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 G4 T6
 
 "PROGRESS AND POVERTY," 
 
 A CRITICISM OF MR. HENRY GEORGE. 
 
 BEING 
 
 TWO LECTURES 
 
 Delivered in St. Andrew's Hall, Newman Street, London, 
 
 llJ^$i 
 
 BY THE LA' 
 
 ARNOLD TOYNBEE, M.A., 
 
 Senm- Bursar atid Tutor of Balliol College^ Oxford. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
 LONDON 
 l^EGAN TAUL; trench & CO., I, TATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 1883.
 
 HP N T.iBr ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOENIA 
 •SANTA BARBARA 
 
 A/f 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 When Mr. Toynbee delivered the two speeches which make up tliis pamphlet, 
 it was his intention to use the shorthand writer's report of what he said as the 
 basis of a treatise, containing a fuller statement of his arguments, and, ia 
 particular, a large number of statistical details, of which in speaking he only 
 indicated the general results. A protracted and, as it has proved, fatal illness 
 frustrated his purpose. Mr. Toynbee was never able so much as to look over the 
 proofs of his addresses, to assure himself that he was correctly reported, much less 
 to review and recast what he said. Delivered as they were in the extremity of 
 physical weakness, and now appearing without revision, these speeches may well 
 seem to those who knew him best to be but an imperfect expression of his thought 
 and aims. Nevertheless, the friend to whom the task of editing them has fallen 
 has not felt himself justified in making any but the most trifling and obvious 
 corrections. There were, indeed, no materials for a more complete revision, as 
 the speeches were entirely extempore, and Mr. Toynbee was not in the haljit of 
 making notes of his addresses. The excellence of the shorthand writer's notes 
 permits the hope that there may be no serious errors in the report of what Mr. 
 Toynbee actually said, however far this may fall short of what, had strength not 
 failed him, he was competent and anxious to say. But any regrets on this score 
 are now merged in the wider and lasting regret for all that has been lost to his 
 friends and the community by his untimely death. —A. M.
 
 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 UK. GEORGE IN CALIFORNIA. 
 
 (Delivered the nth January, 1883.) 
 
 The book I have undertaken to criticise does not stand alone 
 in economic and social literature. It is one of many similar 
 works which have been inspired by a vision of human misery. 
 It is true that it is not filled, like the work of the great 
 socialist, Karl Marx, with detailed descriptions of human degra- 
 dation ; nevertheless, it has human injustice for its theme. Some 
 of us, I know, are inclined to put the book down in disgust and 
 impatience ; but I think any of us who have, even for a momeht, 
 looked into the abyss will be glad that this book has once 
 more reminded us of the widespread suffering that is concealed 
 beneath the smooth surface of our ordinary life. I know that many 
 who have read this book have felt not merely disgust and impatience, 
 but have thought that the warm and fierce sympathy shown in it with 
 human pain was not real ; but they have made a great mistake. 
 I do not think we now require such books as these to make 
 us realise and understand those more obvious forms of suffering 
 which press upon us from every side. We are all of us, I suppose* 
 appalled when we picture the dark and desolate cabins of Maamtrasna, 
 on that bleak mountain side, inhabited by half-civilised savages, or 
 when we visit those still more dark and desolate corners of this great 
 city, inhabited by beings whom we still call men and women, or when 
 we catch a glimpse of the moral interior of a labourer's cottage. 
 These forms of suffering, I say, are obvious — they are obtrusive ; but 
 it is a more refined form of suffering which, it seems to me, this book 
 brings to our notice. It is the suffering of men who earn what we call 
 good wages, whose labour — labour, let me remind you, which does 
 not invigorate the brain, but which wears it out prematurely, and
 
 depresses the mind and dulls the intellect — whose labour, I say, 
 cannot obtain for them even a whole house as a home, nor the decent 
 enjoyments of life, nor the certainty of an honourable old age. Forty 
 years ago it was the famished multitude clamouring for bread that 
 threatened society. To-day, though we still have our 800,000 
 paupers, and hundreds of thousands more who are kept from 
 pauperism only by heroic sacrifice, to-day, I say, society is 
 threatened not by this m\iltitude, for cheap bread has kept 
 them quiet since 1846, but it is threatened by that large class 
 of men whose wants have grown while their income has been 
 stationary, or whose wants have grown faster than their incomes. I 
 know that there are some, again, who will say that this description is 
 exaggerated, and I admit that there are classes of artizans — stone 
 carvers, for example — whose wages are high, and who find rational 
 delight in their employment ; but I maintain that any people who 
 have visited factories, or descended into mines, any person who has 
 taken the trouble to compare the necessary expenditure of an artizan 
 with his income, will understand that what I say is true. The 
 misery, however, which produced the socialism with which 
 we are familiar in England was misery, in the first instance, 
 of a physical kind. All modern socialism originated with the 
 great industrial revolution which began at the commence, 
 ment of the last century ; the industrial revolution which silenced the 
 spinning-wheel and hand-loom, and dragged men and women into 
 great cities and huge factories. With that began the modern 
 problems of the distribution of wealth; and also at that time great 
 socialist writers made their appearance ; but the same epoch 
 which gave birth to the socialists, gave birth also to their grest 
 enemies, the economists. These writers — Malthus, James Mill, 
 David Ricardo — men of intellect and of upright character, framed 
 an explanation of the misery which they saw before them, which 
 denied hope to the human race. One man, the most eminent of 
 them, Ricardo, caught up the scattered points which various writers 
 had elucidated, and welded them into a compact and lucid science 
 No writer that I know has a greater power of abstract thought 
 than David Ricardo, and I have found it difficult, if once you grant 
 his premises, to find any mistakes in his conclusions. From 1817 to 
 1848 the economists reigned supreme. There were, indeed, objections 
 raised, objections raised even by men in their own ranks. Sismondi, 
 the great Swiss economist, for example, once talking to Ricardo, said,
 
 ' What, then ! is wealth everything ? is man nothing ? '' Ricardo 
 answered — at least you will find the answer in his books — that 
 the suffering which Sismondi pitied was the result of an inevitable 
 law. To explain the views which the economists took, we must 
 remember that they looked upon life as a mad race between 
 population and wealth. They would not allow for a moment 
 that the machinery in the factories was to be stopped in order 
 that women and children might breathe, lest a little wealth should 
 be lost, and the world go back. There were others who pro- 
 tested outside the ranks of the economists. There were the 
 Christian socialists, there was Thomas Carlyle, who in his '*Past 
 and Present " flung upon the economists passionate reproaches, 
 which all of them left unheeded but one, and that man was John 
 Stuart Mill. In 1S48 was published Mill's book, which, 
 though it incorporates much of the old economic doctrines, yet 
 represents an immense and unparalleled advance in England of union 
 and of sympathy with the mass of the people. In that book, for the 
 first time, is seen the influence of the socialists upon the economists ; 
 the influence of the earliest social reformers, who, bewildered and 
 perplexed as they were, said that a science that told them these 
 things must be a false science. And since Mill's time, the argu- 
 ment has gone on, and at last it is now apparent to all the world, 
 that the long and bitter controversy between economists and human 
 beings has ended in the conversion of the economists. The 
 economist now dares to say that the end of his practical science is 
 not wealth, but man; and further, he owns that his intellectual theories 
 have also undergone a vast change. He has learnt to recognise that 
 the laws which he supposed were universal are often only partial and 
 provisional ; he has learnt to recognise that the method which he 
 uses with such confidence — the method of abstract deduction — is a 
 most dangerous one ; that it can be used only by men who know 
 that at every step they have to question their premises, and that at 
 every step they have to test their conclusions by experience. 
 Last of all, he recognises that the vast problems which we all now 
 see are looming upon us cannot be solved by rash and hasty state- 
 ments, but only by patient and vigilant science. He recognises that 
 to solve the problem of to-day we must go back far into the past. 
 He recognises that the problem of distribution is not a simple one ; 
 that it is a very difficult and a very complicated one. That is the 
 position of the economists at the present time ; but it is a singular
 
 8 
 
 thins, that at the very time when David Ricardo has been discredited 
 amongst the economists themselves, he has become the founder of 
 two new systems of sociaUsm, He, the great middle-class economist, 
 the man who was looked up to as the bulwark of society, this man by 
 his theory of wages has produced Lassalle, and by his theory of rent 
 has produced Henry George. To-night I have nothing to do with 
 Lassalle, I have to speak of Mr. Henry George. 
 
 The book which Mr. George wrote between 1877 and 1879 is, as 
 we all know, a remarkable one. It is full of acute dialectic and splendid 
 declamation ; full, as I said in my opening remarks, of a real and 
 keen sympathy with the people. Indeed, as he tells us in his book, 
 he might well sympathise with the people, for he had been a work- 
 man himself. Nevertheless, remarkable as the book is, original as 
 the book is — not so original as many of us suppose, not so 
 original if we come to look back upon American economic literature 
 — it has yet, in spite of partial truths, promulgated errors which I 
 believe to be fundamentally dangerous. And I, for one, seeing how 
 much wrong the economists have done in the past by false theories, 
 remembering that the economists for years denounced Trades 
 Unions, and told the unionists thatthey could not raise the rate of wages 
 by combination ; remembering that the economists have sometimes 
 influenced legislation in the past in a mischievous direction, that they 
 were guilty, for instance, of the Irish Land Act of i860, which substi- 
 tuted contract for tenure; I am determined that, as far as in me lies, I 
 will be no party to any more illusions. I will do what I can to further 
 the public good, but I will not sacrifice my intellectual conscience by 
 supporting a fair, but delusive panacea. 
 
 The book which I have spoken of was written in 1877, but it was 
 preceded by a pamphlet, which was written in 1871. I said just 
 now that George was a child of David Ricardo, but that is an 
 inadequate statement ; we must also recognise that he is the child, or 
 rather, that his theories are the children, of the peculiar circumstances 
 of a new State. The first pamphlet which Mr. George wrote was a 
 pamphlet about the Land Question in California. And it is no 
 wonder that he should have written the pamphlet, for he saw in a 
 country with natural resources greater than those of France, and with 
 a population at that time numbering not more than 600,000 people, 
 tramps and paupers make their appearance. That was enough to 
 make a man gasp and stare. He also saw the concentration of 
 land in a few hands — one peculiar evil, that is to say, of
 
 an old country making its appearance in a new one. Properties 
 there were at the time which exceeded almost anything we know in 
 England, properties of more than a quarter of a million acres held by 
 men who did not even go through the pretence of rendering any 
 public service as the condition of their tenure. Mr. George pondered 
 on these things, and whilst he was pondering, he stumbled across 
 Mill's pamphlets, published in 1870, on the reform of land tenure. In 
 those pamphlets Mill for the first time put forward the famous proposal 
 for the appropriation of the unearned increment. But the 
 proposal was not a new one. It is to be found in the first edition of 
 Mill's book, published in 1848, and it is to be found still further 
 back than that in his father's book on political economy, published 
 in 1821. The history of the idea is a singular one, for there is no 
 doubt that it was the historian of British India with whom the idea 
 originated. It was his observations on the systems ot land tenure 
 and revenue in India that led him to make, in a clear and incisive 
 form, the proposal which has now been popularised and become the 
 basis of an agitation. That proposal put forward in Mill's pamphlet- 
 awakened new thoughts in Mr. George. It awakened also new 
 thoughts in land reformers in Victoria and our own colonies. All 
 over the world men were busy with the idea, fighting then for its 
 practical application. 
 
 Mr. George's pamphlet, though a very remarkable one, appears to 
 have produced little effect. His practical proposals were two. First, 
 he said, " We will tax all land up to its full value." By that he meant 
 that he would take all that part of rent which is due to the growth of 
 civilisation and to wealth, and not to individual labour and enterprise. 
 Let us remember that that is the proposal — to take, mark 
 you, not what a man puts into the soil, but what comes to a man 
 owing to no exertion on his own part. " If," said Mr. George, " you 
 tax these great estates up to their full value, then it will be impossible 
 any longer for the great landowners to keep their properties together ; 
 they will be forced to sell." In the next place, he proposed, and it 
 was a remarkable proposal to niake, to limit the size of properties — 
 that is to say, that land in future should be granted only in 40 and So 
 acre sections; and he believed that in that way a steady and regular 
 development of population and wealth would take place. I want you 
 to remember that proposition, because Mr. George abandoned it 
 afterwards. His pamphlet attracted some attention, but produced, as 
 J said, little effect. Mr. George, however, did not abandon his con-
 
 lO 
 
 sidcration of the question. He turned to other American economists ; 
 he studied the writings of Henry Carey, the Pennsylvanian economist ; 
 of Francis Walker, the eminent head of the United States Department 
 of Statistics ; of Francis Bowen, another American economist ; and of 
 M. Emile de Laveleye. All these books he had studied, when in the year 
 1 877 there came the great labour war in Pennsylvania. That labour war 
 in Pennsylvania, and the distress that followed, led Mr. George to begin 
 this great work, which he completed two years afterwards. Remember 
 that the work was begun at a time of immense distress, and of wide- 
 spread and deep depression of trade. In 1878, for example, it was 
 said that 600,000 men left the East for the West. Everywhere wages 
 fell, and artizans who had emigrated from England to America 
 returned from America to England. It was in the midst, therefore, of 
 an unexampled depression of trade, in a continent with the greatest 
 natural resources in the world, that this book was written. Again, 
 remember that these circumstances must have left their mark upon 
 the treatise. And note, too, that Mr. George's practical proposals are 
 now a little changed from those of 187 1. His first practical proposal 
 is still to confiscate rent — /.e., to take the unearned increment 
 without compensation ; but, on the other hand, he abandons 
 his old proposal of limitmg the size of farms, and asserts that large 
 farms are due to an inevitable law of economic development, with 
 which he will not meddle. 
 
 This is the book which I have to criticise. It abounds with points, 
 it abounds with side issues ; but there is one main contention, and one 
 principal theory. The contention is, that rent must be taken, and 
 the theory is a theory of the development of society in relation to the 
 distribution of wealth. That not only for Mr. George, but for all of 
 us, is the main issue ; that is the real question — Is the law of 
 economic development one which will tend to produce greater and 
 greater equality in the distribution of wealth, or is it one which will 
 concentrate wealth more and more in a few hands ? Now we know 
 that in England wealth has become gradually concentrated in fewer 
 hands. The fact has been disputed, and it is not such a simple 
 question as some people suppose ; but still, if we take the evidence of 
 themostcompetentpersons, we shall find that upon this point they agree. 
 There was a famous Budget speech made by Mr. Gladstone in 1864, 
 a speech in which, after dilating upon the unexampled prosperity of the 
 country. Air. Gladstone paused, and turned round and said to his 
 astonished audience, " But what is human life in the great majority
 
 1 1 
 
 of cases but a bare struggle for existence ? " And the remark 
 was repeated in less emphatic, but equally significant, language only 
 the other day by the latest member of the Cabinet, Sir Charles Dilke. 
 We have, therefore, the evidence both of Mr. Gladstone, the Prime 
 Minister, and Sir Charles Dilke, that wealth is concentrated in fewer 
 hands, or, at any rate, that the mass of the people do not share in the 
 growing prosperity of our industry and our commerce. And the 
 same phenomenon was visible in America in those two years of 
 which I speak. There, also, was the spectacle of men like Vanderbilt. 
 who inherited twenty millions, and of others almost equally rich, who, 
 whilst the labourers were driven by thousands from the East to the 
 West, still lived in luxury, and seemed to have kept the wealth 
 which they had made. 
 
 What is the explanation ? What is the explanation of this ever- 
 recurring question ; the question which has bewildered the minds 
 and saddened the hearts of every man who cares for his fellow- 
 men? The explanation must be one of four things. Either 
 there is an impassable, inexorable physical limit, which presses down 
 the labourers, and against which the labourers struggle in vain. Or, 
 there must be some fatal flaw in our institutions. Or, there must be 
 some sinister shadow cast by the law of production — by the system of 
 production on a large scale. That system which for production is most 
 efficient may perhaps cause a more unequal distribution of wealth. 
 Or, last of all, the fault may be in human nature ; it may be that it 
 is human rapacity — the apparently inexorable demand of men to 
 benefit themselves at the expense of their fellow-creatures. One of 
 these four or a combination of these four must be the cause. Mr. 
 George says that the explanation is not to be found in any limit set 
 by external nature ; that it is not to be found in all institutions or 
 some, but only in one — private property in land. And he expressly 
 denies that the economic structure of society can have any influence ; 
 and further, he thinks that if you once stamped out that one baneful 
 institution, human nature would be powerless to oppress and degrade. 
 Of the four possible kinds of cause Mr. George accordingly only 
 acknowledges the second, namely, our institutions, and only one part 
 of these — i.e. , private property in land. 
 
 Is Mr. George right about the first statement ? That is our first 
 point. Remember that at present, for the purposes of to-night, I 
 am speaking of new countries, not of old countries ; I shall deal with 
 old countries in my next lecture. Is Mr. George right with regard to
 
 12 
 
 America when he says there is no present physical limit to the prosperity 
 of the people ? Yes, Mr. George is right with regard to America. In 
 the first place, it has long been recognised by economists, that in 
 manufactures there is what is called a law of increasing return — that 
 is, as men come together in masses, the cost of carriage is diminished, 
 the .power of combination is increased, inventions take place, and 
 enterprise advances ; and all these things increase the net produce of 
 labour per head, z>., the wealth left over after the exertions which have 
 produced it have been satisfied and the tools and materials replaced. 
 That is the view oi Mr. Nassau Senior, and it is the view, also, of most 
 English economists — not, I think, that they have seen its significance. 
 Let us turn next to agriculture. Is this law true of agriculture ? An 
 Englishman — any Englishman who has read, for example, Ricardo's 
 book, and remembers the ploughing up of the sheep-walks in the years 
 of the great war with Napoleon, when we got five or six bushels of 
 wretched corn to the acre — would think that it is not true, and that 
 in agriculture, at any rate, there is a law of diminishing return. 
 After a time, even in a new State, even in a new continent like 
 America, the return to the labour expended on the fields must be 
 less and less in proportion to the effort. But of America as a whole 
 this is not yet true. There are apparent exceptions, due to the 
 peculiarities of American agriculture, due to the wasteful and exhaust- 
 ing method of cultivation pursued in America, which has led to a 
 premature diminution of the fertility of the soil, not only in the 
 Eastern States, but in what is called the new North-West. Still, on 
 the whole, we may say that up to the present time not only has the 
 total wealth of America increased, in agriculture as well as in manu- 
 factures, but — and this is the crucial point — the total wealth pei 
 head. Not only is there more wealth, but if it were equally 
 divided each man would have more. So far, then, we agree with 
 Mr. George. If, therefore, external nature does not impose a 
 barrier, why is it, asks Mr. George, that, with all this vast increase 
 of wealth, wages either do not increase or actually decrease ? 
 Who gets this vast accession of wealth ? Mr. George answers : 
 not the great speculators, not the Rothschilds, not the great 
 contractors, not the lords of the loom and the spindle, not the 
 great ironmasters, not the keepers of great stores, not the great 
 grain dealers and merchants, but one class alone, the owners of land. 
 They alone seize upon the increase, and are rich, whilst the people 
 become poorer, cr, at least, remain as poor as ever. To somci
 
 ^3 
 
 perhaps, accustomed to the accumulation of wealth in England, this 
 may seem an absolutely absurd statement ; but let us be patient, and 
 study Mr. George's book in his own country. If we turn to an 
 eminent American economist, to whom I have already alluded, Mr. 
 Francis Bowen, we find that he makes this remark — that the com- 
 monest and the simplest way of making a fortune in America is to 
 buy up land where a city is likely to be built, and to wait for an 
 increase in value. And, again, let us also remember this, in justice to 
 Mr. George's view, that the great railway kings in America have not 
 made their fortunes merely by speculation in stocks and shares, but in 
 lind speculation ; for land speculation has been bound up from the 
 beginning with the extension of railways in America. Still, how far, 
 admitting all this, can Mr. George's statement be considered true ? 
 
 Now I come to the difficult part of my lecture, and I ask you to be 
 patient. If you are really eager about these questions, and recognise 
 as you all must, how huge they are, how they have bewildered men 
 from the beginning of time, you will be patient ; if I tried to make 
 the problem really simpler than it is, you might justly complain of me. 
 I could do so, but I should have to use for that purpose illegitimate 
 artifice. 
 
 Let me remind you, the theory is, that j-ent sw anows^up the increase 
 of wealth. How does Mr. George prove this ? Let us try and v,'ork 
 out his theory; let us watch how the theory is explained in the 
 development of a little miniature State. I will try to make the picture 
 as vivid in your minds as possible. Suppose, for example, one of 
 those settlements of our Puritan forefathers on the Atlantic coast, 
 and with no commerce with the outside world. Mr. George 
 says, in the first place, when these settlers land there is no rent — 
 anyone can go upon the land, anywhere. After a time, wealth 
 increases and population increases ; slowly the people move outwards 
 from the settlement, and new pieces of land are taken into use. Now 
 we must suppose that already the division between employers and 
 workmen in the industrial system has taken place, and we have got to 
 ask— (and this is the whole point ; I am not going to deal with interest 
 to-night, I am going to deal with wages)— what will determine wages in 
 this little settlement? Mr. George says that wages will be determined by 
 what the labourer can get working for himself on the land last taken 
 into use. Put it in this way : supposing the man who works on a piece 
 of land a mile away from the little group of houses on the sea-coast 
 can get three pecks of wheat a day as his wage. If an employer in the
 
 14 
 
 town says to him, " I will give you two pecks, if you will work 
 
 for me at such-and-such a business," the labourer will say, "No; 
 
 I will take at least three, because I can make at least three by 
 
 working for myself on the land outside." Therefore, says Mr. George, 
 
 in a new settleme nt wages will be determined by what a man can 
 
 make working for himself on the last piece of land taken into use. 
 
 Now, how, according to this theory, are we to explain the fall in wages 
 
 which takes place ? " Oh," says Mr. George, " that is very simple. 
 
 As years go on, the whole of that little plain is occupied, and men 
 
 begin to carry their cultivation up the sides of the mountains. Then 
 
 it is found that the labourer can only earn one peck,, we will say, a 
 
 day working on the piece of land last taken into use, and then all 
 
 through the settlement wages will fall to one peck a day instead of 
 
 three ; and" the landowner — we are not now talking of the capitalist 
 
 or the employer, we are talking of the landowner — will sweep off the 
 
 whole of the increased wealth." That is the explanation, according 
 
 to this statement, of the fall of wages with the advance of civilisation.' 
 
 Now, in the first place, I wish to point out that this theory assumes 
 
 the law of diminishing return — that is, it assumes that after a time 
 
 the return to men's labour will diminish. But that contradicts Mr. 
 
 George's statement (with which I entirely agree), that the true law of 
 
 agriculture and of industry is a law of increasing return. Mr. 
 
 George, however, has an answer, which is obvious on the surface 
 
 of the book. He says, "Oh, I don't talk merely of wages as a 
 
 quantity; I talk of wages as a proportion." This is Mr. George's 
 
 answer, in the first place ; but my reply to Mr. George is this : " If 
 
 you speak of wages only as a proportion, how does your theory 
 
 explain the fall of wages, the appearance of tramps, and the 
 
 appearance of poverty m a new State ? " because, though wages 
 
 might increase or might remain stationary, yet still, as long as 
 
 they did not decline, we should be at a loss to explain by Mr. 
 
 George's theory the fact which Mr. George sets out to explain — 
 
 the appearance of tramps and the fall of wages in a new 
 
 Slate. And, in the next place, if we look carefully at Mr. 
 
 George's book itself, we find that all the evidence he gives is of 
 
 the fall of wages as a quantity. He tells us that wages in 
 
 California fell from i6 dollars a day, say, in 1849, to 2)^ dollars 
 
 a day in 1879 ; so that the facts which he himself adduces, which he 
 
 seis out to explain, are not explained by his theory. Mr. George, 
 
 he V, ever, has yet another answer to make : "What I mean," he says,
 
 15 
 
 " is, that speculation in land is the true cause of a fall in wages in a 
 new State." To illustrate his contention I will ask you to come back 
 with me to our little settlement at the sea-side. Mr. George supposes 
 that men hold on to great tracts of land in that little settlement, 
 and will not sell it or let it, so that the labourers who want to settle 
 on the land have to pass this tract, and passing it, are forced by 
 this artificial cause of land speculation to take poorer land into use. 
 That being the case, their increased skill, their increased agricul- 
 tural knowledge, will not now, owing to pushing back, as it were, on 
 what Mr. George calls the land line, owing to the pushing back of 
 cultivation up to the hills, counterbalance the diminishing fertility 
 of soil in agriculture. But my answer is again (I am coming to the 
 end of this very soon) : first, Mr. George, you are not consistent 
 with yourself. In various passages you say that private property 
 in land is the primary, speculation only a derivative, cause ; 
 so that, even if there were not speculation, wages would fall as a 
 ' quantity with the advance of civilisation. But next I ask. Is there 
 any evidence that cultivation has been pushed in America so far back 
 as to diminish the return to labour and agriculture ? Certainly not. 
 If we may take the price of wheat as an index, we find that the price 
 between 1810 and 1820 averaged about eight dollars, measured in 
 gold, for a barrel of wheat in Philadelphia. In 1820 it was nine 
 dollars; but then in 1869 it was six dollars, measured in gold, 
 and it has been falling, as we know, since, so that Mr. George 
 brings no evidence as to the diminishing fertility, as to the 
 diminishing power of labour in agriculture, owing to the pushing back 
 of the margin of cultivation. Notice, too, that Mr. George has, 
 curiously enough, neglected altogether — I suppose it is to obtain that 
 simplicity which we economists stand so much in need of in studying 
 things — the mechanism of exchange. For according to Ricardo's 
 theory, which Mr. George accepts implicitly, the margin of cultiva- 
 tion, of which we have spoken, instead of determining the wages and 
 the remuneration of the employed, is itself determined by the growth 
 of population and wealth and commerce. Let us go back for the 
 last time to our settlement, and I will show you what is the process 
 according to Ricardo. As population advances, poorer lands 
 may be taken into use ; but Ricardo points out that a farmer 
 (he was thinking, of course, of the English farmer of his own day, who 
 was ploughing up the edges of the moors and the sheep-walks), though 
 he might get only six bushels per acre on that new bit of land
 
 i6 
 
 which is ploughed up on the side of the hill, would yet expect the 
 same interest and the same wages for superintendence, and expect 
 to pay his labourers the same wages as before. In other words, 
 what would happen is, not that he would obtain a lower remuneration, 
 a smaller share of the general produce of industry, because he was 
 working on inferior land, but that he would sell his smaller produce 
 at a higher price. My point is, that wages and profits — or we will 
 throw away the word profits, which is a troublesome one, and say 
 wages and the earnings of the great employers (for Mr. George, in the 
 most extraordinary way, includes under the title wages the wages 
 of superintendence, the earnings of these great employers and iron- 
 masters, and the great grain speculators), the wages of these men are 
 determined, as a general rule, independently of the productiveness of 
 the soil, and therefore rent cannot be the cause of wages and profits 
 falling lower than before. That is Ricardo's theory of rent, which 
 Mr. George only half understands, and which, as far as California or any 
 new country is concerned, is true, though there are exceptions with 
 regard to old countries. Rent, I may as well admit at once (and I 
 shall deal with this with care in my next lecture), rent in Ireland and 
 rent in this great City of London ; and rent, again, in some parts of 
 agricultural England, has in certain cases lowered wages — that I 
 admit; but then that is owing to a different cause, which I shall 
 try to explain in my second lecture. 
 
 I have now shown, first, that Mr. George's theory is self-contra- 
 dictory ; secondly, that he cannot explain by his theory the facts 
 which he himself adduces ; and in the third place, that the theory 
 is false ; not the theory that there is a law of increasing return, but 
 the theory that it is rent which alone swallows up the increase. Last 
 of all, in criticising Mr. George, let us ask whether Mr. George's facts 
 are right ; in the first place, whether there is or is not a fall of wages 
 in California ; in the second place, whether there is or is not a fall of 
 wages in America and our colonies generally, a matter, mind, of 
 primary importance to workmen who have to emigrate. 
 
 What is the truth about California ? Mr. George is quite right 
 in saying that wages rose from 8s 4d a-day (wages of a common 
 labourer), to about ^3 6s. 8d. a-day in 1849, when the gold 
 discoveries were made. They fell, however, rapidly ; they were only 
 I2S. 6d. a-day in 1856. In i860, they fell to Ss. 2d (I am talking of 
 the average wages), but in 1879, the year in which Mr. George pub- 
 lished his book, wages were higher than they were in i860. They
 
 were 9s. y^^d, that is the average wage calculated from statistics 
 supplied by Mr. Tooke in his History of Prices ; by Dr. Young in his 
 Labour in Europe and America (these are my authorities for 
 wages in California) ; and, finally, by Mr. George himself. But 
 if money wages have somewhat increased, the increase in real wages, 
 i.e., in the amount of the conveniences and necessaries of life that a 
 v/orkman can obtain with his money, is greater still, inasmuch as the 
 prices of nearly all the principal articles of life have fallen about one- 
 third — were falling about one-third in California generally between 
 1856 and 1879. I am, indeed, not quite satisfied about these facts, 
 although I have taken immense pains with them. Statistics, I 
 have found, are very unreliable. One man will tell you about prices 
 of things in San Francisco, and another man will tell you about 
 the prices of things in California, and these facts must be taken 
 subject to that consideration. But what about wages generally in 
 America? That is the main point. Have they risen, or have they fallen ? 
 My own impression was that they had risen — real wages I mean — 
 and I consulted three American economists : First, Mr. Amasa 
 Walker, a Free-trade economist ; next, Mr. Francis Bowen, a 
 Protectionist economist : and lastly, Mr. Francis Walker, a Free-trade 
 economist again ; and I find that all these three economists agree that 
 wages — real wages — have, on the whole, risen since 1800. Mr. Francis 
 Walker was the latest writer — he brings his figures down to 1877 ; Mr. 
 Amasa Walker down to 1869, and Mr. Francis Bowen down to 1S70. 
 So far, then, the figures of the American economists are in favour of 
 my view ; but I was not satisfied with that. I determined to study 
 the course of wages in our own colonies ; and what do I find to be 
 the case ? This : that in the gold colonies, Victoria and New South 
 Wales, exactly the same line of movement has taken place. Wages 
 were low before the gold discoveries ; they rose rapidly when 
 the gold diggings were discovered. They have fallen, and have 
 fluctuated, especially the wages of skilled artizans, a good deal 
 since; but at the present time, in New South Wales, accord- 
 ing to statistics supplied by the Government, they are higher 
 than they were in 1856 ; and the New South Wales corre- 
 spondent of the Times, writing from Sydney on August 2 last, said 
 also that wages had never been so high as they were at the present 
 time. You can now justly turn to me, and say : " If that is so what 
 is your theory of wages ? If rent has not reduced wages in America, 
 if wages have risen, and also along with wages, not interest, wliich
 
 i8 
 
 is a different thing, but the remuneration of management — the 
 great gains of speculation — what is the explanation ? " The explana- 
 tion is a very simple one. The net produce of American agriculture 
 and American industry has, as Mr. George has said, increased during 
 this time, and, as a consequence, the;, net produce to be divided 
 between the labourer and the employer and the owner of capital, of 
 course, is greater than before. It has thus been possible for the 
 employers and owners of capital to amass enormous wealth without 
 depriving the labourer of all share in the increased returns. 
 Mind, I admit that his share k not what it ought to be. 
 I am only hinting to you that we shall have to look for our 
 explanation in America, and perhaps in England, to the division of 
 the net produce between the employer and the workman ; but I 
 have not dealt adequately and fairly with Mr, George until I have 
 shown how his theory originated. His theory is not a mere 
 fiction of his brain ; it is one that has a natural origin in 
 American experience. His theory, for example, that . wages 
 are determined by what a man can get on the last land taken 
 into cultivation is by no means an abstract one. If you study 
 the history of California and of Victoria and of New South Wales, 
 you will find that all writers — • not only newspaper writers, but 
 economists — say that at one time wages in every trade were 
 determined by what men could get by working at the gold diggings. 
 For instance, Mr. Tooke, the historian of prices, tells us that men 
 working at the gold-diggings in Victoria could get about /^8 to ;!^io 
 a week in 185 1, and the wages, therefore, in Melbourne were 
 about ;£6 or ;£'j a week for all kinds of labour — the difiference 
 being, of course, accounted for by the risk of the gold trade. 
 The explanation is, that where there is an unlimited demand 
 for labour in any one trade, to which labour has ready access, then 
 the wages obtained in that trade will determine the wages paid in every 
 other trade. No man will take less — that is, as a blacksmith or as a 
 carpenter — in Melbourne than he can obtain, roughly speaking, at 
 the gold diggings further oft". It is the same in California. But I 
 have not done ; it is not merely in California that you will find 
 these facts brought forward and these phrases used. Take the 
 great American ironmaster, Mr Hewitt, who was examined before 
 the Trades Union Commission, and ask him what determines wages 
 in the Eastern States, and he will say at once, " Oh, what a labourer 
 can get off the land ; that determines wages." He puts it in this
 
 19 
 
 way — "We great ironmasters in the Eastern States, in Pennsylvania, are 
 obliged to pay our puddlers at least what they can obtain on the 
 farms in the West." There was at the time the words were used a 
 demand, perfectly unlimited, for labour in agriculture in the West, 
 and therefore any labourer in an iron foundry in Pennsylvania would 
 say to his master, " Give nie this wage, or I shall go West and take up 
 land, where I can get that much for myself" On the other hand, of 
 course, wages are always somewhat lower in an Eastern State, because 
 men prefer to live in cities ; they like the excitement of city life, and 
 they dislike the solitude and hard life of the West. Then there is one 
 more point before we have done with this part of our subject. Mr. 
 George says it was not merely the exhaustion of the rich gold deposits 
 in California that produced a fall of wages. He maintains, of course, 
 that workmen got high wages, because anyone could go with his 
 rocker and his spade to a stream, and simply dig out the gold, wash 
 it in his pan, and sell the gold dust just as it was there 
 to the dealer. That is, it only required a pick and a shovel, and a 
 man had nothing more to do than to dig out the gold. Sometimes 
 these deposits would not yield much gold, and then, as the result, the 
 labourers got lower wages ; that is clear. But then says Mr. George, 
 " Notice, if you please, that these gold diggings were common pro- 
 perty ; no man might hold a claim over one of them for a longer time 
 than it was in use. He could peg out his claim, and if he did not use it 
 any one day, then he had to go." Mr. George is perfecdy right. That 
 was the law not only in California, but in Victoria. Then he says, 
 the Comstock lode was rich in certain places, and yet the opening of 
 that great vein did not raise wages. I agree with Mr. George, that 
 had land been monopolised in California in the first instance, 
 instead of wages rising everywhere with the gold discoveries, 
 all that the workmen would have asked would have been 
 a slightly higher wage than they could obtain in the carpenters 
 shops and the blacksmiths' shops in San Francisco, and the 
 rest would have gone to the capitalist, in the first instance, who 
 took the lease, and ultimately to the landlord ; it would have gone to 
 rent. But let me point out, if you please, that Mr. George's own 
 remedy would not allow v/ages to rise, because Mr. George proposes 
 to tax land up to its full value, and, therefore, these gold miners 
 at the placer deposits would not have had higher wages, but 
 would have had to yield a large part of the gold which they had 
 obtained to the State, so that their individual wages would not
 
 20 
 
 have risen, though the gold would have gone to the community, 
 instead of to the individual. For the rest, I perfectly 
 agree with Mr. George that private property in land is not 
 essential to good agriculture ; that security of tenure is sufficient ; 
 and that it has been an iniquitous mistake on the part of 
 our own Colonial Governments, and on the part of the Government 
 of America, to sell land to individuals instead of keeping it for 
 the use of the people. But this view is not, of course, a new 
 one, it is an old question in all the colonies. As long ago as 1856, 
 Mr. Tooke, whom I have quoted so often, an eminent merchant, 
 who wrote a most valuable " History of Prices," proposed that land 
 should be let on lease instead of being sold. And then, again, it was 
 proposed in Victoria in 1870 and 1873, in the land agitation of which 
 I have spoken ; and as I have said, the principle is a just one ; but 
 there are practical difficulties. I find, for example, that Mr. Charles 
 Pearson, who has studied the land question from the extreme radical 
 point of view in Victoria for some time, and has tried all sorts of 
 methods to prevent land accumulating in the hands of a few great 
 owners, remarked of this proposal, which he admitted was in the 
 abstract a just one, that where there was a great number of lease- 
 holders it would be an extremely dangerous one, because all those 
 leaseholders would have votes, and could vote about the renewal of 
 their leases. Well, I do not attribute myself very much importance 
 lO the objection, because not one form alone, but all forms of taxation, 
 and all forms of exacting wealth from individuals in a new State may 
 be openings for corruption. But I want to point out that the question 
 is not such a simple one ; and we have seen that earnest and thoughtful 
 .radical land reformers, like Mr. Pearson, do not think it is a very easy 
 one. The gain to the State, I admit, would be enormous ; but remember 
 that my point is still, that though this revenue would go into the 
 pockets of the State — into the Treasury, instead of into the pockets of 
 individuals — yet it would not benefit wages, '\^^ages have not, as a 
 general rule, been reduced by the rise of rent, and they could not be 
 >increased by its confiscation. 
 
 I have, last of all, in this explanation, to show you what is 
 the true theory of the facts — the true facts which Mr. George 
 adduces. I have said already that the rapid fall of wages in 
 California and Victoria was due to the exhaustion of the placer 
 deposits. I admit that the previous rapid rise was due to the fact 
 that these deposits were not monopolised by individuals. But now —
 
 21 
 
 this is a very vital question — What about the tramps of whom Mr. 
 George speaks ? The facts are astounding. In one pamphlet Mr. 
 George says that the common estimate in 1878 was that there were 
 20,000 labourers unemployed in San Francisco. Another estimate 
 made in 1875 P^t the number at 10,000. Now, what is the expla- 
 nation of the appearance of these tramps, these vagrants, in a new 
 State — a most appalling fact ? I am not speaking of China- 
 men ; they are distinct altogether from European labourers. The 
 Chinamen numbered about 8,000 in 1870 ; the figure I have given is 
 the number of unemployed labourers of European race. At the 
 time of which I speak there were not only tramps in California, 
 but tramps in Lake City, and tramps in the new North-West. Why 
 is that ? The explanation is given by Mr. George himself in a pamphlet 
 he wrote on the labour struggle, and it is to be found in all the 
 recent valuable reports presented to the Duke of Richmond's Com- 
 mission en American agriculture. It is this— that with the large farm 
 system of cultivation workmen cannot obtain regular employment. 
 For instance, take one great farm in Dakota, which had an area equal 
 to about three times the size of the City of New York. On this farm in 
 the spring 150 men were employed, and in the summer 250, and in the 
 winter only 10. What became of these men ? They went to the towns. 
 For, you may say, nine months in the year the labourers in the great 
 wheat farms in California, the largest wheat farms in the world, have 
 no employment, and are driven into San Francisco ; and these are the 
 men who, justly perhaps, protest against Chinese labour, and who 
 meet on the sand-locks in San Francisco, and propose to remedy their 
 grievances. That is the explanation of tramps in California and 
 Minnesota and Dakota. I must remind you that Mr. George does not 
 propose to touch the large farm system. He says the large farm 
 system is due to a law of economic development, with which he will 
 not meddle. But as long as vast accumolators of capital continue 
 to deal thus ruthlessly with their human instruments, what good will 
 the confiscation of rent do ? The evil in this case plainly is not the 
 ownership of land in large quantities, which is all that Mr. George 
 would prevent, but its tenure in large quantities, which he would 
 allow. 
 
 What, then, is to be said about this large farm system ? Is it 
 to go on ? If we look at it closely, we shall find that this is 
 but one typical form of a universal and urgent problem. It 
 is not only in farms and in agriculture that great businesses are
 
 22 
 
 being formed, or have been formed, but in industry and manu- 
 factures, as we well know here. As Karl Marx and other writers have 
 pointed out, gradually large industries are stamping out, or rather, 
 large businesses are stamping out, small ones. Gradually capital is 
 being accumulated in- fewer and fewer hands, until at last some 
 think we shall have nothing but a handful of stupendous monopo- 
 lists, with a struggling mass of labourers at their feet. This, 
 I say, is one great cause affecting the division of produce ; 
 it is one great reason why wages have not risen in propor- 
 tion to the increase in productive power ; it is because the economic 
 structure of society is such that the huge employer and the huge 
 capitalist can practically dictate terms to the labourers. What is 
 the remedy for this ? Mr. George offers none. There is one which 
 he hints at, but I do not think it a serious one. If anyone likes to 
 ask me afterw'ards my opinion I will discuss it. Why does Mr. 
 George propose no remedy ? Why does he refuse to meddle with it? 
 Because he is a believer in what the economists no longer believe in 
 — in what are called the "economic harmonies" ; that is, he believes, 
 as Adam Smith believed, and as Bastiat believed, that if you once 
 abolish private property, or, rather, confiscate the unearned increment, 
 then individual interests will harmonise with common interests, and 
 competition, which we know is often now a baneful and destructive force, 
 will then become a beneficent one. Now, in justice to Mr. George, 
 again, I must point out that he proposes that when industries become 
 monopolies they should be undertaken by the State. Well, I admit 
 that that is the true principle. They should be either undertaken by 
 the State, or regulated by the State. We are going to deal, for 
 example, wuth the Water Companies in London; and all great 
 industries like the supply of water and the supply of gas, and so 
 on, which involve necessarily a monopoly, ought either to be 
 undertaken by the State, or regulated by the State. But apart 
 from absolute monopoly, there may be the immense force of great 
 capitalists not in ooen combination, who are able to press down wages. 
 What is to be done ? I said just now that we economists abandoned 
 the belief in economic harmonies. What do we, then, think of the 
 economic self-interest which most socialists denounce as a thing to be 
 destroyed ? We say that economic self-interest more resembles a great 
 physical force than anything else, the laws of which must be studied 
 in order that it may be controlled. For example, take self-interest 
 working in the great grain market. To buy in the cheapest and sell
 
 23 
 
 in the dearest market is to take a thing from Avhere it is least wanted 
 to where it is most wanted. Here is a service, therefore, rendered by 
 self-interest to the community ; not that the great grain speculators 
 are not over-paid ; still self-interest does work, where they have not a 
 monopoly, for the good of the community as a whole. But look at 
 self-interest working in the destruction of life in mines and factories. 
 We know very well what this was ; we know very well there were no 
 economic harmonies there. The absence of economic harmonies is to 
 be read in that terrible history of the degradation of men, and women, 
 and children which is to be found in our own Government reports. 
 But while we regard competition as resembling a physical force, 
 in that it admits of and demands study and control, we do 
 not allow that it is, like physical forces, unalterable in itself. 
 Whilst you cannot change the elements of nature, but only learn 
 their secret and control them, human nature can change. Man we 
 recognise now is not like a rock or a stont, but is pliable, and 
 pliable to great ideas of justice. We need no longer crouch and 
 shiver under the shadow of inexorable law. Man is master of 
 his fate. Still I know there are some who will say this is an idle 
 dream. Men always have followed their self-interest without 
 remorse ; men always will follow their self-interest without remorse. 
 I deny that. But I admit that we cannot wait for the 
 time when higher ideals will control men's self-interest, and 
 that the economists, it they admit that the economic harmonies 
 are to a large extent a fiction, are bound to admit the necessity for 
 more administration and control. That is true. The era of free 
 trade and free contract is gone, and the era of administration has come- 
 Not only has the era come, but silently it has been upon us before 
 we knew it. Throughout the whole of this century, when we were 
 busy unshackling our trade and flinging open our ports to the whole 
 world, we were at the same time — against, I admit, the protests of 
 the economists — hemming in the disastrous and virulent greed of 
 employers, passing Factory Acts, prohibiting the labour of women in 
 mines, protecting women and children everywhere. But in 1881 we 
 began a new era, for in that year an Act was passed which extended 
 the protection of the State, which is the organised power of the 
 community for good, not merely to women and children, but 
 to men — I mean the Irish Land Act. The author of that remark- 
 able phrase in 1864, the man who said that for the great majority of 
 beings life was a bare struggle for existence, unconsciously redeemed
 
 24 
 
 his utterance. He unconsciously redeemed his pledge, and by 
 passing the Irish Land Act — though he may deny it, and it may be 
 necessary for him to deny it, there is no reason why we should — 
 he has committed the Radical party to a socialist programme. 
 AVhat I mean by socialism is this. I do not mean the destruc- 
 tion of private property ; I do not mean communism ; but I 
 do mean the extension of the protection of the State not only to 
 women and children, but, if need be, to men, because men also — 
 agricultural labourers and workers in mines and factories — are but 
 too often not free agents. 
 
 Here, however, arises a great problem. We shall have to carry 
 out these measures without undermining that old independence, 
 that habit of voluntary association, of which we are justly proud, for 
 if we undermine that — that pride which has made the English 
 workman sacrifice everything to keep himself out of the workhouse, 
 which has made workmen bind themselves together in Friendly 
 Societies and Trades Unions and in Co-operative Societies — if we 
 undermine that, then it would be better to leave our work undone. 
 But I believe it can be done. I believe that the problems of adminis- 
 tration, difficult as they are, can be solved if men will only have 
 patience, and in my next lecture I hope to sketch in outline a pro- 
 gramme of administration, dealing with wages, the dwellings of the 
 poor, the question of insurance, and the question of the recrea- 
 tions of the people. All these things I hope to deal with, and will try 
 to show that without revolution and without socialism, in the 
 continental sense, we shall be able to do something towards that 
 better distribution of wealth which we all desire to see. But 
 if we undertake a more complicated work of administration, 
 remember, in the first place, that we are dealing, again, not 
 with physical facts, but with the compound of sensibilities 
 and interests shaped by ages of history and change which we call 
 man, and that the thing is not simple— it is difficult ; that it will 
 require not only the thought of one man, but the thought of many, 
 and not only the thought of many, but the patience of more; 
 and if, again, administration is to be successful, it means one 
 thing more : it means devotion to the community. For all 
 these new proposals will only open up new opportunities 
 for corruption, unless at the same time we raise ourselves to the 
 occasion, and determine that we will, in proposing them and in 
 working them out, be actuated with no other feeling than a passionate
 
 25 
 
 devotion to the community. " But, alas ! " many of you will say, 
 " such a thing needs faith, and our faith is in ruins," I 
 answer, " True, your faith is in ruins ; but I think also that in 
 spite of darkness and bewilderment and tears, there will come 
 a purer faith, a faith which, cleared of superstitious control, 
 shall make devotion to the community no longer a troubled and 
 uncertain refuge from doubt, but a source of a pure and tranquil 
 inner life." But we need not wait for that, and if men individually 
 will but make up their minds to do all that in them lies to bring about 
 the great event for which the people have longed for so many 
 centuries, the thing will be done — the reign of social justice will 
 have come.
 
 SECOND LECTURE. 
 MR. GEORGE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 (Delivered the iSth January, 1S83.) 
 
 I WISH to remove one misrepresentation that I may have created by 
 my lecture last Thursday — the impression that I said that no substantial 
 improvement had taken place in the condition of the workpeople. 
 Now, it is not true that no improvement has taken place in their 
 condidon. A great change for the better has taken place, but it is not 
 universal. It is confined to certain portions of the population, and it 
 IS greater, for example, in Lancashire than in London ; in fact, it is 
 because the improvement in the condition of the workmen of London 
 has not been so great as the improvement in the condition of the 
 workmen of Lancashire, that this book upon which I lecture has 
 taken such hold of you. The evidence of what I say is to be sought 
 not in tables of imports and exports, but in the statements of the 
 workmen themselves. Workmen who remember England as it was 
 40 years ago, know well that their condition now, as compared with 
 their condition then, is one which may be said to be almost a 
 civilised one. If you turn to the memoirs of the Chartists, if you 
 turn to the memoirs of men like Samuel Lovett and Thomas Cooper, 
 you can there see what the suffering was. You can there read descrip- 
 tions of men who clamoured to be sent to prison that they might not 
 starve. You read there descriptions of labourers who burnt ricks, and 
 asked when the fighting was to begin ; and you may there read a 
 description of the wretched weavers and stockingers of Leicestershire, 
 cowering in their miserable workshops. The time when such 
 suffering as that — which, mind, was not the suffering of the habitually 
 degraded class of our population, but the suffering of the class of skilled 
 workmen upon whom our national strength depends— the time when 
 such suffering as that could be endured has passed. If we wanted 
 any further evidence of that bygone misery we might find it not 
 merely in the sufferings of the people themselves, but in the
 
 27 
 
 sufferings of great thinkers. The anguish of that dreadful 
 age tortured the sad and brooding spirit of Carlyle into fierce 
 impatience, and clouded the fire of his exhortations. Let us 
 remember when we upbraid him with his savage moods, that he, 
 at least, upheld the lamp of duty amidst the storm, and lightened 
 the darkness of the time. Arnold, too, the great and wise man, with an 
 insight almost deeper than that of Carlyle, protested against the false 
 policy of the Liberals of his time. These men could do nothing 
 for the people ; and they were maddened by the feeling of their im- 
 potence. It was not from them that the salvation of this nation came : 
 it was from Cobden and Bright, and the Anti-Corn Law League. 
 If in my last lecture* I gave anyone the impression that I 
 under-estimated the work of Cobden, I would remove it, because, 
 unless he had laid deep the foundations of the economical prosperity, 
 of this country, the social reforms which we strive for would have 
 been beyond the reach of hope. Cobden, living in the midst of a busy 
 manufacturing population, and with the sagacity of a man of business, 
 saw, at least, one thing. He saw what even Mill, wise and tender as 
 he was to the people, could not see. He saw that the one thing to 
 do wasto repeal the Corn Laws. The repeal of the Corn Laws, which 
 Cobden fought for, curiously enough, was not insisted upon by the 
 economists as a remedy for the distress of the people. It is another of 
 those extraordinary instances of the blindness of wise men, when they 
 arenotin contact with thosewho suffer. In Mill's "Political Economy" 
 you will find an extraordinary passage, in which he says that from the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws he could not hope for much for the bettering 
 of the condition of the people. He said that, because he was misled by 
 a false economic theory. But Cobden, having the brilliant sagacity 
 which shines in Adam Smith, did see in his own county how the men 
 and the mills suffered by the Corn Laws; and he pointed out (and I 
 think we have not sufficiently remarked it since) of what immense 
 importance not merely cheap bread is to the people, but a steady 
 price of bread, which means steady trade. What Cobden said was : 
 If you have a steady price for bread, then will trade, as a whole, be 
 steadier, and the workman be able to calculate his income and his 
 expenditure. And if we turn to the facts since Cobden's time, we 
 see how completely his prediction has been verified. Between i860 and 
 
 * The reference here is to something which was said in the discussion that followed the 
 first lecture, one of the speakers protesting that Mr. Toynbee had unduly depreciated the 
 economists, and especially their services in the cause of Free Trade.
 
 28 
 
 1870, the difference between the highest and the lowest price of grain 
 was 24s. ; between 1S70 and 1880 it was 15s. a quarter. That simplefact 
 means that vast masses of labourers are saved from degradation, because, 
 though the depression of trade through which we have lately passed has 
 been great, it is not to be compared for a moment, as the elder work- 
 men know well, and those who have studied the history of the time 
 know, with the agony of 1841. 
 
 Now, it is this very improvement in the material condition of the 
 people that constitutes the problem we have to solve, for until people 
 have raised themselves a little, they cannot be really discontented. 
 The people at one time were too brutalised to feel the longings for a 
 more refined life which they now feel ; and it is this that we have to 
 settle — how to give them a share in ideals which we have taught them to 
 long for. And the simple difficulty is, that owing to the fact that they 
 have got the suffrage, owing to the fact that we have a free Press, and 
 that they have a greater intelligence — their wants have increased faster 
 than their income. It is a singular thing, that although the material 
 condition of the people has improved, yet the economists have not 
 changed their theory of economic development. It is a singular 
 thing that Mr. George can find the foundation of his views in the 
 works of Mill, and Ricardo, and Cairnes. It would not be surprising 
 if we found a theory that rent must increase, and that wages and 
 profits must either remain stationary or fall with an advance of civili- 
 sation, in the works of Ricardo ; but it is extraordinary that in 1873 
 Mr. Mill, in one of his papers on land tenure reform, should have 
 asserted that rent must continually increase, and that profits and 
 wages must either remain stationary or decline. The statement was 
 repeated by Cairnes in 1874, and it seems to be the generally accepted 
 view ; but it is a view which is false. In fact, Mr. George's theory 
 would not have received the support it has in England had it not 
 been buttressed by the theories to be found in the treatises of Mill, 
 Ricardo, and Cairnes. 
 
 Let me try and explain to you how this theory is proved. In 
 Ricardo's time, as I said in my last lecture, England was in a state 
 of great distress. In order to get corn to feed the people, we had to 
 plough up moors and sheepwalks, and every year the price of bread 
 grew higher. Now, what Ricardo said was this : If the price of bread 
 rises and the labourer wishes to obtain, and insists upon obtaining, 
 the same number of loaves — suppose, for example, a family takes ten 
 loaves a week — every manufacturer, every great employer, will have
 
 29 
 
 to give to his workmen a larger share of the wealth that is made in each 
 trade. That is, the great coalowner will have to give a larger share of 
 the coal to the coal hewer, that he may purchase the same quantity of 
 bread as before ; the great cotton manufacturer will have to give a larger 
 weight of yarn to the spinner, that he may purchase the samequantity of 
 bread as before ; and therefore the share that will remain in the hands 
 of the employers will be less than before ; but in the meantime rent 
 will increase, because the price of bread having gone up every land- 
 owner can obtain a higher price for his land. That is the simple 
 statement of the theory of economic development accepted by the 
 English economists. But the theory is not true. For, to take only 
 one point, it is clear that just at the time when the price of bread 
 is highest the labourer is at his weakest, and, therefore, is most help- 
 less in struggling with the employer. As a matter of fact, the great 
 employers did make large fortunes during the great war, when 
 rent was very high, as they have made large fortunes since. 
 The reason why Mill did not see this was that he, in common 
 with the whole English school of economists, confounded the 
 return for the use of capital, which we call interest, with what we may call 
 the gains of monopoly and speculation and enterprise. Because 
 interest, as a rule, but not always, falls with the advance of civilisation, 
 these economists argued that the wages of superintendence also would 
 fall, or, rather, they included the wages of superintendence under the 
 term interest ; and there was their mistake. As a matter of fact, 
 therefore, and I have found this to be the case by investigations 
 I have made, in different manufacturing districts in different trades 
 profits have risen in the sense that the gains of the employers have 
 increased since 1840; and that is one explanation of the reason 
 why the workmen are not better off. The increase has not gone, as 
 the English economists said, simply to rent, or mainly to rent ; it has 
 gone mostly to the great employers. 
 
 But I cannot satisfactorily explain the origin of this theory, that 
 rent is continually increasing, to the detriment of profits and wages, 
 unless you will lollow me back once more to that disastrous time when 
 the great modern problems arose. It was in that time that this 
 peculiar theory sprang up, and unless I can put this theory aside, I 
 cannot effectually destroy Mr. George's view. That time was an awful 
 crisis in the history of the English people. Population, which had 
 been growing slowly during the early years of the eighteenth century, 
 suddenly went forward with an immense impetus under the encourage-
 
 ment of the power-loom, and the spinning machinery, and the steam 
 engine. And then all of a sudden the sun failed, and the heavens broke 
 up. The stars in their courses fought against the English people- 
 Year after year the rain beat down upon the soddened fields, tilled by 
 paupers; and men, women, and children, working with moans and tears 
 in factories and mines from daybreak to night, could get no bread to eat, 
 though our commerce grew, andspreadtoevery clime. All theContinent 
 was aflame with war, and though our commerce spread, the English 
 labourer took not of the increase, for that which he needed most we 
 could not get then in return for all our goods. We could not get 
 enough bread for him to eat. It was not the fault of the rich in this 
 case. We had come to one of those great crises in the history of the 
 human race, when in the long struggle between fate and human will 
 (by fate I mean those great uncontrolled natural forces which en- 
 compass our life, and those inner workings of our own minds which 
 have not yet been brought under the control of our will) — I say it 
 was one of those times when fate was triumphant, and man went to 
 the ground. It was an awful time, and we may be thankful that we 
 did not live in it ; it is no good trying to see that there is a meaning 
 in it. We cannot see the meaning of these things. Every now and 
 then the human race must suff<2r in silence. Thank God, we have not 
 to suffer thus at the present time ! 
 
 I will show you now how it is that the rich could not help the poor. 
 We are all amazed at the vast increase of machinery, and at the 
 enormous mechanical power now placed at our service — it is one of 
 the facts which Mr, George dwells upon — and yet we say, how little 
 have the workpeople gained ! But the power-loom and the spindle 
 and the steam-engine could do little to elevate the suffering of the 
 people ; for if you ask the workman about his expenditure, he will 
 tell you (and I think there is a general agreement about it) that he 
 spends between 40 and 60 per cent. — generally 60 per cent., at least, 
 in the case of the labourer — on food ; and so, though you might 
 cheapen clothing, it was of little avail while you could not cheapen 
 bread. And then machinery brought a vast evil in its train. People — 
 working weavers and spinners — were thrust aside and trampled down 
 by the newmachinery; and that at the very time when they needed help 
 most. And again, the rich could not help by money, for, wonderful as 
 it may seem, in spite of the vast heaps of wealth that there 
 were in England, it was impossible for the rich really to succour 
 the poor. And here we have the explanation of the book written by
 
 Alalthus. During those bad harvests year after year, with a great war 
 all through Europe, we could not get, as a nation, the bread to eat. 
 There was a Hmited supply of food ; and Malthus urged and argued, 
 that it was of no use the rich giving money to the poor, for it would 
 only raise the price of bread. The only way in which they could 
 help — and they did it as much as they could — was by lessening their 
 own consumption of bread. That is how the idea of natural and ^^-- 
 exorable law crept into our economic science. Human will was 
 powerless at that particular time, and Malthus was right in saying 
 as he did, that Trades' Unions could not raise wages, simply 
 because, though they might get higher money wages, they could not 
 get higher bread wages. Now we understand, perhaps, Malthus's 
 doctrine of population. It, like the whole of the English school of 
 thought, was the product of a peculiar and disastrous time. Popu- 
 lation was advancing at an immense pace, and though immense 
 improvements were also being made in agriculture, food could not be 
 grown fast enough. But after a time the crisis passed away, although 
 the theories which had grown up in the brief moment of agony 
 dominated our thought for half-a-century. You may ask, 
 iS; then, the theory of Malthus false ? Well, it is neither false 
 nor true. I told you in my last lecture, that one thing that w^e 
 economists had learnt w^as this, that many of the laws or statements 
 that we made, which we at one time supposed to be universally true, 
 we now understand to be true only under the conditions of a par- 
 ticular time and place. The law of population is not true in America, 
 because increase of population means an increase of wealth ; but it 
 probably is true in Norway and in France. How far the doctrine of 
 population is of practical importance to us at the present time I can- 
 not now tell you ; but one thing I may say, and it is this — the 
 doctrine of population in its practical application is subordinate to 
 the hope of social reform. I mean, that we need not trust, as the old 
 economists did, to checks on population, either alone or in the main, 
 or improvements in the condition of the workpesple; but we may 
 trust to the organised work of the community, which will slowly 
 lift them to a higher place. 
 
 I have now put aside that doctrine of the English economists which 
 seems to countenance the theory of Mr. George. Eet me next take 
 Mr. George's theory in itself, and ask how far, and under what con- 
 ditions, it is true when applied to an old country like England ? Mr. 
 George says that in England x^^t will swallow up everything, except
 
 32 
 
 what is just necessary to induce people to add to the stores of wealth, 
 and to induce the race to reproduce itself — that is, he says, that in 
 an old country like England wages will depend upon the minimum 
 standard of comfort, and that the rate of interest (with which 
 he generally confounds the earnings of monopoly, though he 
 distinguishes them in one place) will depend upon the induce- 
 ments to save. Everything else besides will be swept off by 
 rent. Now, under what conditions is this true ? It would be true in 
 ^n island where one man possessed the whole of the land, and 
 where the people were subject to him — that is, where he had the 
 physical power to leave them just enough to eat and himself to take all 
 the rest ; and even then, of course, from this island there must be no 
 migration of labour or capital ; the people of that island must be con- 
 fined to it. Is there any country in the world in which circumstances 
 of this sort obtain ? Yes ; there is more than one. If you turn to 
 India you will find that there, practically, wages — the remuneration of 
 those who till the soil — do depend upon the will of the Government. 
 But notice that in India economic interest, or, rather, the enlightened 
 economic interest of a Government which is slowly struggling to do 
 justice, does protect the people. Othman, the great Mohammedan 
 Emperor, in his first land settlements altered the rent every year ; but 
 he soon found that he had made a mistake, because if he swept off 
 the fruits of the earth year after year, there was no inducement left at 
 all to the labourers to work ; so, gradually, he extended his settle- 
 ments to ten years, and we have now extended them to thirty years — 
 that is, for thirty years the labourers are left in possession of the land 
 and of the fruits of the land ; for thirty years any increased wealth 
 which they make cannot be carried off by the State. But there is 
 another country closer home than India in which economic interest 
 has broken down — I mean Ireland. Ireland is almost too sad a 
 subject for anyone to talk about, but I will say a few words 
 about it. In Ireland you have a population of peasants, with no 
 manufactures to which to resort, as we have in England ; and you 
 have a population of peasants, without the alertness and the power of 
 movement which capital gives, and therefore they are at the mercy, or 
 were at the mercy, of the landlords. It is true that in Ireland rent has 
 lowered wages. It is true that what the landlord took lowered the 
 remuneration not only of the peasant farmer, but of the labourer 
 whom he employed ; and Mr. Davitt is right in saying that the labourers 
 ought now to share in the reduction of rent which has taken place —
 
 33 
 
 for it was partly out of their wages that the excessive rent had been 
 taken. The Irish Land Act of 1881, as I told you last Thursday, does 
 mark a great epoch in our history ; but it is not an Act in which 
 we can take any pride, for it was not the fruit of patient foresight, 
 watching year after year to remedy the sufferings of a people ; it 
 was an Act snatched from us by crime and violence ; and though 
 the great statesman who passed it, and who will go down to posterity 
 memorable for passing that Act — and he deserves to be memorable 
 — although this great statesman will go down to posterity 
 memorable for the work he has done, yet we cannot but regret that 
 not only he, but the ruling classes in this country, had not foreseen 
 the evil which came. One or two Englishmen, remember, saw 
 it, and understood it. It is one of the greatest of the many merits 
 of John Mill, that he saw long ago that rents in Ireland ought not to be 
 fixed by competition ; but his words were unheeded, and we are 
 responsible — not merely the governing classes, but we, as a nation, are 
 responsible — for neglecting his words. 
 
 Is there similar oppression in England? The theory has 
 been that the oppression which was exercised in Ireland was 
 peculiar to Ireland, and that the English farmers, being capitalists, 
 with the power of movement, were able to hold out against unfair 
 exactions of rent, and that the English labourer was also able to 
 protect himself According to this theory, rent is what is left after 
 wages and profits are paid, and wages and profits are fixed inde- 
 pendently of rent. This theory is the accepted one, and it has 
 been especially urged as a justification of the Irish Land Act — that 
 the principle upon which it could be vindicated does not apply 
 here. Now, I wish to make a distinction which I shall recur to 
 later on : a distinction between the power of a landlord to evict or 
 to pull down cottages and throw together farms — what you may call 
 the physical power which he exercises in virtue of his possession of 
 the land — and his power to raise rent. Now it is true — as I have to deal 
 with the management of land, I know it — that under certain condi- 
 tions you cannot raise your rents against the will of the farmer, 
 because the farmer can say, " I will throw up my farm, and I will 
 either emigrate to America, or remove to some other part of this 
 country." In the present depression of agriculture farmers have 
 thrown up their farms ; that is, being capitalists, they have been able 
 to hold their own, and you will find that is especially the case in 
 the districts which border on the great manufacturing centres.
 
 34 
 
 There the farmers are alert, intelligent, and are able to hold their 
 own ; but when you come to the South of England, to Dorsetshire, 
 say, or Wiltshire, you will find there that in many districts the 
 farmers are not capitalist farmers; that they have only a little, 
 capital ; that they are unable to resist the exactions of the landlord, 
 and that the labourers share also in their economic subjection. 
 Now I find from studying Government reports, that it is admitted, or, 
 rather, asserted, by farmers and labourers, that the high rents have in 
 England caused low wages. This has always been denied by land- 
 lords ; but I have had the opportunity of consulting land-agents who 
 have not been afraid to speak the truth, and these men have admitted 
 to me that on more than one farm they have known a rise in rents to 
 be followed by a reduction in wages — that is, that on a small scale 
 the same conditions obtain in an English county in the South of 
 England that obtain in Ireland and in India. But mind, those con- 
 ditions are in England exceptional. Wherever you have labourers, such 
 as you have in Northumberland and Durham, who are close to the coal- 
 pits and the industries, and whenever you have farmers with energy, 
 and character, and capital, there rent cannot lower wages, because the 
 labourer has the power of movement, and the capitalist farmer has 
 the power of movement, and t-here is competition amongst the land- 
 lords for the letting of farms. 
 
 Now, let us come, having dealt with agriculture, to ground rents in 
 England. Ground rents are of far more importance, perhaps to 
 you than agricultural rents, for, as I hinted at the beginning of my 
 lecture, the working men in London have suffered from high rents. 
 You I dare say understand that the value of land in London 
 is infinitely greater than the value of land in any other town ; it is 
 infinitely greater than the value of land, say, in Bolton, in Lancashire. 
 If you went to Bolton, in Lancashire, you would find that nearly 
 every artizan lived in a whole house ; but you know well that an 
 artizan in London either has to live in two rooms, or has to take a 
 house and let lodgings. Now, here is one explanation of the reason 
 why I think you attribute so much importance to this book of Mr. 
 George's. You have suffered yourselves — whether consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, I do not know, probably consciously — from the high rents 
 which are exacted in London. Now, let us look carefully into this matter, 
 and see whether we can explain it. Why are rents, in the first place, 
 so much higher in London than they are elsewhere ? and in the next 
 place, why do workmen apparently suffer themselves more from high
 
 oo 
 
 rents in London ? It might be argued that economic interest would 
 lead them to expect higher wages in London to compensate them for 
 their higher rents ; and in a certain measure wages are higher in 
 London than they are, say, in Oxford or in Bolton, in similar trades, 
 but I think from my own inquiries, and from the opinions of workmen 
 whom I have consulted, that this higher rate of wages does 
 not compensate for the greater cost of living. Now the 
 reason why land is of such immense value in London is this. Land 
 in London will bear or has a great many uses ; and if a labourer 
 wishes to live in the middle of London, he will have to pay a rent 
 which will not be merely determined by the value of the land for his 
 own house, but by the value of the land for a warehouse. If you 
 let it for a warehouse, you let it for an enormous rent, and, 
 therefore, if you are going to build an artizan's house upon 
 it, that artizan's house will have to pay a much higher rent 
 than it would have to pay supposing the land were only adapted for 
 this one class of house. Now, to show you that this is the case, if you 
 go to great manufacturing towns in Yorkshire and in Lancashire, 
 you will find often that there is a gradual movement of factories from 
 inside the town to the outskirts. That is, the great millowners find 
 that the land is so valuable for warehouses, and that they have to pay 
 such a high rent if they keep their factories on the land in the centre 
 of the town, that it pays them better to take their businesses outside, 
 and build in the valleys, or on the edge of the moors. There is an 
 instance of what I mean— the great value of the land causing, you will 
 observe, a great difficulty to the manufacturer for a time, because 
 the rent he pays is not determined by the value of the land for the use 
 of his factory, but, say, by the value of his land for its use for a 
 warehouse. 
 
 Now then, what bearing has this upon wages and interest and 
 profits ? In the first place, there is no doubt that some capitalists 
 may have suffered by the exactions of landowners in great towns ; 
 but if you go to Lancashire or to Yorkshire, you will find that that is 
 not the case. In most of the great Lancashire towns the mills are 
 built either on a 99 years lease, or upon — what is practically a free- 
 hold — a 999 years lease. That is, the owner of the land is powerless 
 to demand a high rent for his land ; and from inquiries I have made 
 of men who ought to know, because they are manufacturers them- 
 selves, I have learned that not only is this the case, but that even at the 
 termination of the 99 years lease the rent is often not raised. Ycu may
 
 36 
 
 ask me in astonishment, why does the landowner let the manufacturer 
 stay there ? For a very simple reason; the business of the factory is 
 essential to the prosperity of the place. If the landowner tries to 
 exact a high rent, there are a great many places elsewhere on 
 which the cotton spinner can build his factory, and if he goes, then 
 will the population follow him ; then will the cottages which belong 
 to the landowner become tenantless ; so that it is the landowner's 
 interest in Lancashire not to exact a high rent, but rather to let 
 the land for the factory go very cheap. And it is clear that in 
 Lancashire rent has nothing whatever to do either with a depression 
 of profi's, supposing there to be a depression — which has not 
 been the case — or with a depression of wages. Wages in Lancashire 
 are independent of the powerof the landownersof Lancashireasawhole. 
 But directly you come to London you find an entirely different state of 
 things. I have noticed in some of the papers indignant letters, 
 evidently inspired by Mr. George's book, which I should say have 
 been written by London leaseholders. Leases in London are far 
 shorter than they are anywhere else. Whereas in Bolton you get a 
 99 years lease, and may not get your rent raised at the end of it, in 
 London you often can only get a 60 or 75 years lease, sometimes 
 shorter, because the old corporations — colleges, and so on — could 
 not let their land for longer than 40 years ; and at the termination 
 of the lease the rent is raised. But observe, during the 40 years of the 
 lease the owner of the ground is powerless even here. The holder of 
 the lease stands, as it were, in his place, and is able to appropriate the 
 fruits of the growth of speculation and of his enterprise, and the 
 labourer is able to share it with him if he combines in Trades Unions. 
 But at the end of the term the landowner raises his rent — and now we 
 come to an important question. It is quite clear he can sweep off the 
 increased value of the land, but can he sweep off more? Can he 
 raise his rent to a point which will not only transfer to him that 
 " unearned increment " which has hitherto gone to the tenant, but 
 will diminish the profits of the tenant's business ? No, he cannot, 
 except, as I will show you, under certain exceptional conditions, because, 
 as a rule, as I know from experience, those who own or rent these 
 shops and warehouses will say, " I will not stay here. I will go else- 
 where ;" and as there is competition amongst the owners of 
 land in London to let land, it is quite clear that the owner of 
 the shop or business has the power to move elsewhere, and 
 other men will be glad to let their lands to him. I
 
 37 
 
 have known instances where shops have stood empty year after 
 year, I know of one in Oxford at the present time, simply 
 because the owner of the house persists in asking a higher 
 rent than that which the shopkeeper says he can afford to 
 pay and yet make the ordinary profit on his trade. So you will 
 observe that, though the landowners are able to sweep off the increased 
 rent, they are not able to diminish profits, and, therefore, not to 
 depress wages so far as they depend upon profits, except where a man's 
 business depending greatly upon local connection, he is uinwilling to 
 forego his connection, and unwilling to leave his house and shop, 
 and, therefore, is forced to take lower profits in his trade, in order to 
 retain the advantages of staying there. 
 
 I have now shown thatrent in agriculture and in great cities does not 
 lower profits or wages, except under certain exceptional conditions, which 
 I shall deal with later on. If I had time I could give you a great 
 number of facts to show that Mr. George's assertion, that wages and 
 interest always fall as rent rises, is constantly disproved by history. I 
 will only take one instance from our own recent experience. Between 
 1850 and 1878 there was a great rise of rent in this country. Even 
 in the case of agricultural land there was an increase of 40 per cent., 
 while the rent of town land, of course, rose even more considerably. 
 Did interest and wages fall ? On the contrary. Interest remained 
 stationary while wages rose, rose to nearly double in a few cases, but 
 rose more or less in almost all. Now we come to the question : Since 
 rent does not directly lower profits or lower wages, ought we to con fiscate 
 rent? First of all, let us ask what we should gain — what the money gain 
 would be ? You will remember that Mr. George, in his book, states 
 that he would not take the whole of what is commonly called rent but, 
 only that part of rent which was due, not to individual exertions and 
 enterprise, but to the natural growth of civilisation— that is, he wishes 
 that every man should keep that which he has earned himself; and he 
 there follows the English economists. But he asserts that the com- 
 munity ought to obtain that which practically the community has 
 produced. Now, can we divide the rent which is really the result of 
 labour and capital from rent which is what Mr. George would call 
 payment for the bare use of land ? Take, first of all, the rent in agricul- 
 ture. What is the rent of agricultural land in the United Kingdom ? 
 The rent, according to the latest available income-tax returns, is 
 ;^69,ooo,ooo.* Now, about ;^io,ooo,ooo of that is Irish rent, and that 
 
 * The gross annual value of " Lands " as distinct from " Houses " under Schedule A was
 
 38 
 
 is being reduced. Again, about ^10,000,000 of it is the rent of 
 corporate property — property which either is, or ought to be, as I 
 understand it, directed to a public use. Of that figure I am not quite 
 certain. Now, if we deduct, say, ^10,000,000 of corporate rent, and 
 deduct the sum which the Land Commissioners have taken from the 
 landlords of Ireland and handed over to the peasants, we may fairly say 
 thattherental still left to deal with does not exceed^6o,ooo,ooo. Now, 
 what part of that are we to regard as due to the growth of the com- 
 munity, as "unearned increment " ? It is a very difficult thing to say. I 
 have done the best I could. I have talked with land-agents about it, 
 especially with one land-agent whom I have the honour to know, who 
 is not only a land-agent, but a good Liberal, and a man who, though 
 he has dealt with land all his life, understands and sympathises with 
 the labourers. I asked him what he thought this so-called " unearned 
 increment " would be, and he told me that it was impossible to form 
 an exact estimate ; but he pointed out one thing which he considered 
 of great importance. He said : " Of course, Mr. George proposes to 
 leave to the landlords the interest on the capital which they have put 
 into the soil ; but a certain portion at least of that capital is wasted ; it 
 does not add to the value of the land. For instance, a man may 
 spend a great deal of money in adopting a bad system of drainage, 
 which does not add to the value _ of the land ; in fact, it may 
 depreciate the value of the land ; so that the question arises, are you 
 to leave to the landlord the interest on all the capital he has 
 put into the land, or are you to take what is the letting value of the 
 land at the present time, and then see how much, as far as you can, 
 the improvements introduced by the landlords have added to the letting 
 value?" My own opinion is, that it would be fair, supposing we 
 adopted this system, to take the letting value of the land, and deduct 
 only that which the landlords had added to that value. Now, how much 
 would that be ? Well, it has been variously estimated. Some people 
 have said it would be two-thirds of the whole ; others have saidonlyone- 
 third. If I take an estimate halfway, which I think myself (of course, 
 ■vve are all liable to correction on this point) is too high, it would be 
 thirty millions ; so that thirty millions would be paid to the English 
 people. 
 
 Now we come to the ground rents. These present even greater 
 
 returned at something between 69 and 70 millions for each of the four years 1877.8 to 18S0 r 
 but the total was reduced by about a million in each of the two latter vears ovvin-^ to reoav' 
 ments and altowances on account of agricultural depression ' °
 
 39 
 
 difficulty. The value ot houses, according to the returns I 
 have just referred to, in iS8o or 1881* was 115 millions 
 in the United Kingdom. There, you see, you get land and 
 houses together — we have no separate record of ground rents — 
 the ground rents are hidden away under the rent of houses. The 
 question, therefore, is, have we any data for forming a fair and 
 just estimate ? I do not know that we have ; but one thing I will 
 point out, and that is this — that the ground rents of London are 
 infinitely greater in proportion to the area of land than those 
 of any other place, owing to the reason I have spoken of. 
 Take a given piece of land in Bolton or Blackburn, and 
 take an equal piece of land in London, and you will find the difference 
 between the ground rents would be enormous. I believe that 
 many people have been dazzled and misled by the immense sums which 
 they know land would let for in the centre of this city ; they have 
 formed their estimate of the ground rents of the whole kingdom, that 
 is, upon the ground rents of an exceptional place. Still, the ground 
 rents of the whole kingdom would amount to a large sum. I put 
 them myself on some rough calculations" which I have made, but to 
 which I do not attach much value, at about 20 or 25 millions, 
 as a whole, out of the 115 millions. I know there is a great 
 difference of opinion about this, and I do not want to rest my 
 case upon it. I found that a friend of mine, an economist of 
 reputation, had also estimated the ground rents at 25 millions. 
 To be safe, then, let us put the ground rents at 30 millions. 
 We now have 60 millions which would be paid over to the 
 treasury of the State if Mr. George's plan were to be adopted. 
 This sum of 60 millions is to be paid for the redemption of 
 the English people ! It seems to me simply incredible, that an old 
 and powerful nation like the English, with a long history of free 
 institutions, with men who have suffered for liberty, and who have 
 built up her greatness by devotion and patience — I say, it seems to 
 me incredible, that the members of that nation should think that they 
 can redeem themselves by seizing upon 60 millions of gold and 
 silver. Sixty millions is a large sum, I admit. It is not such a very 
 large sum when you compare it with the national income, which is 
 something about twelve hundred millions — still it is a large sum ; but 
 is it a sum for which you are going to risk your whole civilisation ? 
 
 * 115 millions in 1879-80, 117^ millions in 1880.S1.
 
 40 
 
 I do not deny that there may be cases in which it may be 
 justifiable to confiscate property. Such cases have arisen in the history 
 of a great nation. No compensation, as Mr. George tells us, was given 
 to Southern slaveowners for their slaves after the great war ; but I 
 am told by the Americans that tliey would have had compensation 
 if it had not been for the war. Again, I find instances of confisca- 
 tion in England and our own Colonics, and, I think, justifiable 
 confiscation. For example, the Colony of Victoria in Australia was, 
 until the gold discoveries of 1 850-1, not a rich colony at all, and 
 was inhabited by a sparse population, largely composed of great 
 graziers. These men held vast tracts of land from the Government 
 by lease, with the right of pre-emption, that is, of buying at a nominal 
 price. Then came the gold discoveries. The gold discoveries, which 
 brought thousands of men from every country in the world, added 
 enormously to the wealth and population of the country, and gave an 
 immense increase to the value of the land. The squatters proposed 
 to exercise their right of pre-emption at a nominal price. If they 
 had done so at that time they would immediately, being very 
 few, have had the whole of the colony in their hands, and so the 
 Colonial Government said " No," and it simply wiped out those 
 rights without compensation, andthe English Government at home rati- 
 fied that action. AVell, I think that that was justifiable; but do remember 
 of what nation you are speaking in the case of England. It is not a 
 nation that has been ground down for ages. It has had its wrongs and 
 has suffered, I admit ; you know that as well as I do ; but you knov/ 
 also, that the way we have dealt with those wrongs and sufferings 
 has not been by violent and spasmodic attempts at confiscation, 
 producing a war between classes, but it has been by slow and patient 
 endeavours to do right, by endeavouring to win one class to support 
 another class, and to weld the nation into a compact whole. I 
 admit that rent ought to be taxed ; but you have no right — well, it is 
 superfluous to talk about right — I say that it is highly inexpedient it^ 
 the interests of this community that the proposal simply to con- 
 fiscate rent should be entertained for a moment. 
 
 I have said that I would tell you how you should deal with the 
 taxing of rent. I shall speak on the subject a little later on, when I 
 come to discuss social reforms, and to show you where to get money 
 to carry them out. Before dealing with that point, I wish to ask, 
 having shown you that rent has not lowered profits and wages as a 
 whole (always remember the exceptions), what has lowered wages in
 
 41 
 
 England ? or rather, what has prevented wages from rising as much 
 as we should have expected them to do, considering the enormous 
 and admitted increase in our wealth ? I have made, again, investiga- 
 tions about the rise in money wages, and the increase in the cost ol 
 living in this country, and I find that in certain trades (I speak here 
 largely upon the evidence of workmen themselves : I have not gone 
 by statistics much), in certain trades wages have risen. For instance, 
 I believe they have risen very largely (I am now, of course, speaking 
 of money wages) in the boot and hosiery trades in Leicester. They 
 have risen, again, in the copper works of South Wales ; they have risen, 
 as you all know, in the building trades, but they have remained station- 
 ary in some of the leading trades in which we should have expected 
 them to rise most. They have risen not at all, or only a little, in the 
 great engineering trades, for example, and many workmen in 
 Lancashire not only have not gained a rise in wages, but have 
 positively suffered — that is, workmen who were earning high wages in 
 factories have been displaced by machinery, and have had to work for 
 lower wages in those factories or in the mines. The whole question 
 of the rise of money wages is an extremely difficult one ; but I may 
 here point out, that about the year 1874, and he repeated the state- 
 ments in his book. Professor Fawcett, after reading Mr. Brassey's 
 book upon Work and Wages, expressed his astonishment that wages in 
 England had risen so little since Free-trade. He said — " It had been 
 my impression that the workman had largely gained ; and I find that 
 the workman has gained but little." He based that statement upon 
 statistics supplied by Mr. Brassey. Now, the point which we have got to 
 find out is this — Why wages did not rise more. You remember that the 
 old political economists told us that there was a physical limit to the 
 rise in wages, and I have shown you how that view arose. But we 
 now know, first of all, that the only physical limit at the present ti.ne 
 in a country like England is the whole of the net produce of industry; 
 that is, the whole of the net produce which is the joint result of labour 
 and enterprise. There is the physical limit; and as that net produce 
 is very large, we need not consider that physical limit of much 
 importance. Again, we admit that there is no limit in the amount of 
 previously stored-up wealth. That was an idea that the economists 
 had at one time, but it has been abandoned. No one supposes that 
 labourers in the boot trade in London, or in the cotton trade in 
 Lancashire, are prevented from getting higher wages, simply because, 
 at any given moment, there is only a limited quantity of wealth stored
 
 42 
 
 up for ready use. We know very well, of course, that the great 
 mass of things are not stored up ready for use. They are produced 
 when there is a demand for them. If, for instance, the bootmakers of 
 Leicester get higher wages, what happens is, that they begin to spend 
 their money in all the shops in Leicester, and then the trades in 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire become busy, and more coats and hats and 
 other articles of use are made ; so .there is no limit, we find 
 agam, to a rise of wages, m the previous accumulations of 
 capital. Where is the limit, then ? The limit is in the 
 will of the employer. The limit is not a physical one 
 but one which you may call a moral one. Now remember, if 
 you please, that at present the employers expect what they call a 
 certain rate of profit — a certain rate of remuneration — for their enter- 
 prise. The question is, can you — I do not ask for the present, whether 
 it is just that they should have so much, but whether you can, by 
 contrivance, by Trades' Unions, by skilful watching of the turns of 
 trade, get part of that wealth from them ? We are not now going to 
 discuss whether employers ought to give more wages ; we are going 
 to discuss whether the workman can, under the present conditions, 
 obtain more wages from him by any means to which he may legiti- 
 mately resort in the present state of society. Now, it is true that the 
 employer is immensely more powerful than the workman. Even when 
 the workman is combined in powerful Trades' Unions, he yet finds it 
 very difficult to grapple with the employer on equal terms. If the 
 workmen, by a combination, succeed in obtaining a rise in wages, the 
 employer can, if he likes, dismiss a certain number of workmen ; he 
 can, if he likes, also introduce machinery. I have known instances 
 where a strike for a rise of wages has taken place, and the only 
 result has been that the machine has taken the place of the labourer. 
 This is the employer's power. Mind, we are not condemning the 
 employers; remember that workmen would probably do just the same if 
 they were in their position; in fact, I don't find in my own experience 
 that workmen are better employers than others. I am sorry to say 
 that I find that co-operators — I]do not wish to throw any slur upon the 
 co-operative cause — but co-operators who are workmen, and who are 
 often in the position of employers, have sometimes forgotten the high 
 ideal with which they have started, and have not treated their workmen 
 any better than the capitalist employer whom they intend to 
 displace. I say, therefore, that we are not now discussing 
 whether an employer ought to do a certain thing, or whether he is
 
 43 
 
 wrong or right because he does a certain thing. We are simply 
 asking whether you, by using legal means, can obtain a rise in wages 
 from him; and my answer is this— that it is extremely difficult, 
 simply because the employer, as I believe, can either, if he likes, 
 introduce machinery, or, if he likes, reduce his expenditure on wages. 
 Now, one of the old doctrines of the economists was, that the 
 employers had a fixed sum to spend on wages, and people have 
 laughed at it. Of course, it is untrue as a general principle, but 
 recent investigations into the condition of the agricultural labourer 
 have certainly led me to suppose that there are classes of employers, 
 probably the most ignorant and stupid, who, having spent habitually 
 a certain sum on labour, when wages rise, rather than employ the 
 same number as before at the higher wage, will dismiss a certain 
 number of the labourers, and spend only the same sum as before. 
 
 You see, therefore, the difficulties. Now, what have been the 
 remedies which the workmen have relied upon? The workmen, in the 
 first place, have relied upon Trades' Unions; and I believe myself— (and 
 I think this, again, is a thing which London workmen do not realise as 
 fully as workmen in the North, in the iron and coal trades)— that the 
 great Trades' Unions, when properly organised, and supported as they 
 will be more and more by public opinion, the public opinion of the 
 whole of the people, will be able, not by coercion mainly, but by 
 forcing the employer to respect them, and slowly to conceive of the 
 idea of introducing equity into his dealings with workmen — I do 
 think that the Trades' Unions may enforce a rise in wages in the 
 future. As a matter of fact, the Trades' Unions have so far succeeded 
 that in the North of England, and in othei parts of the country, boards, 
 which are not known in London, called Boards of Conciliation, have 
 been formed, upon which employers and workmen sit, at the same 
 table, to discuss the question of wages. These boards I think myself 
 are of very great significance, because they could not have been 
 formed unless the employer had recognised the political equality and 
 independence of the woikmen ; and mark what that means. The 
 workman, as Mr. Mundella told the Trades' Unions Commission in 
 1867, had in the past been treated by the employer as a serf and a 
 dependent ; when he obtained the franchise and got political rights, 
 the employer was forced to respect him, and admit him to an equal 
 footing. And — this is the point — directly you get the idea of 
 citizenship extended from one class to the whole people, it is 
 inevitable that in time the relations between classes must chan 

 
 44 
 
 I do not mean to say that they will change at once, but 
 I do know that these considerations slowly begin to act upon the 
 employers, and that if we, the English nation, are only true to our- 
 selves, and to our ideals, we shall be able to coerce the employers, 
 not by physical force, but by a far more powerful and subtle force — 
 public opinion — into yielding to the workmen the wages which they 
 deserve. The employers, as I say, may be worked upon in that 
 way ; but there is also one other method of dealing with them, that 
 is, by international co-operations of workmen. There was a society 
 formed some years ago, of which Professor Beesly knows the 
 history — for he was concerned in it — which was called the Inter- 
 national, and was much misunderstood in England ; but it had for 
 its main object a thoroughly legitimate thing, viz. — the combination, 
 the peaceful combination, peaceful and intelligent combination of 
 workmen in different countries in Europe, to prevent employers 
 reducing wages by importing foreign labour. Now that 
 society broke down, and it is important to remember why. It 
 broke down because workmen were not yet fit to co-operate ; that 
 is, they were not yet fit for international co-operation. I say that the 
 workmen were not fit at that time to carry out this work, because it 
 involved co-operation between men of different races, different 
 languages, different ideas and prejudices. But the history of that 
 society teaches us one great lesson, which is this ; that the thing can 
 be done, and probably will be done in time. But remember that 
 the material change you want can only be got by the development of 
 higher moral qualities. That is a thing which I am afraid a great 
 many of you do not understand. You do not realise what a subtle 
 and delicate and complicated thing civilisation is. Civilisation has 
 not been built up by brute force, as I told you before ; it has been 
 built up by patience, by self-sacrifice, by care, by suffering ; and you 
 cannot, and you will not, obtain any great material change for the 
 better unless you are also prepared to make an effort to advance in 
 your moral ideas. 
 
 So far, then, I have dealt with the question of a rise in wages as 
 between employers and workmen. Is there any remedy which can 
 be offered besides ? I think you will find, if you study the question, 
 that there is one remedy which has been much spoken of and dealt 
 with in Lancashire and Yorkshire, but, again, is little understood in 
 London. That is the difficulty of dealing with you London work- 
 men : you lead a peculiar life ; you have a sort of civilisation of your
 
 45 
 
 own ; you have a history of your own ; and I, talking about the 
 workman's Hfe in Lancashire and Yorkshire, have sometimes been 
 surprised to find that workmen in London are as ignorant of 
 it as if — well, as if they belonged to the middle class. Now, 
 what can co-operation, which is a great name in Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire, and of which Mr. Lloyd Jones has been the champion 
 for so long a time — what can co-operation do for the workmen 
 to obtain a rise in wages? There has been a great difficulty 
 in the way of co-operation, for that, again, has implied higher moral 
 qualities ; and not only that, but it has implied great energy and 
 power of mind ; for industry, as it is carried on in modern times, is, 
 as we know, carried on upon a large scale, and a man requires to be, in 
 a rough way, a kind of genius in order to grapple with trade, to watch 
 markets, to know what shall be made, where to buy his materials, and 
 when to close his factories. Now, workmen have never been able 
 to succeed up to the present time on a large scale (I think I 
 am right) in co-operative production ; but I do believe that 
 co-operative production can succeed, and I wish co-operators would 
 turn their attention to one thing. I have said that most of the trades 
 in England are carried on on a large scale, but there are some trades 
 which are carried on on a small scale. There is the nail trade, for 
 instance, in South Staffordshire. We have been horrified by the 
 revelations of the state of things in the nail trade. Now, the nail 
 trade is a trade, so far as I understand it, not requiring much capital, 
 and which couldbegrappled withby co-operators. Mightlsuggest to the 
 co-operators that they should turn their immediate attention to those 
 trades in which small capital is required, and see whether they cannot 
 redeem the workers in them — for the condition of the workers in the 
 nail trade is infamous. 
 
 There are many other points with regard to co-operation 
 which I might deal with, but I have no more time. I 
 must turn now to agriculture. I have said that I would deal 
 with the taxing of rent and deal with agricultural wages. What 
 can be done to raise the wages and improve the condition of 
 the agricultural labourer ? We know that the historical policy of the 
 Liberal party with regard to land has been what has been called 
 free trade in land, but that we know in the last year or so has 
 fallen slightly into contempt amongst them. Men thought great 
 things of it at one time, but they now see this ; that if you had 
 free trade in land you would only get larger estates than before, and
 
 46 
 
 what we want to do is to prevent 2,238 men owning half of the 
 United Kingdom. That is an appalling fact, and it has im- 
 pressed not only people who propose the nationalisation of the 
 land, but people who do not propose such a revolutionary measure, 
 as they would call it, but who propose other measures which, they 
 think, would prevent a catastrophe. These people have 
 proposed peasant proprietorship. They have said, and men on 
 all hands begin to admit (even those who would alter things 
 as little as possible), that there is a great danger to 
 society in the existence of such a small number of land- 
 owners in the midst of a vast population like this. Now, let us 
 consider first the old Liberal remedy. Is it of no use ? I have 
 taken immense pains to study this question. It is one of those 
 questions in w^hich historical investigations are of primary importance ; 
 until you know, that is, the reasons which have led to the accumula- 
 tions of land in the past, you cannot faithfully say what the effect of 
 free trade in land will be. I cannot even summarise my conclusions 
 to-night, but I will tell you my opinion, and you may take it for what 
 it is worth. My own opinion is, that the land has in England been 
 got together into a few hands mainly for political and social causes, 
 for I find that the dispersion of small freeholders in England follows 
 very closely the growing supremacy in politics of the great landowners. 
 From 1 688 to 1800 the small freeholders went, and during that time the 
 great landowners were on the throne. Now, the question is. If we had 
 free trade in land, would those political motives disappear ? No. 
 I think if you had free trade in land alone, and left free trade in 
 land to do the work alone, you would not get a dispersion of land. 
 But I think if you accompanied such measures by sweeping and vital 
 and necessary political changes — if you reform the House of Lords, 
 which you will have to do ; if you establish County Boards — 
 that is, if you place the government of the English counties in the 
 handsofthe labourers and inhabitants of the counties; if you abolish the 
 Game Laws ; if you remove all those other privileges which at present 
 induce men to buy land, I think it is extremely probable, though we 
 have men of enormous wealth in England whose passion now is to 
 buy land, that in future those men might be content as, on the whole, 
 men are content in America, to buy just enough land for residence, 
 and not to accumulate estates in county after county for the sake of 
 political influence. I know that there are large estates in America ; 
 but I find that those, as a rule, are held for speculation — that is, the
 
 47 
 
 men who hold them are not rich men, wielding vast political power — 
 they are men who are called land-poor — they are poor men who are 
 impoverishing themselves in order to enrich themselves by the sale of 
 the land in the future. I cannot argue this out now — I may at some 
 future time — but there is one point I want to insist upon. 
 The question is this : If free trade in land gives you a 
 greater distribution of land, will it improve the condition 
 (and that is the real point) of the agricultural labourers ? 
 Now, in the first place, I would point out that, of course, free trade 
 in land would be accompanied by improved agriculture. Men 
 having absolute ownership of land (and that is included under the 
 term free trade) would put capital into the land, would spend more 
 money in wages ; and in this manner the labourer's position would 
 improve. It is indeed pointed out in answer to that, that where agri- 
 culture is at its best, the condition of the labourer is often at its worst. 
 That I admit is sometimes the case ; and it is not merely necessary to 
 get efficient production, you must look into the matter, and see whether 
 there is not something wrong with the methods of distribution in 
 agriculture. Now, the peasant-proprietorship scheme is meant really to 
 meet this difficulty. You mean, those of you who propose it, to give 
 to the labourer the land in order that he may have his own small 
 plot of ground, may become prosperous, perhaps, and certainly a 
 Conservative. Now, the agricultural labourer, I imagine, is 
 not yet fit to become a peasant proprietor, and what is more, if he 
 were, I should say, that it was a highly dangerous and foolish experi- 
 ment to make at the present time. When you are proposing to intro- 
 duce great economic changes, you do not sit down in your study and 
 manufacture a scheme. You carefully watch the course of things, 
 you carefully observe the movements of population and of wealth and 
 the habits and ideas of the people, and you try and forecast the 
 results of your measure. Now, I maintain, first of all, that economic 
 conditions in England are far too uncertain to admit of this proposal 
 being adopted at present in any but the most tentative way. 
 The most experienced observers say that, apart altogether 
 from the seasons, the future of agriculture is an extremely uncertain 
 one ; and if it is so, it is quite clear that by putting the labourer on 
 the land you may simply involve him in ruin. You have to wait, and 
 this is what I especially want to impress upon you, you have to wait 
 to deal with this thing until the economic conditions are more 
 settled. There is a great disturbing fact in the West of America —
 
 48 
 
 the great farms of the West of America ; but these farms, I think 
 from what I observe, are beginning to disappear. The soil in 
 many cases is getting so exhausted, that it does not pay to cultivate 
 in the present wasteful manner, and therefore the extraordinary 
 low price of corn which has prevailed in the English markets 
 may not prevail in future. Still, I say, that it is uncertain, and 
 while it is uncertain, the transference of the land to the peasantry 
 at the present time might prove a destructive gift to the peasants. 
 Next, I think I can point out that it is quite possible for you to 
 effect a decided improvement in the condition of the agricultural 
 labourer without trying any such measure. What I think the Liberal 
 Party might try is this. They might say, first of all, that all the 
 commons and all the waste lands in the kingdom, instead of, as at 
 present, being under an Enclosure, or rather, it has now become a 
 Land Commission, should be really placed in the hands of either 
 the Village Commune, as in France, or of the County Boards, 
 which are now to be established. These waste lands are, of course, 
 very much smaller than they used to be, but they are still of vast 
 importance, and if you can place them in the hands of the County 
 Boards, you would then prevent, at any rate, the labourers suffering 
 in the future from the enclosure of the remnants of their commons, 
 and, in the next place, you would enable land to be let to labourers 
 where experiments could be made as to the possibility of peasant 
 proprietorship. That, I think, is a suggestion thaf might be con- 
 sidered. But further, I think there is this one thing necessary. It 
 is necessary that labourers in the country, as well as in the towns, 
 should be able to buy their houses, and, if they wish, to get a plot of 
 land as well. I do think it is reasonable to demand that the 
 labourer should have a right to buy a house if he wishes, and that he 
 should have also the right either to rent or to buy, say, a half acre 
 of land, the half acre which Mr. Joseph Arch demands. That seems 
 to me a reasonable proposal, and if you do that, you will then, to a 
 certain extent— to a large extent, secure the independence of the 
 agricultural labourer, for it is no good conferring a vote upon him 
 unless you do secure his independence. 
 
 Next, we come to the taxation of rent. What can be said for 
 the taxation of rent ? Mill's original proposal, which was made by 
 him in 1870 in consultation with some of the London workmen 
 (who were as eager about the nationalisation of the land then as you 
 are now), was that what he called the unearned increment
 
 40 
 
 should be taken, but that it should not be taken as Mr. George 
 proposes, without compensation, but should be taken after a 
 time, after the land had been valued. Now, I do not think that 
 that is a very practicable thing. But what could be done is this. 
 I think you could tax land more than you do by the present income 
 tax if you increased the tax on the income of capitalists at the same 
 time. You may say that is a very extraordinary proposal, but in 
 thinking it over I think that it is just. All property in this kingdom 
 is held subject to taxation. What really is unjust is, that 
 you should suddenly put a great burden upon one class 
 alone. In 1842, Sir Robert Peel, in order to carry out 
 some great financial changes — in order, in fact, to inaugurate 
 the era of Free-trade — imposed the income tax, which was, 
 practically, of course, a deduction from the income of the propertied 
 classes ; and as such it affected the selUng value of shares. 
 Now, no one disputed it to be his right to do that ; in fact, it was 
 admitted to be his right, and I think if you imposed a tax, not at first 
 a heavy one, perhaps a graduated tax, according to the size of estates 
 and the size of incomes, you would go some steps towards meeting the 
 difficulty. These questions, as I said, are difficult— they are not 
 simple — and you cannot decide upon them at once by a " cheer," or a 
 "no," or a "yes." They have to be decided upon by careful 
 working, and by devotion to the people. I say if this were done, I 
 think you might succeed in getting a large revenue in time from 
 the lands and from the capitalists, through the taking of 
 which they would not suffer, and which would enable us to carry out 
 those great reforms which we desire. There is one thing to be 
 remembered. I do not think the rich would object to taxation 
 very much if they thought that the money which was taken 
 would really be of vast use to the people. The rich in the past have 
 not shown themselves unequal to great emergencies. An aristocracy 
 like ours cannot be wholly base, because it has ruled so long. It is a 
 far better aristocracy, for example, than the aristocracy of France, 
 because it has been a ruling aristocracy ; and although a man may be 
 debased by ruling a people, he may also be elevated by it ; the sense 
 of responsibility may elevate him and strengthen his character, and he 
 may be open to appeals to his sense of justice Now, I do think that 
 the rich in this country, both landowners and others, are open to 
 such appeals, and I think if we could make that appeal, and make it 
 effectively, we might get such a measure of taxation carried out as
 
 would enable us to carry out also, and realise, the reforms that we 
 want. 
 
 What are those reforms ?* We come now to the last part of all, and 
 I shall indicate at once the practical reforms which I suggest, I am 
 not going to dogmatise upon them. I am only going to indicate the 
 principles upon which they can be carried out. Let me again tell 
 you one thing. If you want to propose a scheme of practical reform, 
 do not sit down and frame an artificial one, but patiently look into 
 the history of the country. Look, for instance, into the administra- 
 tive changes that have been going on during the last 50 or 60 years, 
 andsee whether you can get any hints for future guidance. I believe you 
 can. I believe we might havelearntgreatlessons which wehave neglected. 
 First of all, take the question of your dwellings ; that is a primary one, 
 and of vast importance. It has two aspects — first, as a question of 
 rent, and secondly, as a question of health and decent comfort. It is 
 notorious that the sanitary conditions of dwellings in great towns is a 
 disgrace ; and we find that we have boards who are nominally 
 responsible for the inspection of these places, and yet nothing is 
 done. If you turn to the history of factory legislation, you 
 will find that, first of all, we passed Acts which we thought 
 would be effective, but they were not eifective, and why?- 
 Simply because we did not appoint anyone to enforce them. It was 
 not till 1833 that we learnt, that in addition to passing an Act 
 requiring certain things to be done, we had also to appoint inspectors, 
 who should insist that those things should be done. Now, between 
 1833 and 1859, an immense change was wrought for the better in the 
 condition of the factory people. Diseases which had been peculiar 
 to them slowly disappeared, simply because the law was enforced, 
 although I admit it was not enforced with sufficient vigilance. You 
 may answer me : *' But we have sanitary inspectors, we have medical 
 officers." Well, you have ; but then there are two points you must 
 look to. First, these tnen are often dependent upon the local 
 bodies for their practice and position, and therefore they will not 
 enforce the laws against members of those bodies whose enmity 
 might injure them ; and in the next place, unless some pressure is 
 put upon them, you will get nothing done, because they are often 
 apathetic or too busy with their own practice. Now, have we 
 anything that can guide us in this matter ? Yes we have. 
 
 * When Mr. Toynbee had reached this point the lateness of the hour and his own extreme 
 exhaustion compelled him greatly to curtail the remaining portions of his address.
 
 51 
 
 Again turn to existing facts. The English people spend some- 
 thing like ^16,000 a 3'ear in simply enforcing laws to 
 protect animals from cruelty. What we do for animals cannot 
 we do for human beings? Cannot we direct some of this 
 eager, energetic, and restless philanthropy— much of it is good, I 
 admit— but cannot some of it be directed to more profitable use ? 
 I do not mean that the protection of animals is not a profitable use, 
 but I do s-ay that philanthrophy is wasted largely. Why cannot you form 
 Vigilance Committees, which shall be composed of working men and 
 the members of the middle class alike, who would watch the enforce- 
 ment of these laws, and insist upon their being enforced ; who would 
 keep the sanitary inspectors and medical officers to their work, so 
 that such abuses as we read of constantly in the London papers 
 could not exist any longer ? That is one of those practical reforms 
 to which I would desire that you should turn your attention. 
 Land nationalisation is a great thing, but after all, these 
 little things are greater in reality, because they imply the high 
 qualities of patience and combmation, to which, more than to 
 sweeping laws, we must look for improvement. 
 
 There are many other points I should wish to dwell upon and 
 submit for the consideration of those who think about these things. 
 I have not yet dealt with the question of rent of houses. I myself 
 think it would be possible for the municipality of London, which 
 has practically done it indirectly already, to buy up land, and let 
 it to building companies under certain conditions, companies which 
 should be limited, as the gas companies are and the water companies 
 ought to be, to a certain rate of profit, so that rents could not be 
 raised beyond a certain point, and the workmen could be decently 
 housed in the centre of London at a moderate price ; but there 
 are immense difficulties in connection with the scheme. I do not 
 want you to rush away with the impression that the scheme is feasible 
 without the most careful study and thought. You must ask 
 people like Miss Hill, who have worked all their lives amongst 
 the poor, and considered the question of rents — you must 
 ask such people what they think about it, and you m.ust remem- 
 ber that if you Londoners want to settle these questions, you 
 can settle them, but only by co-operating with those who have 
 time to think. This question of dwellings, as I know, is of primary 
 importance, and can probably be settled in some such way as I 
 indicate. But, mind, you may settle it in the wrong way. We have
 
 52 
 
 done a great many wrong and mischievous things in the past by care- 
 lessness, and it is of vast importance that you should act circumspectly 
 And, finally, with regard to the class of measures I have been speaking 
 of, I think you ought to take care that the great suburbs growing up 
 round London at the present time are not mere blocks of brick and 
 mortar, as they are at present, without a single open space in which you 
 can breathe. You ought to take care that powers are given to local 
 bodies— and you should combine and see that they use them — to 
 prevent this being done, and to secure open spaces. Let the Govern- 
 ment give compulsory powers to municipalities to buy up open tracts 
 of land wherever they like. You ought not to have to go back to 
 Parliament every time for power to buy up vacant land. When you 
 want it, you ought to be able to command it yourselves. 
 
 Then there is the question of insurance, and the question of 
 insurance is a very great one. There is one important consideration 
 about it, namely, that the middle classes, who have talked to us 
 mostly about this subject, have overlooked the tact that thrift may often 
 brutalise a man as much as drink. I mean this, that a man may 
 make huge efforts to save and to raise himself, and so become narrow 
 and selfish and careless of his fellow-men. Now we want men to 
 raise themselves, without brutalising themselves, and if (I throw this 
 out as a suggestion) you can take into account the great PMendly 
 Societies, which we are justly proud of, which have something like 
 ;^ 12,000,000 capital, and to which large masses of the workpeople 
 belong — if the Government could co-operate with them, and adopt 
 some such principle as is adopted with regard to education, by making 
 grants-in-aid under carefully-considered conditions of State audit, and 
 the like, I think it might be possible for the great Friendly Societies in 
 time slowly to reduce their rates of payment, slowly to enable more 
 men to insure, and so in time to diminish pauperism — without, mind, 
 invoking State aid on a large and monstrous scale, without inter- 
 fering with those great self-helping voluntary institutions which have 
 built up this nation. But I only throw that out as a suggestion. I 
 only want to show the principle upon which we should work. 
 
 And last of all, there is the question of recreation. I suppose 
 what impresses us most in London is the dreariness of life. I do 
 think that the question of recreation is a question for the great land- 
 lords in London to consider Will not one of these great men ransom 
 his soul by building a great building, where people may come out of 
 the dreary streets and rest, and listen, it they like, to music such as
 
 53 
 
 Milton listened to? Why should not they get, as we do, a sense of 
 the infinite — for a great building is really the infinite made visible — 
 why should not they get a sense of the infinite from great buildings ? 
 Why should not they, also, share in our pleasures ? If these great 
 men would do this thing, it would be worth their while in many ways. 
 I do think that that is a thing which the rich, at any rate, might 
 think of. 
 
 I have said a great deal about reforms, but the question is — How 
 can you get them carried ? I shall give you one final word about 
 that. The way we have got reforms carried in England is not by, as 
 a rule, class war, but by class alliance. It has been that the working 
 classes have found friends amongst the best of the middle classes and 
 the rich, and they together have brought such a pressure to bear upon 
 the rest of the rich that the thing has been done. I know the rich 
 are afraid, many of them. I am speaking to an audience of two 
 classes, and I will speak to both. I know the rich are afraid, many of 
 them, of democracy; but they need not fear democracy, for 
 democracy has been able to do much for the rich without their 
 knowing it. It has cleared them of much of the selfishness which 
 necessarily attaches to irresponsible wealth. It has opened their 
 minds to the wants and wishes of the people. It is violent, I 
 know; it is stormy at times, but it is only violent and stormy like 
 a sea — it cleanses the shores of human life. 
 
 Now 1 turn to the workmen. Some of you have been impatient 
 here this evening ; you have shouted for revolution ; but I 
 do not think that that is the feeling of the great mass of 
 the people. What I do feel is, that they are justified, in a way, 
 in looking with dislike and suspicion on those who are better to do. 
 We — the middle classes, I mean, not merely the very rich — we 
 have neglected you; instead of justice we have offered you charity, 
 and instead of sympathy, we have offered you hard and unreal advice ; 
 but I think we are changing. If you would only believe it and trust 
 us, I think that many of us would spend our lives in your service. 
 You have — I say it clearly and advisedly--you have to forgive us, for 
 we have wronged you ; we have sinned against you grievously— not 
 knowingly always, but still we have sinned, and let us confess it ; but 
 if you will forgive us — nay, whether you will forgive us or not— we will 
 serve you, we will devote our lives to your service, and we cannot do 
 more. It is not that we care about public life, for what is public life 
 but the miserable, arid waste of barren controversies and personal
 
 54 
 
 jealousies, and grievous loss of time ? Who would live in public life 
 if he could help it ? But we students, we would help you if we could. 
 We are willing to give up something much dearer than fame and social 
 position. We are willing to give up the life we care for, the life with 
 books and with those we love. We will do this, and only ask 
 you to remember one thing in return. We will ask you 
 to remember this — that we work for you in the hope and 
 trust that if you get material civilisation, if you get a better life, 
 if you have opened up to you the possibility of a better life, you 
 will really lead a better life. If, that is, you get material civilisation, 
 remember that it is not an end in itself. Remember that man, like trees 
 and plants, has his roots in the earth ; but like the trees and the plants, 
 he must grow upwards towards the heavens. If you will only keep 
 to the love of your fellow-men and to great ideals, then we shall find 
 our happiness in helping you, but if you do not, then our reparation 
 will be in vain. 
 
 And, last of all, you must remember that if you will join hands with 
 us, we do intend that we shall as a nation accomplish great things, and 
 seek to redeem what is evil in our past. We shall try to rule 
 India justly. We shall try to obtain forgiveness from Ireland. 
 We shall try to prevent subject races being oppressed by our com- 
 merce, and we shall try to spread to every clime the love of man. 
 
 IJBRARY 
 
 UNIVEKriTTY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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