, but secur- 
 ity for the improvements. This will be obvious to who- 
 ever will look around him. While there is no more 
 necessity for making a man the absolute and exclusive 
 owner of land, in order to induce him to improve it, than 
 there is of burning down a house in order to cook a pig; 
 while the making of land private property is as rude, 
 wasteful, and uncertain a device for securing improve- 
 ment, as the burning down of a house is a rude, waste- 
 ful, and uncertain device for roasting a pig, we have not
 
 396 APPLICATION OF THE EEMEDT. Book VIII 
 
 the excuse for persisting in the one that Lamb's China- 
 men had for persisting in the other. Until the sage 
 arose who invented the rude gridiron, which according 
 to Lamb, preceded the spit and oven, no one had known 
 or heard of a pig being roasted, except by a house being 
 burned. But, among us, nothing is more common than 
 for land to be improved by those who do not own it. 
 The greater part of the land of Great Britain is culti- 
 vated by tenants, the greater part of the buildings of 
 London are built upon leased ground, and even in the 
 United States the same system prevails everywhere to a 
 greater or less extent. Thus it is a common matter for 
 use to be separated from ownership. 
 
 Would not all this land be cultivated and improved 
 just as well if the rent went to the State or municipality, 
 as now, when it goes to private individuals? If no 
 private ownership in land were acknowledged, but all 
 land were held in this way, the occupier or user paying 
 rent to the State, would not land be used and improved 
 as well and as securely as now? There can be but one 
 answer: Of course it would. Then would the resumption 
 of land as common property in nowise interfere with the 
 proper use and improvement of land. 
 
 What is necessary for the use of land is not its private 
 ownership, but the security of improvements. It is not 
 necessary to say to a man, "this land is yours," in order 
 to induce him to cultivate or improve it. It is only nec- 
 essary to say to him, "whatever your labor or capital 
 produces on this land shall be yours." Give a man 
 security that he may reap, and he will sow; assure him of 
 the possession of the house he wants to build, and he 
 will build it. These are the natural rewards of labor. It 
 is for the sake of the reaping that men sow; it is for the 
 sake of possessing houses that men build. The owner- 
 ship of land has nothing to do with it. 
 
 It was for the sake of obtaining this security, that in
 
 Chap. 1. OWNEBSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND. 397 
 
 the beginning of the feudal period so many of the smaller 
 land holders surrendered the ownership of their lands to 
 a military chieftain, receiving back the use of them in 
 fief or trust, and kneeling bareheaded before the lord, 
 with their hands between his hands, swore to serve him 
 with life, and limb, and worldly honor. Similar in- 
 stances of the giving up of ownership in land for the 
 sake of security in its enjoyment are to be seen in 
 Turkey, where a peculiar exemption from taxation and 
 extortion attaches to vakouf, or church lands, and where 
 it is a common thing for a land owner to sell his land to 
 a mosque for a nominal price, with the understanding 
 that he may remain as tenant upon it at a fixed rent. 
 
 It is not the magic of property, as Arthur Young said, 
 that has turned Flemish sands into fruitful fields. It is 
 the magic of security to labor. This can be secured in 
 other ways than making land private property, just as 
 the heat necessary to roast a pig can be secured in other 
 ways than by burning down houses. The mere pledge of 
 an Irish landlord that for twenty years he would not 
 claim in rent any share in their cultivation induced Irish 
 peasants to turn a barren mountain into gardens; on 
 the mere security of a fixed ground rent for a term of 
 years the most costly buildings of such cities as London 
 and New York are erected on leased ground. If we give 
 improvers such security, we may safely abolish private 
 property in land. 
 
 The complete recognition of common rights to land 
 need in no way interfere with the complete recognition 
 of individual right to improvements or produce. Two 
 men may own a ship without sawing her in half. The 
 ownership of a railway may be divided into a hundred 
 thousand shares, and yet trains be run with as much 
 system and precision as if there were but a single owner. 
 In London, joint stock companies have been formed to 
 hold and manage real estate. Everything could go on as
 
 398 APPLICATION OP THE REMEDY. Book VOL 
 
 now, and yet the common right to land be fully recog- 
 nized by appropriating rent to the common benefit. 
 There is a lot in the center of San Francisco to which 
 the common rights of the people of that city are yet 
 legally recognized. This lot is not cut up into infinites- 
 imal pieces nor yet is it an unused waste. It is covered 
 with fine buildings, the property of private individuals, 
 that stand there in perfect security. The only difference 
 between this lot and those around it, is that the rent of 
 the one goes into the common school fund, the rent of 
 the others into private pockets. What is to prevent the 
 land of a whole country being held by the people of the 
 country in this way? 
 
 It would be difficult to select any portion of the terri- 
 tory of the United States in which the conditions com- 
 monly taken to necessitate the reduction of land to 
 private ownership exist in higher degree than on the 
 little islets of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the Aleutian 
 Archipelago, acquired by the Alaska purchase from 
 Russia. These islands are the breeding places of the 
 fur seal, an animal so timid and wary that the slightest 
 fright causes it to abandon its accustomed resort, never 
 to return. To prevent the utter destruction of this 
 fishery, without which the islands are of no use to man, 
 it is not only necessary to avoid killing the females and 
 young cubs, but even such noises as the discharge of a 
 pistol or the barking of a dog. The men who do the 
 killing must be in no hurry, but quietly walk around 
 among the seals who line the rocky beaches, until the 
 timid animals, so clumsy on land but so graceful in 
 water, show no more sign of fear than lazily to waddle 
 out of the way. Then those who can be killed without 
 diminution of future increase are carefully separated and 
 gently driven inland, out of sight and hearing of the 
 herds, where they are dispatched with clubs. To throw 
 such a fishery as this open to whoever chose to go and
 
 Chap. I. OWNERSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND. 399 
 
 kill which wonld make it to the interest of each party 
 to kill as many as they conld at the time without refer- 
 ence to the future would be utterly to destroy it in a 
 few seasons, as similar fisheries in other oceans have 
 been destroyed. But it is not necessary, therefore, to 
 make these islands private property. Though for 
 reasons greatly less cogent, the great public domain of 
 the American people has been made over to private 
 ownership as fast as anybody could be got to take it, 
 these islands have been leased at a rent of $317,500 per 
 year,* probably not very much less than they could have 
 been sold for at the time of the Alaska purchase. They 
 have already yielded two millions and a half to the 
 national treasury, and they are still, in unimpaired value 
 (for under the careful management of the Alaska Fur 
 Company the seals increase rather than diminish), the 
 common property of the people of the United States. 
 
 So far from the recognition of private property in land 
 being necessary to the proper use of land, the contrary is 
 the case. Treating land as private property stands in the 
 way of its proper use. Were land treated as public 
 property it would be used and improved as soon as there 
 was need for its use or improvement, but being treated 
 as private property, the individual owner is permitted to 
 prevent others from using or improving what he cannot 
 or will not use or improve himself. When the title is in 
 dispute, the most valuable land lies unimproved for 
 years; in many parts of England improvement is stopped 
 because, the estates being entailed, no security to im- 
 provers can be given; and large tracts of ground which, 
 were they treated as public property, would be covered 
 with buildings and crops, are kept idle to gratify the 
 
 * The fixed rent under the lease to the Alaska Fur Company Is 
 $55,000 a year, with a payment of $2.62 1-2 on each skin, which on 
 100,000 skins, to which the take is limited, amounts to $262,500 a 
 total rent of $317,500.
 
 400 APPLICATION OP THE REMEDY. Book VTTL 
 
 caprice of the owner. In the thickly settled parts of the 
 United States there is enough land to maintain three or 
 four times our present population, lying unused, because 
 its owners are holding it for higher prices, and im- 
 migrants are forced past this unused land to seek homes 
 where their labor will be far less productive. In every 
 city valuable lots may be seen lying vacant for the same 
 reason. If the best use of land be the test, then private 
 property in land is condemned, as it is condemned by 
 every other consideration. It is as wasteful and uncer- 
 tain a mode of securing the proper use of land as the 
 burning down of houses is of roasting pigs.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE ASSERTED 
 AND SECURED. 
 
 We have traced the want and suffering that every- 
 where prevail among the working classes, the recurring 
 paroxysms of industrial depression, the scarcity of em- 
 ployment, the stagnation of capital, the tendency of 
 wages to the starvation point, that exhibit themselves 
 more and more strongly as material progress goes on, to 
 the fact that the land on which and from which all must 
 live is made the exclusive property of some. 
 
 We have seen that there is no possible remedy for these 
 evils but the abolition of their cause; we have seen that 
 private property in land has no warrant in justice, but 
 stands condemned as the denial of natural right a sub- 
 version of the law of nature that as social development 
 goes on must condemn the masses of men to a slavery the 
 hardest and most degrading. 
 
 We have weighed every objection, and seen that neither 
 on the ground of equity or expediency is there anything 
 to deter us from making land common property by con- 
 fiscating rent. 
 
 But a question of method remains. How shall we do 
 it? 
 
 We should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet 
 all economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing 
 all private titles, declaring all land public property, and 
 letting it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit, under 
 such conditions as would sacredly guard the private right 
 to improvements. 
 
 Thus we should secure, in a more complex state of
 
 402 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book V1IL 
 
 \ 
 
 society, the same equality of rights that in a ruder state 
 were secured by equal partitions of the soil, and by giv- 
 ing the use of the land to whoever could procure the 
 most from it, we should secure the greatest production. 
 
 Such a plan, instead of being a wild, impracticable 
 vagary, has (with the exception that he suggests com- 
 pensation to the present holders of land undoubtedly a 
 careless concession which he upon reflection would recon- 
 sider) been indorsed by no less eminent a thinker than 
 Herbert Spencer, who ("Social Statics," Chap. IX, Sec. 
 8) says of it: 
 
 " Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civiliza- 
 tion; may be carried out without involving a community of goods, 
 and need cause no very serious revolution in existing arrangements. 
 The change required would simply be a change of landlords. Sepa- 
 rate ownership would merge into the joint-stock ownership of the 
 public. Instead of being in the possession of individuals, the coun- 
 try would be held by the great corporate body society. Instead of 
 leasing his acres from an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease 
 them from the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of 
 Sir John or his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or deputy agent 
 of the community. Stewards would be public officials instead of 
 private ones, and tenancy the only land tenure. A state of things 
 so ordered would be in perfect harmony with the moral law. Under 
 it all men would be equally landlords, all men would be alike free 
 to become tenants. * * * Clearly, therefore, on such a system, 
 the earth might be enclosed, occupied and cultivated, in entire sub- 
 ordination to the law of equal freedom." 
 
 But such a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not 
 seem to me the best. Or rather I propose to accomplish 
 the same thing in a simpler, easier, and quieter way, 
 than that of formally confiscating all the land and 
 formally letting it out to the highest bidders. 
 
 To do that would involve a needless shock to present 
 customs and habits of thought which is to be avoided. 
 
 To do that would involve a needless extension of gov- 
 ernmental machinery which is to be avoided.
 
 . HOW EQUAL BIGHTS MAY BE AS8EETED. 403 
 
 It is an axiom of statesmanship, which the successful 
 founders of tyranny have understood and acted upon 
 that great changes can best be brought about under old 
 forms. We, who would free men, should heed the same 
 truth. It is the natural method. When nature would 
 make a higher type, she takes a lower one and develops 
 it. This, also, is the law of social growth. Let us work 
 by it. With the current we may glide fast and far. 
 Against it, it is hard pulling and slow progress. 
 
 I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate 
 private property in land. The first would be unjust; 
 the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold 
 it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they 
 are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call 
 it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and 
 devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we 
 take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it 
 is only necessary to confiscate rent. 
 
 Nor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that the 
 State should bother with the letting of lands, and assume 
 the chances of the favoritism, collusion, and corruption 
 this might involve. It is not necessary that any new 
 machinery should be created. The machinery already 
 exists. Instead of extending it, all we have to do is to 
 simplify and reduce it. By leaving to land owners a 
 percentage of rent which would probably be much less 
 than the cost and loss involved in attempting to rent 
 lands through State agency, and by making use of this 
 existing machinery, we may, without jar or shock, assert 
 the common right to land by taking rent for public uses. 
 
 We already take some rent in taxation. We have only 
 to make some changes in our modes of taxation to take 
 it all. 
 
 What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sovereign 
 remedy, which will raise wages, increase the earnings of 
 capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give re-
 
 404 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIIL 
 
 munerative employment to whoever wishes it, afford free 
 scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate morals, 
 and taste, and intelligence, purify government and carry 
 civilization to yet nobler heights, is to appropriate rent 
 by taxation. 
 
 In this way the State may become the universal land- 
 lord without calling herself so, and without assuming a 
 single new function. In form, the ownership of land 
 would remain just as now. No owner of land need be 
 dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon the 
 amount of land any one could hold. For, rent being 
 taken by the State in taxes, land, no matter in whose 
 name it stood, or in what parcels it was held, would be 
 really common property, and every member of the com- 
 munity would participate in the advantages of its owner- 
 ship. 
 
 Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land values, 
 must necessarily be increased just as we abolish other 
 taxes, we may put the proposition into practical form by 
 proposing 
 
 To abolish all taxation save that upon land values. 
 
 As we have seen, the value of land is at the beginning 
 of society nothing, but as society develops by the in- 
 crease of population and the advance of the arts, it 
 becomes greater and greater. In every civilized country, 
 even the newest, the value of the land taken as a whole is 
 sufficient to bear the entire expenses of government. In 
 the better developed countries it is much more than 
 sufficient. Hence it will not be enough merely to place 
 all taxes upon the value of land. It will be necessary, 
 where rent exceeds the present governmental revenues, 
 commensurately to increase the amount demanded in 
 taxation, and to continue this increase as society pro- 
 gresses and rent advances. But this is so natural and 
 easy a matter, that it may be considered as involved, or 
 at least understood, in the proposition to put all taxes
 
 Chap. JL HOW EQUAL EIGHTS MAY BE ASSERTED. 405 
 
 on the value of land. That is the first step, upon which 
 the practical struggle must be made. When the hare is 
 once caught and killed, cooking him will follow as a 
 matter of course. When the common right to land is so 
 far appreciated that all taxes are abolished save those 
 which fall upon rent, there is no danger of much more 
 than is necessary to induce them to collect the public 
 revenues being left to individual land holders. 
 
 Experience has taught me (for I have been for some 
 years endeavoring to popularize this proposition) that 
 wherever the idea of concentrating all taxation upon land 
 values finds lodgment sufficient to induce consideration, 
 it invariably makes way, but that there are few of the 
 classes most to be benefited by it, who at first, or even 
 for a long time afterward, see its full significance and 
 power. It is difficult for workingmen to get over the 
 idea that there is a real antagonism between capital and 
 labor. It is difficult for small farmers and homestead 
 owners to get over the idea that to put all taxes on the 
 value of land would be unduly to tax them. It is diffi- 
 cult for both classes to get over the idea that to exempt 
 capital from taxation would be to make the rich richer, 
 and the poor poorer. These ideas spring from confused 
 thought. But behind ignorance and prejudice there is 
 a powerful interest, which has hitherto dominated litera- 
 ture, education, and opinion. A great wrong always 
 dies hard, and the great wrong which in every civilized 
 country condemns the masses of men to poverty and 
 want, will not die without a bitter struggle. 
 
 I do not think the ideas of which I speak can be enter- 
 tained by the reader who has followed me thus far; but 
 inasmuch as any popular discussion must deal with the 
 concrete, rather than with the abstract, let me ask him 
 to follow me somewhat further, that we may try the 
 remedy I have proposed by the accepted canons of taxa- 
 tion. In doing so, many incidental bearings may be seen 
 that otherwise might escape notice.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 
 
 The best tax by which public revenues can be raised 
 is evidently that which will closest conform to the fol- 
 lowing conditions: 
 
 1. That it bear as lightly as possible upon production 
 so as least to check the increase of the general fund 
 from which taxes must be paid and the community main- 
 tained. 
 
 2. That it be easily and cheaply collected, and fall as 
 directly as may be upon the ultimate payers so as to 
 take from the people as little as possible in addition to 
 what it yields the government. 
 
 3. That it be certain so as to give the least opportu- 
 nity for tyranny or corruption on the part of officials, and 
 the least temptation to law-breaking and evasion on the 
 part of the taxpayers. 
 
 4. That it bear equally so as to give no citizen an 
 advantage or put any at a disadvantage, as compared 
 with others. 
 
 Let us consider what form of taxation best accords 
 with these conditions. Whatever it be, that evidently 
 will be the best mode in which the public revenues can 
 be raised. 
 
 7. The Effect of Taxes upon Production. 
 
 All taxes must evidently come from the produce of 
 land and labor, since there is no other source of wealth 
 than the union of human exertion with the material and
 
 Chap.m. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 407 
 
 forces of nature. But the manner in which equal 
 amounts of taxation may be imposed may very differently 
 affect the production of wealth. Taxation which lessens 
 the reward of the producer necessarily lessens the incen- 
 tive to production; taxation which is conditioned upon 
 the act of production, or the use of any of the three 
 factors of production, necessarily discourages produc- 
 tion. Thus taxation which diminishes the earnings of 
 the laborer or the returns of the capitalist tends to ren- 
 der the one less industrious and intelligent, the other 
 less disposed to save and invest. Taxation which falls 
 upon the processes of production interposes an artificial 
 obstacle to the creation of wealth. Taxation which falls 
 upon labor as it is exerted, wealth as it is used as capital, 
 and as it is cultivated, will manifestly tend to discourage 
 production much more powerfully than taxation to the 
 same amount levied upon laborers, whether they work or 
 play, upon wealth whether used productively or unpro- 
 ductively, or upon land whether cultivated or left waste. 
 
 The mode of taxation is, in fact, quite as important as 
 the amount. As a small burden badly placed may dis- 
 tress a horse that could carry with ease a much larger 
 one properly adjusted, so a people may be impoverished 
 and their power of producing wealth destroyed by taxa- 
 tion, which, if levied in another way, could be borne with 
 ease. A tax on date-trees, imposed by Mohammed AH, 
 caused the Egyptian fellahs to cut down their trees; but 
 a tax of twice the amount imposed on the land produced 
 no such result. The tax of ten per cent, on all sales, 
 imposed by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, would, 
 had it been maintained, have all but stopped exchange 
 while yielding but little revenue. 
 
 But we need not go abroad for illustrations. The 
 production of wealth in the United States is largely 
 lessened by taxation which bears upon its processes. 
 Ship-building, in which we excelled, has been all but
 
 408 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Boole VIll. 
 
 destroyed, so far as the foreign trade is concerned, and 
 many branches of production and exchange seriously 
 crippled, by taxes which divert industry from more to 
 less productive forms. 
 
 This checking of production is in greater or less de- 
 gree characteristic of most of the taxes by which the 
 revenues of modern governments are raised. All taxes 
 upon manufactures, all taxes upon commerce, all taxes 
 upon capital, all taxes upon improvements, are of this 
 kind. Their tendency is the same as that of Mohammed 
 Ali's tax on date-trees, though their effect may not be so 
 clearly seen. 
 
 All such taxes have a tendency to reduce the produc- 
 tion of wealth, and should, therefore, never be resorted 
 to when it is possible to raise money by taxes which do 
 not check production. This becomes possible as society 
 develops and wealth accumulates. Taxes which fall 
 upon ostentation would simply turn into the public 
 treasury what otherwise would be wasted in vain show 
 for the sake of show; and taxes upon wills and devises of 
 the rich would probably have little effect in checking 
 the desire for accumulation, which, after it has fairly got 
 hold of a man, becomes a blind passion. But the great 
 class of taxes from which revenue may be derived with- 
 out interference with production are taxes upon monop- 
 olies for the profit of monopoly is in itself a tax levied 
 upon production, and to tax it is simply to divert into 
 the public coffers what production must in any event 
 
 Pay- 
 There are among us various sorts of monopolies. For 
 instance, there are the temporary monopolies created by 
 the patent and copyright laws. These it would be ex- 
 tremely unjust and unwise to tax, inasmuch as they are 
 but recognitions of the right of labor to its intangible 
 productions, and constitute a reward held out to inven-
 
 Chap. III. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 409 
 
 tion and authorship.* There are also the onerous monop- 
 olies alluded to in Chapter IV of Book III, which result 
 from the aggregation of capital in businesses which are of 
 the nature of monopolies. But while it would be ex- 
 tremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, to levy 
 taxes by general law so that they would fall exclusively 
 on the returns of such monopoly and not become taxes 
 on production or exchange, it is much better that these 
 monopolies should be abolished. In large part they 
 spring from legislative commission or omission, as, for 
 instance, the ultimate reason that San Francisco mer- 
 chants are compelled to pay more for goods sent direct 
 from New York to San Francisco by the Isthmus route 
 than it costs to ship them from New York to Liverpool 
 or Southampton and thence to San Francisco, is to be 
 found in the "protective" laws which make it so costly 
 
 * Following the habit of confounding the exclusive right granted 
 by a patent and that granted by a copyright as recognitions of the 
 right of labor to its intangible productions, I in this fell into error 
 which I subsequently acknowledged and corrected in the Standard 
 of June 23, 1888. The two things are not alike, but essentially 
 different. The copyright is not a right to the exclusive use of a fact, 
 an idea, or a combination, which by the natural law of property all 
 are free to use; but only to the labor expended in the thing itself. 
 It does not prevent any one from using for himself the facts, the 
 knowledge, the laws or combinations for a similar production, but 
 only from using the identical form of the particular book or other 
 production the actual labor which has in short been expended in 
 producing it. It rests therefore upon the natural, moral right of 
 each one to enjoy the products of his own exertion, and involves no 
 interference with the similar right of any one else to do likewise. 
 
 The patent, on the other hand, prohibits any one from doing a 
 similar thing, and involves, usually for a specified time, an interference 
 with the equal liberty on which the right of ownership rests. The 
 copyright is therefore in accordance with the moral law it gives to 
 the man who has expended the intangible labor required to write a 
 particular book or paint a picture security against the copying of that 
 identical thing. The patent is in defiance of this natural right. It 
 prohibits others from doing what has been already attempted. Every
 
 410 APPLICATION OF THE BEMEDY. Book VHl. 
 
 to build American steamers and which forbid foreign 
 steamers to carry goods between American ports. The 
 reason that residents of Nevada are compelled to pay as 
 much freight from the East as though their goods were 
 carried to San Francisco and back again, is that the 
 authority which prevents extortion on the part of a hack 
 driver is not exercised in respect to a railroad company. 
 And it may be said generally that businesses which are in 
 their nature monopolies are properly part of the functions 
 of the State, and should be assumed by the State. There 
 is the same reason why Government should carry tele- 
 graphic messages as that it should carry letters; that rail- 
 roads should belong to the public as that common roads 
 should. 
 
 But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as com- 
 pared with the monopoly of land. And the value of land 
 expressing a monopoly, pure and simple, is in every re- 
 spect fitted for taxation. That is to say, while the value 
 of a railroad or telegraph line, the price of gas or of a 
 patent medicine, may express the price of monopoly, it 
 also expresses the exertion of labor and capital; but the 
 value of land, or economic rent, as we have seen, is in no 
 part made up from these factors, and expresses nothing 
 but the advantage of appropriation. Taxes levied upon 
 the value of land cannot check production in the slight- 
 est degree, until they exceed rent, or the value of land 
 
 one has a moral right to think what I think, or to perceive what I 
 perceive, or to do what I do no matter whether he gets the hint from 
 me or independently of me. Discovery can give no right of owner- 
 ship, for whatever is discovered must have been already here to be 
 discovered. If a man make a wheelbarrow, or a book, or a picture, 
 he has a moral right to that particular wheelbarrow, or book, or pic- 
 ture, but no right to ask that others be prevented from making sim- 
 ilar things. Such a prohibition, though given for the purpose of 
 stimulating discovery and invention, really in the long run operates 
 as a check upon them.
 
 Chap.m. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 411 
 
 taken annually, for unlike taxes upon commodities, or 
 exchange, or capital, or any of the tools or processes of 
 production, they do not bear upon production. The 
 value of land does not express the reward of production, 
 as does the value of crops, of cattle, of buildings, or any of 
 the things which are styled personal property and improve- 
 ments. It expresses the exchange value of monopoly. 
 It is not in any case the creation of the individual who 
 owns the land; it is created by the growth of the com- 
 munity. Hence the community can take it all without 
 in any way lessening the incentive to improvement or in 
 the slightest degree lessening the production of wealth. 
 Taxes may be imposed upon the value of land until all 
 rent is taken by the State, without reducing the wages 
 of labor or the reward of capital one iota; without in- 
 creasing the price of a single commodity, or making pro- 
 duction in any way more difficult. 
 
 But more than this. Taxes on the value of land not 
 only do not check production as do most other taxes, but 
 they tend to increase production, by destroying specula- 
 tive rent. How speculative rent checks production may 
 be seen not only in the valuable land withheld from use, 
 but in the paroxysms of industrial depression which, 
 originating in the speculative advance in land values, 
 propagate themselves over the whole civilized world, 
 everywhere paralyzing industry, and causing more waste 
 and probably more suffering than would a general war. 
 Taxation which would take rent for public uses would 
 prevent all this; while if land were taxed to anything 
 near its rental value, no one could afford to hold land 
 that he was not using, and, consequently, land not in 
 use would be thrown open to those who would use it. 
 Settlement would be closer, and, consequently, labor and 
 capital would be enabled to produce much more with the 
 same exertion. The dog in the manger who, in this 
 country especially, so wastes productive power, would be 
 choked off.
 
 APPLICATION 0? TEH EZKHBY. P-:o fUL 
 
 I yet an even more important way by which, 
 through its effect upon distribution, the taking of rent 
 to public oses by taxation would stimulate the produc- 
 tion of wealth. But reference to that may be reserved. 
 It is sufficiently evident that with regard to production, 
 the tax upon the value of land is the best tax that can be 
 imposed. Tax manufactures, and the effect is to check 
 manufacturing; tax improvements, and the effect is to 
 lessen improvement; tax commerce, and the effect is to 
 utcvent exchange; tax capital, and the effect is to drive 
 it away. But the whole value of land may be taken in 
 taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate industry, 
 to open new opportunities to capital, and to increase the 
 production of wealth. 
 
 U.A* to Eaae and CJuapmu* of Cotteetom. 
 
 With, perhaps, the exception of certain licenses and 
 stamp duties, which may be made almost to collect them- 
 selves, bat which can be relied on for only a trivial 
 amount of revenue, a tax upon land values can, of all 
 taxes, be most easily and cheaply collected. For land 
 cannot be hidden or carried off; its value can be readily 
 smlsiiM'd, and the * iiimi nl once made, nothing but 
 a receiver is required for collection. 
 
 And as under all fiscal systems some part of the public 
 revenues is collected from taxes on land, and the 
 machinery for that purpose already exists and could as 
 well be made to collect all as apart, the cost of collecting 
 the revenue now obtained by other taxes might be en- 
 tirely saved by substituting the tax on land values for all 
 ether taxes. What an enormous saving might thus be 
 made can be inferred from the horde of officials now en- 
 gaged in collecting these taxes. 
 
 This saving would largely reduce the difference be- 
 tween what taxation now costs the people and what H 
 yields, bat the substitution of a tax on land values for
 
 Chap. III. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 413 
 
 all other taxes would operate to reduce this difference in 
 an even more important way. 
 
 A tax on land values does not add to prices, and is thus 
 paid directly by the persons on whom it falls; whereas, 
 all taxes upon things of unfixed quantity increase prices, 
 and in the course of exchange are shifted from seller to 
 buyer, increasing as they go. If we impose a tax upon 
 money loaned, as has been often attempted, the lender 
 will charge the tax to the borrower, and the borrower 
 must pay it or not obtain the loan. If the borrower uses 
 it in his business, he in his turn must get back the tax 
 from his customers, or his business becomes unprofitable. 
 If we impose a tax upon buildings, the users of buildings 
 must finally pay it, for the erection of buildings will 
 cease until building rents become high enough to pay 
 the regular profit and the tax besides. If we impose a 
 tax upon manufactures or imported goods, the manufac- 
 turer or importer will charge it in a higher price to the job- 
 ber, the jobber to the retailer, and the retailer to the 
 consumer. Now, the consumer, on whom the tax thus 
 ultimately falls, must not only pay the amount of the tax, 
 but also a profit on this amount to every one who has thus 
 advanced it for profit on the capital he has advanced in 
 paying taxes is as much required by each dealer as profit 
 on the capital he has advanced in paying for goods. 
 Manila cigars cost, when bought of the importer in San 
 Francisco, $70 a thousand, of which $14 is the cost of 
 the cigars laid down in this port and $56 is the customs 
 duty. But the dealer who purchases these cigars to 
 sell again must charge a profit, not on $14, the real cost 
 of the cigars, but on $70, the cost of the cigars plus the 
 duty. In this way all taxes which add to prices are 
 shifted from hand to hand, increasing as they go, until 
 they ultimately rest upon consumers, who thus pay much 
 more than is received by the government. Now, the 
 way taxes raise prices is by increasing the cost of pro-
 
 414 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIII 
 
 duction, and checking supply. But land is not a thing 
 of human production, and taxes upon rent cannot check 
 supply. Therefore, though a tax on rent compels the 
 land owners to pay more, it gives them no power to 
 obtain more for the use of their land, as it in no way 
 tends to reduce the supply of land. On the contrary, 
 by compelling those who hold land on speculation to sell 
 or let for what they can get, a tax on land values tends 
 to increase the competition between owners, and thus to 
 reduce the price of land. 
 
 Thus in all respects a tax upon land values is the 
 cheapest tax by which a large revenue can be raised 
 giving to the government the largest net revenue in pro- 
 portion to the amount taken from the people. 
 
 III. As to Certainty. 
 
 Certainty is an important element in taxation, for just 
 as the collection of a tax depends upon the diligence and 
 faithfulness of the collectors and the public spirit and 
 honesty of those who are to pay it, will opportunities 
 for tyranny and corruption be opened on the one side, 
 and for evasions and frauds on the other. 
 
 The methods by which the bulk of our revenues are 
 collected are condemned on this ground, if on no other. 
 The gross corruptions and fraud occasioned in the 
 United States by the whisky and tobacco taxes are well 
 known; the constant undervaluations of the Custom 
 House, the ridiculous untruthfulness of income tax re- 
 turns, and the absolute impossibility of getting anything 
 like a just valuation of personal property, are matters of 
 notoriety. The material loss which such taxes inflict 
 the item of cost which this uncertainty adds to the 
 amount paid by the people but not received by the gov- 
 ernment is very great. When, in the days of the pro- 
 tective system of England, her coasts were lined with an 
 army of men endeavoring to prevent smuggling, and an-
 
 Chap. III. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 415 
 
 other army of men were engaged in evading them, it is 
 evident that the maintenance of both armies had to 
 come from the produce of labor and capital; that the 
 expenses and profits of the smugglers, as well as the pay 
 and bribes of the Custom House officers, constituted a 
 tax upon the industry of the nation, in addition to what 
 was received by the government. And so, all douceurs 
 to assessors; all bribes to customs officials; all moneys 
 expended in electing pliable officers or in procuring acts 
 or decisions which avoid taxation; all the costly modes 
 of bringing in goods so as to evade duties, and of manu- 
 facturing so as to evade imposts; all moieties, and ex- 
 penses of detectives and spies; all expenses of legal pro- 
 ceedings and punishments, not only to the government, 
 but to those prosecuted, are so much which these taxes 
 take from the general fund of wealth, without adding to 
 the revenue. 
 
 Yet this is the least part of the cost. Taxes which 
 lack the element of certainty tell most fearfully upon 
 morals. Our revenue laws as a body might well be en- 
 titled, "Acts to promote the corruption of public officials, 
 to suppress honesty and encourage fraud, to set a pre- 
 mium upon perjury and the subornation of perjury, and 
 to divorce the idea of law from the idea of justice." 
 This is their true character, and they succeed admirably. 
 A Custom House oath is a by-word; our assessors regu- 
 larly swear to assess all property at its full, true, cash 
 value, and habitually do nothing of the kind; men who 
 pride themselves on their personal and commercial honor 
 bribe officials and make false returns; and the demoraliz- 
 ing spectacle is constantly presented of the same court 
 trying a murderer one day and a vender of unstamped 
 matches the next! 
 
 So uncertain and so demoralizing are these modes of 
 taxation that the New York Commission, composed of 
 David A. Wells, Edwin Dodge and George W. Cuyler,
 
 416 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VW. 
 
 who investigated the subject of taxation in that State> 
 proposed to substitute for most of the taxes now levied, 
 other than that on real estate, an arbitrary tax on each 
 individual, estimated on the rental value of the premises 
 he occupied. 
 
 But there is no necessity of resorting to any arbitrary 
 assessment. The tax on land values, which is the least 
 arbitrary of taxes, possesses in the highest degree the 
 element of certainty. It may be assessed and collected 
 with a definiteness that partakes of the immovable and 
 unconcealable character of the land itself. Taxes levied 
 on land may be collected to the last cent, and though 
 the assessment of land is now often unequal, yet the 
 assessment of personal property is far more unequal, and 
 these inequalities in the assessment of land largely arise 
 from the taxation of improvements with land, and from 
 the demoralization that, springing from the causes to 
 which I have referred, affects the whole scheme of taxa- 
 tion. Were all taxes placed upon land values, irrespec- 
 tive of improvements, the scheme of taxation would be 
 so simple and clear, and public attention would be so 
 directed to it, that the valuation of taxation could and 
 would be made with the same certainty that a real estate 
 agent can determine the price a seller can get for a lot. 
 
 IV. As to Equality. 
 
 Adam Smith's canon is, that "The subjects of every 
 state ought to contribute toward the support of the 
 government as nearly as possible in proportion to their 
 respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue 
 which they respectively enjoy under the protection of 
 the state." Every tax, he goes on to say, which falls 
 only upon rent, or only upon wages, or only upon in- 
 terest, is necessarily unequal. In accordance with this 
 is the common idea which our systems of taxing every- 
 thing vainly attempt to carry out that every one should
 
 Chap.UL THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 417 
 
 pay taxes in proportion to his means, or in proportion to 
 his income. 
 
 But, waiving all the insuperable practical difficulties in 
 the way of taxing every one according to his means, it is 
 evident that justice cannot be thus attained. 
 
 Here, for instance, are two men of equal means, or 
 equal incomes, one having a large family, the other hav- 
 ing no one to support but himself. Upon these two men 
 indirect taxes fall very unequally, as the one cannot 
 avoid the taxes on the food, clothing, etc., consumed by 
 his family, while the other need pay only upon the neces- 
 saries consumed by himself. But, supposing taxes levied 
 directly, so that each pays the same amount. Still there 
 is injustice. The income of the one is charged with the 
 support of six, eight, or ten persons; the income of the 
 other with that of but a single person. And unless the 
 Malthusian doctrine be carried to the extent of regard- 
 ing the rearing of a new citizen as an injury to the state, 
 here is a gross injustice. 
 
 But it may be said that this is a difficulty which cannot 
 be got over; that it is Nature herself that brings human 
 beings helpless into the world and devolves their support 
 upon the parents, providing in compensation therefor 
 her own sweet and great rewards. Very well, then, let 
 us turn to Nature, and read the mandates of justice in 
 her law. 
 
 Nature gives to labor; and to labor alone. In a very 
 Garden of Eden a man would starve but for human exer- 
 tion. Now, here are two men of equal incomes that of 
 the one derived from the exertion of his labor, that 
 of the other from the rent of land. Is it just that they 
 should equally contribute to the expenses of the state? 
 Evidently not. The income of the one represents wealth 
 he creates and adds to the general wealth of the state; 
 the income of the other represents merely wealth that 
 he takes from the general stock, returning nothing.
 
 418 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY,, Book VUL 
 
 The right of the one to the enjoyment of his income 
 rests on the warrant of nature, which returns wealth 
 to labor; the right of the other to the enjoyment 
 of his income is a mere fictitious right, the creation of 
 municipal regulation, which is unknown and unrecog- 
 nized by nature. The father who is told that from his 
 labor he must support his children must acquiesce, for 
 such is the natural decree; but he may justly demand 
 that from the income gained by his labor not one penny 
 shall be taken, so long as a penny remains of incomes 
 which are gained by a monopoly of the natural oppor- 
 tunities which Nature offers impartially to all, and in 
 which his children have as their birthright an equal 
 share. 
 
 Adam Smith speaks of incomes as "enjoyed under the 
 protection of the state;" and this is the ground upon 
 which the equal taxation of all species of property is 
 commonly insisted upon that it is equally protected by 
 the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that the 
 enjoyment of property is made possible by the state 
 that there is a value created and maintained by the com- 
 munity, which is justly called upon to meet community 
 expenses. Now, of what values is this true? Only of 
 the value of land. This is a value that does not arise 
 until a community is formed, and that, unlike other 
 values, grows with the growth of the community. It 
 exists only as the community exists. Scatter again the 
 largest community, and land, now so valuable, would 
 have no value at all. With every increase of population 
 the value of land rises; with every decrease it falls. 
 This is true of nothing else save of things which, like 
 the ownership of land, are in their nature monopolies. 
 
 The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just 
 and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who re- 
 ceive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and 
 upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It
 
 Chap. in. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 419 
 
 is the taking by the community, for the use of the com- 
 munity, of that value which is the creation of the com- 
 munity. It is the application of the common property 
 to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for 
 the needs of the community, then will the equality or- 
 dained by nature be attained. No citizen will have an 
 advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his 
 industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain 
 what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor 
 get its full reward, and capital its natural return.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 INDOBSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 
 
 The grounds from which we have drawn the conclu- 
 sion that the tax on land values or rent is the best 
 method of raising public revenues have been admitted 
 expressly or tacitly by all economists of standing, since 
 the determination of the nature and law of rent. 
 
 Ricardo says (Chap. X), "a tax on rent would fall 
 wholly on landlords, and could not be shifted to any 
 class of consumers/' for it "would leave unaltered the 
 difference between the produce obtained from the least 
 productive land in cultivation and that obtained from land 
 of every other quality. * * * A tax on rent would not 
 discourage the cultivation of fresh land, for sach land 
 pays no rent and would be untaxed." 
 
 McCullooh (Note XXIV to "Wealth of Nations") de- 
 clares that "in a practical point of view taxes on the rent 
 of land are among the most unjust and impolitic that 
 can be imagined," but he makes this assertion solely on 
 the ground of his assumption that it is practically im- 
 possible to distinguish in taxation between the sum paid 
 for the use of the soil and that paid on account of the 
 capital expended upon it. But, supposing that this 
 separation could be effected, he admits that the sum 
 paid to landlords for the use of the natural powers of 
 the soil might be entirely swept away by a tax without 
 their having it in their power to throw any portion of 
 the burden upon any one else, and without affecting the 
 price of produce. 
 
 John Stuart Mill not only admits all this, but expressly
 
 Chap. IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 421 
 
 declares the expediency and justice of a peculiar tax on 
 rent, asking what right the landlords have to the acces- 
 sion of riches that comes to them from the general 
 progress of society without work, risk, or economizing 
 on their part, and although he expressly disapproves of 
 interfering with their claim to the present value of land, 
 he proposes to take the whole future increase as belong- 
 ing to society by natural right. 
 
 Mrs. Fawcett, in the little compendium of the writings 
 of her husband, entitled "Political Economy for Begin- 
 ners," says: "The land tax, whether small or great in 
 amount, partakes of the nature of a rent paid by the 
 owner of land to the state. In a great part of India the 
 land is owned by the government and therefore the land 
 tax is rent paid direct to the state. The economic 
 perfection of this system of tenure may be readily 
 perceived." 
 
 In fact, that rent should, both on grounds of expedi- 
 ency and justice, be the peculiar subject of taxation, is 
 involved in the accepted doctrine of rent, and may be 
 found in embryo in the works of all economists who have 
 accepted the law of Eicardo. That these principles have 
 not been pushed to their necessary conclusions, as I have 
 pushed them, evidently arises from the indisposition to 
 endanger or offend the enormous interest involved in 
 private ownership in land, and from the false theories in 
 regard to wages and the cause of poverty which have 
 dominated economic thought. 
 
 But there has been a school of economists who plainly 
 perceived, what is clear to the natural perceptions of 
 men when uninfluenced by habit that the revenues of 
 the common property, land, ought to be appropriated to 
 the common service. The French Economists of the 
 last century, headed by Quesnay and Turgot, proposed 
 just what I have proposed, that all taxation should be 
 abolished save a tax upon the value of land. As I am
 
 423 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VID. 
 
 acquainted with the doctrines of Quesnay and his dis- 
 ciples only at second hand through the medium of the 
 English writers, I am unable to say how far his peculiar 
 ideas as to agriculture being the only productive avoca- 
 tion, etc., are erroneous apprehensions, or mere peculiari- 
 ties of terminology. But of this I am certain from the 
 proposition in which his theory culminated that he saw 
 the fundamental relation between land and labor which 
 has since been lost sight of, and that he arrived at prac- 
 tical truth, though, it may be, through a course of de- 
 fectively expressed reasoning. The causes which leave 
 in the hands of the landlord a "produce net" were by 
 the Physiocrats no better explained than the suction of 
 a pump was explained by the assumption that nature 
 abhors a vacuum, but the fact in its practical relations 
 to social economy was recognized, and the benefit which 
 would result from the perfect freedom given to industry 
 and trade by a substitution of a tax on rent for all the 
 impositions which hamper and distort the application of 
 labor was doubtless as clearly seen by them as it is by 
 me. One of the things most to be regretted about the 
 French Revolution is that it overwhelmed the ideas of 
 the Economists, just as they were gaining strength 
 among the thinking classes, and were apparently about to 
 influence fiscal legislation. 
 
 Without knowing anything of Quesnay or his doc- 
 trines, I have reached the same practical conclusion by a 
 route which cannot be disputed, and have based it on 
 grounds which cannot be questioned by the accepted 
 political economy. 
 
 The only objection to the tax on rent or land values 
 which is to be met with in standard politico-economic 
 works is one which concedes its advantages for it is, 
 that from the difficulty of separation, we might, in tax- 
 ing the rent of land, tax something else. McCulloch, 
 for instance, declares taxes on the rent of land to be
 
 Chap. IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 423 
 
 impolitic and unjust because the return received for the 
 natural and inherent powers of the soil cannot be clearly 
 distinguished from the return received from improve- 
 ments and meliorations, which might thus be discouraged. 
 Macaulay somewhere says that if the admission of the 
 attraction of gravitation were inimical to any considera- 
 ble pecuniary interest, there would not be wanting argu- 
 ments against gravitation a truth of which this objec- 
 tion is an illustration. For admitting that it is impossi- 
 ble invariably to separate the value of land from the 
 value of improvements, is this necessity of continuing to 
 tax some improvements any reason why we should con- 
 tinue to tax all improvements? If it discourage produc- 
 tion to tax values which labor and capital have intimately 
 combined with that of land, how much greater dis- 
 couragement is involved in taxing not only these, but all 
 the clearly distinguishable values which labor and capital 
 create? 
 
 But, as a matter of fact, the value of land can always 
 be readily distinguished from the value of improvements. 
 In countries like the United States there is much valua- 
 ble land that has never been improved; and in many of 
 the States the value of the land and the value of improve- 
 ments are habitually estimated separately by the assessors, 
 though afterward reunited under the term real estate. Nor 
 where ground has been occupied from immemorial times, 
 is there any difficulty in getting at the value of the bare 
 land, for frequently the land is owned by one person and 
 the buildings by another, and when a fire occurs and 
 improvements are destroyed, a clear and definite value 
 remains in the land. In the oldest country in the world 
 no difficulty whatever can attend the separation, if all 
 that be attempted is to separate the value of the clearly 
 distinguishable improvements, made within a moderate 
 period, from the value of the land, should they be de- 
 stroyed. This, manifestly, is all that justice or policy
 
 424 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book nil. 
 
 requires. Absolute accuracy is impossible in any system, 
 and to attempt to separate all that the human race has 
 done from what nature originally provided would be as 
 absurd as impracticable. A swamp drained or a hill 
 terraced by the Romans constitutes now as much a part 
 of the natural advantages of the British Isles as though 
 the work had been done by earthquake or glacier. The 
 fact that after a certain lapse of time the value of such 
 permanent improvements would be considered as having 
 lapsed into that of the land, and would be taxed accord- 
 ingly, could have no deterrent effect on such improve- 
 ments, for such works are frequently undertaken upon 
 leases for years. The fact is, that each generation builds 
 and improves for itself, and not for the remote future. 
 And the further fact is, that each generation is heir, not 
 only to the natural powers of the earth, but to all that 
 remains of the work of past generations. 
 
 An objection of a different kind may however be made. 
 It may be said that where political power is diffused, it 
 is highly desirable that taxation should fall not on one 
 class, such as land owners, but on all; in order that all 
 who exercise political power may feel a proper interest 
 in economical government. Taxation and representa- 
 tion, it will be said, cannot safely be divorced. 
 
 But however desirable it may be to combine with polit- 
 ical power the consciousness of public burdens, the pres- 
 ent system certainly does not secure it. Indirect taxes 
 are largely raised from those who pay little or nothing 
 consciously. In the United States the class is rapidly 
 growing who not only feel no interest in taxation, 
 but who have no concern in good government. In our 
 large cities elections are in great measure determined 
 not by considerations of public interest, but by such in- 
 fluences as determined elections in Rome when the masses 
 had ceased to care for anything but bread and the circus. 
 
 The effect of substituting for the manifold taxes now
 
 Chap. JV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 425 
 
 imposed a single tax on the value of land would hardly 
 lessen the number of conscious taxpayers, for the divi- 
 sion of land now held on speculation would much increase 
 the number of land holders. But it would so equalize 
 the distribution of wealth as to raise even the poorest 
 above that condition of abject poverty in which public 
 considerations have no weight; while it would at the 
 same time cut down those overgrown fortunes which 
 raise their possessors above concern in government. The 
 dangerous classes politically are the very rich and very 
 poor. It is not the taxes that he is conscious of paying 
 that gives a man a stake in the country, an interest in its 
 government; it is the consciousness of feeling that he is 
 an integral part of the community; that its prosperity is 
 his prosperity, and its disgrace his shame. Let but the 
 citizen feel this; let him be surrounded by all the in- 
 fluences that spring from and cluster round a comforta- 
 ble home, and the community may rely upon him, even 
 to limb or to life. Men do not vote patriotically, any more 
 than they fight patriotically, because of their payment of 
 taxes. Whatever conduces to the comfortable and inde- 
 pendent material condition of the masses will best foster 
 public spirit, will make the ultimate governing power 
 more intelligent and more virtuous. 
 
 But it may be asked: If the tax on land values is so 
 advantageous a mode of raising revenue, how is it that 
 so many other taxes are resorted to in preference by all 
 governments? 
 
 The answer is obvious: The tax on land values is the 
 only tax of any importance that does not distribute itself. 
 It falls upon the owners of land, and there is no way in 
 which they can shift the burden upon any one else. 
 Hence, a large and powerful class are directly interested 
 in keeping down the tax on land values and substituting, 
 as a means for raising the required revenue, taxes on 
 other things, just as the land owners of England, two
 
 426 APPLICATION OF THE BEMEDY. Book Vlll. 
 
 hundred years ago, succeeded in establishing an excise, 
 which fell on all consumers, for the dues under the 
 feudal tenures, which fell only on them. 
 
 There is, thus, a definite and powerful interest opposed 
 to the taxation of land values; but to the other taxes 
 upon which modern governments so largely rely there is 
 no special opposition. The ingenuity of statesmen has 
 been exercised in devising schemes of taxation which 
 drain the wages of labor and the earnings of capital as 
 the vampire bat is said to suck the lifeblood of its victim. 
 Nearly all of these taxes are ultimately paid by that in- 
 definable being, the consumer; and he pays them in a 
 way which does not call his attention to the fact that he 
 is paying a tax pays them in such small amounts and in 
 such insidious modes that he does not notice it, and is 
 not likely to take the trouble to remonstrate effectually. 
 Those who pay the money directly to the tax collector 
 are not only not interested in opposing a tax which they 
 so easily shift from their own shoulders, but are very 
 frequently interested in its imposition and maintenance, 
 as are other powerful interests which profit, or expect to 
 profit, by the increase of prices which such taxes bring 
 about. 
 
 Nearly all of the manifold taxes by which the people 
 of the United States are now burdened have been im- 
 posed rather with a view to private advantage than to 
 the raising of revenue, and the great obstacle to the 
 simplification of taxation is these private interests, whose 
 representatives cluster in the lobby whenever a reduction 
 of taxation is proposed, to see that the taxes by which 
 they profit are not reduced. The fastening of a protec- 
 tive tariff upon the United States has been due to these 
 influences, and not to the acceptance of absurd theories 
 of protection upon their own merits. The large revenue 
 which the civil war rendered necessary was the golden 
 opportunity of these special interests, and taxes were
 
 Chap. IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 427 
 
 piled up on every possible thing, not so much to raise 
 revenue as to enable particular classes to participate 
 in the advantages of tax-gathering and tax-pocketing. 
 And, since the war, these interested parties have consti- 
 tuted the great obstacle to the reduction of taxation; 
 those taxes which cost the people least having, for this 
 reason, been found easier to abolish than those taxes 
 which cost the people most. And, thus, even popular 
 governments, which have for their avowed principle the 
 securing of the greatest good to the greatest number, 
 are, in a most important function, used to secure a ques- 
 tionable good to a small number, at the expense of a 
 great evil to the many. 
 
 License taxes are generally favored by those on whom 
 they are imposed, as they tend to keep others from en- 
 tering the business; imposts upon manufactures are 
 frequently grateful to large manufacturers for similar 
 reasons, as was seen in the opposition of the distillers to 
 the reduction of the whisky tax; duties on imports not 
 only tend to give certain producers special advantages, 
 but accrue to the benefit of importers or dealers who 
 have large stocks on hand; and so, in the case of all such 
 taxes, there are particular interests, capable of ready 
 organization and concerted action, which favor the im- 
 position of the tax, while, in the case of a tax upon the 
 value of land, there is a solid and sensitive interest stead- 
 ily and bitterly to oppose it. 
 
 But if once the truth which I am trying to make clear 
 is understood by the masses, it is easy to see how a union 
 of political forces strong enough to carry it into practice 
 becomes possible.
 
 BOOK IX. 
 
 EFFECTS OF THE EEMEDY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. OF THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OF 
 
 WEALTH. 
 CHAPTER II. OF THE EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND 
 
 THENCE UPON PRODUCTION. 
 CHAPTER III. OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND 
 
 CLASSES. 
 CHAPTER IV. OF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE 
 
 WROUGHT IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 
 
 AND SOCIAL LIFE.
 
 I cannot play upon any stringed instrument; but I can tell you 
 how of a little village to make a great and glorious city. Themis- 
 tocle* 
 
 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the 
 1>rier shall come up the myrtle tree. 
 
 And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant 
 vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and an- 
 other inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat. Isaiah.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OP THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION" OF WEALTH. 
 
 The elder Mirabeau, we are told, ranked the proposi- 
 tion of Quesnay, to substitute one single tax on rent (the 
 impot unique) for all other taxes, as a discovery equal 
 in utility to the invention of writing or the substitution 
 of the use of money for barter. 
 
 To whomsoever will think over the matter, this saying 
 will appear an evidence of penetration rather than of ex- 
 travagance. The advantages which would be gained by 
 substituting for the numerous taxes by which the public 
 revenues are now raised, a single tax levied upon the 
 value of land, will appear more and more important the 
 more they are considered. This is the secret which 
 would transform the little village into the great city. 
 With all the burdens removed which now oppress indus- 
 try and hamper exchange, the production of wealth 
 would go on with a rapidity now undreamed of. This, 
 in its turn, would lead to an increase in the value of land 
 a new surplus which society might take for general 
 purposes. And released from the difficulties which at- 
 tend the collection of revenue in a way that begets 
 corruption and renders legislation the tool of special 
 interests, society could assume functions which the in- 
 creasing complexity of life makes it desirable to assume, 
 but which the prospect of political demoralization under 
 the present system now leads thoughtful men to shrink 
 from. 
 
 Consider the effect upon the production of wealth. 
 
 To abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting,
 
 432 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book JX. 
 
 now hampers every wheel of exchange and presses upon 
 every form of industry, would be like removing an im- 
 mense weight from a powerful spring. Imbued with 
 fresh energy, production would start into new life, and 
 trade would receive a stimulus which would be felt to 
 the remotest arteries. The present method of taxation 
 operates upon exchange like artificial deserts and moun- 
 tains; it costs more to get goods through a custom house 
 than it does to carry them around the world. It operates 
 upon energy, and industry, and skill, and thrift, like a 
 fine upon those qualities. If I have worked harder and 
 built myself a good house while you have been contented 
 to live in a hovel, the tax-gatherer now comes annually 
 to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry, 
 by taxing me more than you. If 1 have saved while you 
 wasted, I am mulct, while you are exempt. If a man 
 build a ship we make him pay for his temerity, as though 
 he had done an injury to the state; if a railroad be 
 opened, down comes the tax-collector upon it, as though 
 it were a public nuisance; if a manufactory be erected 
 we levy upon it an annual sum which would go far toward 
 making a handsome profit. We say we want capital, but 
 if any one accumulate it,'or bring it among us, we charge 
 him for it as though we were giving him a privilege. 
 We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields 
 with ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery, 
 >nd him who drains a swamp. How heavily these taxes 
 burden production only those realize who have attempted 
 to follow our system of taxation through its ramifications, 
 for, as I have before said, the heaviest part of taxation 
 is that which falls in increased prices. But manifestly 
 these taxes are in their nature akin to the Egyptian 
 Pasha's tax upon date-trees. If they do not cause the 
 trees to be cut down, they at least discourage the 
 planting. 
 
 To abolish these taxes would 'be to lift the whole enor-
 
 Chap.L UPON THE PRODUCTION OP WEALTH. 433 
 
 rnous weight of taxation from productive industry. The 
 needle of the seamstress and the great manufactory; the 
 cart-horse and the locomotive; the fishing boat and the 
 steamship; the farmer's plow and the merchant's stock, 
 would be alike untaxed. All would be free to-make or 
 to save, to buy or to sell, unfined by taxes, unannoyed 
 by the tax-gatherer. Instead of saying to the producer, 
 as it does now, "The more you add to the general wealth 
 the more shall you be taxed!" the state would say to 
 the producer, "Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enter- 
 prising as you choose, you shall have your full reward! 
 You shall not be fined for making two blades of grass 
 grow where one grew before; you shall not be taxed for 
 adding to the aggregate wealth." 
 
 And will not the community gain by thus refusing to 
 kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; by thus refrain- 
 ing from muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn; 
 by thus leaving to industry, and thrift, and skill, their 
 natural reward, foil and unimpaired? For there is to 
 the community also a natural reward. The law of society 
 is, each for all, as well as all for each. No one can keep 
 to himself the good he may do, any more than he can 
 keep the bad. Every productive enterprise, besides its 
 return to those who undertake it, yields collateral advan- 
 tages to others. If a man plant a fruit-tree, his gain is 
 that he gathers the fruit in its time and season. But in 
 addition to his gain, there is a gain to the whole com- 
 munity. Others than the owner are benefited by the 
 increased supply of fruit; the birds which it shelters fly 
 far and wide; the rain which it helps to attract falls not 
 alone on his field; and, even to the eye which rests upon 
 it from a distance, it brings a sense of beauty. And so 
 with everything else. The building of a house, a fac- 
 tory, a ship, or a railroad, benefits others besides those 
 who get the direct profits. Nature laughs at a miser. 
 He is like the squirrel who buries his nuts and refrains
 
 434 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 from digging them up again. Lo! they sprout and grow 
 into trees. In fine linen, steeped in costly spices, the 
 mummy is laid away. Thousands and thousands of years 
 thereafter, the Bedouin cooks his food by a fire of its 
 encasings, it generates the steam by which the traveler 
 is whirled on his way, or it passes into far-off lands to 
 gratify the curiosity of another race. The bee fills the 
 hollow tree with honey, and along comes the bear or the 
 man. 
 
 Well may the community leave to the individual pro- 
 ducer all that prompts him to exertion; well may it let 
 the laborer have the full reward of his labor, and the 
 capitalist the full return of his capital. For the more 
 that labor and capital produce, the greater grows the 
 common wealth in which all may share. And in the 
 value or rent of land is this general gain expressed in a 
 definite and concrete form. Here is a fund which the 
 state may take while leaving to labor and capital their 
 full reward. With increased activity of production this 
 would commensurately increase. 
 
 And to shift the burden of taxation from production 
 and exchange to the value or rent of land would not 
 merely be to give new stimulus to the production of 
 wealth; it would be to open new opportunities. For 
 under this system no one would care to hold land unless 
 to use it, and land now withheld from use would every- 
 where be thrown open to improvement. 
 
 The selling price of land would fall; laud speculation 
 would receive its death blow; land monopolization would 
 no longer pay. Millions and millions of. acres from 
 which settlers are now shut out by high prices would 
 be abandoned by their present owners or sold to set- 
 tlers upon nominal terms. And this not merely on 
 the frontiers, but within what are now considered well 
 settled districts. Within a hundred miles of San Fran 
 cisco would be thus thrown open land enough to support,
 
 Chap. I. UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 435 
 
 even with present modes of cultivation, an agricultural 
 population equal to that now scattered from the Oregon 
 boundary to the Mexican line a distance of 800 miles. 
 In the same degree would this be true of most of the 
 Western States, and in a great degree of the older Eastern 
 States, for even in New York and Pennsylvania is popula- 
 tion yet sparse as compared with the capacity of the land. 
 And even in densely populated England would such a 
 policy throw open to cultivation many hundreds of thou- 
 sands of acres now held as private parks, deer preserves, 
 and shooting grounds. 
 
 For this simple device of placing all taxes on the value 
 of land would be in effect putting up the land at auction 
 to whomsoever would pay the highest rent to the state. 
 The demand for land fixes its value,and hence,if taxes were 
 placed so as very nearly to consume that value, the man 
 who wished to hold land without using it would have to 
 pay very nearly what it would be worth to any one who 
 wanted to use it. 
 
 And it must be remembered that this would apply, not 
 merely to agricultural land, but to all land. Mineral 
 land would be thrown open to use, just as agricultural 
 land; and in the heart of a city no one could afford to 
 keep land from its most profitable use, or on the out- 
 skirts to demand more for it than the use to which it 
 could at the time be put would warrant. Everywhere 
 that land had attained a value, taxation, instead of 
 operating, as now, as a fine upon improvement, would 
 operate to force improvement. Whoever planted an 
 orchard, or sowed a field, or built a house, or erected a 
 manufactory, no matter how costly, would have no more 
 to pay in taxes than if he kept so much land idle. The 
 monopolist of agricultural land would be taxed as much 
 as though his land were covered with houses and barns, 
 with crops and with stock. The owner of a vacant city 
 lot would have to pay as much for the privilege of keep-
 
 436 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 ing other people off of it until he wanted to use it, as 
 his neighbor who has a fine house upon his lot. It would 
 cost as much to keep a row of tumble-down shanties 
 upon valuable land as though it were covered with a 
 grand hotel or a pile of great warehouses filled with 
 costly goods. 
 
 Thus, the bonus that wherever labor is most produc- 
 tive must now be paid before labor can be exerted would 
 disappear. The farmer would not have to pay out half 
 his means, or mortgage his labor for years, in order to 
 obtain land to cultivate; the builder of a city homestead 
 would not have to lay out as much for a small lot as for 
 the house he puts upon it; the company that proposed to 
 erect a manufactory would not have to expend a great 
 part of their capital for a site. And what would be paid 
 from year to year to the state would be in lieu of all 
 the taxes now levied upon improvements, machinery, and 
 stock. 
 
 Consider the effect of such a change upon the labor 
 market. Competition would no longer be one-sided, as 
 now. Instead of laborers competing with each other for 
 employment, and in their competition cutting down 
 wages to the point of bare subsistence, employers would 
 everywhere be competing for laborers, and wages would 
 rise to the fair earnings of labor. For into the labor 
 market would have entered the greatest of all competi- 
 tors for the employment of labor, a competitor whose 
 demand cannot be satisfied until want is satisfied the 
 demand of labor itself. The employers of labor would 
 not have merely to bid against other employers, all feel- 
 ing the stimulus of greater trade and increased profits, 
 but against the ability of laborers to become their own 
 employers upon the natural opportunities freely opened 
 to them by the tax which prevented monopolization. 
 
 With natural opportunities thus free to labor; with 
 capital and improvements exempt from tax, and exchange
 
 Chap. I. UPON" THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 437 
 
 released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men 
 unable to turn their labor into the things they are suffer- 
 ing for would become impossible; the recurring parox 
 ysms which paralyze industry would cease; every wheel of 
 production would be set in motion; demand would keep 
 pace with supply, and supply with demand; trade would 
 increase in every direction, and wealth augment on every 
 hand.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 OF THE EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND THENCE UPON 
 PRODUCTION. 
 
 But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a trans- 
 ference of all public burdens to a tax upon the value of 
 land cannot be fully appreciated until we consider the 
 effect upon the distribution of wealth. 
 
 Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of 
 wealth which appears in all civilized countries, with a 
 constant tendency to greater and greater inequality as 
 material progress goes on, we have found it in the fact 
 that, as civilization advances, the ownership of land, 
 now in private hands, gives a greater and greater power 
 of appropriating the wealth produced by labor and capital. 
 
 Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, 
 direct and indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent, 
 would be, as far as it went, to counteract this tendency 
 to inequality, and, if it went so far as to take in taxation 
 the whole of rent, the cause of inequality would be to- 
 tally destroyed. Kent, instead of causing inequality, as 
 now, would then promote equality. Labor and capital 
 would then receive the whole produce, minus that portion 
 taken by the state in the taxation of land values, which, 
 being applied to public purposes, would be equally dis- 
 tributed in public benefits. 
 
 That is to say, the wealth produced in every commu- 
 nity would be divided into two portions. One part would 
 be distributed in wages and interest between individual 
 producers, according to the part each had taken in the 
 work of production; the other part would go to the com- 
 munity as a whole, to be distributed in public benefits to
 
 Chap.n. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 439 
 
 all its members. In this all would share equally the 
 weak with the strong, young children and decrepit old 
 men, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, as well as the 
 vigorous. And justly so for while one part represents 
 the result of individual effort in production, the other 
 represents the increased power with which the commu- 
 nity as a whole aids the individual. 
 
 Thus, as material progress tends to increase rent, were 
 rent taken by the community for common purposes the 
 very cause which now tends to produce inequality as 
 material progress goes on would then tend to produce 
 greater and greater equality. Fully to understand this 
 effect, let us revert to principles previously worked out. 
 
 We have seen that wages and interest must everywhere 
 be fixed by the rent line or margin of cultivation that 
 is to say, by the reward which labor and capital can 
 secure on land for which no rent is paid; that the aggre- 
 gate amount of wealth, which the aggregate of labor and 
 capital employed in production will receive, will be the 
 amount of wealth produced (or rather, when we consider 
 taxes, the net amount), minus what is taken as rent. 
 
 We have seen that with material progress, as it is at 
 present going on, there is a twofold tendency to the ad- 
 vance of rent. Both are to the increase of the proportion 
 of the wealth produced which goes as rent, and to the 
 decrease of the proportion which goes as wages and in- 
 terest. But the first, or natural tendency, which results 
 from the laws of social development, is to the increase of 
 rent as a quantity, without the reduction of wages and 
 interest as quantities, or even with their quantitative 
 increase. The other tendency, which results from the 
 unnatural appropriation of land to private ownership, is 
 to the increase of rent as a quantity by the reduction of 
 wages and interest as quantities. 
 
 Now, it is evident that to take rent in taxation for 
 public purposes, which virtually abolishes private owner-
 
 440 EFFECTS OF THE EEMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 ship in land, would be to destroy the tendency to an 
 absolute decrease in wages and interest, by destroying 
 the speculative monopolization of land and the specula- 
 tive increase in rent. It would be very largely to in- 
 crease wages and interest, by throwing open natural 
 opportunities now monopolized and reducing the price 
 of land. Labor and capital would thus not merely gain 
 what is now taken from them in taxation, but would gain 
 by the positive decline in rent caused by the decrease in 
 speculative land values. A new equilibrium would be 
 established, at which the common rate of wages and in- 
 terest would be much higher than now. 
 
 But this new equilibrium established, further advances 
 in productive power, and the tendency in this direction 
 would be greatly accelerated, would result in still in- 
 creasing rent, not at the expense of wages and interest, 
 but by new gains in production, which, as rent would be 
 taken by the community for public uses, would accrue to 
 the advantage of every member of the community. 
 Thus, as material progress went on, the condition of the 
 masses would constantly improve. Not merely one class 
 would become richer, but all would become richer; not 
 merely one class would have more of the necessaries, 
 conveniences, and elegancies of life, but all would have 
 more. For, the increasing power of production, which 
 comes with increasing population, with every new dis- 
 covery in the productive arts, with every labor-saving 
 invention, with every extension and facilitation of ex- 
 changes, could be monopolized by none. That part of 
 the benefit which did not go directly to increase the re- 
 waid of labor and capital would go to the state that is 
 to say, to the whole community. With all the enormous 
 advantages, material and mental, of a dense population, 
 would be united the freedom and equality that can now 
 be found only in new and sparsely settled districts. 
 
 And, then, consider how equalization in the distribn.
 
 Chap.H. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 441 
 
 tion of wealth would react upon production, everywhere 
 preventing waste, everywhere increasing power. 
 
 If it were possible to express in figures the direct 
 pecuniary loss which society suffers from the social mal- 
 adjustments which condemn large classes to poverty and 
 vice, the estimate would be appalling. England main- 
 tains over a million paupers on official charity; the city 
 of New York alone spends over seven million dollars a 
 year in a similar way. But what is spent from public 
 funds, what is spent by charitable societies and what is 
 spent in individual charity, would, if aggregated, be but 
 the first and smallest item in the account. The potential 
 earnings of the labor thus going to waste, the cost of the 
 reckless, improvident and idle habits thus generated; the 
 pecuniary loss, to consider nothing more, suggested by 
 the appalling statistics of mortality, and especially infant 
 mortality, among the poorer classes; the waste indicated 
 by the gin palaces or low groggeries which increase as 
 poverty deepens; the damage done by the vermin of 
 society that are bred of poverty and destitution the 
 thieves, prostitutes, beggars, and tramps; the cost of 
 guarding society against them, are all items in the sum 
 which the present unjust and unequal distribution of 
 wealth takes from the aggregate which, with present 
 means of production, society might enjoy. Nor yet shall 
 we have completed the account. The ignorance and 
 vice, the recklessness and immorality engendered by the 
 inequality in the distribution of wealth show themselves 
 in the imbecility and corruption of government; and 
 the waste of public revenues, and the still greater waste 
 involved in the ignorant and corrupt abuse of public 
 powers and functions, are their legitimate consequences. 
 
 But the increase in wages, and the opening of new 
 avenues of employment which would result from the 
 appropriation of rent to public purposes, would not 
 merely stop these wastes and relieve society of these
 
 442 EFFECTS OF THE EEMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 enormous losses; new power would be added to labor. 
 It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its 
 wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, 
 the world over. 
 
 What is remarked between the efficiency of labor in 
 the agricultural districts of England where different 
 rates of wages prevail; what Brassey noticed as between 
 the work done by his better paid English navvies and that 
 done by the worse paid labor of the continent; what was 
 evident in the United States as between slave labor and 
 free labor; what is seen by the astonishing number of 
 mechanics or servants required in India or China to get 
 anything done, is universally true. The efficiency of 
 labor always increases with the habitual wages of labor 
 for high wages mean increased self-respect, intelligence, 
 hope, and energy. Man is not a machine, that will do 
 so much and no more; he is not an animal, whose powers 
 may reach thus far and no further. It is mind, not 
 muscle, which is the great agent of production. The 
 physical power evolved in the human frame is one of 
 the weakest of forces, but for the human intelligence 
 the resistless currents of nature flow, and matter be- 
 comes plastic to the human will. To increase the com- 
 forts, and leisure, and independence of the masses is to 
 increase their intelligence; it is to bring the brain to the 
 aid of the hand; it is to engage in the common work of 
 life the faculty which measures the animalcule and traces 
 the orbits of the stars! 
 
 Who can say to what infinite powers the wealth-pro- 
 ducing capacity of labor may not be raised by social 
 adjustments which will give to the producers of wealth 
 their fair proportion of its advantages and enjoyments! 
 With present processes the gain would be simply incal- 
 culable, but just as wages are high, so do the invention 
 and utilization of improved processes and machinery go 
 vn with greater rapidity and ease. That the wheat crops
 
 Chap. II. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 443 
 
 of Southern Eussia are still reaped with the scythe and 
 beaten out with the flail is simply because wages are 
 there so low. American invention, American aptitude 
 for labor-saving processes and machinery are the result 
 of the comparatively high wages that have prevailed in 
 the United States. Had our producers been condemned 
 to the low reward of the Egyptian fellah or Chinese 
 coolie, we would be drawing water by hand and trans- 
 porting goods on the shoulders of men. The increase 
 in the reward of labor and capital would still further 
 stimulate invention and hasten the adoption of improved 
 processes, and these would truly appear, what in them- 
 selves they really are an unmixed good. The injurious 
 effects of labor-saving machinery upon the working 
 classes, that are now so often apparent, and that, in 
 spite of all argument, make so many people regard 
 machinery as an evil instead of a blessing, would disap- 
 pear. Every new power engaged in the service of man 
 would improve the condition of all. And from the gen- 
 eral intelligence and mental activity springing from this 
 general improvement of condition would come new de- 
 velopments of power of which we as yet cannot dream. 
 
 But I shall not deny, and do not wish to lose sight of 
 the fact, that while thus preventing waste and thus add- 
 ing to the efficiency of labor, the equalization in the dis- 
 tribution of wealth that would result from the simple 
 plan of taxation that I propose, must lessen the intensity 
 with which wealth is pursued. It seems to me that in a 
 condition of society in which no one need fear poverty, 
 no one would desire great wealth at least, no one would 
 take the [trouble to strive and to strain for it as men do 
 now. For, certainly, the spectacle of men who have only 
 a few years to live, slaving away their time for the sake 
 of dying rich, is in itself so unnatural and absurd, that 
 in a state of society where the abolition of the fear of 
 want had dissipated the envious admiration with which
 
 444 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 the masses of men now regard the possession of great 
 riches, whoever would toil to acquire more than he cared 
 to use would be looked upon as we would now look on a 
 man who would thatch his head with half a dozen hats, 
 or walk around in the hot sun with an overcoat on. 
 When every one is sure of being able to get enough, no 
 one will care to make a pack-horse of himself. 
 
 And though this incentive to production be with- 
 drawn, can we not spare it? Whatever may have been 
 its office in an earlier stage of development, it is not 
 needed now. The dangers that menace our civilization 
 do not come from the weakness of the springs of produc- 
 tion. What it suffers from, and what, if a remedy be 
 not applied, it must die from, is unequal distribution! 
 
 Nor would the removal of this incentive, regarded 
 only from the standpoint of production, be an unmixed 
 loss. For, that the aggregate of production is greatly 
 reduced by the greed with which riches are pursued, is 
 one of the most obtrusive facts of modern society. 
 While, were this insane desire to get rich at any cost 
 lessened, mental activities now devoted to scraping to- 
 gether riches would be translated into far higher spheres 
 of usefulness.
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 OP THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 
 
 When it is first proposed to put all taxes upon the 
 value of land, and thus confiscate rent, all land holders 
 are likely to take the alarm, and there will not be want- 
 ing appeals to the fears of small farm and homestead 
 owners, who will be told that this is a proposition to rob 
 them of their hard-earned property. But a moment's 
 reflection will show that this proposition should com- 
 mend itself to all whose interests as land holders do not 
 largely exceed their interests as laborers or capitalists, 
 or both. And further consideration will show that 
 though the large land holders may lose relatively, yet 
 even in their case there will be an absolute gain. For, 
 the increase in production will be so great that labor and 
 capital will gain very much more than will be lost to 
 private land ownership, while in these gains, and in the 
 greater ones involved in a more healthy social condition, \ 
 the whole community, including the land owners them-y 
 selves, will share. 
 
 In a preceding chapter I have gone over the question 
 of what is due to the present land holders, and have 
 shown that they have no claim to compensation. But 
 there is still another ground on which we may dismiss all 
 idea of compensation. They will not really be injured. 
 
 It is manifest, of course, that the change I propose 
 will greatly benefit all those who live by wages, whether 
 of hand or of head laborers, operatives, mechanics, 
 clerks, professional men of alH sorts. It is manifest, 
 also, that it will benefit all those who live partly by wages
 
 446 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Booh IX. 
 
 and partly by the earnings of their capital storekeepers, 
 merchants, manufacturers, employing or undertaking 
 producers and exchangers of all sorts from the peddler 
 or drayman to the railroad or steamship owner and it 
 is likewise manifest that it will increase the incomes of 
 those whose incomes are drawn from the earnings of 
 capital, or from investments other than in lands, save 
 perhaps the holders of government bonds or other securi- 
 ties bearing fixed rates of interest, which will probably 
 depreciate in selling value, owing to the rise in the gen- 
 eral rate of interest, though the income from them will 
 remain the same. 
 
 Take, now, the case of the homestead owner the 
 mechanic, storekeeper, or professional man who has 
 secured himself a house and lot, where he lives, and 
 which he contemplates with satisfaction as a place from 
 which his family cannot be ejected in case of his death. 
 He will not be injured; on the contrary, he will be the 
 gainer. The selling value of his lot will diminish 
 theoretically it will entirely disappear. But its useful- 
 nes to him will not disappear. It will serve his purpose 
 as well as ever. While, as the value of all other lots will 
 diminish or disappear in the same ratio, he retains the 
 same security of always having a lot that he had before. 
 That is to say, he is a loser only as the man who has 
 bought himself a pair of boots may be said to be a loser 
 by a subsequent fall in the price of boots. His boots 
 will be just as useful to him, and the next pair of boots 
 he can get cheaper. So, to the homestead owner, his lot 
 will be as useful, and should he look forward to getting 
 a larger lot, or having his children, as they grow up, 
 get homesteads of their own, he will, even in the matter 
 of lots, be the gainer. And in the present, other things 
 considered, he will be much the gainer. For though he 
 will have more taxes to pay upon his land, he will be re- 
 leased from taxes upon his house and improvements,
 
 Chap. III. UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 447 
 
 upon his furniture and personal property, upon all that 
 he and his family eat, drink, and wear, while his earn- 
 ings will be largely increased by the rise of wages, the 
 constant employment, and the increased briskness of 
 trade. His only loss will be, if he wants to sell his lot 
 without getting another, and this will be a small loss 
 compared with the great gain. 
 
 And so with the farmer. I speak not now of the 
 farmers who never touch the handles of a plow, who cul- 
 tivate thousands of acres and enjoy incomes like those of 
 the rich Southern planters before the war; but of the 
 working farmers who constitute such a large class in the 
 United States men who own small farms, which they 
 cultivate with the aid of their boys, and perhaps some 
 hired help, and who in Europe would be called peasant 
 proprietors. Paradoxical as it may appear to these men 
 until they understand the full bearings of the proposi- 
 tion, of all classes above that of the mere laborer they 
 have most to gain by placing all taxes upon the value 
 of land. That they do not now get as good a living as 
 their hard work ought to give them, they generally feel, 
 though they may not be able to trace the cause. The 
 fact is that taxation, as now levied, falls on them with 
 peculiar severity. They are taxed on all their improve- 
 ments houses, barns, fences, crops, stock. The per- 
 sonal property which they have cannot be as readily con- 
 cealed or undervalued as can the more valuable kinds 
 which are concentrated in the cities. They are not only 
 taxed on personal property and improvements, which the 
 owners of unused land escape, but their land is generally 
 taxed at a higher rate than laud held on speculation, 
 simply because it is improved. But further than this, 
 all taxes imposed on commodities, and especially the 
 taxes which, like our protective duties, are imposed with 
 a view of raising the prices of commodities, fall on the 
 farmer without mitigation. For in a country like the
 
 448 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 United States, which exports agricultural produce, the 
 farmer cannot be protected. Whoever gains, he must 
 lose. Some years ago the Free Trade League of New 
 York published a broadside containing cuts of various 
 articles of necessity marked with the duties imposed by 
 the tariff, and which read something in this wise: "The 
 farmer rises in the morning and draws on his pantaloons 
 taxed 40 per cent, and his boots taxed 30 per cent., strik- 
 ing a light with a match taxed 200 per cent.," and so on, 
 following him through the day and through life, until, 
 killed by taxation, he is lowered into the grave with a 
 rope taxed 45 per cent. This is but a graphic illustra- 
 tion of the manner in which such taxes ultimately fall. 
 The farmer would be a great gainer by the substitution 
 of a single tax upon the value of land for all these taxes, 
 for the taxation of land values would fall with greatest 
 weight, not upon the agricultural districts, where land 
 values are comparatively small, but upon the towns and 
 cities where land values are high; whereas taxes upon 
 personal property and improvements fall as heavily in 
 the country as in the city. And in sparsely settled dis- 
 tricts there would be hardly any taxes at all for the 
 farmer to pay. For taxes, being levied upon the value 
 of the bare land, would fall as heavily upon unimproved 
 as upon improved land. Acre for acre, the improved 
 and cultivated farm, with its buildings, fences, orchard, 
 crops, and stock could be taxed no more than unused 
 land of equal quality. The result would be that specu- 
 lative values would be kept down, and that cultivated and 
 improved farms would have no taxes to pay until the 
 country around them had been well settled. In fact, 
 paradoxical as it may at first seem to them, the effect of 
 putting all taxation upon the value of land would be to 
 relieve the harder working farmers of all taxation. 
 
 But the great gain of the working farmer can be seen 
 only when the effect upon the distribution of population
 
 Chap. 111. UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 449 
 
 is considered. The destruction of speculative land 
 values would tend to diffuse population where it is too 
 dense and to concentrate it where it is too sparse; to 
 substitute for the tenement house, homes surrounded by 
 gardens, and fully to settle agricultural districts before 
 people were driven far from neighbors to look for land. 
 The people of the cities would thus get more of the pure 
 air and sunshine of the country, the people of the coun- 
 try more of the economies and social life of the city. If, 
 as is doubtless the case, the application of machinery 
 tends to large fields, agricultural population will assume 
 the primitive form and cluster in villages. The life of 
 the average farmer is now unnecessarily dreary. He is 
 not only compelled to work early and late, but he is cut 
 off by the sparseness of population from the conveniences, 
 the amusements, the educational facilities, and the social 
 and intellectual opportunities that come with the closer 
 contact of man with man. He would be far better off in 
 all these respects, and his labor would be far more pro- 
 ductive, if he and those around him held no more land 
 than they wanted to use.* While his children, as they 
 grew up, would neither be so impelled to seek the excite- 
 ment of a city nor would they be driven so far away to 
 seek farms of their own. Their means of living would 
 be in their own hands, and at home. 
 
 In short, the working farmer is both a laborer and a 
 capitalist, as well as a land owner, and it is by his labor 
 
 * Besides the enormous increase in the productive power of labor 
 which would result from the better distribution of population, there 
 would be also a similar economy in the productive power of land. 
 The concentration of population in cities fed by the exhaustive cul- 
 tivation of large, sparsely populated areas, results in a literal drain- 
 ing into the sea of the elements of fertility. How enormous this 
 waste is may be seen from the calculations that have been made as 
 to the sewage of our cities, and its practical result is to be seen in the 
 diminishing productiveness of agriculture in large sections. In a 
 great part of the United States we are steadily exhausting our lands.
 
 450 EFFECTS OF THE EEMEDT. Book IX. 
 
 and capital that his living is made. His loss would be 
 nominal; his gain would be real and great. 
 
 In varying degrees is this true of all land holders. 
 Many land holders are laborers of one sort or another. 
 And it would be hard to find a land owner not a laborer, 
 who is not also a capitalist while the general rule is, 
 that the larger the land owner the greater the capitalist. 
 So true is this that in common thought the characters 
 are confounded. Thus to put all taxes on the value of 
 land, while it would be largely to reduce all great for- 
 tunes, would in no case leave the rich man penniless. 
 The Duke of Westminster, who owns a considerable part 
 of the site of London, is probably the richest land owner 
 in the world. To take all his ground rents by taxation 
 would largely reduce his enormous income, but would 
 still leave him his buildings and all the income from 
 them, and doubtless much personal property in various 
 other shapes. He would still have all he could by any 
 possibility enjoy, and a much better state of society in 
 which to enjoy it. 
 
 So would the Astors of New York remain very rich. 
 And so, I think, it will be seen throughout this measure 
 would make no one poorer but such as could be made a 
 great deal poorer without being really hurt. It would 
 cut down great fortunes, but it would impoverish no one. 
 
 Wealth would not only be enormously increased; it 
 would be equally distributed. I do not mean that each 
 individual would get the same amount of wealth. That 
 would not be equal distribution, so long as different 
 individuals have different powers and different desires. 
 But I mean that wealth would be distributed in accord- 
 ance with the degree in which the industry, skill, knowl- 
 edge, or prudence of each contributed to the common 
 stock. The great cause which concentrates wealth in 
 the hands of those who do not produce, and takes it 
 from the hands of those who do, would be gone. The
 
 Chap.IIL UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 451 
 
 inequalities that continued to exist would be those of na- 
 ture, not the artificial inequalities produced by the denial 
 of natural law. The non-producer would no longer roll 
 in luxury while the producer got but the barest necessi- 
 ties of animal existence. 
 
 The monopoly of the land gone, there need be no fear 
 of large fortunes. For then the riches of any individual 
 must consist of wealth, properly so-called of wealth, 
 which is the product of labor, and which constantly 
 tends to dissipation, for national debts, I imagine, would 
 not long survive the abolition of the system from which 
 they spring. All fear of great fortunes might be dis- 
 missed, for when every one gets what he fairly earns, no 
 one can get more than he fairly earns. How many men 
 are there who fairly earn a million dollars?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WROUGHT IN SOCIAL 
 ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 We are dealing only with general principles. There 
 are some matters of detail such as those arising from 
 the division of revenues between local and general gov- 
 ernments which upon application of these principles 
 would come up, but these it is not necessary here to dis- 
 cuss. When once principles are settled, details will be 
 readily adjusted. 
 
 Nor without too much elaboration is it possible to 
 notice all the changes which would be wrought, or would 
 become possible, by a change which would readjust the 
 very foundation of society, but to some main features let 
 me call attention. 
 
 Noticeable among these is the great simplicity which 
 would become possible in government. To collect taxes, 
 to prevent and punish evasions, to check and counter- 
 check revenues drawn from so many distinct sources, 
 now make up probably three-fourths, perhaps seven- 
 eighths of the business of government, outside of the 
 preservation of order, the maintenance of the military 
 arm, and the administration of justice. An immense 
 and complicated network of governmental machinery 
 would thus be dispensed with. 
 
 In the administration of justice there would be a like 
 saving of strain. Much of the civil business of our 
 courts arises from disputes as to ownership of land. 
 These would cease when the state was virtually acknowl- 
 edged as the sole owner of land, and all occupiers became
 
 Chap.lV. UPO-N SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 453 
 
 practically rent-paying tenants. The growth of morality 
 consequent upon the cessation of want would tend to a 
 like diminution in other civil business of the courts, 
 which could be hastened by the adoption of the common 
 sense proposition of Bentham to abolish all laws for the 
 collection of debts and the enforcement of private con- 
 tracts. The rise of wages, the opening of opportunities 
 for all to make an easy and comfortable living, would at 
 once lessen and would soon eliminate from society the 
 thieves, swindlers, and other classes of criminals who 
 spring from the unequal distribution of wealth. Thus 
 the administration of the criminal law, with all its para- 
 phernalia of policemen, detectives, prisons, and peniten- 
 tiaries, would, like the administration of the civil law, 
 cease to make such a drain upon the vital force and atten- 
 tion of society. We should get rid, not only of many 
 judges, bailiffs, clerks and prison keepers, but of the 
 great host of lawyers who are now maintained at the 
 expense of producers; and talent now wasted in legal 
 subtleties would be turned to higher pursuits. 
 
 The legislative, judicial, and executive functions of 
 government would in this way be vastly simplified. Nor 
 can I think that the public debts and the standing 
 armies, which are historically the outgrowth of the 
 change from feudal to allodial tenures, would long re- 
 main after the reversion to the old idea that the land of 
 a country is the common right of the people of the coun- 
 try. The former could readily be paid off by a tax that 
 would not lessen the wages of labor nor check produc- 
 tion, and the latter the growth of intelligence and inde- 
 pendence among the masses, aided, perhaps, by the prog- 
 ress of irivention, which is revolutionizing the military 
 art, must soon cause to disappear. 
 
 Society would thus approach the ideal of Jeffersonian 
 democracy, the promised land of Herbert Spencer, the 
 abolition of government. But of government only as a
 
 454 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 directing and repressive power. It would at the same 
 time, and in the same degree, become possible for it to 
 realize the dream of socialism. All this simplification 
 and abrogation of the present functions of government 
 would make possible the assumption of certain other 
 functions which are now pressing for recognition. Gov- 
 ernment could take upon itself the transmission of mes- 
 sages by telegraph, as well as by mail; of building and 
 operating railroads, as well as of opening and maintain- 
 ing common roads. With present functions so simplified 
 and reduced, functions such as these could be assumed 
 without danger or strain, and would be under the super- 
 vision of public attention, which is now distracted. 
 There would be a great and increasing surplus revenue 
 from the taxation of land values, for material progress, 
 which would go on with greatly accelerated rapidity, 
 would tend constantly to increase rent. This revenue 
 arising from the common property could be applied to 
 the common benefit, as were the revenues of Sparta. 
 We might not establish public tables they would be un- 
 necessary; but we could establish public baths, museums, 
 libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and dancing 
 halls, theaters, universities, technical schools, shooting 
 galleries, play grounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat, light, 
 and motive power, as well as water, might be conducted 
 through our streets at public expense; our roads be lined 
 with fruit trees; discoverers and inventors rewarded, 
 scientific investigations supported; and in a thousand 
 ways the public revenues made to foster efforts for the 
 public benefit. We should reach the ideal of the social- 
 ist, but not through governmental repression. Govern- 
 ment would change its character, and would become the 
 administration of a great co-operative society. It would 
 become merely the agency by which the common property 
 was administered for the common benefit. 
 Does this seem impracticable? Consider for a moment
 
 Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 455 
 
 the vast changes that would be wrought in social life by 
 a change which would assure to labor its full reward; 
 which would banish want and the fear of want; and give 
 to the humblest freedom to develop in natural symmetry. 
 
 In thinking of the possibilities of social organization, 
 we are apt to assume that greed is the strongest of human 
 motives, and that systems of administration can be safely 
 based only upon the idea that the fear of punishment is 
 necessary to keep men honest that selfish interests are 
 always stronger than general interests. Nothing could 
 be further from the truth. 
 
 From whence springs this lust for gain, to gratify 
 which men tread everything pure and noble under their 
 feet; to which they sacrifice all the higher possibilities 
 of life; which converts civility into a hollow pretense, 
 patriotism into a sham, and religion into hypocrisy; 
 which makes so much of civilized existence an Ishma- 
 elitish warfare, of which the weapons are cunning and 
 fraud? 
 
 Does it not spring from the existence of want? Carlyle 
 somewhere says that poverty is the hell of which the 
 modern Englishman is most afraid. And he is right. 
 Poverty is the open-mouthed, relentless hell which yawns 
 beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough. The 
 Vedaa declare no truer thing than when the wise crow 
 Bushanda tells the eagle-bearer of Vishnu that the keen- 
 est pain is in poverty. For poverty is not merely dep- 
 rivation; it means shame, degradation; the searing of 
 the most sensitive parts of our moral and mental nature as 
 with hot irons; the denial of the strongest impulses and 
 the sweetest affections; the wrenching of the most vital 
 nerves. You love your wife, you love your children; 
 but would it not be easier to see them die than to see 
 theji reduced to the pinch of want in which large classes 
 in every highly civilized community live? The strong- 
 est of animal passions is that with which we cling to life,
 
 456 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IZ 
 
 but it is an everyday occurrence in civilized societies for 
 men to put poison to their mouths or pistols to their 
 heads from fear of poverty, and for one who does this 
 there are probably a hundred who have the desire, but 
 are restrained by instinctive shrinking, by religious con- 
 siderations, or by family ties. 
 
 From this hell of poverty, it is but natural that men 
 should make every effort to escape. With the impulse 
 to self-preservation and self-gratification combine nobler 
 feelings, and love as well as fear urges in the struggle. 
 Many a man does a mean thing, a dishonest thing, a 
 greedy and grasping and unjust thing, in the effort to 
 place above want, or the fear of want, mother or wife or 
 children. 
 
 And out of this condition of things arises a public 
 opinion which enlists, as an impelling power in the 
 struggle to grasp and to keep, one of the strongest 
 perhaps with many men the very strongest springs of 
 human action. The desire for approbation, the feeling 
 that urges us to win the respect, admiration, or sym- 
 pathy of our fellows, is instinctive and universal. Dis- 
 torted sometimes into the most abnormal manifestations, 
 it may yet be everywhere perceived. It is potent with 
 the veriest savage, as with the most highly cultivated 
 member of the most polished society; it shows itself with 
 the first gleam of intelligence, and persists to the last 
 breath. It triumphs over the love of ease, over the sense 
 of pain, over the dread of death. It dictates the most 
 trivial and the most important actions. 
 
 The child just beginning to toddle or to talk will make 
 new efforts as its cunning little tricks excite attention 
 and laughter; the dying master of the world gathers his 
 robes around him, that he may pass away as becomes a 
 king; Chinese mothers will deform their daughters' feet 
 by cruel stocks, European women will sacrifice their own 
 comfort and the comfort of their families to similar
 
 . IF. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 457 
 
 dictates of fashion ; the Polynesian, that he may excite 
 admiration by his beautiful tattoo, will hold himself still 
 while his flesh is torn by sharks' teeth; the North Ameri- 
 can Indian, tied to the stake, will bear the most fiendish 
 tortures without a moan, and, that he may be respected 
 and admired as a great brave, will taunt his tormentors 
 to new cruelties. It is this that leads the forlorn hope; 
 it is this that trims the lamp of the pale student; it is 
 this that impels men to strive, to strain, to toil, and to 
 die. It is this that raised the pyramids and that fired 
 the Ephesian dome. 
 
 Now, men admire what they desire. How sweet to 
 the storm-stricken seems the safe harbor; food to the 
 hungry, drink to the thirsty, warmth to the shivering, 
 rest to the weary, power to the weak, knowledge to him 
 in whom the intellectual yearnings of the soul have been 
 aroused. And thus the sting of want and the fear of 
 want make men admire above all things the possession of 
 riches, and to become wealthy is to become respected, 
 and admired, and influential. Get money honestly, if 
 you can, but at any rate get money! This is the lesson 
 that society is daily and hourly dinning in the ears of its 
 members. Men instinctively admire virtue and truth, 
 but the sting of want and the fear of want make them 
 even more strongly admire the rich and sympathize with 
 the fortunate. It is well to be honest and just, and men 
 will commend it; but he who by fraud and injustice gets 
 him a million dollars will have more respect, and admira- 
 tion, and influence, more eye service and lip service, if 
 not heart service, than he who refuses it. The one may 
 have his reward in the future; he may know that his 
 name is writ in the Book of Life, and that for him is the 
 white robe and the palm branch of the victor against 
 temptation; but the other has his reward in the present. 
 His name is writ in the list of "our substantial citizens;" 
 he has the courtship of men and the flattery of women;
 
 458 EFFECTS OF THE BEMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 the best pew in the church and the personal regard of 
 the eloquent clergyman who in the name of Christ 
 preaches the Gospel of Dives, and tones down into a 
 meaningless flower of Eastern speech the stern metaphor 
 of the camel and the needle's eye. He may be a patron 
 of arts, a Maecenas to men of letters; may profit by the 
 converse of the intelligent, and be polished by the attri- 
 tion of the refined. His alms may feed the poor, and 
 help the struggling, and bring sunshine into desolate 
 places; and noble public institutions commemorate, after 
 he is gone, his name and his fame. It is not in the 
 guise of a hideous monster, with horns and tail, that 
 Satan tempts the children of men, but as an angel of 
 light. His promises are not alone of the kingdoms of 
 the world, but of mental and moral principalities and 
 powers. He appeals not only to the animal appetites, but 
 to the cravings that stir in man because he is more than 
 an animal. 
 
 Take the case of those miserable "men with muck- 
 rakes," who are to be seen in every community as plainly 
 as Bunyan saw their type in his vision who, long after 
 they have accumulated wealth enough to satisfy every 
 desire, go on working, scheming, striving to add riches 
 to riches. It was the desire "to be something;" nay, in 
 many cases, the desire to do noble and generous deeds, 
 that started them on a career of money getting. And 
 what compels them to it long after every possible need 
 is satisfied, what urges them still with unsatisfied and 
 ravenous greed, is not merely the force of tyrannous 
 habit, but the subtler gratifications which the possession 
 of riches gives the sense of power and influence, the 
 sense of being looked up to and respected, the sense that 
 their wealth not merely raises them above want, but 
 makes them men of mark in the community in which 
 they live. It is this that makes the rich man so loath to 
 part with his money, so anxious to get more.
 
 Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 459 
 
 Against temptations that thus appeal to the strongest 
 impulses of our nature, the sanctions of law and the pre- 
 cepts of religion can effect but little; and the wonder is, 
 not that men are so self-seeking, but that they are not 
 much more so. That under present circumstances men 
 are not more grasping, more unfaithful, more selfish 
 than they are, proves the goodness and fruitfulness of 
 human nature, the ceaseless flow of the perennial foun- 
 tains from which its moral qualities are fed. All of us 
 have mothers; most of us have children, and so faith, 
 and purity, and unselfishness can never be utterly ban- 
 ished from the world, howsoever bad be social adjust- 
 ments. 
 
 But whatever is potent for evil may be made potent 
 for good. The change I have proposed would destroy 
 the conditions that distort impulses in themselves benefi- 
 cent, and would transmute the forces which now tend 
 to disintegrate society into forces which would tend to 
 unite and purify it. 
 
 Give labor a free field and its full earnings; take for 
 the benefit of the whole community that fund which the 
 growth of the community creates, and want and the fear 
 of want would be gone. The springs of production 
 would be set free, and the enormous increase of wealth 
 would give the poorest ample comfort. Men would no 
 more worry about finding employment than they worry 
 about finding air to breathe; they need have no more 
 care about physical necessities than do the lilies of the field. 
 The progress of science, the march of invention, the 
 diffusion of knowledge, would bring their benefits to all. 
 
 With this abolition of want and the fear of want, the 
 admiration of riches would decay, and men would seek 
 the respect and approbation of their fellows in other 
 modes than by the acquisition and display of wealth. In 
 this way there would be brought to the management of 
 public affairs, and the administration of common funds,
 
 460 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 the skill, the attention, the fidelity, and integrity that 
 can now be secured only for private interests, and a rail- 
 road or gas works might be operated on public account, 
 not only more economically and efficiently than as at 
 present, under joint stock management, but as econom- 
 ically and efficiently as would be possible under a single 
 ownership. The prize of the Olympian games, that 
 called forth the most strenuous exertions of all Greece, 
 was but a wreath of wild olive; for a bit of ribbon men 
 have over and over again performed services no money 
 opuld have bought. 
 
 j Shortsighted is the philosophy which counts on selfish- 
 ? ness as the master motive of human action. It is blind 
 "^to facts of which the world is full. It sees not the 
 present, and reads not the past aright. If you would 
 move men to action, to what shall you appeal? Not to 
 their pockets, but to their patriotism; not to selfishness, 
 but to sympathy. Self-interest is, as it were, a mechan- 
 ical force potent, it is true; capable of large and wide 
 results. But there is in human nature what may be 
 likened to a chemical force; which melts and fuses and 
 overwhelms; to which nothing seems impossible. "All 
 that a man hath will he give for his life" that is self- 
 ' interest. But in loyalty to higher impulses men will give 
 even life. 
 
 It is not selfishness that enriches the annals of every 
 people with heroes and saints. It is not selfishness that 
 on every page of the world's history bursts out in sudden 
 splendor of noble deeds or sheds the soft radiance of 
 benignant lives. It was not selfishness that turned 
 Gautama's back to his royal home or bade the Maid of 
 Orleans lift the sword from the altar; that held the 
 Three Hundred in the Pass of Thermopylae, or gathered 
 into Winkelried's bosom the sheaf of spears; that 
 chained Vincent de Paul to the bench of the galley, or 
 brought little starving children, during the Indian
 
 Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 461 
 
 famine, tottering to the relief stations with yet weaker 
 starvelings in their arms. Call it religion, patriotism, 
 sympathy, the enthusiasm for humanity, or the love of 
 God give it what name you will; there is yet a force 
 which overcomes and drives out selfishness; a force 
 which is the electricity of the moral universe; a force 
 beside which all others are weak. Everywhere that men 
 have lived it has shown its power, and to-day, as ever, 
 the world is full of it. To be pitied is the man who has 
 never seen and never felt it. Look around! among com- 
 mon men and women, amid the care and the struggle of 
 daily life, in the jar of the noisy street and amid the 
 squalor where want hides every here and there is the 
 darkness lighted with the tremulous play of its lambent 
 flames. He who has not seen it has walked with shut 
 eyes. He who looks may see, as says Plutarch, that "the 
 soul has a principle of kindness in itself, and is born to 
 love, as well as to perceive, think, or remember." 
 
 And this force of forces that now goes to waste or 
 assumes perverted forms we may use for the strengthen- 
 ing, and building up, and ennobling of society, if we 
 but will, just as we now use physical forces that once 
 seemed but powers of destruction. All we have to do is 
 but to give it freedom and scope. The wrong that pro- 
 duces inequality; the wrong that in the midst of abun- 
 dance tortures men with want or harries them with the 
 fear of want; that stunts them physically, degrades them 
 intellectually, and distorts them morally, is what alone 
 prevents harmonious social development. For "all that 
 is from the gods is full of providence. We are made for 
 co-operation like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the 
 rows of the upper and lower teeth." 
 
 There are people into whose heads it never enters to 
 conceive of any better state of society than that which 
 now exists who imagine that the idea that there could 
 be a state of society in which greed would be banished,
 
 46J2 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IT. 
 
 prisons stand empty, individual interests be subordinated 
 to general interests, and no one seek to rob or to oppress 
 his neighbor, is but the dream of impracticable dreamers, 
 for whom these practical level-headed men, who pride 
 themselves on recognizing facts as they are, have a 
 hearty contempt. But such men 'though some of them 
 write books, and some of them occupy the chairs of uni- 
 versities, and some of them stand in pulpits do not think. 
 
 If they were accustomed to dine in such eating houses 
 as are to be found in the lower quarters of London and 
 Paris, where the knives and forks are chained to the 
 table, they would deem it the natural, ineradicable dis- 
 position of man to carry off the knife and fork with 
 which he has eaten. 
 
 Take a company of well-bred men and women dining 
 together. There is no struggling for food, no attempt 
 on the part of any one to get more than his neighbor; no 
 attempt to gorge or to carry off. On the contrary, each 
 one is anxious to help his neighbor before he partakes 
 himself; to offer to others the best rather than pick it 
 out for himself; and should any one show the slightest 
 disposition to prefer the gratification of his own appetite 
 to that of the others, or in any way to act the pig or 
 pilferer, the swift and heavy penalty of social contempt 
 and ostracism would show how such conduct is repro- 
 bated by common opinion. 
 
 All this is so common as to excite no remark, as to 
 seem the natural state of things. Yet it is no more 
 natural that men should not be greedy of food than that 
 they should not be greedy of wealth. They are greedy 
 of food when they are not assured that there will be a 
 fair and equitable distribution which will give each 
 enough. But when these conditions are assured, they 
 cease to be greedy of food. And so in society, as at 
 present constituted, men are greedy of wealth because 
 the conditions of distribution are so unjust that instead
 
 Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 463 
 
 of each being sure of enough, many are certain to be 
 condemned to want. It is the "devil catch the hind- 
 most" of present social adjustments that causes the race 
 and scramble for wealth, in which all considerations of 
 justice, mercy, religion, and sentiment are trampled 
 under foot; in which men forget their own souls, and 
 struggle to the very verge of the gr^ve for what they 
 cannot take beyond. But an equitable distribution of 
 wealth, that would exempt all from the fear of want, 
 would destroy the greed of wealth, just as in polite 
 society the greed of food has been destroyed. 
 
 On the crowded steamers of the early California lines 
 there was often a marked difference between the manners 
 of the steerage and the cabin, which illustrates this prin- 
 ciple of human nature. An abundance of food was pro- 
 vided for the steerage as for the cabin, but in the former 
 there were no regulations which insured efficient service, 
 and the meals became a scramble. In the cabin, on the 
 contrary, where each was allotted his place and there 
 was no fear that every one would not get enough, there 
 was no such scrambling and waste as were witnessed hi 
 the steerage. The difference was not in the character of 
 the people, but simply in this fact. The cabin passenger 
 transferred to the steerage would participate in the 
 greedy rush, and the steerage passenger transferred to 
 the cabin would at once become decorous and polite. 
 The same difference would show itself in society in 
 general were the present unjust distribution of wealth 
 replaced by a just distribution. 
 
 Consider this existing fact of a cultivated and refined 
 society, in which all the coarser passions are held in 
 check, not by force, not by law, but by common opinion 
 and the mutual desire of pleasing. If this is possible 
 for a part of a community, it is possible for a whole com- 
 munity. There are states of society in which every one 
 has to go armed in which every one has to hold him-
 
 464 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Boole IX. 
 
 self in readiness to defend person and property with the 
 strong hand. If we have progressed beyond that, we may 
 progress still further. 
 
 But it may be said, to banish want and the fear of 
 want, would be to destroy the stimulus to exertion; men 
 would become simply idlers, and such a happy state of 
 general comfort and content would be the death of prog- 
 ress. This is the old slaveholders' argument, that men 
 can be driven to labor only with the lash. Nothing is 
 more untrue. 
 
 Want might be banished, but desire would remain. 
 Man is the unsatisfied animal. He has but begun to ex- 
 plore, and the universe lies before him. Each step that 
 he takes opens new vistas and kindles new desires. He 
 is the constructive animal; he builds, he improves, he 
 invents, and puts together, and the greater the thing he 
 does, the greater the thing he wants to do. He is more 
 than an animal. Whatever be the intelligence that 
 breathes through nature, it is in that likeness that man 
 is made. The steamship, driven by her throbbing 
 engines through the sea, is in kind, though not in 
 degree, as much a creation as the whale that swims be- 
 neath. The telescope and the microscope, what are they 
 but added eyes, which man has made for himself; the 
 soft webs and fair colors in which our women array them- 
 selves, do they not answer to the plumage that nature 
 gives the bird? Man must be doing something, or fancy 
 that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative 
 impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, 
 but an abnormal man. 
 
 As soon as a child can command its muscles, it will 
 begin to make mud pies or dress a doll; its play is but the 
 imitation of the work of its elders; its very destructive- 
 ness arises from the desire to be doing something, from 
 the satisfaction of seeing itself accomplish something. 
 There is no such thing as the pursuit of pleasure for the
 
 Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL OKGANIZATION AND LIFE. 465 
 
 sake of pleasure. Our very amusements amuse only as 
 they are, or simulate, the learning or the doing of some- 
 thing. The moment they cease to appeal either to our 
 inquisitive or to our constructive powers, they cease to 
 amuse. It will spoil the interest of the novel reader to 
 be told just how the story will end; it is only the chance 
 and the skill involved in the game that enable the card- 
 player to "kill time" by shuffling bits of pasteboard. 
 The luxurious frivolities of Versailles were possible to 
 human beings only because the king thought he was 
 governing a kingdom and the courtiers were in pursuit 
 of fresh honors and new pensions. People who lead 
 what are called lives of fashion and pleasure must have 
 some other object in view, or they would die of ennui; 
 they support it only because they imagine that they are 
 gaining position, making friends, or improving the 
 chances of their children. Shut a man up, and deny 
 him employment, and he must either die or go mad. 
 
 It is not labor in itself that is repugnant to man; it is 
 not the natural necessity for exertion which is a curse. 
 It is only labor which produces nothing exertion of 
 which he cannot see the results. To toil day after day, 
 and yet get but the necessaries of life, this is indeed 
 hard; it is like the infernal punishment of compelling 
 a man to pump lest he be drowned, or to trudge on a 
 treadmill lest he be crushed. But, released from this 
 necessity, men would but work the harder and the bet- 
 ter, for then they would work as their inclinations led 
 them; then would they seem to be really doing some- 
 thing for themselves or for others. Was Humboldt's 
 life an idle one? Did Franklin find no occupation when 
 he retired from the printing business with enough to live 
 on ? Is Herbert Spencer a laggard ? Did Michael Angelo 
 paint for board and clothes? 
 
 The fact is that the work which improves the condi- 
 tion of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and
 
 466 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 increases power, and enriches literature, and elevates 
 thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the 
 work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of 
 a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men 
 who perform it for its own sake, and not that they may 
 get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state 
 of society where want was abolished, work of this sort 
 would be enormously increased. 
 
 I am inclined to think that the result of confiscating 
 rent in the manner I have proposed would be to cause 
 the organization of labor, wherever large capitals were 
 used, to assume the co-operative form, since the more 
 equal diffusion of wealth would unite capitalist and 
 laborer in the same person. But whether this would be 
 so or not is of little moment. The hard toil of routine 
 labor would disappear. Wages would be too high and 
 opportunities too great to compel any man to stint and 
 starve the higher qualities of his nature, and in every 
 avocation the brain would aid the hand. Work, even of 
 the coarser kinds, would become a lightsome thing, and 
 the tendency of modern production to subdivision would 
 not involve monotony or the contraction of ability in the 
 worker; but would be relieved by short hours, by change, 
 by the alternation of intellectual with manual occupa- 
 tions. There would result, not only the utilization of 
 productive forces now going to waste; not only would 
 our present knowledge, now so imperfectly applied, be 
 fully used; but from the mobility of labor and the men- 
 tal activity which would be generated, there would result 
 advances in the methods of production that we now 
 cannot imagine. 
 
 For, greatest of all the enormous wastes which the 
 present constitution of society involves, is that of mental 
 power. How infinitesimal are the forces that concur to 
 the advance of civilization, as compared to the forces 
 that lie latent! How few are the thinkers, the discover-
 
 Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 467 
 
 ers, the inventors, the organizers, as compared with the 
 great ma^s of the people! Yet such men are born in 
 plenty; it is the conditions that permit so few to 
 develop. There are among men infinite diversities of 
 aptitude and inclination, as there are such infinite diver- 
 sities in physical structure that among a million there 
 will not be two that cannot be told apart. But, both 
 from observation and reflection, I am inclined to think 
 that the differences of natural power are no greater than 
 the differences of stature or of physical strength. Turn 
 to the lives of great men, and see how easily they might 
 never have been heard of. Had Caesar come of a prole- 
 tarian family; had Napoleon entered the world a few 
 years earlier; had Columbus gone into the Church in- 
 stead of going to sea; had Shakespeare been apprenticed 
 to a cobbler or chimney-sweep; had Sir Isaac Newton 
 been assigned by fate the education and the toil of an 
 agricultural laborer; had Dr. Adam Smith been born in 
 the coal hews, or Herbert Spencer forced to get his living 
 as a factory operative, what would their talents have 
 availed? But there would have been, it will be said, 
 other Caesars or Napoleons, Columbuses or Shakespeares, 
 Newtons, Smiths or Spencers. This is true. And it 
 shows how prolific is our human nature. As the com- 
 mon worker is on need transformed into queen bee, so, 
 when circumstances favor his development, what might 
 otherwise pass for a common man rises into a hero or 
 leader, discoverer or teacher, sage or saint. So widely 
 has the sower scattered the seed, so strong is the germina- 
 tive force that bids it bud and blossom. But, alas, for 
 the stony ground, and the birds and the tares! For one 
 who attains his full stature, how many are stunted and 
 deformed. 
 
 The will within us is the ultimate fact of conscious- 
 ness. Yet how little have the best of us, in acquire- 
 ments, in position, even in character, that may be cred-
 
 468 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 
 
 ited entirely to ourselves; how much to the influences 
 that have molded us. Who is there, wise, learned, dis- 
 creet, or strong, who might not, were he to trace the 
 inner history of his life, turn, like the Stoic Emperor, to 
 give thanks to the gods, that by this one and that one, 
 and here and there, good examples have been set him, 
 noble thoughts have reached him, and happy opportuni- 
 ties opened before him. Who is there, who, with his 
 eyes about him, has reached the meridian of life, who has 
 not sometimes echoed the thought of the pious English- 
 man, as the criminal passed to the gallows, "But for the 
 grace of God, there go I." How little does heredity 
 count as compared with conditions. This one, we say, is 
 the result of a thousand years of European progress, and 
 that one of a thousand years of Chinese petrifaction; 
 yet, placed an infant in the heart of China, and but for 
 the angle of the eye or the shade of the hair, the Cau- 
 casian would grow up as those around him, using the 
 same speech, thinking the same thoughts, exhibiting the 
 same tastes. Change Lady Vere de Vere in her cradle 
 with an infant of the slums, and will the blood of a hun- 
 dred earls give you a refined and cultured woman? 
 
 To remove want and the fear of want, to give to all 
 classes leisure, and comfort, and independence, the decen- 
 cies and refinements of life, the opportunities of mental and 
 moral development, would be like turning water into a 
 desert. The sterile waste would clothe itself with 
 verdure, and the barren places where life seemed banned 
 would ere long be dappled with the shade of trees and 
 musical with the song of birds. Talents now hidden, 
 virtues unsuspected, would come forth to make human 
 life richer, fuller, happier, nobler. For in these round 
 men who are stuck into three-cornered holes, and three- 
 cornered men who are jammed into round holes; in these 
 men who are wasting their energies in the scramble to 
 be rich; in these who in factories are turned into ma-
 
 Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE. 469 
 
 chines, or are chained by necessity to bench or plow; in 
 these children who are growing up in squalor, and vice, 
 and ignorance, are powers of the highest order, talents 
 the most splendid. They need but the opportunity to 
 bring them forth. 
 
 Consider the possibilities of a state of society that gave 
 that opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out the 
 picture; its colors grow too bright for words to paint. 
 Consider the moral elevation, the intellectual activity, 
 the social life. Consider how by a thousand actions and 
 interactions the members of every community are linked 
 together, and how in the present condition of things 
 even the fortunate few who stand upon the apex of the 
 social pyramid must suffer, though they know it not, 
 from the want, ignorance, and degradation that are 
 underneath. Consider these things and then say whether 
 the change I propose would not be for the benefit of 
 every one even the greatest land holder? Would he not 
 be safer of the future of his children in leaving them 
 penniless in such a state of society than in leaving them 
 the largest fortune in this? Did such a state of society 
 anywhere exist, would he not buy entrance to it cheaply 
 by giving up all his possessions? 
 
 I have now traced to their source social weakness and 
 disease. I have shown the remedy. I have covered 
 every point and met every objection. But the problems 
 that we have been considering, great as they are, pass 
 into problems greater yet into the grandest problems 
 with which the human mind can grapple. I am about 
 to ask the reader who has gone with me so far, to go 
 with me further, into still higher fields. But I ask him 
 to remember that in the little space which remains of 
 the limits to which this book must be confined, I cannot 
 fully treat the questions which arise. I can but suggest 
 some thoughts, which may, perhaps, serve as hints for 
 farther thought.
 
 BOOK X. 
 
 THE LAW OP HUMAN PEOGEESS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE CURRENT THEORY OP HUMAN PRO- 
 GRESS ITS INSUFFICIENCY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION TO WHAT 
 DUE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. THE CENTRAL TRUTH.
 
 What in me is dark 
 
 Illumine, what is low raise and support; 
 That to the height of this great argument 
 I may assert eternal Providence 
 And justify the ways of God to men. 
 
 Milton.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CUBBEJTT THEOBY OF HUMAK PBOQBESS ITS IN- 
 SUFFICIENCY. 
 
 If the conclusions at which we have arrived are cor- 
 rect, they will fall under a larger generalization. 
 
 Let us, therefore, recommence our inquiry from a 
 higher standpoint, whence we may survey a wider field. 
 
 What is the law of human progress f 
 
 This is a question which, were it not for what has 
 gone before, I should hesitate to review in the brief 
 space I can now devote to it, as it involves, directly or 
 indirectly, some of the very highest problems with which 
 the human mind can engage. But it is a question which 
 naturally comes up. Are or are not the conclusions to 
 which we have come consistent with the great law under 
 which human development goes on? 
 
 What is that law? We must find the answer to our 
 question; for the current philosophy, though it clearly 
 recognizes the existence of such a law, gives no more sat- 
 isfactory account of it than the current political economy 
 does of the persistence of want amid advancing wealth. 
 
 Let us, as far as possible, keep to the firm ground of 
 facts. Whether man was or was not gradually developed 
 from an animal, it is not necessary to inquire. However 
 intimate may be the connection between questions which 
 relate to man as we know him and questions which relate 
 to his genesis, it is only from the former upon the latter 
 that light can be thrown. Inference cannot proceed 
 from the unknown to the known. It is only from facts
 
 474 THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 of which we are cognizant that we can infer what has 
 preceded cognizance. 
 
 However man may have originated, all we know of 
 him is as man just as he is now to be found. There is 
 no record or trace of him in any lower condition than 
 that in which savages are still to be met. By whatever 
 bridge he may have crossed the wide chasm which now 
 separates him from the brutes, there remain of it no 
 vestiges. Between the lowest savages of whom we know 
 and the highest animals, there is an irreconcilable differ- 
 ence a difference not merely of degree, but of kind. 
 Many of the characteristics, actions, and emotions of 
 man are exhibited by the lower animals; but man, no 
 matter how low in the scale of humanity, has never yet 
 been found destitute of one thing of which no animal 
 shows the slightest trace, a clearly recognizable but al- 
 most undefinable something, which gives him the power 
 of improvement which makes him the progressive 
 animal. 
 
 The beaver builds a dam, and the bird a nest, and the 
 bee a cell; but while beavers' dams, and birds' nests, 
 and bees' cells are always constructed on the same model, 
 the house of the man passes from the rude hut of leaves 
 and branches to the magnificent mansion replete with 
 modern conveniences. The dog can to a certain extent 
 connect cause and effect, and may be taught some tricks; 
 but his capacity in these respects has not been a whit 
 increased during all the ages he has been the associate of 
 improving man, and the dog of civilization is not a whit 
 more accomplished or intelligent than the dog of the 
 wandering savage. We know of no animal that uses 
 clothes, that cooks its food, that makes itself tools or 
 weapons, that breeds other animals that it wishes to eat, 
 or that has an articulate language. But men who do 
 not do such things have never yet been found, or heard 
 of, except in fable. That is to say, man, wherever we
 
 'Chap.l. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CUKRENT THEORY. 475 
 
 know him, exhibits this power of supplementing what 
 nature has done for him by what he does for himself; 
 and, in fact, so inferior is the physical endowment of 
 man, that there is no part of the world, save perhaps 
 some of the small islands of the Pacific, where without 
 this faculty he could maintain an existence. 
 
 Man everywhere and at all times exhibits this faculty 
 everywhere and at all times of which we have knowl- 
 edge he has made some use of it. But the degree 
 in which this has been done greatly varies. Between 
 the rude canoe and the steamship; between the boom- 
 erang and the repeating rifle; between the roughly carved 
 wooden idol and the breathing marble of Grecian art; 
 between savage knowledge and modern science; .be- 
 tween the wild Indian and the white settler; between 
 the Hottentot woman and the belle of polished society, 
 there is an enormous difference. 
 
 The varying degrees in which this faculty is used can- 
 not be ascribed to differences in original capacity the 
 most highly improved peoples of the present day were 
 savages within historic times, and we meet with the 
 widest differences between peoples of the same stock. 
 Nor can they be wholly ascribed to differences in phys- 
 ical environment the cradles of learning and the arts are 
 now in many cases tenanted by barbarians, and within a 
 few years great cities rise on the hunting grounds of wild 
 tribes. All these differences are evidently connected with 
 social development. Beyond perhaps the veriest rudi- 
 ments, it becomes possible for man to improve only as 
 he lives with his fellows. All these improvements, 
 therefore, in man's powers and condition we summarize 
 in the term civilization. Men improve as they become 
 civilized, or learn to co-operate in society. 
 
 What is the law of this improvement? By what com- 
 mon principle can we explain the different stages of civili- 
 zation at which different communities have arrived? In
 
 476 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 what consists essentially the progress of civilization, so 
 that we may say of varying social adjustments, this favors 
 it, and that does not; or explain why an institution or 
 condition which may at one time advance it may at an- 
 other time retard it? 
 
 The prevailing belief now is, that the progress of civi- 
 lization is a development or evolution, in the course of 
 which men's powers are increased and his qualities im- 
 proved by the operation of causes similar to those which 
 are relied upon as explaining the genesis of species viz., 
 the survival of the fittest and the hereditary transmission 
 of acquired qualities. 
 
 That civilization is an evolution that it is, in the 
 language of Herbert Spencer, a progress from an in- 
 definite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
 heterogeneity there is no doubt; but to say this is not 
 to explain or identify the causes which forward or retard 
 it. How far the sweeping generalizations of Spencer, 
 which seek to account for all phenomena under terms of 
 matter and force, may, properly understood, include all 
 these causes, I am unable to say; but, as scientifically 
 expounded, the development philosophy has either not 
 yet definitely met this question, or has given birth, or 
 rather coherency, to an opinion which does not accord 
 with the facts. 
 
 I The vulgar explanation of progress is, I think, very 
 ,'much like the view naturally taken by the money maker 
 / of the causes of the unequal distribution of wealth. His 
 theory, if he has one, usually is, that there is plenty of 
 money to be made by those who have will and ability, 
 and that it is ignorance, or idleness, or extravagance, 
 that makes the difference between the rich and the poor. 
 And so the common explanation of differences of ciYiliza- 
 tion is of differences in capacity. The civilized races are 
 the superior races, and advance in civilization is accord- 
 ing to this superiority just as English victories were, in
 
 Cfcop./. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CUEEBNT THEORY. 47? 
 
 common English opinion, due to the natural superiority 
 of Englishmen to frog-eating Frenchmen; and popular 
 government, active invention, and greater average com- 
 fort are, or were until lately, in common American opin- 
 ion, due to the greater "smartness of the Yankee 
 Nation." 
 
 Now, just as the politico-economic doctrines which in 
 the beginning of this inquiry we met and disproved, 
 harmonize with the common opinion of men who see 
 capitalists paying wages and competition reducing wages; 
 just as the Malthusian theory harmonized with existing 
 prejudices both of the rich and the poor; so does the ex- 
 planation of progress as a gradual race improvement 
 harmonize with the vulgar opinion which accounts by 
 race differences for differences in civilization. It has 
 given coherence and a scientific formula to opinions 
 which already prevailed. Its wonderful spread since the 
 time Darwin first startled the world with his "Origin of 
 Species" has not been so much a conquest as an assimila- 
 tion. 
 
 The view which now dominates the world of thought 
 is this: That the struggle for existence, just in propor- 
 tion as it becomes intense, impels men to new efforts and 
 inventions. That this improvement and capacity for 
 improvement is fixed by hereditary transmission, and 
 extended by the tendency of the best adapted individual, 
 or most improved individual, to survive and propagate 
 among individuals, and of the best adapted, or most im- 
 proved tribe, nation, or race to survive in the struggle 
 between social aggregates. On this theory the differ- 
 ences between man and the animals, and differences in 
 the relative progress of men, are now explained as confi- 
 dently, and all but as generally, as a little while ago they 
 were explained upon the theory of special creation and 
 divine interposition. 
 
 The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of
 
 478 THE LAW OF HUMAN" PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 hopeful fatalism, of which current literature is full.* In 
 this view, progress is the result of forces which work 
 slowly, steadily and remorselessly,for the elevation of man. 
 War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and pesti- 
 lence, the want and misery which fester in modern civili- 
 zation, are the impelling causes which drive man on, by 
 eliminating poorer types and extending the higher; and 
 hereditary transmission is the power by which advances 
 are fixed, and past advances made the footing for new 
 advances. The individual is the result of changes thus 
 impressed upon and perpetuated through a long series of 
 past individuals, and the social organization takes its 
 form from the individuals of which it is composed. 
 Thus, while this theory is, as Herbert Spencer saysf 
 "radical to a degree beyond anything which current 
 radicalism conceives;" inasmuch as it looks for changes 
 in the very nature of man; it is at the same time "con- 
 servative to a degree beyond anything conceived by cur- 
 rent conservatism," inasmuch as it holds that no change 
 can avail save these slow changes in men's natures. 
 Philosophers may teach that this does not lessen the 
 duty of endeavoring to reform abuses, just as the theo- 
 logians who taught predestinarianism insisted on the 
 
 * In semi-scientific or popularized form this may perhaps be seen 
 In best, because frankest, expression in "The Martyrdom of Man," 
 by Winwood Reade, a writer of singular vividness and power. This 
 book is in reality a history of progress, or, rather, a monograph upon 
 its causes and methods, and will well repay perusal for its vivid pic- 
 tures, whatever may be thought of the capacity of the author for 
 philosophic generalization. The connection between subject and 
 title may be seen by the conclusion: "I give to universal history a 
 strange but true title The Martyrdom of Man. In each generation 
 the human race has been tortured that their children might profit by 
 their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the 
 past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit 
 of those who are to come?" 
 
 f "The Study of Sociology " Conclusion.
 
 Chap. 1. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURKENT THEOKY. 479 
 
 duty of all to struggle for salvation; but, as generally 
 apprehended, the result is fatalism "do what we may, 
 the mills of the gods grind on regardless either of our 
 aid or our hindrance." I allude to this only to illustrate 
 what I take to be the opinion now rapidly spreading and 
 permeating common thought; not that in the search for 
 truth any regard for its effects should be permitted to 
 bias the mind. But this I take to be the current view of 
 civilization: That it is the result of forces, operating in 
 the way indicated, which slowly change the character, 
 and improve and elevate the powers of man; that the 
 difference between civilized man and savage is of a long 
 race education, which has become permanently fixed in 
 mental organization; and that this improvement tends to 
 go on increasingly, to a higher and higher civilization. 
 We have reached such a point that progress seems to 
 be natural with us, and we look forward confidently to 
 the greater achievements of the coming race some even 
 holding that the progress of science will finally give men 
 immortality and enable them to make bodily the tour not 
 only of the planets, but of the fixed stars, and at length 
 to manufacture suns and systems for themselves.* 
 
 But without soaring to the stars, the moment that 
 this theory of progression, winch seems so natural to us 
 amid an advancing civilization, looks around the world, 
 it comes against an enormous fact the fixed, petrified 
 civilizations. The majority of the human race to-day 
 have no idea of progress; the majority of the human race 
 to-day look (as until a few generations ago our own an- 
 cestors looked) upon the past as the time of human per- 
 fection. The difference between the savage and the 
 civilized man may be explained on the theory that the 
 former is as yet so imperfectly developed that his prog- 
 ress is hardly apparent; but how, upon the theory that 
 human progress is the result of general and continuous 
 
 * Winwood Reade, " The Martyrdom of Man."
 
 480 THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGRESS. Book X. 
 
 causes, shall we account for the civilizations that have 
 progressed so far and then stopped? It cannot be said 
 of the Hindoo and of the Chinaman, as it may be said of 
 the savage, that our superiority is the result of a longer 
 education; that we are, as it were, the grown men of 
 nature, while they are the children. The Hindoos and 
 the Chinese were civilized when we were savages. They 
 
 ti 
 
 had great cities, highly organized and powerful govern- 
 ments, literatures, philosophies, polished manners, con- 
 siderable division of labor, large commerce, and elaborate 
 arts, when our ancestors were wandering barbarians, liv- 
 ing in huts and skin tents, not a whit further advanced 
 than the American Indians. While we have progressed 
 from this savage state to Nineteenth Century civiliza- 
 tion, they have stood still. If progress be the result of 
 fixed laws, inevitable and eternal, which impel men for- 
 ward, how shall we account for this? 
 
 One of the best popular expounders of the develop- 
 ment philosophy, Walter Bagehot ("Physics and Poli- 
 tics"), admits the force of this objection, and endeavors 
 in this way to explain it: That the first thing necessary 
 to civilize man is to tame him; to induce him to live in 
 association with his fellows in subordination to law; and 
 hence a body or "cake" of laws and customs grows up, 
 being intensified and extended by natural selection, the 
 tribe or nation thus bound together having an advantage 
 over those who are not. That this cake of custom and 
 law finally becomes too thick and hard to permit further 
 progress, which can go on only as circumstances occur 
 which introduce discussion, and thus permit the freedom 
 and mobility necessary to improvement. 
 
 This explanation, which Mr. Bagehot offers, as he says, 
 with some misgivings, is I think at the expense of the 
 general theory. But it is not worth while speaking of 
 that, for it, manifestly, does not explain the facts. 
 
 The hardening tendency of which Mr. Bagehot speaks
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY. 481 
 
 would show itself at a very early period of development, 
 and his illustrations of it are nearly all drawn from 
 savage or semi-savage life. Whereas, these arrested civi- 
 lizations had gone a long distance before they stopped. 
 There must have been a time when they were very 
 far advanced as compared with the savage state, and 
 were yet plastic, free, and advancing. These arrested 
 civilizations stopped at a point which was hardly in any- 
 thing inferior and in many respects superior to European 
 civilization of, say, the sixteenth or at any rate the fif- 
 teenth century. Up to that point then there must have 
 been discussion, the hailing of what was new, and men- 
 tal activity of all sorts. They had architects who carried 
 the art of building, necessarily by a series of innovations 
 or improvements, up to a very high point; ship-builders 
 who in the same way, by innovation after innovation, 
 finally produced as good a vessel as the war ships of 
 Henry VIII.; inventors who stopped only on the verge of 
 our most important improvements, and from some of 
 whom we can yet learn; engineers who constructed great 
 irrigation works and navigable canals; rival schools of 
 philosophy and conflicting ideas of religion. One great 
 religion, in many respects resembling Christianity, rose 
 in India, displaced the old religion, passed into China, 
 sweeping over that country, and was displaced again in 
 its old seats, just as Christianity was displaced in its first 
 seats. There was life, and active life, and the innova- 
 tion that begets improvement, long after men had 
 learned to live together. And, moreover, both India 
 and China have received the infusion of new life in con- 
 quering races, with different customs and modes of 
 thought. 
 
 The most fixed and petrified of all civilizations of which 
 we know anything was that of Egypt, where even art 
 finally assumed a conventional and inflexible form. But 
 we know that behind this must have been a time of life
 
 482 THE LAW OF HUMAN PBOGRESS. Book X. 
 
 and vigor a freshly developing and expanding civiliza- 
 tion, such as ours is now or the arts and sciences could 
 never have been carried to such a pitch. And recent 
 excavations have brought to light from beneath what we 
 before knew of Egypt an earlier Egypt still in statues 
 and carvings which, instead of a hard and formal type, 
 beam with life and expression, which show art strug- 
 gling, ardent, natural, and free, the sure indication of 
 an active and expanding life. So it must have been once 
 with all now unprogressive civilizations. 
 
 But it is not merely these arrested civilizations that 
 the current theory of development fails to account for. 
 It is not merely that men have gone so far on the path 
 of progress and then stopped; it is that men have gone 
 far on the path of progress and then gone back. It is 
 not merely an isolated case that thus confronts the theory 
 it is the universal rule. Every civilization that the 
 world has yet seen has had its period of vigorous growth, 
 of arrest and stagnation; its decline and fall. Of all the 
 civilizations that have arisen and flourished, there re- 
 main to-day but those that have been arrested, and our 
 own, which is not yet as old as were the pyramids when 
 Abraham looked upon them while behind the pyramids 
 were twenty centuries of recorded history. 
 
 That our own civilization has a broader base, is of a 
 more advanced type, moves quicker and soars higher 
 than any preceding civilization is undoubtedly true; but 
 in these respects it is hardly more in advance of the 
 Greco-Roman civilization than that was in advance of 
 Asiatic civilization; and if it were, that would prove 
 nothing as to its permanence and future advance, unless 
 it be shown that it is superior in those things which 
 caused the ultimate failure of its predecessors. The 
 current theory does not assume this. 
 
 In truth, nothing could be further from explaining the 
 facts of universal history than this theory that civiliza-
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CUEBENT THEOEY. 483 
 
 tion is the result of a course of natural selection which 
 operates to improve and elevate the powers of man. 
 That civilization has arisen at different times in different 
 places and has progressed at different rates, is not incon- 
 sistent with this theory; for that might result from the 
 unequal balancing of impelling and resisting forces; but 
 that progress everywhere commencing, for even among 
 the lowest tribes it is held that there has been some 
 progress, has nowhere been continuous, but has every- 
 where been brought to a stand or retrogression, is abso- 
 lutely inconsistent. For if progress operated to fix an 
 improvement in man's nature and thus to produce further 
 progress, though there might be occasional interruption, 
 yet the general rule wonld be that progress would be 
 continuous that advance would lead to advance, and 
 civilization develop into higher civilization. 
 
 Not merely the general rule, but the universal rule, is 
 the reverse of this. The earth is the tomb of the dead 
 empires, no less than of dead men. Instead of progress 
 fitting men for greater progress, every civilization that 
 was in its own time as vigorous and advancing as ours is 
 now, has of itself come to a stop. Over and over again, 
 art has declined, learning sunk, power waned, popula- 
 tion become sparse, until the people who had built great 
 temples and mighty cities, turned rivers and pierced 
 mountains, cultivated the earth like a garden and intro- 
 duced the utmost refinement into the minute affairs of 
 life, remained but in a remnant of squalid barbarians, 
 who had lost even the memory of what their ancestors 
 had done, and regarded the surviving fragments of their 
 grandeur as the work of genii, or of the mighty race be- 
 fore the flood. So true is this, that when we think of 
 the past, it seems like the inexorable law, from which we 
 can no more hope to be exempt than the young man 
 who "feels his life in every limb" can hope to be exempt 
 from the dissolution which is the common fate of all.
 
 484 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGBESS. Book X. 
 
 "Even this, Rome, must one day be thy fate!" wept 
 Scipio over the ruins of Carthage, and Macaulay's pic- 
 ture of the New Zealander musing upon the broken arch 
 of London Bridge appeals to the imagination of even 
 those who see cities rising in the wilderness and help to 
 lay the foundations of new empire. And so, when we 
 erect a public building we make a hollow in the largest 
 corner stone and carefully seal within it some mementos 
 of our day, looking forward to the time when our works 
 shall be ruins and ourselves forgot. 
 
 Nor whether this alternate rise and fall of civilization, 
 this retrogression that always follows progression, be, or 
 be not, the rhythmic movement of an ascending line 
 (and I think, though I will not open the question, that 
 it would be much more difficult to prove the affirmative 
 than is generally supposed) makes no difference; for the 
 current theory is in either case disproved. Civilizations 
 have died and made no sign, and hard-won progress has 
 been lost to the race forever, but, even if it be admitted 
 that each wave of progress has made possible a higher 
 wave and each civilization passed the torch to a greater 
 civilization, the theory that civilization advances by 
 changes wrought in the nature of man fails to explain 
 the facts; for in every case it is not the race that has 
 been educated and hereditarily modified by the old civili- 
 zation that begins the new, but a fresh race coming from 
 a lower level. It is the barbarians of the one epoch who 
 have been the civilized men of the next; to be in their 
 turn succeeded by fresh barbarians. For it has been 
 heretofore always the case that men under the influences 
 of civilization, though at first improving, afterward 
 degenerate. The civilized man of to-day is vastly the 
 superior of the uncivilized; but so in the time of its 
 vigor was the civilized man of every dead civilization. 
 But there are such things as the vices, the corruptions, 
 the enervations of civilization, which past a certain point
 
 Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CUEEENT THEOBY. 485 
 
 have always heretofore shown themselves. Every civili- 
 zation that has been overwhelmed by barbarians has really 
 perished from internal decay. 
 
 This universal fact, the moment that it is recognized, 
 disposes of the theory that progress is by hereditary trans- 
 mission. Looking over the history of the world, the 
 line of greatest advance does not coincide for any length 
 of time with any line of heredity. On any particular 
 line of heredity, retrogression seems always to follow 
 advance. 
 
 Shall we therefore say that there is a national or race 
 life, as there is an individual life that every social 
 aggregate has, as it were, a certain amount of energy, 
 the expenditure of which necessitates decay? This is an 
 old and widespread idea, that is yet largely held, and 
 that may be constantly seen cropping out incongruously 
 in the writings of the expounders of the development 
 philosophy. Indeed, I do not see why it may not be 
 stated in terms of matter and of motion so as to bring it 
 clearly within the generalizations of evolution. For con- 
 sidering its individuals as atoms, the growth of society is 
 "an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of 
 motion; during which the matter passes from an in- 
 definite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
 heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion 
 undergoes a parallel transformation."* And thus an 
 analogy may be drawn between the life of a society and 
 the life of a solar system upon the nebular hypothesis. 
 As the heat and light of the sun are produced by the 
 aggregation of atoms evolving motion, which finally 
 ceases when the atoms at length come to a state of 
 equilibrium or rest, and a state of immobility succeeds, 
 which can be broken in again only by the impact of ex- 
 
 * Herbert Spencer's definition of Evolution, "First Principles," p. 
 396.
 
 486 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 ternal forces, which reverse the process of evolution, 
 integrating motion and dissipating matter in the form of 
 gas, again to evolve motion by its condensation; so, it 
 may be said, does the aggregation of individuals in a 
 community evolve a force which produces the light and 
 warmth of civilization, but when this process ceases and 
 the individual components are brought into a state of 
 equilibrium, assuming their fixed places, petrifaction 
 ensues, and the breaking up and diffusion caused by an 
 incursion of barbarians is necessary to the recommence- 
 ment of the process and a new growth of civilization. 
 
 But analogies are the most dangerous modes of 
 thought. They may connect resemblances and yet dis- 
 guise or cover up the truth. And all such analogies are 
 superficial. While its members are constantly repro- 
 duced in all the fresh vigor of childhood, a community 
 cannot grow old, as does a man, by the decay of its 
 powers. While its aggregate force must be the sum of 
 the forces of its individual components, a community 
 cannot lose vital power unless the vital powers of its 
 components are lessened. 
 
 Yet in both the common analogy which likens the life 
 power of a nation to that of an individual, and in the 
 one I have supposed, lurks the recognition of an obvious 
 truth the truth that the obstacles which finally bring 
 progress to a halt are raised by the course of progress; 
 that what has destroyed all previous civilizations has 
 been the conditions produced by the growth of civiliza- 
 tion itself. 
 
 This is a truth which in the current philosophy is 
 ignored; but it is a truth most pregnant. Any valid 
 theory of human progress must account for it.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION TO WHAT DUB. 
 
 In attempting to discover the law of human progress, 
 the first step must be to determine the essential nature 
 of those differences which we describe as differences in 
 civilization. 
 
 That the current philosophy, which attributes social 
 progress to changes wrought in the nature of man, does 
 not accord with historical facts, we have already seen. 
 And we may also see, if we consider them, that the 
 differences between communities in different stages of 
 civilization cannot be ascribed to innate differences in 
 the individuals who compose these communities. That 
 there are natural differences is true, and that there is 
 such a thing as hereditary transmission of peculiarities is 
 undoubtedly true; but the great differences between 
 men in different states of society cannot be explained in 
 this way. The influence of heredity, which it is now 
 the fashion to rate so highly, is as nothing compared 
 with the influences which mold the man after he comes 
 into the world. What is more ingrained in habit than 
 language, which becomes not merely an automatic trick 
 of the muscles, but the medium of thought? What per- 
 sists longer, or will quicker show nationality? Yet we 
 are not born with a predisposition to any language. Our 
 mother tongue is our mother tongue only because we 
 learned it in infancy. Although his ancestors have 
 thought and spoken in one language for countless gen- 
 erations, a child who hears from the first nothing else, 
 will learn with equal facility any other tongue. And so
 
 488 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 of other national or local or class peculiarities. They 
 seem to be matters of education and habit, not of trans- 
 mission. Cases of white children captured by Indians 
 in infancy and brought up in the wigwam show this. 
 They become thorough Indians. And so, I believe, with 
 children brought up by Gypsies. 
 
 That this is not so true of the children of Indians or 
 other distinctly marked races brought up by whites is, I 
 think, due to the fact that they are never treated pre- 
 cisely as white children. A gentleman who had taught 
 a colored school once told me that he thought the colored 
 children, up to the age of ten or twelve, were really 
 brighter and learned more readily than white children, 
 but that after that age they seemed to get dull and care- 
 less. He thought this proof of innate race inferiority, 
 and so did I at the time. But I afterward heard a 
 highly intelligent negro gentleman (Bishop Hillery) in- 
 cidentally make a remark which to my mind seems a 
 sufficient explanation. He said: "Our children, when 
 they are young, are fully as bright as white children, and 
 learn as readily. But as soon as they get old enough to 
 appreciate their status to realize that they are looked 
 upon as belonging to an inferior race, and can never 
 hope to be anything more than cooks, waiters, or some- 
 thing of that sort, they lose their ambition and cease to 
 keep up." And to this he might have added, that be- 
 ing the children of poor, uncultivated and unambitious 
 parents, home influences told against them. For, I be- 
 lieve it is a matter of common observation that in the 
 primary part of education the children of ignorant 
 parents are quite as receptive as the children of intelli- 
 gent parents, but by and by the latter, as a general rule, 
 pull ahead and make the most intelligent men and 
 women. The reason is plain. As to the first simple 
 things which they learn only at school, they are on a par, 
 but as their studies become more complex, the child who
 
 Chap. JL DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 489 
 
 at home is accustomed to good English, hears intelligent 
 conversation, has access to books, can get questions 
 answered, etc., has an advantage which tells. 
 
 The same thing may be seen later in life. Take a man 
 who has raised himself from the ranks of common labor, 
 and just as he is brought into contact with men of cul- 
 ture and men of affairs, will he become more intelligent 
 and polished. Take two brothers, the sons of poor 
 parents, brought up in the same home and in the same 
 way. One is put to a rude trade, and never gets beyond 
 the necessity of making a living by hard daily labor; the 
 other, commencing as an errand boy, gets a start in an- 
 other direction, and becomes finally a successful lawyer, 
 merchant, or politician. At forty or fifty the contrast 
 between them will be striking, and the unreflecting will 
 credit it to the greater natural ability which has enabled 
 the one to push himself ahead. But just as striking a 
 difference in manners and intelligence will be manifested 
 between two sisters, one of whom, married to a man who 
 has remained poor, has her life fretted with petty cares 
 and devoid of opportunities, and the other of whom has 
 married a man whose subsequent position brings her into 
 cultured society and opens to her opportunities which 
 refine taste and expand intelligence. And so deteriora- 
 tions may be seen. That "evil communications corrupt 
 good manners" is but an expression of the general law 
 that human character is profoundly modified by its con- 
 ditions and surroundings. 
 
 I remember once seeing, in a Brazilian seaport, a negro 
 man dressed in what was an evident attempt at the 
 height of fashion, but without shoes and stockings. 
 One of the sailors with whom I was in company, and who 
 had made some runs in the slave trade, had a theory that 
 a negro was not a man, but a sort of monkey, and pointed 
 to this as evidence in proof, contending that it was not 
 natural for a negro to wear shoes, and that in his wild
 
 490 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 state he would wear no clothes at all. I afterward 
 learned that it was not considered "the thing" there 
 for slaves to wear shoes, just as in England it is not con- 
 sidered the thing for a faultlessly attired butler to wear 
 jewelry, though for that matter I have since seen white 
 men at liberty to dress as they pleased get themselves 
 up as incongruously as the Brazilian slave. But a great 
 many of the facts adduced as showing hereditary trans- 
 mission have really no more bearing than this of our 
 forecastle Darwinian. 
 
 That, for instance, a large number of criminals and 
 recipients of public relief in New York have been shown 
 to have descended from a pauper three or four genera- 
 tions back is extensively cited as showing hereditary 
 transmission. But it shows nothing of the kind, inas- 
 much as an adequate explanation of the facts is nearer. 
 Paupers will raise paupers, even if the children be not 
 their own, just as familiar contact with criminals will 
 make criminals of the children of virtuous parents. To 
 learn to rely on charity is necessarily to lose the self- 
 respect and independence necessary for self-reliance 
 when the struggle is hard. So true is this that, as is 
 well known, charity has the effect of increasing the de- 
 mand for charity, and it is an open question whether 
 public relief and private alms do not in this way do far 
 more harm than good. And so of the disposition of 
 children to show the same feelings, tastes, prejudices, or 
 talents as their parents. They imbibe these dispositions 
 jnst as they imbibe from their habitual associates. And 
 the exceptions prove the rule, as dislikes or revulsions 
 may be excited. 
 
 And there is, I think, a subtler influence which often 
 accounts for what are looked upon as atavisms of char- 
 acter the same influence that makes the boy who reads 
 dime novels want to be a pirate. I once knew a gentle- 
 man in whose veins ran the blood of Indian chiefs. He
 
 Chap.n. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 491 
 
 used to tell me traditions learned from his grandfather, 
 which illustrated what is difficult for a white man to 
 comprehend the Indian habit of thought, the intense 
 but patient blood thirst of the trail, and the fortitude of 
 the stake. From the way in which he dwelt on these, 
 I have no doubt that under certain circumstances, highly 
 educated, civilized man that he was, he would have 
 shown traits which would have been looked on as due to 
 his Indian blood; but which in reality would have been 
 sufficiently explained by the broodings of his imagination 
 upon the deeds of his ancestors.* 
 
 In any large community we may see, as between differ- 
 ent classes and groups, differences of the same kind as 
 those which exist between communities which we speak 
 of as differing in civilization differences of knowledge, 
 belief, customs, tastes, and speech, which in their ex- 
 tremes show among people of the same race, living in 
 the same country, differences almost as great as those 
 between civilized and savage communities. As all stages 
 of social development, from the stone age up, are yet to 
 be found in contemporaneously existing communities, so 
 in the same country and in the same city are to be 
 found, side by side, groups which show similar diversi- 
 ties. In such countries as England and Germany, 
 children of the same race, born and reared in the same 
 place, will grow up, speaking the language differently, 
 holding different beliefs, following different customs, 
 and showing different tastes; and even in such a country 
 as the United States differences of the same kind, though 
 
 * Wordsworth, in his "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, "has 
 in highly poetical form alluded to this influence: 
 
 Armor rusting in his halls 
 
 On the blood of Clifford calls: 
 " Quell the Scot," exclaims the lance; 
 "Bear me to the heart of France," 
 
 Is the longing of the shield.
 
 492 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGBE88. Book X. 
 
 not of the same degree, may be seen between different 
 circles or groups. 
 
 But these differences are certainly not innate. No 
 baby is born a Methodist or Catholic, to drop its h's or 
 to sound them. All these differences which distinguish 
 different groups or circles are derived from association in 
 these circles. 
 
 The Janissaries were made up of youths torn from 
 Christian parents at an early age, but they were none 
 the less fanatical Moslems and none the less exhibited 
 all the Turkish traits; the Jesuits and other orders show 
 distinct character, but it is certainly not perpetuated by 
 hereditary transmissions; and even such associations as 
 schools or regiments, where the components remain but a 
 short time and are constantly changing, exhibit general 
 characteristics, which are the result of mental impres- 
 sions perpetuated by association. 
 
 Now, it is this body of traditions, beliefs, customs, 
 laws, habits, and associations, which arise in every com- 
 munity and which surround every individual this 
 "super-organic environment/' as Herbert Spencer calls 
 it, that, as I take it, is the great element in determining 
 national character. It is this, rather than hereditary 
 transmission, which makes the Englishman differ from 
 the Frenchman, the German from the Italian, the 
 American from the Chinaman, and the civilized man 
 from the savage man. It is in this way that national 
 traits are preserved, extended, or altered. 
 
 Within certain limits, or, if you choose, without limits 
 in itself, hereditary transmission may develop or alter qual- 
 ities, but this is much more true of the physical than of the 
 mental part of a man, and much more true of animals than 
 it is even of the physical part of man. Deductions from 
 the breeding of pigeons or cattle will not apply to man, 
 and the reason is clear. The life of man, even in his 
 rudest state, is infinitely more complex. He is constantly
 
 Chap. II. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 493 
 
 acted on by an infinitely greater number of influences, 
 amid which the relative influence of heredity becomes 
 less and less. A race of men with no greater mental 
 activity than the animals men who only ate, drank, 
 slept, and propagated might, I doubt not, by careful 
 treatment and selection in breeding, be made, in course 
 of time, to exhibit as great diversities in bodily shape 
 and character as similar means have produced in the 
 domestic animals. But there are no such men; and in 
 men as they are, mental influences, acting through the 
 mind upon the body, would constantly interrupt the 
 process. You cannot fatten a man whose mind is on the 
 strain by cooping him up and feeding him as you would 
 fatten a pig. In all probability men have been upon the 
 earth longer than many species of animals. They have 
 been separated from each other under differences of 
 climate that produce the most marked differences in 
 animals, and yet the physical differences between the 
 different races of men are hardly greater than the differ- 
 ence between white horses and black horses they are 
 certainly nothing like as great as between dogs of the 
 same sub-species, as, for instance, the different varieties 
 of the terrier or spaniel. And even these physical differ- 
 ences between races of men, it is held by those who 
 account for them by natural selection and hereditary 
 transmission, were brought out when man was much 
 nearer the animal that is to say, when he had less mind. 
 
 And if this be true of the physical constitution of 
 man, in how much higher degree is it true of his mental 
 constitution? All our physical parts we bring with us 
 into the world; but the mind develops afterward. 
 
 There is a stage in the growth of every organism in 
 which it cannot be told, except by the environment, 
 whether the animal that is to be will be fish or reptile, 
 monkey or man. And so with the new-born infant; 
 whether the mind that is yet to awake to consciousness
 
 494 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Hook X. 
 
 and power is to be English or German, American or 
 Chinese the mind of a civilized man or the mind of a 
 savage depends entirely on the social environment in 
 which it is placed. 
 
 Take a number of infants born of the most highly 
 civilized parents and transport them to an uninhabited 
 country. Suppose them in some miraculous way to be 
 sustained until they come of age to take care of them- 
 selves, and what would you have? More helpelss savages 
 than any we know of. They would have fire to discover; 
 the rudest tools and weapons to invent; language to con- 
 struct. They would, in short, have to stumble their way 
 to the simplest knowledge which the lowest races now 
 possess, just as a child learns to walk. That they would 
 in time do all these things I have not the slightest 
 doubt, for all these possibilities are latent in the human 
 mind just as the power of walking is latent in the human 
 frame, but I do not believe they would do them any bet- 
 ter or worse, any slower or quicker, than the children of 
 barbarian parents placed in the same conditions. Given 
 the very highest mental powers that exceptional in- 
 dividuals have ever displayed, and what could mankind 
 be if one generation were separated from the next by an 
 interval of time, as are the seventeen-year locusts? One 
 such interval would reduce mankind, not to savagery, 
 but to a condition compared with which savagery, as we 
 know it, would seem civilization. 
 
 And, reversely, suppose a number of savage infants 
 could, unknown to the mothers, for even this would be 
 necessary to make the experiment a fair one, be substi- 
 tuted for as many children of civilization, can we sup- 
 pose that growing up they would show any difference? 
 I think no one who has mixed much with different peo- 
 ples and classes will think so. The great lesson that is 
 thus learned is that "human nature is human nature all 
 the world over." And this lesson, too, may be learned
 
 Ckap.n. DIFFEBENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 495 
 
 in the library. I speak not so much of the accounts of 
 travelers, for the accounts given of savages by the civi- 
 lized men who write books are very often just such ac- 
 counts as savages would give of us did they make flying 
 visits and then write books; but of those mementos of 
 the life and thoughts of other times and other peoples, 
 which, translated into our language of to-day, are like 
 glimpses of our own lives and gleams of our own thought. 
 The feeling they inspire is that of the essential similarity 
 of men. "This," says Emanuel Deutsch "this is the 
 end of all investigation into history or art. Tliey were 
 even as we are." 
 
 There is a people to be found in all parts of the 
 world who well illustrate what peculiarities are due 
 to hereditary transmission and what to transmission by 
 association. The Jews have maintained the purity of 
 their blood more scrupulously and for a far longer time 
 than any of the European races, yet I am inclined to 
 think that the only characteristic that can be attributed 
 to this is that of physiognomy, and this is in reality far 
 less marked than is conventionally supposed, as any one 
 who will take the trouble may see on observation. Al- 
 though they have constantly married among themselves, 
 the Jews have everywhere been modified by their sur- 
 roundings the English, Russian, Polish, German, and 
 Oriental Jews differing from each other in many respects 
 as much as do the other people of those countries. Yet 
 they have much in common, and have everywhere pre- 
 served their individuality. The reason is clear. It is 
 the Hebrew religion and certainly religion is not trans- 
 mitted by generation, but by association which has 
 everywhere preserved the distinctiveness of the Hebrew 
 race. This religion, which children derive, not as they 
 derive their physical characteristics, but by precept and 
 association, is not merely exclusive in its teachings, but 
 has, by engendering suspicion and dislike, produced a
 
 496 THE LAW OF HUMAN PKOGRES8. Book X. 
 
 powerful outside pressure which, even more than its pre- 
 cepts, has everywhere constituted of the Jews a com- 
 munity within a community. Thus has been built up and 
 maintained a certain peculiar environment which gives 
 a distinctive character. Jewish intermarriage has been 
 the effect, not the cause of this. What persecution 
 which stopped short of taking Jewish children from their 
 parents and bringing them up outside of this peculiar 
 environment could not accomplish, will be accomplished 
 by the lessening intensity of religious belief, as is already 
 evident in the United States, where the distinction be- 
 tween Jew and Gentile is fast disappearing. 
 
 And it seems to me that the influence of this social 
 net or environment will explain what is so often taken as 
 proof of race differences the difficulty which less civi- 
 lized races show in receiving higher civilization, and the 
 manner in which some of them melt away before it. 
 Just as one social environment persists, so does it render 
 it difficult or impossible for those subject to it to accept 
 another. 
 
 The Chinese character is fixed if that of any people is. 
 Yet the Chinese in California acquire American modes 
 of working, trading, the use of machinery, etc., with 
 such facility as to prove that they have no lack of flexi- 
 bility, or natural capacity. That they do not change in 
 other respects is due to the Chinese environment that 
 still persists and still surrounds them. Coming from 
 China, they look forward to return to China, and live 
 while here in a little China of their own, just as the 
 Englishmen in India maintain a little England. It is 
 not merely that we naturally seek association with those 
 who share our peculiarities, and that thus language, 
 religion and custom tend to persist where individuals 
 are not absolutely isolated; but that these differences 
 provoke an external pressure, which compels such asso- 
 ciation.
 
 Chap. II. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 497 
 
 These obvious principles fully account for all the 
 phenomena which are seen in the meeting of one stage or 
 body of culture with another, without resort to the 
 theory of ingrained differences. For instance, as com- 
 parative philology has shown, the Hindoo is of the same 
 race as his English conqueror, and individual instances 
 have abundantly shown that if he could be placed com- 
 pletely and exclusively in the English environment 
 (which, as before stated, could be thoroughly done only 
 by placing infants in English families in such a way that 
 neither they, as they grow up, nor those around them, 
 would be conscious of any distinction) one generation 
 would be all required to thoroughly implant European 
 civilization. But the progress of English ideas and 
 habits in India must be necessarily very slow, because 
 they meet there the web of ideas and habits constantly 
 perpetuated through an immense population, and inter- 
 laced with every act of life. 
 
 Mr. Bagehot ("Physics and Politics") endeavors to ex- 
 plain the reason why barbarians waste away before our 
 civilization, while they did not before that of the an- 
 cients, by assuming that the progress of civilization 
 has given us tougher physical constitutions. After al- 
 luding to the fact that there is no lament in any clas- 
 sical writer for the barbarians, but that everywhere the 
 barbarian endured the contact with the Roman and the 
 Eoman allied himself to the barbarian, he says (pp. 47-8) : 
 
 " Savages in the first year of the Christian era were pretty much 
 what they were in the eighteen hundredth; and if they stood the con- 
 tact of ancient civilized men and cannot stand ours, it follows that 
 our race is presumably tougher than the ancient; for we have to bear, 
 and do bear, the seeds of greater diseases than the ancients carried 
 with them. We may use, perhaps, the unvarying savage as a 
 meter to gauge the vigor of the constitution to whose contact he is 
 exposed." 
 
 Mr. Bagehot does not attempt to explain how it is that
 
 498 THE LAW OF HUMAN PKOGRESS. Book X. 
 
 eighteen hundred years ago civilization did not give the 
 like relative advantage over barbarism that it does now. 
 But there is no use of talking about that, or of the lack 
 of proof that the human constitution has been a whit 
 improved. To any one who has seen how the contact of 
 our civilization affects the inferior races, a much readier 
 though less flattering explanation will occur. 
 
 It is not because our constitutions are naturally 
 tougher than those of the savage, that diseases which are 
 comparatively innocuous to us are certain death to him. 
 It is that we know and have the means of treating those 
 diseases, while he is destitute both of knowledge and 
 means. The same diseases with which the scum of civi- 
 lization that floats in its advance inoculates the savage 
 would prove as destructive to civilized men, if they knew 
 no better than to let them run, as he in his ignorance 
 has to let them run; and as a matter of fact they were as 
 destructive, until we found out how to treat them. And 
 not merely this, but the effect of the impingement of 
 civilization upon barbarism is to weaken the power of the 
 savage without bringing him into the conditions that 
 give power to the civilized man. While his habits and 
 customs still tend to persist, and do persist as far as they 
 can, the conditions to which they were adapted are forci- 
 bly changed. He is a hunter in a land stripped of game; 
 a warrior deprived of his arms and called on to plead in 
 legal technicalities. He is not merely placed between 
 cultures, but, as Mr. Bagehot says of the European half- 
 breeds in India, he is placed between moralities, and 
 learns the vices of civilization without its virtues. He 
 loses his accustomed means of subsistence, he loses self- 
 respect, he loses morality; he deteriorates and dies away. 
 The miserable creatures who may be seen hanging 
 around frontier towns or railroad stations, ready to beg, 
 or steal, or solicit a viler commerce, are not fair repre- 
 sentatives of the Indian before the white man had en-
 
 Chap. II. DIFFERENCES IN" CIVILIZATION". 499 
 
 croached upon his hunting grounds. They have lost the 
 strength and virtues of their former state, without gain- 
 ing those of a higher. In fact, civilization, as it pushes 
 the red man, shows no virtues. To the Anglo-Saxon of 
 the frontier, as a rule, the aborigine has no rights which 
 the white man is bound to respect. He is impoverished, 
 misunderstood, cheated, and abused. He dies out, as, 
 under similar conditions, we should die out. He disap- 
 pears before civilization as the Eomanized Britons dis- 
 appeared before Saxon barbarism. 
 
 The true reason why there is no lament in any classic 
 writer for the barbarian, but that the Roman civilization 
 assimilated instead of destroying, is, I take it, to be found 
 not only in the fact that the ancient civilization was 
 much nearer akin to the barbarians which it met, but in 
 the more important fact that it was not extended as ours 
 has been. It was carried forward, not by an advancing 
 line of colonists, but by conquest which merely reduced 
 the new province to general subjection, leaving the 
 social, and generally the political organization of the 
 people to a great degree unimpaired, so that, without 
 shattering or deterioration, the process of assimilation 
 went on. In a somewhat similar way the civilization of 
 Japan seems to be now assimilating itself to European 
 civilization. 
 
 In America the Anglo-Saxon has exterminated, in- 
 stead of civilizing, the Indian, simply because he has not 
 brought the Indian into his environment, nor yet has the 
 contact been in such a way as to induce or permit the 
 Indian web of habitual thought and custom to be 
 changed rapidly enough to meet the new conditions into 
 which he has been brought by the proximity of new and 
 powerful neighbors. That there is no innate impedi- 
 ment to the reception of our civilization by these un- 
 civilized races has been shown over and over again in 
 individual cases. And it has likewise been shown, so far
 
 500 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 as the experiments have heen permitted to go, by the 
 Jesuits in Paraguay, the Franciscans in California, and 
 the Protestant missionaries on some of the Pacific islands. 
 The assumption of physical improvement in the race 
 within any time of which we have knowledge is utterly 
 without warrant, and within the time of which Mr. 
 Bagehot speaks, it is absolutely disproved. We know 
 from classic statues, from the burdens carried and the 
 marches made by ancient soldiers, from the records of 
 runners and the feats of gymnasts, that neither in pro- 
 portions nor strength has the race improved within two 
 thousand years. But the assumption of mental improve- 
 ment, which is even more confidently and generally 
 made, is still more preposterous. As poets, artists, 
 architects, philosophers, rhetoricians, statesmen, or sol- 
 diers, can modern civilization show individuals of greater 
 mental power than can the ancient? There is no use 
 in recalling names every schoolboy knows them. For 
 our models and personifications of mental power we go 
 back to the ancients, and if we can for a moment 
 imagine the possibility of what is held by that oldest and 
 most widespread of all beliefs that belief which Less- 
 ing declared on this account the most probably true, 
 though he accepted it on metaphysical grounds and 
 suppose Homer or Virgil, Demosthenes or Cicero, Alex- 
 ander, Hannibal or Caesar, Plato or Lucretius, Euclid or 
 Aristotle, as re-entering this life again in the Nineteenth 
 Century, can we suppose that they would show any in- 
 feriority to the men of to-day? Or if we take any period 
 since the classic age, even the darkest, or any previous 
 period of which we know anything, shall we not find 
 men who in the conditions and degree of knowledge of 
 their times showed mental power of as high an order as 
 men show now? And among the less advanced races do 
 we not to-day, whenever our attention is called to them, 
 find men who in their conditions exhibit mental qualities
 
 Cha-p. IL DIFFEKENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 501 
 
 as great as civilization can show? Did the invention of 
 the railroad, coming when it did, prove any greater in- 
 ventive power than did the invention of the wheelbarrow 
 when wheelbarrows were not? We of modern civiliza- 
 tion are raised far above those who have preceded us 
 and those of the less advanced races who are our contem- 
 poraries. But it is because we stand on a pyramid, not 
 that we are taller. What the centuries have done for us 
 is not to increase our stature, but to build up a structure 
 on which we may plant our feet. 
 
 Let me repeat: I do not mean to say that all men 
 possess the same capacities, or are mentally alike, any 
 more than I mean to say that they are physically alike. 
 Among all the countless millions who have come and 
 gone on this earth, there were probably never two who 
 either physically or mentally were exact counterparts. 
 Nor yet do I mean to say that there are not as clearly 
 marked race differences in mind as there are clearly 
 marked race differences in body. I do not deny the 
 influence of heredity in transmitting peculiarities of 
 mind in the same way, and possibly to the same degree, 
 as bodily peculiarities are transmitted. But neverthe- 
 less, there is, it seems to me, a common standard and 
 natural symmetry of mind, as there is of body, toward 
 which all deviations tend to return. The conditions 
 under which we fall may produce such distortions as the 
 Flatheads produce by compressing the heads of their 
 infants or the Chinese by binding their daughters' feet. 
 But as Flathead babies continue to be born with naturally 
 shaped heads and Chinese babies with naturally shaped 
 feet, so does nature seem to revert to the normal mental 
 type. A child no more inherits his father's knowledge 
 than he inherits his father's glass eye or artificial leg; 
 the child of the most ignorant parents may become a 
 pioneer of science or a leader of thought. 
 
 But this is the great fact with which we are concerned:
 
 502 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Boolf JT. 
 
 That the differences between the people of communities 
 in different places and at different times, which we call 
 differences of civilization, are not differences which inhere 
 in the individuals, but differences which inhere in the 
 society; that they are not, as Herbert Spencer holds, 
 differences resulting from differences in the units; but 
 that they are differences resulting from the conditions 
 under which these units are brought in the society. In 
 short, I take the explanation of the differences which dis- 
 tinguish communities to be this: That each society, small 
 or great, necessarily weaves for itself a web of knowledge, 
 beliefs, customs, language, tastes, institutions, and laws. 
 Into this web, woven by each society, or rather, into these 
 webs, for each community above the simplest is made up 
 of minor societies, which overlap and interlace each 
 other, the individual is received at birth and continues 
 until his death. This is the matrix in which mind un- 
 folds and from which it takes its stamp. This is the way 
 in which customs, and religions, and prejudices, and 
 tastes, and languages, grow up and are perpetuated. 
 This is the way that skill is transmitted and knowledge 
 is stored up, and the discoveries of one time made the 
 common stock and stepping stone of the next. Though 
 it is this that often offers the most serious obstacles to 
 progress, it is this that makes progress possible. It is 
 this that enables any schoolboy in our time to learn in a 
 few hours more of the universe than Ptolemy knew; that 
 places the most humdrum scientist far above the level 
 reached by the giant mind of Aristotle. This is to the 
 race what memory is to the individual. Our wonderful 
 arts, our far-reaching science, our marvelous inventions 
 they have come through this. 
 
 Human progress goes on as the advances made by one 
 generation are in this way secured as the common prop- 
 erty of the next, and made the starting point for new 
 advances.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LAW OF HUMAN" PROGEESS. 
 
 What, then, is the law of human progress the 
 under which civilization advances? 
 
 It must explain clearly and definitely, and not by 
 vague generalities or superficial analogies, why, though 
 mankind started presumably with the same capacities 
 and at the same time, there now exist such wide differ- 
 ences in social development. It must account for the 
 arrested civilizations and for the decayed and destroyed 
 civilizations; for the general facts as to the rise of civili- 
 zation, and for the petrifying or enervating force which 
 the progress of civilization has heretofore always evolved. 
 It must account for retrogression as well as for progres- 
 sion; for the differences in general character between 
 Asiatic and European civilizations; for the difference 
 between classical and modern civilizations; for the differ- 
 ent rates at which progress goes on; and for those bursts, 
 and starts, and halts of progress which are so marked as 
 minor phenomena. And, thus, it must show us what 
 are the essential conditions of progress, and what social 
 adjustments advance and what retard it. 
 
 It is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but 
 to look and we may see it. I do not pretend to give it 
 scientific precision, but merely to point it out. 
 
 The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in 
 human nature the desire to gratify the wants of the 
 animal nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and 
 the wants of the sympathetic nature; the desire to be, to
 
 504 THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGBESS. Book X. 
 
 know, and to do desires that short of infinity can never 
 be satisfied, as they grow by what they feed on. 
 
 Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and by 
 which each advance is secured and made the vantage 
 ground for new advances. Though he may not by tak- 
 ing thought add a cubit to his stature, man may by 
 taking thought extend his knowledge of the universe 
 and his power over it, in what, so far as we can see, is an 
 infinite degree. The narrow span of human life allows 
 the individual to go but a short distance, but though 
 each generation may do but little, yet generations, suc- 
 ceeding to the gain of their predecessors, may gradually 
 elevate the status of mankind, as coral polyps, building 
 one generation upon the work of the other, gradually 
 elevate themselves from the bottom of the sea. 
 
 Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and 
 men tend to advance in proportion to the mental power 
 expended in progression the mental power which is de- 
 voted to the extension of knowledge, the improvement 
 of methods, and the betterment of social conditions. 
 
 Now mental power is a fixed quantity that is to say, 
 there is a limit to the work a man can do with his mind, as 
 there is to the work he can do with his body; therefore, 
 the mental power which can be devoted to progress is only 
 what is left after what is required for non-progressive 
 purposes. 
 
 These non-progressive purposes in which mental power 
 is consumed may be classified as maintenance and con- 
 flict. By maintenance I mean, not only the support of 
 existence, but the keeping up of the social condition and 
 the holding of advances already gained. By conflict I 
 mean not merely warfare and preparation for warfare, 
 but all expenditure of mental power in seeking the grati- 
 fication of desire at the expense of others, and in resist- 
 ance to such aggression. 
 
 to compare society to a boat. Her progress through
 
 Chap. 111. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGBESS. 505 
 
 the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, 
 but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This 
 will be lessened by any expenditure of force required for 
 bailing, or any expenditure of force in fighting among 
 themselves, or in pulling in different directions. 
 
 Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man 
 are required to maintain existence, and mental power is 
 set free for higher uses only by the association of men 
 in communities, which permits the division of labor and 
 all the economies which come with the co-operation 
 of increased numbers, association is the first essential of 
 progress. Improvement becomes possible as men come 
 together in peaceful association, and the wider and closer 
 the association, the greater the possibilities of improve- 
 ment. And as the wasteful expenditure of mental power 
 in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which 
 accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is 
 recognized, equality (or justice) is the second essential of 
 progress. 
 
 Thus association in equality is the law of progress. 
 Association frees mental power for expenditure in im- 
 provement, and equality, or justice, or freedom for the 
 terms here signify the same thing, the recognition of the 
 moral law prevents the dissipation of this power in 
 fruitless struggles. 
 
 Here is the law of progress, which will explain all 
 diversities, all advances, all halts, and retrogressions. 
 Men tend to progress just as they come closer together, 
 and by co-operation with each other increase the mental 
 power that may be devoted to improvement, but just as 
 conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality 
 of condition and power, this tendency to progression is 
 lessened, checked, and finally reversed. 
 
 Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident that 
 social development will go on faster or slower, will stop 
 or turn, back, according to the resistances it meets. I
 
 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 a general way these obstacles to improvement may, in 
 relation to the society itself, he classed as external and 
 internal the first operating with greater force in the 
 earlier stages of civilization, the latter becoming more 
 important in the later stages. 
 
 Man is social in his nature. He does not require to be 
 caught and tamed in order to induce him to live with 
 his fellows. The utter helplessness with which he enters 
 the world, and the long period required for the maturity 
 of his powers, necessitate the family relation: which, as 
 we may observe, is wider, and in its extensions stronger, 
 among the ruder than among the more cultivated peo- 
 ples. The first societies are families, expanding into 
 tribes, still holding a mutual blood relationship, and even 
 when they have become great nations claiming a common 
 descent. 
 
 Given beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such 
 diversified surface and climate as this, and it is evident 
 that, even with equal capacity, and an equal start, social 
 development must be very different. The first limit or 
 resistance to association will come from the conditions of 
 physical nature, and as these greatly vary with locality, 
 corresponding differences in social progress must show 
 themselves. The net rapidity of increase, and the closeness 
 with which men, as they increase, can keep together, 
 will, in the rude state of knowledge in which reliance 
 for subsistence must be principally upon the spontaneous 
 offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, 
 soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal 
 food and warm clothing are required; where the earth 
 seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of 
 tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to 
 control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea 
 separate and isolate men; association, and the power of 
 improvement which it evolves, can at first go but a little 
 "vay. But on the rich plains of warm climates, where
 
 Chap-Hi' THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 507 
 
 human existence can be maintained with a smaller ex- 
 penditure of force, and from a much smaller area, men 
 can keep closer together, and the mental power which 
 can at first be devoted to improvement is much greater. 
 Hence civilization naturally first arises in the great val- 
 leys and table lands where we find its earliest monuments. 
 But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely 
 thus directly produce diversities in social development, 
 but, by producing diversities in social development, bring 
 out in man himself an obstacle, or rather an active coun- 
 terforce, to improvement. As families and tribes are 
 separated from each other, the social feeling ceases to 
 operate between them, and differences arise in language, 
 custom, tradition, religion in short, in the whole social 
 web which each community, however small or large, con- 
 stantly spins. With these differences, prejudices grow, 
 animosities spring up, contact easily produces quarrels, 
 aggression begets aggression, and wrong kindles re- 
 venge.* And so between these separate social aggregates 
 arises the feeling of Ishmael and the spirit of Cain, war- 
 fare becomes the chronic and seemingly natural relation 
 of societies to each other, and the powers of men are ex- 
 pended in attack or defense, in mutual slaughter and 
 
 * How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and dislike; 
 how natural it is for us to consider any difference in manners, cus- 
 toms, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of those who differ 
 from us, any one who has emancipated himself in any degree from 
 prejudice, and who mixes with different classes, may see in civilized 
 society. In religion, for instance, the spirit of the hymn 
 
 "I'd rather be a Baptist, and wear a shining face, 
 Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace," 
 
 is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said, 
 "Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other doxy," while 
 the universal tendency is to classify all outside of the orthodoxies 
 and heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or atheists. 
 And the like tendency is observable as to all other differences.
 
 508 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 mutual destruction of wealth, or in warlike preparations. 
 How long this hostility persists, the protective tariffs 
 and the standing armies of the civilized world to-day 
 bear witness; how difficult it is to get over the idea that 
 it is not theft to steal from a foreigner, the difficulty in 
 procuring an international copyright act will show. Can 
 we wonder at the perpetual hostilities of tribes and clans? 
 Can we wonder that when each community was isolated 
 from the others when each, uninfluenced by the others, 
 was spinning its separate web of social environment, 
 which no individual can escape, that war should have 
 been the rule and peace the exception? "They were 
 even as we are." 
 
 Now, warfare is the negation of association. The 
 separation of men into diverse tribes, by increasing war- 
 fare, thus checks improvement; while in the localities 
 where a large increase in numbers is possible without 
 much separation, civilization gains the advantage of ex- 
 emption from tribal war, even when the community as a 
 whole is carrying on warfare beyond its borders. Thus, 
 where the resistance of nature to the close association of 
 men is slightest, the counterforce of warfare is likely at 
 first to be least felt; and in the rich plains where civili- 
 zation first begins, it may rise to a great height while 
 scattered tribes are yet barbarous. And thus, when 
 small, separated communities exist in a state of chronic 
 warfare which forbids advance, the first step to their civ- 
 ilization is the advent of some conquering tribe or nation 
 that unites these smaller communities into a larger one, in 
 which internal peace is preserved. Where this power of 
 peaceable association is broken up, either by external 
 assaults or internal dissensions, the advance ceases and 
 retrogression begins. 
 
 But it is not conquest alone that has operated to pro- 
 mote association, and, by liberating mental power from 
 the necessities of warfare, to promote civilization. If
 
 Chap. III. THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS. 509 
 
 the diversities of climate, soil, and configuration of the 
 earth's surface operate at first to separate mankind, they 
 also operate to encourage exchange. And commerce, 
 which is in itself a form of association or co-operation, 
 operates to promote civilization, not only directly, but 
 by building up interests which are opposed to warfare, 
 and dispelling the ignorance which is the fertile mother 
 of prejudices and animosities. 
 
 And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed 
 and the animosities it has aroused have often sundered 
 men and produced warfare, yet it has at other times been 
 the means of promoting association. A common worship 
 has often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and 
 furnished the basis of union, while it is from the triumph 
 of Christianity over the barbarians of Europe that modern 
 civilization springs. Had not the Christian Church ex- 
 isted when the Roman Empire went to pieces, Europe, 
 destitute of any bond of association, might have fallen to 
 a condition not much above that of the North American 
 Indians or only received civilization with an Asiatic im- 
 press from the conquering scimiters of the invading 
 hordes which had been welded into a mighty power by a 
 religion which, springing up in the deserts of Arabia, 
 had united tribes separated from time immemorial, and, 
 thence issuing, brought into the association of a common 
 faith a great part of the human race. 
 
 Looking over what we know of the history of the world, 
 we thus see civilization everywhere springing up where 
 men are brought into association, and everywhere disap- 
 pearing as this association is broken up. Thus the 
 Roman civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests 
 which insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the 
 incursions of the northern nations that broke society 
 again into disconnected fragments; and the progress that 
 now goes on in our modern civilization began as the 
 feudal system again began to associate men in larger
 
 510 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 communities, and the spiritual supremacy of Rome to 
 bring these communities into a common relation, as her 
 legions had done before. As the feudal bonds grew into 
 national autonomies, and Christianity worked the amel- 
 ioration of manners, brought forth the knowledge that 
 during the dark days she had hidden, bound the threads 
 of peaceful union in her all-pervading organization, and 
 taught association in her religious orders, a greater prog- 
 ress became possible, which, as men have been brought 
 into closer and closer association and co-operation, has 
 gone on with greater and greater force. 
 
 But we shall never understand the course of civiliza- 
 tion, and the varied phenomena which its history presents, 
 without a consideration of what I may term the internal 
 resistances, or counter forces, which arise in the heart of 
 advancing society, and which can alone explain how a 
 civilization once fairly started should either come of itself 
 to a halt or be destroyed by barbarians. 
 
 The mental power, which is the motor of social prog- 
 ress, is set free by association, which is, what, perhaps, 
 it may be more properly called, an integration. Society 
 in this process becomes more complex; its individuals 
 more dependent upon each other. Occupations and 
 functions are specialized. Instead of wandering, popu- 
 lation becomes fixed. Instead of each man attempting 
 to supply all of his wants, the various trades and indus- 
 tries are separated one man acquires skill in one thing, 
 and another in another thing. So, too, of knowledge, 
 the body of which constantly tends to become vaster than 
 one man can grasp, and is separated into different parts, 
 which different individuals acquire and pursue. So, too, 
 the performance of religious ceremonies tends to pass 
 into the hands of a body of men specially devoted to that 
 purpose, and the preservation of order, the administra- 
 tion of justice, the assignment of public duties and the 
 distribution of awards, the conduce of war, etc., to be
 
 Chap.IIL THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGRESS. 511 
 
 made the special functions of an organized government. 
 In short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer 
 has defined evolution, the development of society is, in 
 relation to its component individuals, the passing from 
 an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, 
 coherent heterogeneity. The lower the stage of social 
 development, the more society resembles one of those 
 lowest of animal organisms which are without organs or 
 limbs, and from which a part may be cut and yet live. 
 The higher the stage of social development, the more 
 society resembles those higher organisms in which func- 
 tions and powers are specialized, and each member is 
 vitally dependent on the others. 
 
 Now, this process of integration, of the specialization 
 of functions and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by 
 virtue of what is probably one of the deepest laws of 
 human nature, accompanied by a constant liability to 
 inequality. I do not mean that inequality is the neces- 
 sary result of social growth, but that it is the constant 
 tendency of social growth if unaccompanied by changes 
 in social adjustments, which, in the new conditions that 
 growth produces, will secure equality. I mean, so to 
 speak, that the garment of laws, customs, and political 
 institutions, which each society weaves for itself, is con- 
 stantly tending to become too tight as the society devel- 
 ops. I mean, so to speak, that man, as he advances, 
 threads a labyrinth, in which, if he keeps straight ahead, 
 he will infallibly lose his way, and through which reason 
 and justice can alone keep him continuously in an ascend- 
 ing path. 
 
 For, while the integration which accompanies growth 
 tends in itself to set free mental power to work improve- 
 ment, there is, both with increase of numbers and with 
 increase in complexity of the social organization, a coun- 
 ter tendency set up to the production of a state of in- 
 equality, which wastes mental power, and, as it increases, 
 brings improvement to a halt.
 
 512 THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOQRESS. Boole X. 
 
 To trace to its highest expression the law which thus 
 operates to evolve with progress the force which stops 
 progress, would be, it seems to me, to go far to the solu- 
 tion of a problem deeper than that of the genesis of the 
 material universe the problem of the genesis of evil. 
 Let me content myself with pointing out the manner in 
 which, as society develops, there arise tendencies which 
 check development. 
 
 There are two qualities of human nature which it will 
 be well, however, to first call to mind The one is the 
 power of habit the tendency to continue to do things in 
 the same way; the other is the possibility of mental and 
 moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social 
 development is to continue habits, customs, laws and 
 methods, long after they have lost their original useful- 
 ness, and the effect of the other is to permit the growth 
 of institutions and modes of thought from which the 
 normal perceptions of men instinctively revolt. 
 
 Now the growth and development of society not 
 merely tend to make each more and more dependent 
 upon all, and to lessen the influence of individuals, even 
 over their own conditions, as compared with the influence 
 of society; but the effect of association or integration is 
 to give rise to a collective power which is distinguish- 
 able from the sum of individual powers. Analogies, or, 
 perhaps, rather illustrations of the same law, may be 
 found in all directions. As animal organisms increase in 
 complexity, there arise, above the life and power of the 
 parts, a life and power of the integrated whole; above the 
 capability of involuntary movements, the capability of 
 voluntary movements. The actions and impulses of 
 bodies of men are, as has often been observed, different 
 from those which, under the same circumstances, would 
 be called forth in individuals. The fighting qualities of 
 a regiment may be very different from those of the in- 
 dividual soldiers. But there is no need of illustrations.
 
 Chap. 111. THE LAW OF HUMAN PflOGBESS. 513 
 
 In our inquiries into the nature and rise of rent, we 
 traced the very thing to which I allude. Where popula- 
 tion is sparse, land has no value; just as men congregate 
 together, the value of land appears and rises a clearly 
 distinguishable thing from the values produced hy in- 
 dividual effort; a value which springs from association, 
 which increases as association grows greater, and disap- 
 pears as association is broken up. And the same thing 
 is true of power in other forms than those generally 
 expressed in terms of wealth. 
 
 Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue 
 previous social adjustments tends to lodge this collective 
 power, as it arises, in the hands of a portion of the com- 
 munity; and this unequal distribution of the wealth and 
 power gained as society advances tends to produce 
 greater inequality, since aggression grows by what it 
 feeds on, and the idea of justice is blurred by the habit- 
 ual toleration of injustice. 
 
 In this way the patriarchal organization of society 
 can easily grow into hereditary monarchy, in which the 
 king is as a god on earth, and the masses of the people 
 mere slaves of his caprice. It is natural that the father 
 should be the directing head of the family, and that at 
 his death the eldest son, as the oldest and most experi- 
 enced member of the little community, should succeed to 
 the headship. But to continue this arrangement as the 
 family expands, is to lodge power in a particular line, 
 and the power thus lodged necessarily continues to in- 
 crease, as the common stock becomes larger and larger, 
 and the power of the community grows. The head of 
 the family passes into the hereditary king, who comes to 
 look upon himself and to be looked upon by others as a 
 being of superior rights. With the growth of the collec- 
 tive power as compared with the power of the individual, 
 his power to reward and to punish increases, and so in- 
 crease the inducements to flatter and to fear him; until
 
 514 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 finally, if the process be not disturbed, a nation grovels 
 at the foot of a throne, and a hundred thousand men toil 
 for fifty years to prepare a tomb for one of their own 
 mortal kind. 
 
 So the war-chief of a little band of savages is but one 
 of their number, whom they follow as their bravest and 
 most wary. But when large bodies come to act together, 
 personal selection becomes more difficult, a blinder 
 obedience becomes necessary and can be enforced, and 
 from the very necessities of warfare when conducted on 
 a large scale absolute power arises. 
 
 And so of the specialization of function. There is a 
 manifest gain in productive power when social growth 
 has gone so far that instead of every producer being sum- 
 moned from his work for fighting purposes, a regular 
 military force can be specialized; but this inevitably 
 tends to the concentration of power in the hands of the 
 military class or their chiefs. The preservation of in- 
 ternal order, the administration of justice, the construc- 
 tion and care of public works, and, notably, the observ- 
 ances of religion, all tend in similar manner to pass into 
 the hands of special classes, whose disposition it is to 
 magnify their function and extend their power. 
 
 But the great cause of inequality is in the natural 
 monopoly which is given by the possession of land. The 
 first perceptions of men seem always to be that land is 
 common property; but the rude devices by which this is 
 at first recognized such as annual partitions or cultiva- 
 tion in common are consistent with only a low stage of 
 development. The idea of property, which naturally 
 arises with reference to things of human production, is 
 easily transferred to land, and an institution which when 
 population is sparse merely secures to the improver and 
 user the due reward of his labor, finally, as population 
 becomes dense and rent arises, operates to strip the pro- 
 ducer of his wages. Not merely this, but the appropria-
 
 Chap. III. THE LAW OF HUMAN PKOGRESS. 515 
 
 tion of rent for public purposes, which is the only way 
 in which, with anything like a high development, land 
 can be readily retained as common property, becomes, 
 when political and religious power passes into the hands 
 of a class, the ownership of the land by that class, and 
 the rest of the community become merely tenants. And 
 wars and conquests, which tend to the concentration of 
 political power and to the institution of slavery, naturally 
 result, where social growth has given land a value, in 
 the appropriation of the soil. A dominant class, who 
 concentrate power in their hands, will likewise soon con- 
 centrate ownership of the land. To them will fall large 
 partitions of conquered land, which the former inhabit- 
 ants will till as tenants or serfs, and the public domain, 
 or common lands, which in the natural course of social 
 growth are left for awhile in every country, and in which 
 state the primitive system of village culture leaves 
 pasture and woodland, are readily acquired, as we see by 
 modern instances. And inequality once established, the 
 ownership of land tends to concentrate as development 
 goes on. 
 
 I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact 
 that as a social development goes on, inequality tends 
 to establish itself, and not to point out the particular 
 sequence, which must necessarily vary with different con- 
 ditions. But this main fact makes intelligible all the 
 phenomena of petrifaction and retrogression. The unequal 
 distribution of the power and wealth gained by the in- 
 tegration of men in society tends to check, and finally to 
 counterbalance, the force by which improvements are 
 made and society advances. On the one side, the masses 
 of the community are compelled to expend their mental 
 powers in merely maintaining existence. On the other 
 side, mental power is expended in keeping up and inten- 
 sifying the system of inequality, in ostentation, luxury, 
 and warfare. A community divided into a class that
 
 516 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 rules and a class that is ruled into the very rich and the 
 very poor, may "build like giants and finish like jewel- 
 ers;" but it will be monuments of ruthless pride and 
 barren vanity, or of a religion turned from its office of 
 elevating man into an instrument for keeping him down. 
 Invention may for awhile to some degree go on; but it 
 will be the invention of refinements in luxury, not the 
 inventions that relieve toil and increase power. In the 
 arcana of temples or in the chambers of court physicians 
 knowledge may still be sought; but it will be hidden as a 
 secret thing, or if it dares come out to elevate common 
 thought or brighten common life, it will be trodden 
 down as a dangerous innovator. For as it tends to lessen 
 the mental power devoted to improvement, so does in- 
 equality tend to render men adverse to improvement. 
 How strong is the disposition to adhere to old methods 
 among the classes who are kept in ignorance by being 
 compelled to toil for a mere existence, is too well known 
 to require illustration, and on the other hand the con- 
 servatism of the classes to whom the existing social 
 adjustment gives special advantages is equally apparent. 
 This tendency to resist innovation, even though it be 
 improvement, is observable in every special organization 
 in religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in trade 
 guilds; and it becomes intense just as the organization 
 is close. A close corporation has always an instinctive 
 dislike of innovation and innovators, which is but the 
 expression of an instinctive fear that change may tend to 
 throw down the barriers which hedge it in from the com- 
 mon herd, and so rob it of importance and power; and it 
 is always disposed to guard carefully its special knowl- 
 edge or skill. 
 
 It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress. 
 The advance of inequality necessarily brings improve- 
 ment to a halt, and as it still persists or provokes 
 unavailing reactions, draws even upon the mental power 
 necessary for maintenance, and retrogression begins.
 
 Chap.ni. THE LAW OF HUMAN PKOGRESS. 517 
 
 These principles make intelligible the history of civili- 
 zation. 
 
 In the localities where climate, soil, and physical con- 
 formation tended least to separate men as they increased, 
 and where, accordingly, the first civilizations grew up, 
 the internal resistances to progress would naturally 
 develop in a more regular and thorough manner than 
 where smaller communities, which in their separation 
 had developed diversities, were afterward brought to- 
 gether into a closer association. It is this, it seems to 
 me, which accounts for the general characteristics of the 
 earlier civilizations as compared with the later civiliza- 
 tions of Europe. Such homogeneous communities, devel- 
 oping from the first without the jar of conflict between 
 different customs, laws, religions, etc., would show a 
 much greater uniformity. The concentrating and con- 
 servative forces would all, so to speak, pull together. 
 Rival chieftains would not counterbalance each other, 
 nor diversities of belief hold the growth of priestly 
 influence in check. Political and religious power, wealth 
 and knowledge, would thus tend to concentrate in the 
 same centers. The same causes which tended to pro- 
 duce the hereditary king and hereditary priest would 
 tend to produce the hereditary artisan and laborer, and 
 to separate society into castes. The power which associa- 
 tion sets free for progress would thus be wasted, and 
 barriers to further progress be gradually raised. The sur- 
 plus energies of the masses would be devoted to the con- 
 struction of temples, palaces, and pyramids; to minister- 
 ing to the pride and pampering the luxury of their rulers; 
 and should any disposition to improvement arise among 
 the classes of leisure it would at once be checked by the 
 dread of innovation. Society developing in this way 
 must at length stop in a conservatism which permits no 
 further progress. 
 
 How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when
 
 518 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book Z 
 
 once reached, will continue, seems to depend upon ex- 
 ternal causes, for the iron bonds of the social environ- 
 ment which grows up repress disintegrating forces as 
 well as improvement. Such a community can be most 
 easily conquered, for the masses of the people are trained 
 to a passive acquiescence in a life of hopeless labor. If 
 the conquerors merely take the place of the ruling class, 
 as the Hyksos did in Egypt and the Tartars in China, 
 everything will go on as before. If they ravage and de- 
 stroy, the glory of palace and temple remains but in 
 ruins, population becomes sparse, and knowledge and 
 art are lost. 
 
 European civilization differs in character from civiliza- 
 tions of the Egyptian type because it springs not from 
 the association of a homogeneous people developing 
 from the beginning, or at least for a long time, under 
 the same conditions, but from the association of peoples 
 who in separation had acquired distinctive social char- 
 acteristics, and whose smaller organizations longer pre- 
 vented the concentration of power and wealth in one 
 center. The physical conformation of the Grecian pen- 
 insula is such as to separate the people at first into a 
 number of small communities. As those petty republics 
 and nominal kingdoms ceased to waste their energies in 
 warfare, and the peaceable co-operation of commerce ex- 
 tended, the light of civilization blazed up. But the 
 principle of association was never strong enough to save 
 Greece from inter-tribal war, and when this was put an 
 end to by conquest, the tendency to inequality, which 
 had been combated with various devices by Grecian sages 
 and statesmen, worked its result, and Grecian valor, 
 art, and literature became things of the past. And 
 so in the rise and extension, the decline and fall, of 
 Roman civilization, may be seen the working of these 
 two principles of association and equality, from the 
 combination of which springs progress.
 
 Chap. in. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 519 
 
 Springing from the association of the independent 
 husbandmen and free citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh 
 strength from conquests which brought hostile nations 
 into common relations, the Roman power hushed the 
 world in peace. But the tendency to inequality, check- 
 ing real progress from the first, increased as the Roman 
 civilization extended. The Roman civilization did not 
 petrify as did the homogeneous civilizations where the 
 strong bonds of custom and superstition that held the 
 people in subjection probably also protected them, or at 
 any rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled; it 
 rotted, declined and fell. Long before Goth or Vandal 
 had broken through the cordon of the legions, even while 
 her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the\ 
 heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had / 
 dried up the strength and destroyed the vigor of the v 
 Roman world. Government became despotism, which 
 even assassination could not temper; patriotism became 
 servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in pub- 
 lic; literature sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; 
 fertile districts became waste without the ravages of war 
 everywhere inequality produced decay, political, men- 
 tal, moral, and material. The barbarism which ovef^ 
 whelmed Rome came not from without, but from within.) 
 It was the necessary product of the system which had 
 substituted slaves and colonii for the independent hus- 
 bandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates 
 of senatorial families. 
 
 Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth 
 of equality with the growth of association. Two great 
 causes contributed to this the splitting up of concen- 
 trated power into innumerable little centers by the influx 
 of the Northern nations, and the influence of Christian- 
 ity. Without the first there would have been the petri- 
 faction and slow decay of the Eastern Empire, where 
 church and state were closely married and loss of exter-
 
 520 THE LAW OF HUMAX PROGRESS. Book :\ 
 
 nal power brought no relief of internal tyranny. And 
 but for the other there would have been barbarism, 
 without principle of association or amelioration. The 
 petty chiefs and allodial lords who everywhere grasped 
 local sovereignty held each other in check. Italian cities 
 recovered their ancient liberty, free towns were founded, 
 village communities took root, and serfs acquired 
 rights in the soil they tilled. The leaven of Teutonic 
 ideas of equality worked through the disorganized and 
 disjointed fabric of society. And although society was 
 split up into an innumerable number of separated 
 fragments, yet the idea of closer association was always 
 present it existed in the recollections of a universal 
 empire; it existed in the claims of a universal church. 
 
 Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in 
 percolating through a rotting civilization; though 
 pagan gods were taken into her pantheon, and pagan 
 forms into her ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed; 
 yet her essential idea of the equality of men was never 
 wholly destroyed. And two things happened of the 
 utmost moment to incipient civilization the establish- 
 ment of the papacy and the celibacy of the clergy. The 
 first prevented the spiritual power from concentrating in 
 the same lines as the temporal power; and the latter 
 prevented the establishment of a priestly caste, during a 
 time when all power tended to hereditary form. 
 
 In her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her Truce 
 of God; in her monastic orders; in her councils which 
 united nations, and her edicts which ran without regard 
 to political boundaries; in the low-born hands in which 
 she placed a sign before which the proudest knelt; in her 
 bishops who by consecration became the peers of the 
 greatest nobles; in her "Servant of Servants," for so 
 his official title ran, who, by virtue of the ring of a simple 
 fisherman, claimed the right to arbitrate between nations, 
 and whose stirrup was held by kings; the Church, in
 
 Chap. in. THE LAW OF HVMAK PROGRESS. 521 
 
 spite of everything, was yet a promoter of association, a 
 witness for the natural equality of men; and by the 
 Church herself was nurtured a spirit that, when her early 
 work of association and emancipation was well-nigh done 
 when the ties she had knit had become strong, and the 
 learning she had preserved had been given to the world 
 broke the chains with which she would have fettered the 
 human mind, and in a great part of Europe rent her 
 organization. 
 
 The rise and growth of European civilization is too 
 vast and complex a subject to be thrown into proper per- 
 spective and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all its 
 details, as in its main features, it illustrates the truth 
 that progress goes on just as society tends toward closer 
 association and greater equality. Civilization is co- 
 operation. Union and liberty are its factors. The great 
 extension of association not alone in the growth of 
 larger and denser communities, but in the increase of 
 commerce and the manifold exchanges which knit each 
 community together and link them with other though 
 widely separated communities; the growth of interna- 
 tional and municipal law; the advances in security of 
 property and of person, in individual liberty, and towards 
 democratic government advances, in short, towards the 
 recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness it is these that make our modern 
 civilization so much greater, so much higher, than any 
 that has gone before. It is these that have set free the 
 mental power which has rolled back the veil of ignorance 
 which hid all but a small portion of the globe from men's 
 knowledge; which has measured the orbits of the circling 
 spheres and bids us see moving, pulsing life in a drop of 
 water; which has opened to us the antechamber of 
 nature's mysteries and read the secrets of a long-buried 
 past; which has harnessed in our service physical forces 
 beside which man's efforts are puny; and increased pro- 
 ductive power by a thousand great inventions.
 
 522 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as 
 pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak 
 even of war and slavery as means of human progress. 
 But war, which is the opposite of association, can aid 
 progress only when it prevents further war or breaks 
 down anti-social barriers which are themselves passive 
 war. 
 
 As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have 
 aided in establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym 
 of equality, is, from the very rudest state in which man 
 can be imagined, the stimulus and condition of progress. 
 Auguste Gomte's idea that the institution of slavery de- 
 stroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia's humorous 
 notion of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast pig. 
 It assumes that a propensity that has never been found 
 developed in man save as the result of the most un- 
 natural conditions the direst want or the most brutaliz- 
 ing superstitions* is an original impulse, and that he, 
 even in his lowest state the highest of all animals, has 
 natural appetites which the nobler brutes do not show. 
 And so of the idea that slavery began civilization by 
 giving slave owners leisure for improvement. 
 
 Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. 
 Whether the community consist of a single master and a 
 single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of 
 slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human 
 power; for not only is slave labor less productive than 
 free labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted in 
 holding and watching their slaves, and is called away 
 from directions in which real improvement lies. From 
 first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natural 
 
 * The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by eating 
 their bodies. Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not 
 touch. The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating their ene- 
 mies they acquired their strength and valor. And this seems to be 
 the general origin of eating prisoners of war.
 
 Chap. HI. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 523 
 
 equality of men, has hampered and prevented progress. 
 Just in proportion as slavery plays an important part in 
 the social organization does improvement cease. That 
 in the classical world slavery was so universal, is un- 
 doubtedly the reason why the mental activity which so 
 polished literature and refined art never hit on any of 
 the great discoveries and inventions which distinguish 
 modern civilization. No slave-holding people ever were 
 an inventive people. In a slave-holding community the 
 upper classes may become luxurious and polished; but 
 never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and 
 robs him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of 
 invention and forbids the utilization of inventions and 
 discoveries even when made. To freedom alone is given 
 the spell of power which summons the genii in whose 
 keeping are the treasures of earth and the viewless forces 
 of the air. 
 
 The law of human progress, what is it but the moral 
 law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as 
 they acknowledge the equality of right between man and 
 man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which 
 is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must 
 civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must 
 advancing civilization come to a halt and recede. Polit- 
 ical economy and social science cannot teach any lessons 
 that are not embraced in the simple truths that were 
 taught to poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by One 
 who eighteen hundred years ago was crucified the sim- 
 ple truths which, beneath the warpings of selfishness and 
 the distortions of superstition, seem to underlie every 
 religion that has ever striven to formulate the spiritual 
 yearnings of man.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 
 
 The conclusion we have thus reached harmonizes com- 
 pletely with our previous conclusions. 
 
 This consideration of the law of human progress not 
 only brings the politico-economic laws, which in this in- 
 quiry we have worked out, within the scope of a higher 
 law perhaps the very highest law our minds can grasp 
 but it proves that the making of land common property 
 in the way I have proposed would give an enormous im- 
 petus to civilization, while the refusal to do so must en- 
 tail' retrogression. A civilization like ours must either 
 advance or go back; it cannot stand still. It is not like 
 those homogeneous civilizations, such as that of the Nile 
 Valley, which molded men for their places and put them 
 in it like bricks into a pyramid. It much more resembles 
 that civilization whose rise and fall is within historic 
 times, and from which it sprung. 
 
 There is just now a disposition to scoff at any impli- 
 cation that we are not in all respects progressing, and 
 the spirit of our times is that of the edict which the flat- 
 tering premier proposed to the Chinese Emperor who 
 burned the ancient books "that all who may dare to 
 speak together about the She and the Shoo be put to 
 death; that those who make mention of the past so as 
 to blame the present be put to death along with their 
 relatives. " 
 
 Yet it is evident that there have been times of de- 
 cline, just as there have been times of advance; and it is 
 further evident that these epochs of decline could not at 
 first have been generally recognized.
 
 Chap. TV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION" MAY DECLINE. 525 
 
 He would have been a rash man who, when Augustus 
 was changing the Rome of brick to the Rome of marble, 
 when wealth was augmenting and magnificence increas- 
 ing, when victorious legions were extending the frontier, 
 when manners were becoming more refined, language 
 more polished, and literature rising to higher splendors 
 he would have been a rash man who then would have 
 said that Rome was entering her decline. Yet such was 
 the case. 
 
 And whoever will look may see that though our civili- 
 zation is apparently advancing with greater rapidity than 
 ever, the same cause which turned Roman progress into 
 retrogression is operating now. 
 
 What has destroyed every previous civilization has 
 been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth 
 and power. This same tendency, operating with in- 
 creasing force, is observable in our civilization to-day, 
 showing itself in every progressive community, and with 
 greater intensity the more progressive the community. 
 Wages and interest tend constantly to fall, rent to rise, 
 the rich to become very much richer, the poor to become 
 more helpless and hopeless, and the middle class to be 
 swept away. 
 
 I have traced this tendency to its cause. I have shown 
 by what simple means this cause may be removed. I 
 now wish to point out how, if this is not done, progress 
 must turn to decadence, and modern civilization decline 
 to barbarism, as have all previous civilizations. It is 
 worth while to point out how this may occur, as many 
 people, being unable to see how progress may pass into 
 retrogression, conceive such a thing impossible. Gibbon, 
 for instance, thought that modern civilization could 
 never be destroyed because there remained no barbarians 
 to overrun it, and it is a common idea that the inven- 
 tion of printing by so multiplying books has prevented 
 the possibility of knowledge ever again being lost.
 
 526 THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 The conditions of social progress, as we have traced 
 the law, are association and equality. The general 
 tendency of modern development, since the time when 
 we can first discern the gleams of civilization in the 
 darkness which followed the fall of the Western Empire, 
 has been toward political and legal equality to the 
 abolition of slavery; to the abrogation of status; to the 
 sweeping away of hereditary privileges; to the substitu- 
 tion of parliamentary for arbitrary government; to the 
 right of private judgment in matters of religion; to the 
 more equal security in person and property of high and 
 low, weak and strong; to the greater freedom of move- 
 ment and occupation, of speech and of the press. The 
 history of modern civilization is the history of advances 
 in this direction of the struggles and triumphs of per- 
 sonal, political, and religious freedom. And the general 
 law is shown by the fact that just as this tendency has 
 asserted itself civilization has advanced, while just as it 
 has been repressed or forced back civilization has been 
 checked. 
 
 This tendency has reached its full expression in the 
 American Kepublic, where political and legal rights are 
 absolutely equal, and, owing to the system of rotation in 
 office, even the growth of a bureaucracy is prevented; 
 where every religious belief or non-belief stands on the 
 same footing; where every boy may hope to be President, 
 every man has an equal voice in public affairs, and every 
 official is mediately or immediately dependent for the 
 short lease of his place upon a popular vote. This tend- 
 ency has yet some triumphs to win in England, in 
 extending the suffrage, and sweeping away the vestiges of 
 monarchy, aristocracy, and prelacy ; while in such countries 
 as Germany and Russia, where divine right is yet a good 
 deal more than a legal fiction, it has a considerable dis- 
 tance to go. But it is the prevailing tendency, and how 
 soon Europe will be completely republican is only a mat-
 
 Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 527 
 
 ter of time, or rather of accident. The United States 
 are therefore, in this respect, the most advanced of all 
 the great nations, in a direction in which all are advanc- 
 ing, and in the United States we see just how much this 
 tendency to personal and political freedom can of itself 
 accomplish. 
 
 Now, the first effect of the tendency to political equal- 
 ity was to the more equal distribution of wealth and 
 power; for, while population is comparatively sparse, 
 inequality in the distribution of wealth is principally due 
 to the inequality of personal rights, and it is only as 
 material progress goes on that the tendency to inequality 
 involved in the reduction of land to private ownership 
 strongly appears. But it is now manifest that absolute 
 political equality does not in itself prevent the tendency 
 to inequality involved in the private ownership of land, 
 and it is further evident that political equality, co-existing 
 with an increasing tendency to the unequal distribution 
 of wealth, must ultimately beget either the despotism 
 of organized tyranny or the worse despotism of anarchy. 
 
 To turn a republican government into a despotism the 
 basest and most brutal, it is not necessary formally to 
 change its constitution or abandon popular elections. It 
 was centuries after Csesar before the absolute master of the 
 Roman world pretended to rule other than by authority 
 of a Senate that trembled before him. 
 
 But forms are nothing when substance has gone, and 
 the forms of popular government are those from which 
 the substance of freedom may most easily go. Extremes 
 meet, and a government of universal suffrage and theo- 
 retical equality may, under conditions which impel the 
 change, most readily become a despotism. For there 
 despotism advances in the name and with the might 
 of the people. The single source of power once secured, 
 everything is secured. There is no unfranchised class 
 to whom appeal may be made, no privileged orders who
 
 528 THE LAW OK HTM AN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 in defending thoir own rights may defend those of 
 all. No bulwark remains to stay the flood, no eminence 
 to rise above it. They wore belted burons led by a mitered 
 archbishop who curbed the Plantagenet. with Magua 
 Charta: it was the middle classes who broke the pride of 
 the Stuarts; but a mere aristocracy of wealth will never 
 struggle while it can hope to bribe a tyrant. 
 
 And when the disparity of condition increases, so does 
 universal suffrage make it easy to seize the source of power, 
 for the greater is the proportion of power in the hands 
 of those who feel no direct interest in the conduct of 
 government; who, tortured by want and embruted by 
 poverty, are ready to sell their votes to the highest bid- 
 der or follow the lead of the most blatant demagogue; or 
 who, made bitter by hardships, may even look upon prof- 
 ligate and tyrannous government with the satisfaction 
 we may imagine the proletarians and slaves of Rome to 
 have felt, as they saw a Caligula or Nero raging among 
 the rich patricians. Given a community with republican 
 institutions, in which one class is too rich to be shorn of 
 its luxuries, no matter how public affairs are adminis- 
 tered, and another so poor that a few dollars on election 
 day will seem more than any abstract consideration; in 
 which the few roll in wealth and the many seethe with 
 discontent at a condition of things they know not how 
 to remedy, and power must pass into the hands of job- 
 bers who will buy and sell it as the Prwtorians sold the 
 Roman purple, or into the hands of demagogues who 
 will seize and wield it for a time, only to be displaced by 
 worse demagogues. 
 
 Where there is anything like an equal distribution of 
 wealth that is to say, where there is general patriotism. 
 virtue, and intelligence the more democratic the gov- 
 ernment the better it will be; but where there is gross 
 inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more demo- 
 cratic the government the worse it will be; for, while
 
 Chap. IT. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 529 
 
 rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than rotten 
 autocracy, its effects upon national character will be 
 worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, to 
 men to whom the chance to labor is a boon, to men who 
 must beg, or steal, or starve, is to invoke destruction. 
 To put political power in the hands of men embittered 
 and degraded by poverty is to tie firebrands to foxes and 
 turn them loose amid the standing corn; it is to put out 
 the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the 
 pillars of national life. 
 
 Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selec- 
 tion by lot, the plan of some of the ancient republics, 
 may sometimes place the wise and just in power; but in 
 a corrupt democracy the tendency is always to give power 
 to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted, and 
 unscrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate 
 to the bottom, the worst float to the top, and the vile will 
 only be ousted by the viler. While as national character 
 must gradually assimilate to the qualities that win power, 
 and consequently respect, that demoralization of opinion 
 goes on which in the long panorama of history we may 
 see over and over again transmuting races of freemen 
 into races of slaves. 
 
 As in England in the last century, when Parliament 
 was but a close corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt 
 oligarchy clearly fenced off from the masses may exist 
 without much effect on national character, because in 
 that case power is associated in the popular mind with 
 other things than corruption. But where there are no 
 hereditary distinctions, and men are habitually seen to 
 raise themselves by corrupt qualities from the lowest 
 places to wealth and power, tolerance of these qualities 
 finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic gov- 
 ernment must finally corrupt the people, and when a 
 people become corrupt there is no resurrection. The 
 life is gone, only the carcass remains; and it is left but 
 for the plowshares of fate to bury it out of sight.
 
 530 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 Now this trail formation of popular government into 
 despotism of the vilest and most degrading kind, which 
 must inevitably result from the unequal distribution of 
 wealth, is not a thing of the far future. It has already 
 begun in the United States, and is rapidly going on 
 under our eyes. That our legislative bodies are steadily 
 deteriorating in standard; that men of the highest abil- 
 ity and character are compelled to eschew politics, and 
 the arts of the jobber count for more than the reputa- 
 tion of the statesman; that voting is done more reck- 
 lessly and the power of money is increasing; that it is 
 harder to arouse the people to the necessity of reforms 
 and more difficult to carry them out; that political differ- 
 ences are ceasing to be differences of principle, and 
 abstract ideas are losing their power; that parties are 
 passing into the control of what in general government 
 would be oligarchies and dictatorships; are all evidences 
 of political decline. 
 
 The type of modern growth is the great city. Here 
 are to be found the greatest wealth and the deepest pov- 
 erty. And it is here that popular government has most 
 clearly broken down. In all the great American cities 
 there is to-day as clearly defined a ruling class as in the 
 most aristocratic 'countries of the world. Its members 
 carry wards in their pockets, make up the slates for 
 nominating conventions, distribute offices as they bar- 
 gain together, and though they toil not, neither do 
 they spin wear the best of raiment and spend money 
 lavishly. They are men of power, whose favor the ambi- 
 tious must court and whose vengeance he must avoid. 
 Who are these men? The wise, the good, the learned 
 men who have earned the confidence of their fellow- 
 citizens by the purity of their lives, the splendor of their 
 talents, their probity in public trusts, their deep study 
 of the problems of government? No; they are gamblers, 
 saloon keepers, pugilists, or worse, who have made a
 
 Chap. 17. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 531 
 
 trade of controlling votes and of buying and selling 
 offices and official acts. They stand to the government 
 of these cities as the Praetorian Guards did to that of 
 declining Home. He who would wear the purple, fill 
 the curule chair, or have the fasces carried before him, 
 must go or send his messengers to their camps, give them 
 donatives and make them promises. It is through these 
 men that the rich corporations and powerful pecuniary 
 interests can pack the Senate and the bench with their 
 creatures. It is these men who make School Directors, 
 Supervisors, Assessors, members of the Legislature, Con- 
 gressmen. Why, there are many election districts in 
 the United States in which a George Washington, a Ben- 
 jamin Franklin or a Thomas Jefferson could no more go 
 to the lower house of a State Legislature than under the 
 Ancient Regime a base-born peasant could become a 
 Marshal of France. Their very character would be an 
 insuperable disqualification. 
 
 In theory we are intense democrats. The proposal to 
 sacrifice swine in the temple would hardly have excited 
 greater horror and indignation in Jerusalem of old than 
 would among us that of conferring a distinction of rank 
 upon our most eminent citizen. But is there not grow- 
 ing up among us a class who have all the power without 
 any of the virtues of aristocracy? We have simple citi- 
 zens who control thousands of miles of railroad, millions 
 of acres of land, the means of livelihood of great numbers 
 of men; who name the Governors of sovereign States as 
 they name their clerks, choose Senators as they choose 
 attorneys, and whose will is as supreme with Legislatures 
 as that of a French King sitting in bed of justice. The 
 undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us back again 
 to the old conditions from which we dreamed we had 
 escaped. The development of the artisan and commer- 
 cial classes gradually broke down feudalism after it had 
 become so complete that men thought of heaven as
 
 532 THE LAW OF HOULX PBOGBBB. Book T. 
 
 organized on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and 
 second persons of the Trinity as suzerain and tenant-in- 
 chief. But now the development of manufactures and 
 exchange, acting in a social organization in which land 
 is made private property, threatens to compel every 
 worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which followed 
 the final break-np of the Roman Empire compelled every 
 freeman to seek a lord. Nothing seems exempt from 
 this tendency. Industry everywhere tends to assume a 
 form in which one is master and many serve. And when 
 one is master and the others serve, the one will control 
 the others, even in such matters as votes. Just as the 
 English landlord votes his tenants, so does the Xew 
 England mill owner vote his operatives. 
 
 There is no mistaking it the very foundations of 
 society are being sapped before our eyes, while we ask, 
 kow is it possible that such a civilization as this, with its 
 railroads, and daily newspapers, and electric telegraphs, 
 should ever be destroyed? While literature breathes but 
 the belief that we have been, are, and for the future 
 must be, leaving the savage state further and further 
 behind us, there are indications that we are actually 
 turning back again toward barbarism. Let me illus- 
 trate: One of the characteristics of barbarism is the low 
 regard for the rights of person and of property. That 
 the laws of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors imposed as penalty 
 for murder a fine proportioned to the rank of the victim, 
 while our law knows no distinction of rank, and protects 
 the lowest from the highest, the poorest from the richest, 
 by the uniform penalty of death, is looked upon as evi- 
 dence of their barbarism and our civilization. And so, 
 that piracy, and robbery, and slave-trading, and black- 
 mailing, were once regarded as legitimate occupations, 
 is conclusive proof of the rude state of development from 
 which we have so far progressed. 
 
 Bat it is a matter of fact that, in spite of our laws, any
 
 Chap. IV. HOW MODERN" CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE. 533 
 
 one who has money enough and wants to kill another 
 may go into any one of our great centers of population 
 and business, and gratify his desire, and then surrender 
 himself to justice, with the chances as a hundred to one 
 that he will suffer no greater penalty than a temporary 
 imprisonment and the loss of a sum proportioned partly 
 to his own wealth and partly to the wealth and standing 
 of the man he kills. His money will be paid, not to the 
 family of the murdered man, who have lost their protec- 
 tor; not to the state, which has lost a citizen; but to 
 lawyers who understand how to secure delays, to find 
 witnesses, and get juries to disagree. 
 
 And so, if a man steal enough, he may be sure that his 
 punishment will practically amount but to the loss of a 
 part of the proceeds of his theft; and if he steal enough 
 to get off with a fortune, he will be greeted by his ac- 
 quaintances as a viking might have been greeted after a 
 successful cruise. Even though he robbed those who 
 trusted him; even though he robbed the widow and the 
 fatherless; he has only to get enough, and he may safely 
 flaunt his wealth in the eyes of day. 
 
 Now, the tendency in this direction is an increasing 
 one. It is shown in greatest force where the inequalities 
 in the distribution of wealth are greatest, and it shows 
 itself as they increase. If it be not a return to barbar- 
 ism, what is it? The failures of justice to which I havo 
 alluded are only illustrative of the increasing debility 
 of our legal machinery in every department. It is 
 becoming common to hoar men say that it would bo 
 better to revert to first principles and abolish law, for 
 then in self-defense the people would form Vigilanoo 
 Committees and take justice into their own hands. Is 
 this indicative of advance or retrogression? 
 
 All this is matter of common observation. Though 
 we may riot speak it openly, the general faith in repub- 
 lican institutions is, where they have reached their fullest 

 
 534 THE LAW OF HUMAtf PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 development, narrowing and weakening. It is no longer 
 that confident belief in republicanism as the source of 
 national blessings that it once was. Thoughtful men 
 are beginning to see its dangers, without seeing how to 
 escape them; are beginning to accept the view of Macau- 
 lay and distrust that of Jefferson.* And the people at 
 large are becoming used to the growing corruption. The 
 most ominous political sign in the United States to-day 
 is the growth of a sentiment which either doubts the 
 existence of an honest man in public office or looks on 
 him as a fool for not seizing his opportunities. That is 
 to say, the people themselves are becoming corrupted. 
 Thus in the United States to-day is republican govern- 
 ment running the course it must inevitably follow under 
 conditions which cause the unequal distribution of 
 wealth. 
 
 "Where that course leads is clear to whoever will think. 
 As corruption becomes chronic; as public spirit is lost; 
 as traditions of honor, virtue, and patriotism are weak- 
 ened; as law is brought into contempt and reforms 
 become hopeless; then in the festering mass will be gen- 
 erated volcanic forces, ,which shatter and rend when 
 seeming accident gives them vent. Strong, unscrupulous 
 men, rising up upon occasion, will become the exponents 
 of blind popular desires or fierce popular passions, and 
 dash aside forms that have lost their vitality. The sword 
 will again be mightier than the pen, and in carnivals of 
 destruction brute force and wild frenzy will alternate 
 with the lethargy of a declining civilization. 
 
 I speak of the United States only because the United 
 States is the most advanced of all the great nations. 
 What shall we say of Europe, where dams of ancient law 
 and custom pen up the swelling waters and standing 
 armies weigh down the safety valves, though year by 
 
 * See Macaulay's letter to Randall, the biographer of Jefferson.
 
 Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 535 
 
 year the 6rcs grow hotter underneath? Europe tends to 
 republicanism under conditions that will not admit of 
 true republicanism under conditions that substitute for 
 the calm and august figure of Liberty the petroleuse and 
 the guillotine! 
 
 Whence shall come the new barbarians? Go through 
 the squalid quarters of great cities, and you may see, 
 even now, their gathering hordes! How shall learning ii -j-^f 
 perish ? Men will cease to read, and books will kindle 
 fires and be turned into cartridges! 
 
 It is startling to think how slight the traces that would 
 be left of our civilization did it pass through the throes 
 which have accompanied the decline of every previous 
 civilization. Paper will not last like parchment, nor are 
 our most massive buildings and monuments to be com- 
 pared in solidity with the rock-hewn temples and titanic 
 edifices of the old civilizations.* And invention has 
 given us, not merely the steam engine and the printing 
 press, but petroleum, nitro-glycerine, and dynamite. 
 
 Yet to hint, to-day, that our civilization may possibly 
 be tending to decline, seems like the wildness of pessi- 
 mism. The special tendencies to which I have alluded are 
 obvious to thinking men, but with the majority of think- 
 ing men, as with the great masses, the belief in substan- 
 tial progress is yet deep and strong a fundamental belief 
 which admits not the shadow of a doubt. 
 
 But any one who will think over the matter will see 
 that this must necessarily be the case where advance 
 gradually passes into retrogression. For in social devel- 
 opment, as in everything else, motion tends to persist in 
 straight lines, and therefore, where there has been a 
 
 * It is also, it seems to me, instructive to note how inadequate and 
 utterly misleading would be the idea of our civilization which could 
 be gained from the religious and funereal monuments of our time, 
 which are all we have from which to gain our ideas of the buried 
 civilizations.
 
 536 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 previous advance, it is extremely difficult to recognize 
 decline, even when it has fully commenced; there is an 
 almost irresistible tendency to believe that the forward 
 movement which has been advance, and is still going on, 
 is still advance. The web of beliefs, customs, laws, 
 institutions, and habits of thought, which each commu- 
 nity is constantly spinning, and which produces in the 
 individual environed by it all the differences of national 
 character, is never unraveled. That is to say, in the de- 
 cline of civilization, communities do not go down by the 
 same paths that they came up. For instance, the decline 
 of civilization as manifested in government would not 
 take us back from republicanism to constitutional mon- 
 archy, and thence to the feudal system; it would take us 
 to imperatorship and anarchy. As manifested in reli- 
 gion, it would not take us back into the faiths of our fore- 
 fathers, into Protestantism or Catholicity, but into new 
 forms of superstition, of which possibly Mormonism and 
 other even grosser "isms" may give some vague idea. 
 As manifested in knowledge, it would not take us toward 
 Bacon, but toward the literati of China. 
 
 And how the retrogression of civilization, following a 
 period of advance, may be so gradual as to attract no 
 attention at the time; nay, how that decline must neces- 
 sarily, by the great majority of men, be mistaken for 
 advance, is easily seen. For instance, there is an enor- 
 mous difference between Grecian art of the classic period 
 and that of the lower empire; yet the change was accom- 
 panied, or rather caused, by a change of taste. The 
 artists who most quickly followed this change of taste 
 were in their day regarded as the superior artists. And 
 so of literature. As it became more vapid, puerile, and 
 stilted, it would be in obedience to an altered taste, 
 which would regard its increasing weakness as increasing 
 strength and beauty. The really good writer would not 
 find readers; he would be regarded as rude, dry, or dull.
 
 Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 537 
 
 And so would the drama decline; not because there was 
 a lack of good plays, but because the prevailing taste be- 
 came more and more that of a less cultured class, who, 
 of course, regard that which they most admire as the 
 best of its kind. And so, too, of religion; the supersti- 
 tions which a superstitious people will add to it will be 
 regarded by them as improvements. While, as the de- 
 cline goes on, the return to barbarism, where it is not in 
 itself regarded as an advance, will seem necessary to meet 
 the exigencies of the times. 
 
 For instance, flogging, as a punishment for certain 
 offenses, has been recently restored to the penal code of 
 England, and has been strongly advocated on this side 
 of the Atlantic. I express no opinion as to whether this 
 is or is not a better punishment for crime than imprison- 
 ment. I only point to the fact as illustrating how an 
 increasing amount of crime and an increasing embarrass- 
 ment as to the maintenance of prisoners, both obvious 
 tendencies at present, might lead to a fuller return to 
 the physical cruelty of barbarous codes. The use of tor- 
 ture in judicial investigations, which steadily grew with 
 the decline of Roman civilization, it is thus easy to see, 
 might, as manners brutalized and crime increased, be 
 demanded as a necessary improvement of the criminal 
 law. 
 
 Whether in the present drifts of opinion and taste 
 there are as yet any indications of retrogression, it is not 
 necessary to inquire; but there are many things about 
 which there can be no dispute, which go to show that 
 our civilization has reached a critical period, and that 
 unless a new start is made in the direction of social equal- 
 ity, the nineteenth century may to the future mark its 
 climax. These industrial depressions, which cause as 
 much waste and suffering as famines or wars, are like 
 the twinges and shocks which precede paralysis. Every- 
 where is it evident that the tendency to inequality, which
 
 538 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 is the necessary result of material progress where land is 
 monopolized, cannot go much further without carrying 
 our civilization into that downward path which is so easy 
 to enter and so hard to abandon. Everywhere the in- 
 creasing intensity of the struggle to live, the increasing 
 necessity for straining every nerve to prevent being 
 thrown down and trodden under foot in the scramble for 
 wealth, is draining the forces which gain and maintain im- 
 provements. In every civilized country pauperism, crime, 
 insanity, and suicides are increasing. In every civilized 
 country the diseases are increasing which come from 
 overstrained nerves, from insufficient nourishment, from 
 squalid lodgings, from unwholesome and monotonous 
 occupations, from premature labor of children, from the 
 tasks and crimes which poverty imposes upon women. 
 In every highly civilized country the expectation of life, 
 which gradually rose for several centuries, and which 
 seems to have culminated about the first quarter of this 
 century, appears to be now diminishing.* 
 
 It is not an advancing civilization that such figures 
 show. It is a civilization which in its undercurrents has 
 already begun to recede. When the tide turns in bay or 
 river from flood to ebb, it is not all at once; but here it 
 still runs on, though there it has begun to recede. When 
 the sun passes the meridian, it can be told only by the 
 way the short shadows fall; for the heat of the day yet 
 increases. But as sure as the turning tide must soon run 
 full ebb; as sure as the declining sun must bring dark- 
 ness, so sure is it, that though knowledge yet increases 
 and invention marches on, and new states are being set- 
 tled, and cities still expand, yet civilization has begun to 
 
 * Statistics which show these things are collected in convenient 
 form in a volume entitled " Deterioration and Race Education," by 
 Samuel Royce, which has been largely distributed by the venerable 
 Peter Cooper of New York. Strangely enough, the only remedy 
 proposed by Mr. Royce is the establishment of Kindergarten schools.
 
 Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 539 
 
 wane when, in proportion to population, we must build 
 more and more prisons, more and more almshouses, more 
 and more insane asylums. It is not from top to bottom 
 that societies die; it is from bottom to top. 
 
 But there are evidences far more palpable than any 
 that can be given by statistics, of tendencies to the ebb 
 of civilization. There is a vague but general feeling of 
 disappointment; an increased bitterness among the 
 working classes; a widespread feeling of unrest and 
 brooding revolution. If this were accompanied by a 
 definite idea of how relief is to be obtained, it would be 
 a hopeful sign; but it is not. Though the schoolmaster 
 has been abroad some time, the general power of tracing 
 effect to cause does not seem a whit improved. The 
 reaction toward protectionism, as the reaction toward 
 other exploded fallacies of government, shows this.* 
 And even the philosophic free-thinker cannot look upon 
 that vast change in religious ideas that is now sweeping 
 over the civilized world without feeling that this tre- 
 mendous fact may have most momentous relations, which 
 only the future can develop. For what is going on is 
 not a change in the form of religion, but the negation 
 and destruction of the ideas from which religion springs. 
 Christianity is not simply clearing itself of superstitions, 
 but in the popular mind it is dying at the root, as the 
 old paganisms were dying when Christianity entered the 
 world. And nothing arises to take its place. The fun- 
 damental ideas of an intelligent Creator and of a future 
 life are in the general mind rapidly weakening. Now, 
 whether this may or may not be in itself an advance, the 
 importance of the part which religion has played in the 
 
 * In point of constructive statesmanship the recognition of fun- 
 damental principles and the adaptation of means to ends, the Consti- 
 tution of the United States, adopted a century ago, is greatly superior 
 to the latest State Constitutions, the most recent of which is that of 
 California a piece of utter botchwork.
 
 540 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Boole X. 
 
 world's history shows the importance of the change that 
 is now going on. Unless human nature has suddenly 
 altered in what the universal history of the race shows 
 to be its deepest characteristics, the mightiest actions and 
 reactions are thus preparing. Such stages of thought 
 have heretofore always marked periods of transition. On 
 a smaller scale and to a less depth (for I think any one 
 who will notice the drift of our literature, and talk upon 
 such subjects with the men he meets, will see that it is 
 sub-soil and not surface plowing that materialistic ideas 
 are now doing), such a state of thought preceded the 
 French revolution. But the closest parallel to the wreck 
 of religious ideas now going on is to be found in that 
 period in which ancient civilization began to pass from 
 splendor to decline. What change may come, no mortal 
 man can tell, but that some great change must come, 
 thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world is 
 trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either 
 it must be a leap upward, which will open the way to 
 advances yet undreamed of, or it must be a plunge 
 downward, which will carry us back toward barbarism.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 
 
 In the short space to which this latter part of our 
 inquiry is necessarily confined, I have been obliged to 
 omit much that I would like to say, and to touch briefly 
 where an exhaustive consideration would not be out of 
 place. 
 
 Nevertheless, this, at least, is evident, that the truth 
 to which we were led in the politico-economic branch of 
 our inquiry is as clearly apparent in the rise and fall 
 of nations and the growth and decay of civilizations, and 
 that it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of 
 relation and sequence that we denominate moral percep- 
 tions. Thus have been given to our conclusions the 
 greatest certitude and highest sanction. 
 
 This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It 
 shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal 
 distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and 
 more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not 
 incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring 
 progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, 
 bub, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, 
 grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into 
 barbarism by the road every previous civilization has 
 trod. But it also shows that these evils are not imposed \ 
 by natural laws; that they spring solely from social mal- 
 adjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in 
 removing their cause we shall be giving an enormous 
 impetus to progress. 
 
 The poverty which in the midst of abundance pinches
 
 542 THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGRESS. Book X. 
 
 and imbrntes men, and all the manifold evils which flow 
 from it, spring from a denial of justice. In permitting 
 the monopolization of the opportunities which nature 
 freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental 
 law of justice for, so far as we can see, when we 
 view things upon a large scale, justice seems to be the 
 supreme law of the universe. But by sweeping away 
 this injustice and asserting the rights of all men to 
 natural opportunities, we shall conform ourselves to the 
 law we shall remove the great cause of unnatural in- 
 equality in the distribution of wealth and power; we 
 shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions of 
 greed; dry up the springs of vice and misery; light in 
 dark places the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to 
 invention and a fresh impulse to discovery; substitute 
 political strength for political weakness; and make 
 tyranny and anarchy impossible. 
 
 The reform I have proposed accords with all that is 
 politically, socially, or morally desirable. It has the 
 qualities of a true reform, for it will make all other re- 
 forms easier. What is it but the carrying out in letter 
 and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declaration of 
 Independence the "self-evident" truth that is the heart 
 and soul of the Declaration "That all men are created 
 equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
 unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness!" 
 
 These rights are denied when the equal right to land 
 on which and by which men alone can live is denied. 
 Equality of political rights will not compensate for the 
 denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature. Polit- 
 ical liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, 
 becomes, as population increases and invention goes on, 
 merely the liberty to compete for employment at starva- 
 tion wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. 
 And so there come beggars in our streets and tramps on
 
 > THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 543 
 
 our roads; and poverty enslaves men whom we boast are 
 political sovereigns; and want breeds ignorance that our 
 schools cannot enlighten; and citizens vote as their mas- 
 ters dictate; and the demagogue usurps the part of the 
 statesman; and gold weighs in the scales of justice; and 
 in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue 
 even the compliment of hypocrisy; and the pillars of 
 the republic that we thought so strong already bend 
 under an increasing strain. 
 
 We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up 
 her statues and sound her praises. But we have not 
 fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her 
 demands. She will have no half service! 
 
 Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the 
 ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and 
 Justice is the natural law the law of health and symme- 
 try and strength, of fraternity and co-operation. 
 
 They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished 
 her mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges 
 and given men the ballot, who think of her as having no 
 further relations to the everyday affairs of life, have not 
 seen her real grandeur to them the poets who have 
 sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs 
 fools! As the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light; 
 as his beams not merely pierce the clouds, but support 
 all growth, supply all motion, and call forth from what 
 would otherwise be a cold and inert mass all the infinite 
 diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty to mankind. 
 It is not for an abstraction that men have toiled and 
 died; that in every age the witnesses of Liberty have 
 stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have suffered. 
 
 We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, 
 knowledge, invention, national strength and national 
 independence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty 
 is the source, the mother, the necessary condition. She 
 is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth what sun-
 
 544 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 shine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to sight. 
 She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national 
 strength, the spirit of national independence. "Where 
 Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowl- 
 edge expands, invention multiplies human powers, and 
 in strength and spirit the freer nation rises among her 
 neighbors as Saul amid his brethren taller and fairer. 
 Where Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, wealth dimin- 
 ishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and em- 
 pires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless 
 prey to freer barbarians! 
 
 Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of 
 Liberty yet beamed among men, but all progress hath 
 she called forth. 
 
 Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyp- 
 tian whips, and led them forth from the House of Bond- 
 age. She hardened them in the desert and made of 
 them a race of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic 
 law took their thinkers up to heights where they beheld 
 the unity of God, and inspired their poets with strains 
 that yet phrase the highest exaltations of thought. Lib- 
 erty dawned on the Phoenician coast, and ships passed the 
 Pillars of Hercules to plow the unknown sea. She shed 
 a partial light on Greece, and marble grew to shapes of 
 ideal beauty, words became the instruments of subtlest 
 thought, and against the scanty militia of free cities the 
 countless hosts of the Great King broke like surges 
 against a rock. She cast her beams on the four-acre 
 farms of Italian husbandmen, and born of her strength 
 a power came forth that conquered the world. They 
 glinted from shields of German warriors, and Augustus 
 wept his legions. Out of the night that followed her 
 eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities, and a 
 lost learning revived, modern civilization began, a new 
 world was unveiled; and as Liberty grew, so grew art, 
 wealth, power, knowledge, and refinement. In the his-
 
 Chap. V THE CENTRAL TBUTH. 545 
 
 tory of every nation we may read the same truth. It was 
 the strength born of Magna Charta that won Crecy and 
 Agincourt. It was the revival of Liberty from the 
 despotism of the Tudors that glorified the Elizabethan 
 age. It was the spirit that brought a crowned tyrant to 
 the block that planted here the seed of a mighty tree. 
 It was the energy of ancient freedom that, the moment 
 it had gained unity, made Spain the mightiest power of 
 the world, only to fall to the lowest depth of weakness 
 when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in France, all 
 intellectual vigor dying under the tyranny of the Seven- 
 teenth Century to revive in splendor as Liberty awoke in 
 the Eighteenth, and on the enfranchisement of French 
 peasants in the Great Revolution, basing the wonderful 
 strength that has in our time defied defeat. 
 
 Shall we not trust her? 
 
 In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious 
 forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On 
 the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to 
 us again. We must follow her further; we must trust 
 her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will 
 not stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is 
 not enough that they should be theoretically equal be- 
 fore the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves 
 of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand 
 on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature. 
 Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, 
 or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress 
 has evolved turn to powers that work destruction. This 
 is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries. 
 Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social struc- 
 ture cannot stand. 
 
 Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. 
 In allowing one man to own the land on which and from 
 which other men must live, we have made them his 
 bondsmen in a degree which increases as material prog-
 
 546 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book 1 
 
 ress goes on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways 
 they do not realize is extracting from the masses in every 
 civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is 
 instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place 
 of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing polit- 
 ical despotism out of political freedom, and must soon 
 transmute democratic institutions into anarchy. 
 
 It is this that turns the blessings of material progress 
 into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into 
 noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills 
 prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and 
 consumes them with greed; that robs women of the grace 
 and beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little 
 children the joy and innocence of life's morning. 
 
 Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal 
 laws of the universe forbid it. Euins of dead empires 
 testify, and the witness that is in every soul answers, 
 that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevo- 
 lence, something more august than Charity it is Justice 
 herself that demands of us to right this wrong. Justice 
 that will not be denied; that cannot be put off Justice 
 that with the scales carries the sword. Shall we ward 
 the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall we avert 
 the decrees of immutable law by raising churches when 
 hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep? 
 
 Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blas- 
 phemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Provi- 
 dence the suffering and brutishness that come of poverty; 
 that turns with folded hands to the All-Father and lays 
 on Him the responsibility for the want and crime of our 
 great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander 
 the Just One. A merciful man would have better ordered 
 the world; a just man would crush with his foot such an 
 ulcerous anthill! It is not the Almighty, but we who 
 are responsible for the vice and misery that fester amid 
 our civilization. The Creator showers upon us his gifts
 
 Chap. V. THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 547 
 
 more than enough for all. But like swine scrambling 
 for food, we tread them in the mire tread them in the 
 mire, while we tear and rend each other! 
 
 In the very centers of our civilization to-day are want 
 and suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does 
 not close his eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn to 
 the Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing the 
 prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the uni- 
 verse sprang into being there should glow in the sun a 
 greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the 
 soil; that for every blade of grass that now grows two 
 should spring up, and the seed that now increases fifty- 
 fold should increase a hundred-fold! Would poverty be 
 abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever 
 benefit would accrue would be but temporary. The new 
 powers streaming through the material universe could be 
 utilized only through land. And land, being private 
 property, the classes that now monopolize the bounty of 
 the Creator would monopolize all the new bounty. Land 
 owners would alone be benefited. Bents would increase, 
 but wages would still tend to the starvation point! 
 
 This is not merely a deduction of political economy; it 
 is a fact of experience. We know it because we have 
 seen it. Within our own times, under our very eyes, 
 that Power which is above all, and in all, and through 
 all; that Power of which the whole universe is but the mani- 
 festation; that Power which maketh all things, and with- 
 out which is not anything made that is made, has increased 
 the bounty which men may enjoy, as truly as though the 
 fertility of nature had been increased. Into the mind of 
 one came the thought that harnessed steam for the serv- 
 ice of mankind. To the inner ear of another was whis- 
 pered the secret that compels the lightning to bear a 
 message round the globe. In every direction have the 
 laws of matter been revealed; in every department of 
 industry have arisen arms of iron and fingers of steel,
 
 548 THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 
 
 whose effect upon the production of wealth has been pre- 
 cisely the same as an increase in the fertility of nature. 
 What has been the result? Simply that land owners get 
 all the gain. The wonderful discoveries and inventions 
 of our century have neither increased wages nor lightened 
 toil. The effect has simply been to make the few richer; 
 the many more helpless! 
 
 Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus 
 misappropriated with impunity? Is it a light thing that 
 labor should be robbed of its earnings while greed rolls 
 in wealth that the many should want while the few are 
 surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may be 
 read the lesson that such wrong never goes unpunished; 
 that the Nemesis that follows injustice never falters 
 nor sleeps! Look around to-day. Can this state of 
 things continue? May we even say, "After us the del- 
 uge!" Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling even 
 now, and the very foundations of society begin to quiver 
 with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The struggle 
 that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at 
 hand, if it be not already begun. 
 
 The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, 
 and the new powers born of progress, forces have entered 
 the world that will either compel us to a higher plane or 
 overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization after 
 civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is the 
 delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the 
 popular unrest with which the civilized world is fever- 
 ishly pulsing only the passing effect of ephemeral causes. 
 Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjust- 
 ments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here 
 in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen 
 arising. We cannot go on permitting men to vote and 
 forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys 
 and girls in our public schools and then refusing them 
 the right to earn an honest living. We cannot go on
 
 Chap. V. THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 549 
 
 prating of the inalienable rights of man and then deny- 
 ing the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. 
 Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to ferment, 
 and elemental forces gather for the strife! 
 
 But if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and 
 obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers 
 that now threaten must disappear, the forces that now 
 menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think of the 
 powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowledge 
 yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the won- 
 drous inventions of this century give us but a hint. 
 With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble pas- 
 sions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking 
 the place of the jealousy and fear that now array men 
 against each other; with mental power loosed by con- 
 ditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; 
 and who shall measure the heights to which our civiliza- 
 tion may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the 
 Golden Age of which poets have sung and high-raised 
 seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious vision 
 which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful 
 splendor. It is what he saw whose eyes at Patmos were 
 closed in a trance. It is the culmination of Christianity 
 the City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and 
 its gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace! 

 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OP INDIVIDUAL LIFE.
 
 The days of the nations bear no trace 
 
 Of all the sunshine so far foretold; 
 The cannon speaks in the teacher's place 
 
 The age is weary with work and gold, 
 And high hopes wither, and memories wane; 
 
 On hearths and altars the fires are dead; 
 But that brave faith hath not lived in vain 
 
 And this is all that our watcher said. 
 
 Frances Brown-
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE PBOBLEM OP INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 
 
 My task is done. 
 
 Yet the thought still mounts. The problems we have 
 been considering lead into a problem higher and deeper 
 still. Behind the problems of social life lies the problem 
 of individual life. I have found it impossible to think of 
 the one without thinking of the other, and so, I imagine, 
 will it be with those who, reading this book, go with me 
 in thought. For, as says Guizot, "when the history of 
 civilization is completed, when there is nothing more to 
 say as to our present existence, man inevitably asks him- 
 self whether all is exhausted, whether he has reached the 
 end of all things?" 
 
 This problem I cannot now discuss. I speak of it only 
 because the thought which, while writing this book, has 
 come with inexpressible cheer to me, may also be of cheer 
 to some who read it; for, whatever be its fate, it will be 
 read by some who in their heart of hearts have taken 
 the cross of a new crusade. This thought will come to 
 them without my suggestion; but we are surer that we 
 see a star when we know that others also see it. 
 
 The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find 
 easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been 
 accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have 
 been obscured. But it will find friends those who will 
 toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is 
 the power of Truth. 
 
 Will it at length prevail? Ultimately, yes. But in
 
 554 CONCLUSION. 
 
 our own times, or in times of which any memory of us 
 remains, who shall say? 
 
 For the man who, seeing the want and misery, the 
 ignorance and brutishness caused by unjust social insti- 
 tutions, sets himself, in so far as he has strength, to 
 right them, there is disappointment and bitterness. So 
 it has been of old time. So is it even now. But the 
 bitterest thought and it sometimes comes to the best 
 and bravest is that of the hopelessness of the effort, the 
 futility of the sacrifice. To how few of those who sow 
 the seed is it given to see it grow, or even with certainty 
 to know that it will grow. 
 
 Let us not disguise it. Over and over again has the 
 standard of Truth and Justice been raised in this world. 
 Over and over again has it been trampled down often- 
 times in blood. If they are weak forces that are opposed 
 to Truth, how should Error so long prevail? If Justice 
 has but to raise her head to have Injustice flee before 
 her, how should the wail of the oppressed so long go up? 
 
 But for those who see Truth and would follow her; for 
 those who recognize Justice and would stand for her, 
 success is not the only thing. Success! Why, False- 
 hood has often that to give; and Injustice often has that 
 to give. Must not Truth and Justice have something to 
 give that is their own by proper right theirs in essence, 
 and not by accident? 
 
 That they have, and that here and now, every one who 
 has felt their exaltation knows. But sometimes the 
 clouds sweep down. It is sad, sad reading, the lives of 
 the men who would have done something for their fel- 
 lows. To Socrates they gave the hemlock; Gracchus 
 they killed with sticks and stones; and One, greatest and 
 purest of all, they crucified. These seem but types. 
 To-day Eussian prisons are full, and in long processions, 
 me.n and women, who, but for high-minded patriotism, 
 might have lived in ease and luxury, move in chains
 
 THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 555 
 
 toward the death-in-life of Siberia. And in penury and 
 want, in neglect and contempt, destitute even of the 
 sympathy that would have been so sweet, how many in 
 every country have closed their eyes? This we see. 
 
 But do ivejsee it all ? 
 
 In writing I have picked up a newspaper. In it is a 
 short account, evidently translated from a semi-official 
 report, of the execution of three Nihilists at Kieff the 
 Prussian subject Brandtner, the unknown man calling 
 himself Antonoff, and the nobleman Ossinsky. At the 
 foot of the gallows they were permitted to kiss one an- 
 other. "Then the hangman cut the rope, the surgeons 
 pronounced the victims dead, the bodies were buried at 
 the foot of the scaffold, and the Nihilists were given up 
 to eternal oblivion." Thus says the account. I do not 
 believe it. No; not to oblivion! 
 
 I have in this inquiry followed the course of my own 
 thought. When, in mind, I set out on it 1 had no theory 
 to support, no conclusions to prove. Only, when I first 
 realized the squalid misery of a great city, it appalled 
 and tormented me, and would not let me rest, for think- 
 ing of what caused it and how it could be cured. 
 
 But out of this inquiry has come to me something I 
 did not think to find, and a faith that was dead revives. 
 
 The yearning for a further life is natural and deep. It 
 grows with intellectual growth, and perhaps none really 
 feel it more than those who have begun to see how great 
 is the universe and how infinite are the vistas which 
 every advance in knowledge opens before us vistas 
 which would require nothing short of eternity to explore. 
 But in the mental atmosphere of our times, to the great 
 majority of men on whom mere creeds have lost their 
 hold, it seems impossible to look on this yearning save 
 as a vain and childish hope, arising from man's egotism, 
 and for which there is not the slightest ground or war-
 
 556 CONCLUSION. 
 
 rant, but which, on the contrary, seems inconsistent with 
 positive knowledge. 
 
 Now, when we come to analyze and trace up the ideas 
 that thus destroy the hope of a future life, we shall find 
 them, I think, to have their source, not in any revelations 
 of physical science, but in certain teachings of political 
 and social science which have deeply permeated thought 
 in all directions. They have their root in the doctrines, 
 that there is a tendency to the production of more human 
 beings than can be provided for; that vice and misery 
 are the result of natural laws, and the means by which 
 advance goes on; and that human progress is by a slow 
 race development. These doctrines, which have been 
 generally accepted as approved truth, do what, except as 
 scientific interpretations have been colored by them, the 
 extensions of physical science do not do they reduce 
 the individual to insignificance; they destroy the idea 
 that there can be in the ordering of the universe any 
 regard for his existence, or any recognition of what we 
 call moral qualities. 
 
 It is difficult to reconcile the idea of human immortal- 
 ity with the idea that nature wastes men by constantly 
 bringing them into being where there is no room for 
 them. It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an intelli- 
 gent and beneficent Creator with the belief that the 
 wretchedness and degradation which are the lot of such 
 a large proportion of human kind result from his enact- 
 ments; while the idea that man mentally and physically 
 is the result of slow modifications perpetuated by hered- 
 ity, irresistibly suggests the idea that it is the race life, 
 not the individual life, which is the object of human 
 existence. Thus has vanished with many of us, and is 
 still vanishing with more of us, that belief which in the 
 battles and ills of life affords the strongest support and 
 deepest consolation. 
 
 Now, in the inquiry through which we have passed,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 557 
 
 we have met these doctrines and seen their fallacy. We 
 have seen that population does not tend to outrun sub- 
 sistence; we have seen that the waste of human powers 
 and the prodigality of human suffering do not spring 
 from natural laws, but from the ignorance and selfishness 
 of men in refusing to conform to natural laws. We have 
 seen that human progress is not by altering the nature of 
 men; but that, on the contrary, the nature of men seems, 
 generally speaking, always the same. 
 
 Thus the nightmare which is banishing from the 
 modern world the belief in a future life is destroyed. 
 Not that all difficulties are removed for turn which way 
 we may, we come to what we cannot comprehend; but 
 that difficulties are removed which seem conclusive and 
 insuperable. And, thus, hope springs up. 
 
 But this is not all. 
 
 Political Economy has been called the dismal science, 
 and as currently taught, is hopeless and despairing. But 
 this, as we have seen, is solely because she has been 
 degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her har- 
 monies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her 
 mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an 
 indorsement of injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free 
 her in her own proper symmetry, Political Economy is 
 radiant with hope. 
 
 For properly understood, the laws which govern the 
 production and distribution of wealth show that the want 
 and injustice of the present social state are not necessary; 
 but that, on the contrary, a social state is possible in 
 which poverty would be unknown, and all the better 
 qualities and higher powers of human nature would have 
 opportunity for full development. 
 
 And, further than this, when we see that social de- 
 velopment is governed neither by a Special Providence 
 nor by a merciless fate, but by law, at once unchangeable
 
 558 CONCLUSION. 
 
 and beneficent; when we see that human will is the great 
 factor, and that taking men in the aggregate, their con- 
 dition is as they make it; when we see that economic 
 law and moral law are essentially one, and that the truth 
 which the intellect grasps after toilsome effort is but 
 that which the moral sense reaches by a quick intuition, 
 a flood of light breaks in upon the problem of individual 
 life. These countless millions like ourselves, who on 
 this earth of ours have passed and still are passing, with 
 their joys and sorrows, their toil and their striving, their 
 aspirations and their fears, their strong perceptions of 
 things deeper than sense, their common feelings which 
 form the basis even of the most divergent creeds their 
 little lives do not seem so much like meaningless waste. 
 
 The great fact which Science in all her branches shows 
 is the universality of law. Wherever he can trace it, 
 whether in the fall of an apple or in the revolution of 
 binary suns, the astronomer sees the working of the 
 same law, which operates in the minutest divisions in 
 which we may distinguish space, as it does in the im- 
 measurable distances with which his science deals. Out 
 of that which lies beyond his telescope comes a moving 
 body and again it disappears. So far as he can trace its 
 course the law is ignored. Does he say that this is an 
 exception? On the contrary, he says that this is merely 
 a part of its orbit that he has seen; that beyond the 
 reach of his telescope the law holds good. He makes his 
 calculations, and after centuries they are proved. 
 
 Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human 
 life in society, we find that in the largest as in the small- 
 est community, they are the same. We find that what 
 seem at first sight like divergences and exceptions are 
 but manifestations of the same principles. And we find 
 that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into 
 and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a 
 community, justice infallibly brings its reward and in-
 
 THE PEOBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 559 
 
 justice its punishment. But this we cannot see in in- 
 dividual life. If we look merely at individual life we 
 cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slight- 
 est relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or 
 unjust.* Shall we then say that the law which is mani- 
 fest in social life is not true of individual life? It is not 
 scientific to say so. We would not say so in reference to 
 anything else. Shall we not rather say this simply proves 
 that we do not see the whole of individual life? 
 
 The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the 
 facts and relations of physical nature, harmonize with 
 what seems to be the law of mental development not a 
 necessary and involuntary progress, but a progress in 
 which the human will is an initiatory force. But in life, 
 as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go 
 but a little way. The mind hardly begins to awake ere 
 the bodily powers decline it but becomes dimly con- 
 scious of the vast fields before it, but begins to learn and 
 use its strength, to recognize relations and extend its 
 sympathies, when, with the death of the body, it passes 
 away. Unless there is something more, there seems here 
 a break, a failure. Whether it be a Humboldt or a 
 Herschel, a Moses who looks from Pisgah, a Joshua who 
 leads the host, or one of those sweet and patient souls 
 who in narrow circles live radiant lives, there seems, if 
 
 * Let us not delude our children. If for no other reason than for 
 that which Plato gives, that when they come to discard that which 
 we told them as pious fable they will also discard that which we 
 told them as truth. The virtues which relate to self do generally 
 bring their reward. Either a merchant or a thief will be more suc- 
 cessful if he be sober, prudent, and faithful to his promises; but as 
 to the virtues which do not relate to self 
 
 " It seems a story from the world of spirits, 
 When any one obtains that which he merits, 
 Or any merits that which he obtains."
 
 560 CONCLUSION". 
 
 mind and character here developed can go no further, a 
 purposelessness inconsistent with what we can see of the 
 linked sequence of the universe. 
 
 By a fundamental law of our minds the law, in fact, 
 upon which Political Economy relies in all her deduc- 
 tions we cannot conceive of a means without an end; a 
 contrivance without an object. Now, to all nature, so 
 far as we come in contact with it in this world, the sup- 
 port and employment of the intelligence that is in man 
 furnishes such an end and object. But unless man him- 
 self may rise to or bring forth something higher, his 
 existence is unintelligible. So strong is this metaphys- 
 ical necessity that those who deny to the individual any- 
 thing more than this life are compelled to transfer the 
 idea of perfectibility to the race. But as we have seen, 
 and the argument could have been made much more 
 complete, there is nothing whatever to show any essential 
 race improvement. Human progress is not the improve- 
 ment of human nature. The advances in which civiliza- 
 tion consists are not secured in the constitution of man, 
 but in the constitution of society. They are thus not 
 fixed and permanent, but may at any time be lost nay, 
 are constantly tending to be lost. And further than 
 this, if human life does not continue beyond what we see 
 of it here, then we are confronted, with regard to the 
 race, with the same difficulty as with the individual! 
 For it is as certain that the race must die as it is that the 
 individual must die. We know that there have been 
 geologic conditions under which human life was impossi- 
 ble on this earth. We know that they must return 
 again. Even now, as the earth circles on her appointed 
 orbit, the northern ice cap slowly thickens, and the time 
 gradually approaches, when its glaciers will flow again, 
 and austral seas, sweeping northward, bury the seats of 
 present civilization under ocean wastes, as it may be they 
 now bury what was once as high a civilization as our own,
 
 THE PSOBLEM OP INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 561 
 
 And beyond these periods, science discerns a dead earth, 
 an exhausted sun a time when, clashing together, the 
 solar system shall resolve itself into a gaseous form, 
 again to begin immeasurable mutations. 
 
 What then is the meaning of life of life absolutely 
 and inevitably bounded by death ? To me it seems in- 
 telligible only as the avenue and vestibule to another 
 life. And its facts seem explainable only upon a theory 
 which cannot be expressed but in myth and symbol, and 
 which, everywhere and at all times, the myths and sym- 
 bols in which men have tried to portray their deepest 
 perceptions do in some form express. 
 
 The scriptures of the men who have been and gone 
 the Bibles, the Zend Avestas, the Vedas, the Dhamma- 
 padas, and the Korans; the esoteric doctrines of old phi- 
 losophies, the inner meaning of grotesque religions, the 
 dogmatic constitutions of Ecumenical Councils, the preach- 
 ings of Foxes, and Wesleys, and Savonarolas, the tradi- 
 tions of red Indians, and beliefs of black savages, have a 
 heart and core in which they agree a something which 
 seems like the variously distorted apprehensions of a 
 primary truth. And out of the chain of thought we have 
 been following there seems vaguely to rise a glimpse of 
 what they vaguely saw a shadowy gleam of ultimate 
 relations, the endeavor to express which inevitably falls 
 into type and allegory. A garden in which are set the 
 trees of good and evil. A vineyard in which there is 
 the Master's work to do. A passage from life behind to 
 life beyond. A trial and a struggle, of which we cannot 
 see the end. 
 
 Look around to-day. 
 
 Lo! here, now, in our civilized society, the old allego- 
 ries yet have a meaning, the old myths are still true. 
 Into the Valley of the Shadow of Death yet often leads 
 the path of duty, through the streets of Vanity Fair
 
 562 CONCLUSION. 
 
 walk Christian and Faithful, and on Greatheart's armor 
 ring the clanging blows. Ormuzd still fights with Ahri- 
 man the Prince of Light with the Powers of Darkness. 
 He who will hear, to him the clarions of the battle call. 
 
 How they call, and call, and call, till the heart swells 
 that hears them! Strong soul and high endeavor, the 
 world needs them now. Beauty still lies imprisoned, and 
 iron wheels go over the good and true and beautiful that 
 might spring from human lives. 
 
 And they who fight with Ormuzd, though they may 
 not know each other somewhere, sometime, will the 
 muster roll be called. 
 
 Though Truth and Right seem often overborne, we 
 may not see it all. How can we see it all? All that is 
 passing, even here, we cannot tell. The vibrations of 
 matter which give the sensations of light and color become 
 to us indistinguishable when they pass a certain point. It 
 is only within a 'like range that we have cognizance of 
 sounds. Even animals have senses which we have not. 
 And, here? Compared with the solar system our earth 
 is but an indistinguishable speck; and the solar system 
 itself shrivels into nothingness when gauged with the 
 star depths. Shall we say that what passes from our 
 sight passes into oblivion? No; not into oblivion. Far, 
 far beyond our ken the eternal laws must hold their sway. 
 
 The hope that rises is the heart of all religions I The 
 poets have sung it, the seers have told it, and in its deep- 
 est pulses the heart of man throbs responsive to its truth. 
 This, that Plutarch said, is what in all times and in all 
 tongues has been said by the pure hearted and strong 
 sighted, who, standing as it were, on the mountain tops 
 of thought and looking over the shadowy ocean, have 
 beheld the loom of land: 
 
 "Men's souls, encompassed here with bodies and pas-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 563 
 
 sions, have no communication with God, except what they 
 can reach to in conception only, by means of philosophy, as 
 by a kind of an obscure dream. But when they are loosed 
 from the body, and removed into the unseen, invisible, 
 impassable, and pure region, this God is then their leader 
 and king; they there, as it were, hanging on him wholly, 
 and beholding without weariness and passionately affecting 
 that beauty which cannot be expressed or uttered by men."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter, arrest of civilization, 
 480-481 : wby barbarians waste away, 
 497-498. 
 
 Bastiat, cause of interest, 176-186. 
 
 Bisset, Andrew, knight's service, 
 381n. 
 
 Buckle, assumes current doctrine of 
 wages, 18; on Malthus, 92-93, 100; 
 interest and profits, 158; relation be- 
 tween rent, wages and interest, 170. 
 
 Cairnes, J. E., high wages and interest 
 in new countries, 20-22. 
 
 California, economic principles exem- 
 plified in, 19-20, 61-63, 78, 144-146, 174, 
 255-256, 271-275, 290-391, 344, 383-385, 
 392, 398, 434-435. 
 
 Capital, current doctrine of its relation 
 to wages, 17-18; idle in industrial 
 depressions, 21; theory that wages 
 are drawn from, 20-23; deductions 
 from this theory, 24-25; varying 
 definitions of, 32-34; difficulties be- 
 setting use of term, 36-37; ex- 
 clusions of term, 37-38: distinguished 
 from wealth, 41-47, 71-72; used in two 
 senses, 56-57; definitions of Smith, 
 Bicardo, McCulloch, and Mill com- 
 pared, 41-45; wages not drawn from, 
 23-29, 49-69; does not limit industry, 
 26-29, 57-58, 80-86; does not main- 
 tain laborers, 70-78; modes in which 
 it aids labor, 79, 186-188, 195-196; 
 real functions of 79-87; may limit 
 form and productiveness of industry, 
 80-82; apparent want of generally 
 due to some other want, 82-85; 
 limited by requirements of produc- 
 tion, 85-86; poverty not due to 
 scarcity of, 85-86; not necessary to 
 production, 1C3-164; a form of labor, 
 164, 198, 203; its essence, 179; spurious, 
 189-194; not fixed in quantity, 195; if 
 the only active factor in produc- 
 tion, 201-202; its profits as affected 
 by wages, 308-309; wastes when not 
 used, 311; invested upon possessory 
 titles, 385. 
 
 Carey, Henry C., on capital, 34; rent, 
 225. 
 
 China, cause of poverty and famine, 
 121-122; civilization, 480-481. 
 
 Civilization, what, 475-476; prevailing 
 belief as to progress of, 476-479; 
 arrest of, 479-486; differences in, 
 487-502; its law, 503-523; retro- 
 gression, 482-486, 536-537; to endure 
 must be based on justice, 543-546; 
 character of European, 518, 526. 
 
 Civilization, modern, its riddle, 10; 
 has not improved condition or the 
 lowest class, 281-284; development 
 of, 372-382; superiority, 519-620; may 
 decline, 524-528; indications of ret- 
 rogression, 537-540; its possibilities, 
 452-469, 549. 
 
 Communities, industrial, extent of, 
 197. 
 
 Confucius, descendants of, 111-112. 
 
 Consumption, supported by contem- 
 poraneous production, 72-75; de- 
 mand for determines production, 
 75-76; only relative term, 133; in- 
 crease of shows increasing produc- 
 tion, 149. 
 
 Co-operation, not a remedy for pov- 
 erty, 314-317; but will follow from 
 the extirpation of poverty, 453-469. 
 
 Debts, public, not capital, 189-190; 
 origin and abolition, 381-382, 453. 
 
 Demand, not fixed, 243, 245-247. (See 
 Supply and Demand.) 
 
 Deutsch, Emaimel, human nature, 495. 
 
 Development, concentration the order 
 of, 325. 
 
 Development Philosophy, relations to 
 Malthusianism, 100-101 ; insufficiency 
 of, 473-486. 
 
 Discount, high rates of, not interest, 
 21n. 
 
 Distribution, terms of exclusive, 37, 
 38, 162; laws of, 153-222; their neces- 
 sary relation, 160-164; as currently 
 taught, 160-161; contrasted with true 
 laws, 218; equality of, 450-451. 
 
 Education no remedy for poverty, 305- 
 306. 
 
 Exchange, functions of, 27-29, 76-77; 
 a part of production, 47; brings in- 
 crease, 182-183, 186-187; extends 
 with progress of civilization, 197; 
 promotes civilization, 508-509. 
 
 Exchanges, credit in, 276-277; effect of 
 wages on international, 309-310. 
 
 Fawcett, Prof., Indian expenditures, 
 120n, ; value of land in England, 287. 
 
 Fawcett, Mrs., laborers maintained 
 by capital, 70; land tax, 421. 
 
 Feudal system, recognition of common 
 rights to kind, 372-375, 381, infeuda- 
 tion, 396-397. 
 
 Fortunes, great, 193-194, 386-387, 451. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, his economy, 
 303. 
 
 Government, improvements in increase 
 production, 227, 252; will not relieve 
 poverty, 298-301; simplification and 
 change of character, 452-469; tend- 
 ency to republicanism, 526-527; 
 transition to despotism, 301, 527-528. 
 
 Quizot, Europe after fall of Roman 
 Empire, 872-373; the question that 
 arises from a review of civilization, 
 553. 
 
 Hyndman. H. M., Indian famine, 119- 
 120. 
 
 Improvements in the arts, effect upon 
 distribution, 242-252; in habits of in- 
 dustry and thrift, will not relieve 
 poverty, 301-308; upon land, their 
 value separable from land values, 
 341-342, 422-423. 
 
 India, cause of poverty and famine, 
 114-121; civilization, 480, 481, 497. 
 
 Industrial depressions, extent and sig-
 
 566 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 niflcance, 5-6, 537-538; conflicting 
 opinions as to cause, 10-11; their 
 cause and course, 261-279; connection 
 with railroad building, 272-274; pass- 
 ing away, 279. 
 
 Industry, not limited by capital, 26, 56- 
 57; may be limited in form and pro- 
 ductiveness by capital, 80-86. 
 
 Interest, confusion of term with profits, 
 156-163; proper signification, 161-162; 
 variations in, 174; cause of, 174- 
 188; justice of, 187; profits mistaken 
 for, 189-194; law of, 195-203; normal 
 point of, 198-199; formulation of law, 
 202. 
 
 Interest and wages,evident connection, 
 19-21; relation, 171-172, 199-203, 218; 
 why higher in new countries, 221. 
 
 Inventions, labor-saving, failure to re- 
 lieve poverty, 3-5; advantage of goes 
 primarily to labor, 179, 195-196; ex- 
 cept when not diffused, 251 ; effect of, 
 242-252; brought forth by freedom, 
 521-523. 
 
 Ireland, cause of poverty and famine, 
 123-128; effect of introduction of 
 potato, 303-304. 
 
 Labor, purpose of, 27-29, 244-245, 396; 
 meaning of term, 37-38; produces 
 wages, 27-29, 49-69; precedes wages, 
 55^58; employs capital, 163, 195; elimi- 
 nated from production, 201-202; pro- 
 ductiveness varies with natural 
 powers,205; no fixed barriers between 
 occupations. 210-211; value of reduced 
 by value of land, 221-222; supply and 
 demand, 268-269; land necessary to, 
 270, 292-294; cause of want of em- 
 
 Eloyment, 271-272; family, 304; com- 
 ination, 308-314; only rightful basis 
 of property, 332-335; efficiency in- 
 creases with wages, 441-442; not in 
 itself repugnant, 465. 
 
 Labor and Capital, different forms of 
 same thing, 163-164, 198, 203; whence 
 idea of their conflict arises, 189, 14; 
 harmony of interests, 198-203. 
 
 Laborers, not maintained by capital, 
 70-78; where land is monopolized, 
 have no interest in increase of pro- 
 ductive power, 281 ; made more de- 
 pendent by civilization, 281-284; or- 
 ganizations of, 308-314; condition not 
 improved by division of laud, 321- 
 325; their enslavement the ultimate 
 result of private property in land, 
 345-355. 
 
 Land, meaning of term, 37; value of is 
 not wealth, 39, 165-166; diminishing 
 productiveness cited in support Mal- 
 thusian theory, 97; how far true, 
 133-134, 228-241; maintenance of 
 prices, 274-275; estimated value of in 
 England, 287; effects of monopoliza- 
 tion in England, 288-289; relation of 
 man to, 292-294 ; division of will not re- 
 lieve poverty, 319-325; tendency to 
 concentration in ownership, 319-321; 
 necessity^ for abolishing private 
 ownership, 326-327; injustice of 
 
 private property in, 831-392; absurd- 
 fty of legal titles to, 340, 342-344; 
 aristocracy and serfdom spring from 
 ownership of, 294, 348-355, 514-515; 
 purchase by government, 857-358; 
 development of private ownership, 
 366-382; commons, 375-376; tenures 
 in the United States, 383-392; private 
 ownership inconsistent with best use, 
 395-400; how may be made common 
 property, 401-427; effects of this, 
 452-469; increase of productiveness 
 from better distribution of popula- 
 tion, 449n. 
 
 Land owners, power of, 167, 292-294, 
 345-355; ease of their combination, 
 312-313; their claims to compensa- 
 tion, 356-365; will not be injured by 
 confiscation of rent, 445-469. 
 Latimer, Hugh, increase of rent in Six- 
 teenth Century, 288-289. 
 Laveleye, M. de, on small land hold- 
 ings, 324-325; primitive land tenures, 
 369; Teutonic equality, 372. 
 Lawyers, confusions in their terminol- 
 ogy, 335-336; their inculcation of 
 the sacredness of property, 366; in- 
 fluence on land tenures, 370n.. 
 Life, quantity of human, 109-110; 
 limits to, 129-134; reproductive power 
 gives increase to capital, 181; balance 
 of, 196-197; meaning of, 561. 
 Macaulay, English rule in India, 116; 
 
 future of United States, 534. 
 Machinery. (See Inventions.) 
 McCulloch, on wages fund, 22-23; 
 definition of capital, 33-34; compared, 
 42-44; principle of increase, 101; 
 Irish poverty and distress, 125-126; 
 rent, 232; tax on rent, 420, 422-425. 
 Malthus, purpose of Essay on Popula- 
 tion, 98; its absurdities, 104-105, 137; 
 his other works treated with con- 
 tempt, 105-106n; fall of wages in 
 Sixteenth Century, 288; cause of his 
 popularity, 98-100, 336-387w. 
 Malthusian Theory, stated, examined 
 and disproved, 91-150; as stated by 
 Malthus, 93-94; as stated by Mill, 
 94-95, 140-141; in its strongest, form, 
 95; its triumph and the causes, 
 95-96; harmonizes with ideas of 
 working classes, 98; defends in- 
 equality and discourages reform, 
 98-99, 140-141, 836-337w; its extension 
 hi development philosophy, 101; 
 now generally accepted, 101-102; 
 its illegitimate inferences, 103-139; 
 facts which disprove it, 140-150; 
 its support from doctrine of rent, 
 97, 132-133, 228-229; effects pred- 
 icated of increase of population 
 result from improvements in the 
 arts, 242-252; the ultimate defense 
 of property in land, 336^7. 
 Man more than an animal. 129-131, 
 134-136, 307, 464, 473^475, 492-493; 
 his power to avail himself of the 
 reproductive forces of nature, 131- 
 132; primary right and power, 332-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 567 
 
 333; desire for approbation, 456-458; 
 selfishness not the master motive, 
 460-461; his infinite desires, 134-136, 
 243, 245-247, 464-465, 503; how im- 
 proves, 475; idea of national or race 
 life, 485-486; cause of differences 
 and progress, 487-502: hereditary 
 transmission, itt-BOS; social in his 
 nature, 506. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, definition of capital, 
 34, 71-72; industry limited by capital, 
 56-57/1, 70-71; Malthusian doctrine, 
 94-95, 111; effect of unrestricted in- 
 crease of population, 140-141; con- 
 fusion as to profits and interest, 158; 
 law of rent, 168; wages, 213; govern- 
 ment resumption of increase of land 
 values, 358-360; influence of Malthu- 
 sianism, 360-361; tax on rent, 420- 
 421. 
 
 Money, when capital, 45; in hands of 
 consumer. 46n; confounded with 
 wealth, 60-61; lack of commodities 
 spoken of as lack of, 266. 
 
 Monopolies, profits of, 191-194; cause 
 of certain, 408-409. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, ejectments of cot- 
 tagers, 289. 
 
 Nature, its reproductive power, 180- 
 182; utilization of its variations, 
 182-ias, 185-187; equation between 
 reproduction and destruction, 196- 
 197; impartiality of, 333-334. 
 
 Nicholson, N. A., on capital, 35. 
 
 Nightingale, Florence, causes of 
 famine in India, 118-119, 119n, 120. 
 
 Perry, Arthur Latham, on capital, 34; 
 rent, 225. 
 
 Political Economy, its failure, its na- 
 ture and its methods, 10-13; 
 doctrines based upon the theory 
 that wages are drawn from capital 
 24-25; importance of definitions, 
 30-36; its terms abstract terms, 47; 
 confusion of standard treatises, 
 56-57. 158-161, 218; the erroneous 
 standpoint which its investigators 
 have adopted, 162-163; its funda- 
 mental principle, 12, 204, 217, 560: 
 writers on, stumbling over law of 
 wages, 215-216; compared with 
 astronomy, 219-220; deals with gen- 
 eral tendencies, 278-279; admissions 
 in standard works as to property 
 in land, 356-358; principles not 
 pushed to logical conclusions, 421; 
 the Physiocrats, 421-422; unison 
 with moral truth, 230, 484; its hope- 
 fulness, 557; effect on religious 
 ideas, 555-556. 
 
 Population and Subsistence, 91-150. 
 (See Malthusian Theory.) 
 
 Population, inferences as to in- 
 crease, 103-104; of world, no evi- 
 dence of increase in, 107-110; pres- 
 ent, 113n; increase of descendants 
 not increase of, 112; only limited by 
 space, 133-134; real law of increase, 
 137-139; effect of increase upon 
 
 production and distribution, 228- 
 241; increase of increases wealth, 
 140-150; puts land to intenser uses 
 320; increase in United States, 390. 
 
 Poverty, its connection with material 
 progress, 6-10; failure to explain 
 this, 10-11; where deepest, 222; why 
 it accompanies progress, 280-294; 
 remedy for, 326-328; springs from 
 injustice, 338-339,541-542; its effects, 
 354, 456^64. 
 
 Price, not measured by the necessity 
 of the buyer, 185: equation of 
 equalizes reward of labor, 204. 
 
 Production, same principles obvious in 
 complex as in simple forms, 26-29; 
 factors of , 37, 162, 203, 270, 292-294; 
 includes exchange, 47; the im- 
 mediate result of labor, 64-67; 
 directed by demand for consumption, 
 75; functions of capital in, 79-87, 162- 
 164; simple modes of sometimes 
 most efficient, 84-85; only relative 
 term, 138; increased shown by in- 
 creased consumption, 149; meaning 
 of the term, 155; utilizes reproduc- 
 tive forces, 179-182; time an element 
 in, 180-185; the modes of, 186; re- 
 course to lower points does not in- 
 volve diminution of, 229-282; tend- 
 ency to large scale, 320-321, 325, 
 531-532; susceptible of enormous in- 
 crease, 431-434, 466, 547. 
 
 Profits, meaning of the term and con- 
 fusions in its use, 158-162, 189-194. 
 
 Progress, human, current theory of 
 considered, 473-486; in what it con- 
 sists, 487-502; its law, 508-523, 541- 
 549; retrogression, 524-540. 
 
 Progress, material, connection with 
 poverty, 7-11, 222; in what it consists, 
 227; effects upon distribution or 
 wealth, 228-241 ; effect of expectation 
 raised by, 253-258; how it results in 
 industrial depressions, 261-279; why 
 it produces poverty. 280-294. 
 
 Property, basis of, 331-334, 340-342; 
 erroneous categories of, 385; deriva- 
 tion of distinction between real and 
 personal, 377; private in land not 
 necessary to use of land, 395-400; 
 idea of transferred to land, 514-515. 
 
 Protection, its fallacies have their 
 root in belief as to wages, 19; effect 
 on agriculturists, 447-449; abolition 
 by England, effect of, 252; how pro- 
 tective taxes fall, 447-448. 
 
 Quesnay, his doctrine, 422-423, 431. 
 
 Rent, bearing upon Malthueian theory, 
 96-98, 132-134, 228-241, 242-252; mean- 
 ing of the term, 165; arises from 
 monopoly, 166; law of, 168-170; its 
 corollaries, 171, 217-218; effect of 
 their recognition, 171-172; as related 
 to interest, 201-203; as related to 
 wages, 204-216; advance of explains 
 why wages and interest do not ad- 
 vance, 221-222; increased by increase 
 of population, 228-241; increased by
 
 568 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 improvements, 242-252; by specula- 
 tion, 253-258; speculative advance 
 in the cause of industrial depres- 
 sions, 2(51-279; advance in explains 
 the persistence of poverty, 280-294; 
 increase of not prevented by tenant 
 right, 322; or by division of land, 
 324-325; serf, generally fixed, 353; 
 confiscation of future increase, 357- 
 359; a continuous robbery, 362-363; 
 feudal rents, 372-375; their abolition, 
 378-381 ; then- present value, 381-382; 
 rent now taken by the State, 397- 
 400; State appropriation of, 401-427, 
 514-515; taxes on, 406-419; effects of 
 thus appropriating, 431-486. 
 Reade, Winwood, Martyrdom of Man, 
 
 478n, 479n. 
 
 Religion, necessary to socialism, 318; 
 promotive of civilization, 509, 519- 
 520; Hebrew, effects on race, 495- 
 496; retrogression in, 536-537; change 
 going on, 540; animosities created by, 
 507n; consensus of, 560-561. 
 Ricardo, definition of capital, 33; in- 
 ference as to population, 71 ; enunci- 
 ation of law of rent, 168; narrow 
 view of, 168-169, 225; tax on rent, 
 420. 
 Royce, Samuel, Deterioration and 
 
 Race Education, 53&n. 
 Slaveholders of the South, their view 
 
 of abolition, 351-353. 
 Slavery, chattel, comparatively trivial 
 effects of, 347; modifying influences, 
 353-354; not truly abolished in 
 United States, 355, 392; never aided 
 progress, 522-523. 
 
 Smith, Adam, definition of capital, 32- 
 33, 36-42, 44, 45-46; recognizes truth 
 as to source of wages and then 
 abandons it, 50; influence of Mai thu- 
 sian theory upon, 92; profits, 157; 
 how economists have followed him, 
 159; differences of wages in different 
 occupations, 207-208, 209-210; his 
 failure to appreciate the laws of dis- 
 tribution, 215; taxation, 416-419. 
 Socialism, its ends and means, 317-319; 
 practical realization of its ideal, 
 431-469. 
 Social organization and life, possible 
 
 changes, 452-469. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, compensation of 
 land owners, 357-358, 362; public 
 ownership of land, 402; evolution, 
 478, 485; human progress, 478-479; 
 social differences, 502. 
 Strikes, 310-314. 
 
 Subsistence, population and, 91-150; 
 increases with population, 129-133; 
 cannot be exhausted, 133-134; in- 
 cluded in wealth, 142, 244; demand 
 for not fixed, 245-246. (See Malthu- 
 eian Theory.) 
 
 Supply 
 relat 
 
 sly and demand, of labor, 208-209; 
 lative terms, 266-267; as affected 
 oy wages, 308-310. 
 Swift, Dean, his Modest Proposal, 126. 
 
 Taxation, eliminated in considering 
 distribution, 155; reduction of wifl 
 not relieve poverty, 297-301; con- 
 sidered, 406-427; canons of, 406; 
 effect upon production, 406-412; 
 ease and cheapness in collection, 
 412-414; certainty, 414-416; equality 
 of, 416-419; opinions on, 420-423; 
 objections to tax on rent, 422-427; 
 cause of manifold taxation, 425-427; 
 how taxation falls on agriculturists, 
 447-450; effects of confiscating rent 
 by taxation, 481-469. 
 Tennant, Rev. Wm., cause of famine 
 
 in India, 115-116. 
 Thornton, Wm., on wage fund, 18n; 
 
 on capital, 35. 
 
 Values, equation of, 196-197. 
 Wages, current doctrine, 17; it coin- 
 cides with vulgar opinion, 18; but is 
 inconsistent with facts, 19-22; genesis 
 of current theory, 22; difference 
 between it and that herein advanced, 
 23-25; not drawn from capital but 
 produced by labor, 23, 25-29, 49-69; 
 meaning of the term, 31-32; always 
 subsequent to labor, 56-58; fallacy 
 of the assumption that they are 
 drawn from capital, 56-57; for serv- 
 ices, 59n; connection between cur- 
 rent doctrine and Malthusian theory, 
 92-95, 96-97; confusion of terms pro- 
 duced by current theory, 159; rate 
 of, 204; law of, 204-216; formulated, 
 213; in different occupations, 207- 
 212; as quantity and as proportion, 
 216; not increased by material prog- 
 ress, 303-304; minimum fixed by 
 standard of comfort, 303; effect of 
 increase or decrease on employers, 
 308-309; equilibrium of, 310-311; not 
 increased by division of land, 323- 
 325; why they tend to wages of 
 slavery, 346; efficiency of labor in- 
 creases with, 442. 
 
 Wages and Interest, high or low to- 
 gether, 19-22; current explanation, 
 19; Cairne's explanation, 20-22; 
 true explanation, 170-172, 199-203, 
 221; formulated, 218. 
 Wages of Superintendence, 159; used 
 
 to include profits of monopoly, 191. 
 Walker, Amasa, capital, 35. 
 Walker, Prof. F. A., wages, 18; 
 
 capital, 35. 
 Wayland, Professor, definition of 
 
 capital, 34. 
 
 Wealth, increase of not generally 
 shared, 8-9; meaning of term, 38- 
 40; interchangeability of, 47-48, 142, 
 181-182, 244-247; confounded with 
 money, 60-61 ; increases with popu- 
 lation, 141-150; accumulated, 147-149; 
 laws of distribution, 153-216; formu- 
 lated, 218; nature of, 147-149, 180, 
 205; political effects of unequal dis- 
 tribution, 300, 527-535; effects of 
 just distribution, 438-444, 450-461,
 
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