UC-NRLF 
 
 MD MD2 
 
 OGRESS 
 
 J.F.WILBER 
 
JESSICA B. PtIXOTTO 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 AND ITS ENEMIES 
 
 SHOWING THE FALLACY OF THE SINGLE- 
 TAX THEORY, AND SOME OTHER 
 ENEMIES OF PROGRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN FREMONT WILBER 
 
 How many times shall I adjure thee that thou speak 
 unto me nothing but the truth in the name of Jehovah. 
 
 II Chronicles xvii, 15 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JOHN FREMONT WILBER, 
 
 SOMERVILLE, MASS., U. S. A., 
 
 1918. 
 
COPYRIGHTED BY 
 
 JOHN FREMONT WILBER, 
 
 1918. 
 
DEDICATED TO THE ONE WHO 
 WILL TAKE THE MOST INTEREST 
 IN ITS SUCCESS OR ITS FAILURE, 
 
 MY WIFE, 
 ELIZABETH J. WILDER. 
 
 388150 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I A Lie Which is Part a truth. . 1 
 
 II Personal Enemies 6 
 
 III Natural Enemies 10 
 
 IV Artificial Enemies 13 
 
 V Back to the Land 17 
 
 VI Is It a Remedy 23 
 
 VII The Proportional Tax. ... 30 
 
 VIII Danger of Untaxed Voter. . 36 
 
 K Bases of Taxation 45 
 
 X Effect of Taxes on Production. 51 
 
 XI Land 54 
 
 XII Labor 60 
 
 XIII Capital 66 
 
 XIV The Functions of Capital. . . 75 
 
 XV Rent, and Its Law 83 
 
 XVI Interest 87 
 
 XVII Wages 94 
 
 XVIII Conclusion 101 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Becoming convinced that the single-tax was a 
 fallacy, I sent a challenge to the president of the 
 Massachusetts Single Tax League, Inc., to meet 
 him or any of his fraternity in joint debate on 
 the single-tax theory. 
 
 Although the president of that society, who 
 is a college professor, had been giving addresses 
 in at least a dozen different places in Massachu- 
 setts he never answered the challenge, but I did 
 receive a letter from the secretary of the Single 
 Tax League inquiring as to my beliefs and 
 whether I stood for the status quo. 
 
 It is not my idea of a joint debate to tell my 
 opponent the line of attack or defense in ad- 
 vance, but I wrote and told him that, while I was 
 an independent thinker, I stood for the status quo 
 in preference to the single tax. 
 
 I received from the secretary the following 
 letter: 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS SINGLE TAX LEAGUE, INC., ) 
 BOSTON, MASS, April 30, 1917. j 
 Mr. J. F. Wilber 
 
 Dear Sir Thanks for your letter. I think we 
 had better not attempt a debate. I am delighted 
 to thrash out the pros and cons of the single 
 tax with any one who condems the present con- 
 dition of affairs and has what he thinks a better 
 
ii PREFACE 
 
 scheme to propose, whether he may call himself 
 Socialist, Anarchist, or by any other name. But 
 if you stand for the status quo, with all its re- 
 sults in Rockefellers and Astors, and East Side 
 slums, then I assure you no member of this 
 league could find any common ground with you 
 on which to start a debate. All the same I 
 shall be glad to see you if you can call some 
 day. Yours truly, ALEX. MACKENDRICK. 
 
 Debate, according to Worcester, is "a conten- 
 tion of argument; a disputation; a controversy; 
 an altercation ; a quarrel ; a contest." 
 
 How can there be any "contest, or strife, or 
 quarrel" between those who think alike? 
 
 The single-taxer believes in the public owner- 
 ship of the land, and the Socialist believes in the 
 public ownership of the land (and nearly every- 
 thing else), how then could there be any dispute 
 between these, or either of them? 
 
 What they would have, should they meet, 
 would be a "love-feast." No doubt the single- 
 tax secretary and president would both be 
 "delighted to thrash out the pros and cons," 
 chiefly the pros, with such opponents, especially 
 if they could camouflage the public into think- 
 ing it a real contest and thereby gain a little 
 notoriety. 
 
 The gentleman "would be glad to see" me 
 "if" I "would call." 
 
 Who ever heard of a duellist making an after- 
 noon "call" on his enemy? I wonder would he 
 serve pink tea? 
 
 I look upon the single-taxers as men who ad- 
 
PREFACE iii 
 
 yocate robbery of private property (by the pub- 
 lic), like the Bolsheviki of Russia, and I believe 
 the extermination of the teachers of that doc- 
 trine would be a blessing to mankind. 
 
 The only reason I sent a challenge to debate 
 was because the other kind of a challenge is not 
 permissible under our laws, and I try to be a 
 law-abiding citizen. 
 
 The rattlesnake sounds a warning before he 
 strikes and thus gives an opportunity to defend 
 one's self. It is evident the single-taxers prefer 
 the method used by the German submarine of 
 striking without warning. 
 
 Because of the declination of the beforemen- 
 tioned officers of the Massachusetts Single Tax 
 League, Inc., to meet in joint debate, I decided 
 to put some of my thoughts in type, hoping and 
 expecting thereby to reach more people than I 
 would by any joint debate. 
 
 John Fremont Wilber. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 A LIE WHICH Is PART A TRUTH. 
 
 That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies ; 
 That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright 
 But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 If there were no "single taxers" this thesis 
 would not have been written. A "single taxer" 
 does not believe in private ownership of land 
 and the "single tax" is a scheme to abolish such 
 ownership. Their chief writer says: "Histori- 
 cally, as ethically, private property in land is 
 robbery." 
 
 The "single tax" does not mean simply the 
 avoidance of double taxation, but it means the 
 abolition of all taxes except one, and that one to 
 be on the land, or, as they express it, "a tax on 
 land values," and they wish to increase that tax 
 until it takes the full value of the land. 
 
 It has been said that in a progressive civiliza- 
 tion "the rich grow richer and the poor grow 
 poorer." 
 
 "This fact," says Henry George, "the fact that 
 poverty and all its concomitants show themselves 
 in a community just as they develop into the 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 condition toward which material progress tends, 
 prove that social difficulties, existing wherever a 
 certain stage of progress has been reached, do 
 not arise from local circumstances, but are, in 
 some way or another, engendered by progress 
 itself." 
 
 "It is to the newer countries that is to the 
 countries where material progress is yet in its 
 earlier stages that laborers emigrate in search 
 of higher wages, and capital flows in search of 
 higher interest. It is in the older countries 
 that is to say, the countries where material prog- 
 ress has reached later stages that widespread 
 destitution is found in the midst of the greatest 
 abundance. Go into one of the new communi- 
 ties where Anglo-Saxon vigor is just beginning 
 the race of progress, where the machinery of 
 production and exchange is yet rude and ineffi- 
 cient ; where the increment of wealth is not yet 
 great enough to enable any class to live in ease 
 and luxury; where the best house is but a cabin 
 of logs, or a cloth and paper shanty, and the 
 richest man is forced to daily work and though 
 you will find an absence of wealth and all its 
 concomitants, you will find no beggars. There 
 is no luxury, but there is no destitution. No one 
 makes an easy living, nor a very good living ; 
 but every one can make a living, and no one 
 able and willing to work is oppressed by the fear 
 of want." 
 
 The foregoing is the lie which is part a truth. 
 
 In an advancing civilization the rich grow richer 
 
 that is true-^but that the poor grow poorer is 
 
 not true. Nor is it true that social difficulties (or 
 
A LIE WHICH Is PART A TRUTH 3 
 
 poverty) is engendered by progress itself. (It is 
 to be presumed that everybody will admit that 
 in a retrograde civilization the rich and the 
 middle-class grow poorer, and the poor are either 
 forced out of existence or driven to some other 
 community that is more progressive.) 
 
 We measure riches by a number of things. 
 One man owns a thousand acres of timber land, 
 another a gold mine, another a factory or a mill, 
 another has lots of gold or jewelry, yet all are 
 poor if they cannot get food. By what shall we 
 measure poverty? Is not poverty always to be 
 measured by the availability of food? Of what 
 value is gold to a Crusoe on a desert island? 
 
 A certain Eskimo tribe had their village on 
 the shore of a bay where the seals usually came 
 in the Fall and stayed until the ice went out of 
 the bay in the Spring, thus furnishing a supply 
 of food, which was easily obtained by fishing 
 through the ice. 
 
 But one winter the seals did not come into the 
 bay until late in January, and one-third of the 
 tribe died of starvation. 
 
 And yet, there was not one of those natives 
 but what had fur clothes and bedding that would 
 have sold for hundreds of dollars in New York 
 city. 
 
 Is not poverty measured by the availability of 
 food? 
 
 During the first year of the settlement at 
 Jamestown, Va., (in 1607, by 105 persons,) owing 
 to the scarcity and badness of provisions, one- 
 half (50 percent) of the colony died. 
 
 At this same Jamestown settlement, in 1610, 
 
4 PROGRESS 
 
 a most distressing famine prevailed, which was 
 known for many years afterward by the name of 
 "the starving time." So dreadful was its effect 
 that, in the space of six months the colonists 
 were reduced from nearly 500 to 60, (88 per cent 
 died). 
 
 In 1622 there was "another distressing famine" 
 at Jamestown ; and in 1624 of 9000 persons who 
 had been sent from England only 1800 remained 
 in the colony. 
 
 The first permanent settlement was com- 
 menced in New England by 101 Puritans, who 
 landed at Plymouth, Mass., Dec. 22, 1620. One 
 historian says: "Worn down with their long 
 voyage, excessive fatigue, the severity of the 
 weather, and the want of comfortable provisions 
 and habitations, they were, soon after their 
 arrival, visited with distressing sickness and, in 
 three months, reduced to about one-half of their 
 original number. The sickness was so general 
 that, at some times, there were only six or seven 
 well persons in the company." . . . "For 
 several years the whole property of the settlers 
 was held in common." 
 
 If holding land as public property, or in com- 
 mon, is such a good thing, why not apply it to 
 all other property? Why did these settlers 
 abandon it after several years trial? 
 
 In March, 1621, the Plymouth settlers learned 
 from Samoset, a friendly Indian, that not long 
 before a mortal pestilence had swept off almost 
 all the Indians in the vicinity. The historian 
 only gives a sentence to this decimation of the 
 Indians. How many times have these sparsely 
 
A LIE WHICH Is PART A TRUTH 5 
 
 settled sections been nearly or quite depopulated 
 and no mention of it made in history? 
 
 In the cases cited the land was practically free, 
 yet the people starved, they were so poor. They 
 had none of the earmarks of poverty, each family 
 owned its own home, though it was of logs, and 
 each one had clothes and guns and tools that 
 would have made them seem rich to the vaga- 
 bond of the city, and yet they (50 percent of 
 them) could not make a living and died of 
 starvation. No city poverty; no pestilence in 
 settled countries, where the land was owned 
 by private individuals, no famine in thickly 
 settled communities, ever demanded the toll of 
 life that has been demanded and paid by these 
 "new communities" where there are "no rich, 
 no luxuries, no beggars and no destitution." 
 
 Nor are these exceptional cases. The history 
 of the settlement of most countries find similar 
 examples. There were a number of attempted 
 settlements in this country where the would-be 
 settlers were finally obliged to take to their ships 
 and sail away because they could not get a 
 living, although the land was free. 
 
 The "single taxers" will tell you that in old 
 settlements destitution is caused by private own- 
 ership of land. What causes it in these new 
 countries where the land is free? 
 
CHAPTER H. 
 PERSONAL ENEMIES. 
 
 Woe unto the world because of occasions of stumbling ! for it 
 must needs be that the occasions come ; but woe to that man 
 through whom the occasion cometh ! Matthew xviii, 7. 
 
 All of those things which make for poverty 
 we shall class as enemies of progress. 
 
 Are "the ills that flesh is heir to" caused by 
 some one thing; or are the causes numerous? 
 
 1. How about false teachers the blind leaders 
 of the blind? Is it not as great a sin to teach a 
 political or an economic falsehood as it is a relig- 
 ious one? Political untruth a belief in the 
 right to own human beings led to the civil 
 war; and the present world war is owing a 
 belief in political untruths : An excessive na- 
 tionalism, misnamed patriotism ; the doctrine of 
 the survival of the fittest as developed in Ger- 
 many into the cult of the superman, and the 
 "will to power," and "a place in the sun" ; a 
 mistaken conception of the state as something 
 above the law of nations ; the exaltation of force, 
 especially military force. 
 
 Can we not set down false economic belief, 
 which leads to false economic action, as one 
 enemy of progress? 
 
PERSONAL ENEMIES. 7 
 
 2. Some people are improvident. They are 
 perfectly satisfied if they have enough for today 
 and literally "take no thought for tomorrow" 
 what they shall eat, or what they shall drink, or 
 wherewithal shall they be clothed; and some 
 day business slacks up and they are out of work, 
 or sickness comes and they are unable to work. 
 
 If when sickness comes they are on the trail 
 in one of the new countries, they not unfre- 
 quently sink down and die, and some future 
 traveler finds the body and wonders what caused 
 the death. Is not the fact that the penalty for 
 improvidence is so severe, in new countries, the 
 reason why men never sell their guns or cloth- 
 ing for food in those countries ; and to meet a 
 traveler and tell him that you were out of food 
 and hungry would be almost certain to result in 
 an invitation to join him at meal; and you would 
 not be expected to sell your gun or clothes to 
 pay for it. Even if you had money, the chances 
 are it would not be accepted. 
 
 If the improvident one is living in a large city 
 when adversity comes, he probably first sells 
 some of his clothes, tools, or jewelry, or he 
 applies to one of the charities and becomes one 
 of the "submerged tenth." 
 
 Does it not look as if improvidence were one 
 of the enemies of progress? 
 
 3. Some people are lazy. The hook worm may 
 have something to do with it, in some cases ; it 
 might then be treated as a disease. The Bible 
 says: "The soul of the sluggard desireth and 
 hath nothing." "He also that is slothful in his 
 work is a brother to him that is a great waster." 
 
8 PROGRESS 
 
 "I went by the field of the slothful, and by the 
 vineyard of the man void of understanding ; and, 
 lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles 
 had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall 
 thereof was broken down." 
 
 Do you not think that laziness is an enemy 
 of progress? And is it not just as much an 
 enemy whether it be a disease, or whether it be 
 a crime? Of course, if it is a disease, it should 
 be treated as such ; and if it is a crime it should 
 be punished. 
 
 4. We must also consider that brother of lazi- 
 ness, wastefulness. It is claimed that the Amer- 
 ican people waste enough food to feed the people 
 of France. This may be an exaggeration, but 
 there can be no doubt that waste, whether it be 
 great or small, is an enemy of progress. "Waste 
 not, want not." 
 
 Two men, working at the same business and 
 receiving the same pay, one will save and be- 
 come well-to-do while the other will barely make 
 a living, or, perhaps, be in debt most of the time. 
 If sickness comes, the one will have enough in 
 the bank to carry him through his sickness, 
 while the other has to ask help of his friends 
 and shopmates, and, perhaps, public charity. 
 
 In our large cities, in normal times, it is said 
 that one in ten of the population apply for and 
 receive some form of charity each year; and 
 when it comes to death, the burial expenses of 
 one in ten are paid, partly or wholly, by friends 
 or relatives of the deceased or by some form of 
 charity. These are spoken of as the "submerged 
 tenth." Of course this "submerged tenth" is a 
 
PERSONAL ENEMIES 9 
 
 constantly changing crowd. One person may 
 be helped for a short time, until he finds work, 
 or until .he gets over some sickness, and he 
 may never need aid again ; another may need 
 help constantly; while still another may need 
 aid intermittently ; some are never able to get 
 through a winter without help. 
 
 Can not the existence of this "submerged 
 tenth," in normal times, be traced directly to 
 one or more of the four personal causes men- 
 tioned? 1. False economic belief, as "the world 
 owes me a living," whether I work for it or not. 
 2. Improvidence. 3. Laziness. 4. Wastefulness. 
 
 These four enemies may be called personal, 
 but there are other enemies, which are outside 
 and, perhaps, beyond the power of the individual 
 to control. These we will consider in another 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER HI. 
 NATURAL ENEMIES. 
 
 For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth ; likewise to 
 the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength. 
 
 He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land, 
 or for mercy. Job xxxvii, 6, 13. 
 
 Poverty is caused by a number of things, besides 
 those inherent in the individual. A man, or a 
 people, may be provident, economical, industri- 
 ous and saving and yet be unable to progress. 
 
 There are certain things in nature, which we 
 will call natural enemies. These may not, in 
 and of themselves, be enemies, but become so 
 because they occur in too great, or too small, 
 quantities. Here are some of them : 
 
 1. Rain, when it comes in excessive quantities, 
 causing floods, washouts, rot, and the killing of 
 earth-worms which fertilize the soil. 
 
 2. Frost Early in the Fall frosts prevent the 
 working of the soil and the sowing of the 
 Autumn seed. Frosts late in the Spring prevent 
 sowing, and often seriously injure young crops. 
 Many famines are the direct result of frost. 
 
 3. Drouth The fertility of the earth depends, 
 very largely on the rainfall. About 1610, owing 
 to lack of rain at the head waters of the Nile, 
 that river failed to overflow its banks for seven 
 
NATURAL ENEMIES 11 
 
 successive years, causing one of the greatest 
 famines of history. Any farmer can tell you of 
 the disastrous consequences of a long continued 
 drouth. 
 
 4. Earthquakes Not only is the devastation 
 in the immediate locality of the quake to be con- 
 sidered, but also the great damage caused when 
 inruptions of the sea or inland waters have been 
 produced, which has not unfrequently been the 
 case. 
 
 5. Volcanoes Aug 26 and 27, 1883, an erup- 
 tion of Mount Krakatoa and about two-thirds of 
 the other 46 volcanoes on the island of Java re- 
 sulted in the submergence of a tract of land 
 about the size of the State of Massachusetts and 
 the destruction of Anjer and other places and 
 their inhabitants. Vesuvius, in 79 A. D., de- 
 stroyed the two Italian cities of Pompeii and 
 Herculaneum. Mount Pelee on the Island of 
 Martinique, French West Indies, on May 8, 1902, 
 destroyed the city of St. Pierre, with about 
 30,000 inhabitants. And there have been other 
 cases, too numerous to mention, of the destruc- 
 tion of life and property by volcanoes. 
 
 6. Hurricanes and Storms These frequently 
 produce widespread injury, destroying buildings 
 and crops and often causing a loss of life. They 
 also lead to inruptions of the sea and overflow 
 of rivers. 
 
 7. Hailstorms Grain and fruit produce of all 
 kinds are injured, if not totally destroyed, when 
 severe hailstorms occur in the Summer or Au- 
 tumn months, when they are most prevalent. 
 
 8. Insects, Vermin, etc Locusts have fre- 
 
12 PROGRESS 
 
 quently been the cause of famine in some of our 
 Western States, as well as in China, India and 
 Egypt. Concerning the latter we read: "Very 
 grievous were they ; before them there were no 
 such locusts as they, neither after them shall be 
 such. For they covered the face of the whole 
 earth, so that the land was darkened ; and they 
 did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit 
 of the trees which the hail had left ; and there 
 remained not any green in the trees, or in the 
 herbs of the field, through all the land of 
 Egypt" Exodus x, 14, 14. 
 
 In 1812-13 there was a plague of rats in the 
 Madras presidency, which in part caused the 
 famine of that year. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 ARTIFICIAL ENEMIES. 
 
 Some troubles are by nature given, 
 And it seems we are hard to sate, 
 
 Because for others we have striven, 
 And yet we dare to call them fate. 
 
 There are certain enemies of progress that 
 are made by man. These we will call artificial 
 enemies. Following are some of them : 
 
 1. War The cultivation of the soil is directly 
 retarded by using the fields for battle-grounds 
 and maneuvers, and indirectly by calling the 
 people from agricultural pursuits to arms. Fre- 
 quently the crops of whole districts are design- 
 edly destroyed or incidentally devastated. Fam- 
 ines in localities or towns are often caused by 
 blockades or otherwise intercepting supplies. A 
 large quantity of grain is damaged every year, 
 in times of peace, by being kept in military 
 stores in different parts of the world. War 
 may be forced upon a people, and it then be- 
 comes a virtue to defend right and liberty, but, 
 even so, it is a man-made evil. 
 
 2. Defective Agriculture --This may result 
 from ignorance, indifference, or unsuitability of 
 
14 PROGRESS 
 
 climate or location. Where the product of the 
 soil but barely meets the current requirements 
 of the inhabitants it is clear that either the fail- 
 ure of one season's crops, or the sudden influx 
 of any great number of strangers, may produce 
 at least temporary famine. 
 
 3. Defective Transportation This may arise 
 from bad roads, or want of roads, perhaps the 
 railroads need double tracks, or there may not 
 be sufficient terminal facilities, or rolling stock, 
 or there may be an absence of canals or a lack 
 of shipping, or there may be willful obstruction 
 for the sake of securing some desired concession 
 from the government. 
 
 It has frequently happened that there would 
 be a famine prevailing in one part of a country 
 with a superabundance in another. The intro- 
 duction of canals and railroads has largely re- 
 moved this difficulty, especially in settled coun- 
 tries. 
 
 4. Legislative Interference All laws relating 
 to trade in or transportation of food stuffs must 
 be designed to change the natural course of 
 supply and demand, and there can scarcely be a 
 doubt that in many instance the change has 
 been for the worse, else why have so many of 
 those laws been repealed? 
 
 5. Currency Restrictions "Penkethman says, 
 under date of 1124: 'By means of changing the 
 coine all things became very deere, whereof an 
 extreme famine did arise and afflict the multi- 
 tude of the people unto death/ Other instances 
 occurred as in 1248, 1390 and 1586." (Ency- 
 clopaedia Britannica.) 
 
ARTIFICIAL ENEMIES 15 
 
 6. Speculation There have been various laws 
 at diverse times to prevent speculators enhanc- 
 ing the price of food. The "Food Control Bill" 
 is such a measure, intended to prevent specula- 
 tors sending wheat and flour across the ocean, 
 paying carrying charges, and selling them so low- 
 that the retail prices to the consumer are less in 
 those countries than they are at home. 
 
 7. Misapplication of Grain By burning it, 
 whether willfully or accidentally, as well as by 
 the use of grain in brewing and distilling. We 
 find it is recorded that the Londoners, in 1315, 
 "considering that wheat was much consumed by 
 the converting thereof into mault, ordained that 
 from thence it was to be made of other grains." 
 This order was afterward extended by the king 
 (Edward II) through the whole kingdom. So 
 you see prohibiting the use of grain for the 
 manufacture of liquor is no new idea. 
 
 8. Deforestation The leaves of the forest, 
 falling on the ground, form a mulch which 
 acts as a sponge and stores the rain as it 
 falls and allows it to filter gradually into the 
 streams and maintain a constant flow of water 
 in them. Cutting the forests causes the streams 
 to become torrents when it rains, to be followed 
 shortly afterward by dried-up beds and gullies. 
 This destroys the farm lands and causes famine. 
 One writer says: "So great indeed were the 
 devastations from which the Alpine districts 
 (Hautes and Basses) suffered through the de- 
 nudation of the mountain sides, and consequent 
 formation of torrents, that intervention of the 
 most prompt description became necessary to 
 
16 PROGRESS 
 
 prevent the destruction, not only of the grazing 
 grounds themselves, but of the rich valleys 
 below them." 
 
 9. Trusts While corporations and trusts 
 were intended as instruments of progress there 
 have been numerous instances in which they 
 have been just the opposite, as when they have 
 sold goods below the cost of production in one 
 neighborhood, for the sake of ruining a small 
 competitor, while they kept the price up in a 
 dozen other localities ; or when they have bought 
 a patent for the purpose of preventing its man- 
 ufacture and sale. 
 
 We have mentioned twenty-one enemies of 
 progress four personal, eight natural and nine 
 artificial. There may be others, but those men- 
 tioned are so well known that there seems to be 
 no dispute among rational men as to their exist- 
 ence ; and that is the only class with whom we 
 care to reason. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 BACK TO THE LAND? 
 
 Back to the land, then, if you will, 
 Sunshine and shadow will be there still. 
 
 If poverty depends primarily upon the avail- 
 able supply of food, then those things which 
 tend to diminish either the food supply or its 
 availability tend to produce poverty. That is to 
 say the twenty-one causes enumerated. 
 
 When business is good, and there is plenty of 
 work, you do not hear much about people anx- 
 ious to get "back to the land." Why? Because 
 most people, who are not tillers of the soil, are 
 not because they do not wish to be. 
 
 If they attempt to become farmers only when 
 business is dull they are doomed to failure, be- 
 cause "dull business" and "poor crops" are so 
 nearly related that the one is dependant on the 
 other. 
 
 Who ever heard of "dull times" the Tall or 
 Winter after a bumper harvest? 
 
 Why assume that free access to the soil would 
 banish poverty? Would it make the lazy man 
 smart? Would it cause rain where there is a 
 drouth? Or would it check any one of the 
 twenty-one evils mentioned in the preceding 
 chapters? Yet there are people who think that 
 
18 PROGRESS 
 
 free access to the soil is a panacea for all ills. 
 
 Would it not lessen the productivity of the 
 soil by causing men to be more sparing of their 
 improvements, lest some one should step in and 
 reap the benefit of those improvements? 
 
 Why assume that, in a settled community, the 
 wealth of the community belongs to, or should 
 belong to the whole people? May there not be 
 a large percentage of the people who have done 
 nothing to produce that wealth ; who have con- 
 sumed more wealth than they have produced? 
 
 The man who went out on the prairie and 
 selected the first farm hardly knew which to 
 choose, all were so good. The second man had 
 no such trouble. He knew that the best place 
 for him was alongside the man that had already 
 staked his claim. The settlers continued to 
 locate until there were ten farmers, and then, 
 one day, came another man, a Mr. D. Broke, 
 who said to the first man, Mr. A: 
 
 "Can you give me a job? I have no farming 
 tools, and have not the food and clothing neces- 
 sary to keep me until I could harvest a crop, 
 and you could do better by hiring me as two 
 men working together can do more work than 
 two men working separately." 
 
 So Mr. A hired Mr. D. Broke, who worked 
 until the harvesting was finished, when he re- 
 ceived his pay and started for the distant town, 
 and the money which should have gone for 
 farming tools and food and clothing and seed 
 was spent in riotous living, and in less than a 
 month he was at the farm to ask for a job again. 
 But Mr. A did not need a man. He could do all 
 
BACK TO THE LAND? 19 
 
 the work there was to be done on the farm at 
 that time of the year himself. 
 
 "If you want to take up a claim, I'll help you 
 build a cabin, and so will the other settlers." 
 
 "It's no use," said Broke, "I have no tools, nor 
 nor food, nor seed, nor money." 
 
 "But I paid you much more for last Summer's 
 work than I can afford to if I were to hire you 
 in the Winter." 
 
 "But, you will not let me starve ! I'll work 
 for my board if you will let me stay through 
 the Winter." 
 
 And so Mr. A hired a man that he did not 
 need. A man that had consumed in one month 
 all that he had produced by six month's labor, 
 and then had to supported for five months by a 
 charitably inclined employer. 
 
 What right had such a man to any portion of 
 the community increase in value? Had he not 
 consumed all that he produced? 
 
 The ten farms undoubtedly had increased in 
 value. Each farm was worth two or three times 
 what the first farm was when the first settler 
 built his cabin. What caused this increase in 
 value? Surely not Mr. Broke, because he did 
 not appear until the farms were settled and the 
 greater part of the increase already there, and 
 when he did come he became a burden, for a 
 part of the year at least, upon the community, 
 or upon one member of it. The increase in 
 value, in this case, was caused by the industry 
 and thrift of the property owners, and as each 
 continued to own the farm upon which he set- 
 
20 PROGRESS 
 
 tied, each had the benefit of whatever increase 
 in value there was. 
 
 Who will say that Mr. Broke is entitled to any 
 part of that increase in value? 
 
 Mr Broke would no doubt say he was cheated 
 out of his rightful share of what he produced, 
 but Mr Broke would say anything that would 
 prevent him reaping the reward of his folly, or 
 sin. 
 
 Of course, it may be said that Mr. Broke did 
 not "consume" in less than one month all that 
 he had produced in six months. That some 
 land sharks in the shape of rum-sellers, gam- 
 blers and bad women had robbed him of his 
 hard-earned money. Even if they did, that was 
 not the fault of the farming community in 
 which he earned that money, nor of anyone in 
 that community. It might be a good reason for 
 a war of extermination against the sharks. But 
 there is a chance for two opinions about that. 
 
 Rev Dr Francis G. Peabody in a lecture in the 
 Harvard Medical School (Boston Post, Jan. 8, 
 1917,) said: "The saloon-keeper is considered 
 the fundamental criminal, but all saloons would 
 close within a week if there was no demand for 
 their goods. A systematic study of the patron- 
 age of saloons, made by myself and verified by 
 the highest police authorities, brought out the 
 appalling fact that a number of people equal to 
 one-half the population of Greater Boston en- 
 tered the city's saloons in one day. 
 
 "If minors and women, who had no right 
 there, were deducted, the patronage was as if 
 every man in the city went in every day and 
 
BACK TO THE LAND? 21 
 
 every other day took with him a man from the 
 country." 
 
 We visited last Summer one of the abandoned 
 farms of New Hampshire. The town had taken 
 it for nonpayment of taxes. Hence, it is now 
 owned by the public. The town would be glad 
 to get rid of it for the taxes. There will always 
 be taxes, though, if the town is the owner, you 
 might call it rent. The farther the farm is from 
 a railroad station or a market the greater the 
 need for taxes, to build and repair roads, and the 
 less the ability to pay. There are several thou- 
 sand abandoned farms in New England. Aban- 
 doned because the former owners could not 
 make a living. 
 
 Let us briefly compare the loss of life by some 
 of the greatest famines and plagues in history, 
 where the land was owned by private parties, 
 with the loss of life in the "new" settlements of 
 this country where the people had practically 
 free access to the land. 
 
 "The Great Plague of London, 1664-5. The 
 total number of deaths from the plague in that 
 year according to the bills of mortality was 
 68,596, in a population estimated at 460,000, out 
 of whom two-thirds are supposed to have fled 
 to escape the contagion." [Encyclopaedia Brit- 
 annica. That is to say 14 9-10 percent of the 
 population died. While at Jamestown, in 1607, 
 50 percent died ; and in 1610, 88 percent ; and at 
 Plymouth, in 1621, 50 percent. 
 
 "It has been estimated that the mor- 
 
22 PROGRESS 
 
 tality which occurred in the provinces under 
 British administration [in India] during the 
 period of famine and drouth extending over the 
 years 1877 and 1878 amounted, on a populanion 
 of 197 millions to five and one-quarter millions 
 in excess of the deaths that would have occurred 
 had the season been ordinarily healthy." [Ibid.] 
 Less than 3 percent of the population. 
 
 In Ireland, in 1845, the population was 
 8,294,061, the greater part of whom depended 
 on the potato only for food. In 1847 the famine 
 came. "From 200,000 to 300,000 perished of 
 starvation or of fever caused by insufficient 
 food." [Ibid.] But 300,000 was only 3 6-10 
 percent of the population. 
 
 In view of these facts is it not absurd to say 
 that access to the land will prevent pestilence or 
 starvation? 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 Is IT A REMEDY? 
 
 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the Christ, 
 or, Here ; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and 
 false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders ; so as to 
 lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Matthew xxiv, 23, 24. 
 
 The following quotations are from "Progress 
 and Poverty": 
 
 "We must make land common property." 
 
 "We shall not only not think of giving the 
 land holders any compensation for the land, but 
 shall take all the improvements and whatever 
 else they may have as well. 
 
 "But I do not propose . . . to go so far. 
 It is sufficient if the people resume the owner- 
 ship of the land. Let the land owners retain 
 their improvements and personal property." 
 
 "Why continue to permit the land owners to 
 take the rent, or compensate them in any man- 
 ner for the loss of rent." 
 
 "By the time the people of any such country 
 as England or the United States are sufficiently 
 aroused to the injustice and disadvantages of 
 individual ownership of land to induce them to 
 attempt its nationalization, they will be suffi- 
 
24 PROGRESS 
 
 ciently aroused to nationalize it in a much more 
 direct and easy way than by purchase. They 
 will not trouble themselves about compensating 
 the proprietors of land. Nor is it right that 
 there should be any concern about the proprie- 
 tors of the land." 
 
 "What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet 
 sovereign remedy, which will raise wages, in- 
 crease the earnings of capital, extirpate pauper- 
 ism, abolish poverty, give remunerative employ- 
 ment to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to 
 human powers, lessen crime, elevate morals, and 
 taste, and intelligence, purify government and 
 carry civilization to yet nobler heights, is to 
 appropriate rent by taxation." 
 
 "To abolish all taxation save that upon land 
 values." 
 
 Why must we make land common property? 
 
 It is said that primitive peoples held land in 
 common. Primitive peoples also went naked, 
 or clothed themselves with the skins of animals, 
 and they dwelt in caves, or tents. But primitive 
 peoples gave up that kind of life for something 
 better, and so far as we can find holding land in 
 common was given up by those peoples of their 
 own accord. 
 
 "In every stage the conditions of its [the 
 land's] enjoyment and use have been absolutely 
 regulated by the community in reference to the 
 general wellfare." [Encyc. Brit. 
 
 Then why go back to primitive man for our 
 laws? 
 
Is IT A REMEDY? 25 
 
 The right of the government to take the land, 
 or any other form of property, when public 
 necessity (or pleasure) require it, has never been 
 questioned in this country. But when it has 
 been thus taken for parks, streets, etc it has 
 usually been paid for, and at a rate in excess of 
 its real value. 
 
 To take the land without compensation might 
 be like freeing the negroes without compensa-* 
 tion an expensive operation. 
 
 The British government in abolishing slavery 
 in the British West Indies paid $100,000,000 to 
 the slaveholders. The United States in 
 its slaves/of a money value of $2,000,000,000, 
 had a civil war which cost, it is estimated, 
 $8,000,000,000, and caused the death of 300,000 
 on each side. What a saving might have been 
 effected if the slaves had been bought and liber- 
 ated? What a saving of life and property? 
 
 To abolish all taxes save that on land values 
 instead of being a cure for all ills, is sure to re- 
 sult in evil. No limitation to trusts,* liquor or 
 drugs. No licenses of any kind, for licenses are 
 a form of taxation. No country ever did exist 
 that had but a single tax. 
 
 It appears that the economic as well as the 
 human body is a complex organization with 
 many enemies. Every little while some new 
 teacher will spring up, with, perhaps, some old 
 and almost forgotten theory, and cry "Life is 
 simple! Here is a simple remedy for all its 
 ills!" 
 
 Already the real estate of Boston is bearing 
 
26 PROGRESS 
 
 Lx 
 
 *~3QOi than three-quarters of the taxes in that 
 city. There is no talk of lessening the amount 
 of money obtained by taxation, but rather of 
 increasing it. 
 
 It should be remembered that our present 
 laws are the result of the experience of past 
 ages, and should not be thoughtlessly cast aside 
 lest the evil they were designed to suppress be 
 upon us. 
 
 One of the cries of these would-be reformers 
 rovements! Why fine a 
 
 SFfor erecting a ten-story building ; and thus 
 try to prevent labor from obtaining the work?" 
 
 This is a cunning question by which is sought 
 to secure the support of the rich man on the 
 one hand and the working man on the other. 
 
 Mr A has a lot of land in a city, 50x100 feet, 
 on which he erects a 12-story building, during 
 the erection of which two men were killed, and 
 their families left to be supported by the com- 
 munity. Mr. B has the next lot of the same 
 size on which he builds a one-story building. 
 Nobody was injured its construction. And yet 
 we are told that Mr. B should pay as large a tax 
 as Mr. A because he has as large a lot of land 
 in just as valuable a location. And it is pmpofH ^ 
 to put additional taxes on the land, or on land 
 values, which is much the same. 
 
 Who should pay for the support of the fami- 
 lies of the men killed while the sky-scraper was 
 in course of construction? 
 
 Who should pay for the high-pressure water 
 system, and the water towers and the loss of 
 
Is IT A REMEDY? 27 
 
 life by falling walls at fires, all of which are 
 caused by high buildings? 
 
 Suppose Mr. B's lot had no building on it. 
 Must he still pay for all these and police protec- 
 tion as well, though he has nothing to protect, 
 and is in no way benefited by them? 
 
 Does the danger to the community cease with 
 the erection of a tall building? 
 
 A short time ago a man who was washing 
 windows on the sixth story of a building on 
 Washington st, fell and was killed. Two paint- >o^ 
 ers were working on a stage at the sixth story 
 of a building on Cornhill ; one end of the stage 
 gave away and one man was killed and the 
 other maimed for life. Every few months you 
 read of some one walking into an elevator well 
 and being killed or maimed. 
 
 These accidents don't happen on vacant land, 
 and seldom on one or two-story buildings, As 
 you increase the hight of your buildings the I 
 number of accidents increase. 
 
 If the owners are to pay no tax on buildings,^ 
 who pays for the support of those renderecT" 
 destitute by accidents such as here cited? 
 
 I am informed that there is never a sky- 
 scraper erected that there are not two or three 
 lives lost in its construction. And that the in- 
 surance companies refuse to place insurance on 
 the steel workers who put up the frames of 
 those buildings, and they have to depend on 
 their trade unions for insurance. 
 
 "Why tax industry?" Asks these reformers. 
 How can you tax anything but industry?. 
 
28 PROGRESS 
 
 A neighbor of mine has been paying a tax for 
 30 or 40 years on a vacant lot which he inher- 
 ited. As he derived no income from the lot, that 
 tax was a tax on his industry. If he had been 
 able to rent the lot, the tax would have been 
 paid by the industry of the tenant. 
 
 Taxes may be levied indiscriminately, but if 
 they are paid, they are always paid by industry. 
 
 There is a proposition to abolish the tax on 
 machinery, because that is a tax on industry. 
 It is rumored that the Sure Machinery Company 
 as well as the "single taxers" are back of this. 
 
 This may or may not be true, but we can see 
 how a company with nearly all its capital in- 
 vested in machinery might wish to shift its tax 
 on to the land. 
 
 A certain manufacturer has $1,000,000 worth 
 of machinery. Every three or four months 
 some one is injured in the machinery, and every 
 three or four years some one is killed, and his 
 family, if he have any, is dependent upon the 
 community for support. 
 
 Why should not the man who owns the 
 machine pay a tax to recompense the community 
 for the damage caused by the machine? 
 
 Does he not make an increased profit because 
 the increase of production caused by using the 
 machine? 
 
 Why do not these would-be reformers seek a 
 remedy for some of the twenty-one real enemies 
 of mankind and of progress? (See Chapters 
 II, III and IV). 
 
 Why devote their energies and those of soci- 
 
Is IT A REMEDY? 
 
 ety to chasing imaginary evils, when there are 
 so many real ones? 
 
 Why confiscate the property of certain citi- 
 zens (the land owners) because certain other 
 citizens want it? 
 
 Would not this confiscation of property shake ' 
 the faith of the whole community in the justice 
 of our government and make them wonder if ^ / 
 any kind of property is safe under that govern- 
 ment? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 THE PROPORTIONAL TAX 
 
 Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; 
 and unto God the things that are God's. Matthew xxii, 21. 
 
 Have we lost sight of the origin of govern- 
 ment, and the foundation of all taxes? Men 
 first joined themselves together for protection- 
 protection of their homes, their lives, their prop- 
 erty ; and each man gave his time and furnished 
 his own food ; but as civilization progressed it 
 was found better for certain men to give all 
 their time to the arts of war, and for others to 
 pay, by means of a tax, for the protection thus 
 rendered. 
 
 It also came to be recognized that a man 
 should pay for protection in proportion to what 
 he had to protect, or in proportion to his wealth. 
 
 Why should not the man, or corporation, with 
 wealth in machinery, buildings, or any personal 
 property pay for their protection? 
 
 The overthrow of this government by a for- 
 eign government might result in the buildings 
 being reduced to ashes, the machinery to junk 
 and the other personal property to worthless 
 rubbish. 
 
 It is said that in Liverpool the street railways 
 
THE PROPORTIONAL TAX 31 
 
 pay all the taxes. Under a tax on land values 
 only, they would be nearly exempt from taxa- 
 tion. How could you tax them for the "land 
 value" of the streets which they use in common * 
 with thousands of others. 
 
 This whole land question is an importation 
 from England. Mr. Neilson, a former member 
 of the British Parliament, who has been lectur- 
 ing in this country, says : "The last valuation 
 of land in England was in the time of William 
 and Mary (1688-1702) and much of the land 
 was exempted from taxation perpetually in con- 
 sideration of the owners paying a lump s*m 
 equal to between ten and twenty years taxes for 
 the support of the nation." 
 
 Not only were the valuations of 200 years ago 
 very low, but the rate of taxation was also very 
 low, so that in many instances the lump sum 
 which was paid for exemption for taxes did not 
 amount to more than the tax for two years 
 would today. The people of England of today 
 think it unjust that land, some of which has 
 increased in value ten-fold, should escape tax- 
 ation for the government expenses of today 
 because of something which happened two 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 But in this country there is no such exemp- 
 tion of land from taxation. 
 
 In some of the settlements in this country 
 lots were cast for the farms and town lots. 
 
 Land has no value except as it is touched byj ^f r* 
 or comes in contact with, either labor or capital J 
 Go to the new country and the land has little or 
 
32 PROGRESS 
 
 no value, because neither capital nor labor has 
 been expended on it. 
 
 A manufacturing company goes back into the 
 country, where land is cheap, and buys a hun- 
 dred acres of land on some stream, and builds 
 a dam, erects buildings, and moves its factory 
 from some city where their taxes have been 
 increased from 50 to 100 percent in less than 
 twenty years. It brings its workmen, and a 
 village springs up. The land for miles around 
 becomes more valuable, because the farmers 
 have a market nearer home than formerly. 
 
 This increase in value is not because of any 
 good-will, or conscious effort, on the part of the 
 factory employes. We have known of several 
 such moves on the part of corporations, and the 
 employes, invariably, did not like the change, 
 but they (the greater part of them, at least,) 
 made it rather than be out of work and have to 
 look up new jobs. When they have finally 
 moved, they found that the cost of food, which 
 came from the nearby farms, was much less and 
 the quality was better than it had been in the 
 place from which they came. 
 
 The increase in the value of the land was in 
 spite of the factory employes, and, if it was to 
 be credited to anybody or anything, other than 
 the owners of the soil, it would be to the man- 
 agers of the factory and to the capital which 
 they expended. But it must be remembered 
 that the directors of the factory did not order 
 its removal for the sake of enhancing the value 
 of the farm lands, nor for the purpose of bene- 
 
THE PROPORTIONAL TAX 33 
 
 fitting their employes. Their reward came in 
 
 the reduced taxation. \4ftvt ' 
 
 This principle of capital increasing the value of 
 other property than that on which it is expended 
 is well understood. Many cities and towns offer 
 to remit taxes if certain industries will locate 
 within their boundaries. It is not unusual for 
 the people of a community to raise money to 
 start some industry which they think would 
 improve business and thus increase the value of 
 their property. 
 
 How about those cities or towns from which 
 industries move owing to the increase in taxes? 
 
 There is such a thing as a town becoming 
 stagnant, or retrograding, or finally being aban- 
 doned. 
 
 What is the cause of abandoned cities ? 
 
 We have seen mansions and factories aban- 
 doned, the windows boarded up, and finally sold 
 for one-fourth their cost, because the owners 
 could not pay the taxes, and the single-taxers 
 say: "The whole value of the land may be taken \ J o 1 
 in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimii;/ 
 late industry, to open new opportunities to capi- 
 tal, and to increase the production of wealth." 
 
 "With the exception of certain licenses and . 
 stamp duties, which may be made almost to col- 
 lect themselves, but which can be relied on for 
 only a trivial amount of revenue, a tax on land 
 values can, of all taxes, be most easily and 
 cheaply collected." [Henry George. 
 
 If licenses and stamp duties "almost collect 
 themselves," why not increase their number and 
 
I 
 
 34 PROGRESS 
 
 amount until they shall become the rule and not 
 the exception? 
 
 Since George wrote his book the number of 
 of things for which licenses are required have 
 greatly increased, and the increase has been 
 because of public demand. For instance, there 
 was a public demand that automobiles and their 
 drivers be licensed as a protection to pedestrians 
 on the streets. 
 
 In selecting the "easiest" way to collect taxes 
 do we not lose sight of the idea of protection? 
 The original right to levy any tax is based on 
 protection. The robber loots the bank because 
 it is "easier" than to work and receive his 
 pay in small quantities. The Germany army 
 marched through Belgium because it was the 
 "easiest" way. Tax assessors and law makers 
 may loot a land-owner of property, which he 
 honestly acquired, perhaps by years of hard 
 labor. Would it be right? 
 
 "Taxes on the value of the land not only do 
 not check production as do most other taxes, 
 but they tend to increase production, by destroy- 
 ing speculative rent." Ibid. 
 
 Is that so? We had thought that "specula- 
 tive value" and "real value" were so intimately 
 connected that you could not change the one 
 without affecting the other. 
 
 Let it become known that a city or town has 
 a high tax rate, and investors will go to some 
 other town to buy or build, and those whd are 
 in the town will try to move away, often making 
 big sacrifices in selling their property rather 
 than continue to pay the high tax rate. 
 
THE PROPORTIONAL TAX 35 
 
 Of the deserted villages and abandoned cities, 
 how many were due to over-taxation of the 
 land ? God only knows ! 
 
 Adam Smith was right when he said : "The 
 subjects of every state ought to contribute 
 toward the support of the government as nearly 
 as possible in proportion to their respecidve_abil^ 
 ities ; that is, in proportion to the revenue wHIch 
 they respectively enjoy under the protection of 
 the state. . . . Every tax which falls only 
 upon rent, or only upon wages, or only upon 
 interest is necessarily unequal." 
 
 This what is called the "proportional tax." It 
 it has been the goal in taxation for which states- 
 men have striven. It is just. Special interests 
 and tax-dodgers may have overcome for a time 
 that ideal, but, like any other truth, though 
 crushed to earth it will rise again. 
 
 Is it not possible that some advocate the 
 "single tax" for the sake of dodging their just 
 share of the governmental support? All tax- 
 dodgers are not rich men. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 DANGER OF UNTAXED VOTER. 
 
 Yea, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and 
 lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not 
 move them with their finger. Matthew xxiii, 4. 
 
 There is the idea advocated by McCulloch 
 and his followers who claim that taxes on 
 rent of land are impolitic and unjust, because 
 the return received for the natural and inherent 
 powers of the soil cannot be clearly distin- 
 guished from the return received from improve- 
 ments and ameliorations which might thus be 
 discouraged. 
 
 "Where political power is diffused it is highly 
 desirable that the taxation should fall not on 
 one class, such as land owners, but on all ; in 
 order that all who exercise political power may 
 feel a proper interest in economical government. 
 Taxation and representation cannot safely be 
 divorced." 
 
 One of the chief reasons for the extravagance 
 and waste by our city governments is the fact 
 that a large majority of the "city fathers" as 
 well as their constituents pay only a poll tax. 
 In some States it is not necessary for the voter 
 to pay any tax as a requisite to voting. Is it any 
 
DANGER OF UNTAXED VOTER 37 
 
 wonder that the necessity for municipal econ- 
 omy does not appeal to them? 
 
 Of course it may be said that the man who 
 pays only a poll tax has to pay for any extrav- 
 agance of government in increased rent and 
 higher cost of living. If that were true, as the 
 increased cost does not come as a tax, he does 
 not realize it. The higher cost of rent and of 
 living may be because certain combinations, 
 called trusts, have put up the price of build- 
 ing material, or of coal, or of wheat, or of any 
 or all of the necessities of life, and the lesser 
 evil of municipal extravagance is lost sight of. 
 
 But it is not entirely true. A large portion of 
 municipal extravagance assumes the form of an 
 interest-bearing debt which future generations 
 have to pay. We have known of people moving 
 to another town, where rents were cheaper, 
 when their voice and vote had always been in 
 favor of every extravagance in the town from 
 which they moved. Did they pay for that ex- 
 travagance? 
 
 But the owner of land cannot escape an in- 
 crease in taxes by moving. Nor can he increase \/ \| V\ 
 his rents just because taxes increase. We are n t i 
 living in a section of a city in which the taxes 
 30 years ago were $14 on $1000 ; the rate now 
 is $22 on $1000 ; and in spite of this increase in 
 taxes there has been a decrease in the rents. 
 
 "Corn is not high because rent is paid, but 
 rent is paid because corn is high/' and "no re- 
 duction would take place in the price of corn 
 although landlords should forego the whole of 
 their rent." 
 
38 PROGRESS 
 
 "It is not from the produce, but from the price 
 at which the produce is sold, that the rent is 
 derived, and this price is got not because nature 
 assists in production, but because it is the price 
 which suits the consumption to the supply. "- 
 [Buchanan. 
 
 "Nature gives to labor alone. In a very Gar- 
 den of Eden a man would starve but for human 
 exertion." [Henry George. 
 
 The uncivilized man may live by land plus 
 labor. But for the civilized man there is always 
 the third factor, viz: Capital. Without this 
 third factor (capital) man would be a savage. 
 The gun or knife of the hunter means thou- 
 sands of dollars capital employed in its manu- 
 facture. And capital must be paid, i. e., it mus 
 share in the product of land plus labor plu 
 capital. 
 
 "Nature gives to labor ALONE" is not true^f \ft\ 
 where any kind of tools or machinery are used.' 
 To be just in valuing land you must figure not 
 only the value added by labor but that added by 
 capital (the tools and machinery) used to culti- 
 vate the land. 
 
 "There is a value, created and maintained by 
 the community, which is justly called upon to 
 meet community expenses. Now, of what 
 values is this true? Only of the value of the 
 land." Ibid. 
 
 Is it not true of nearly all values? Of what 
 value would a hill of gold be to a Robinson 
 Crusoe? Far more valuable would be one of 
 iron, for with the iron (provided he had the 
 
DANGER OF UNTAXED VOTER 39 
 
 requisite knowledge and skill) he could not only 
 make tools to cultivate the soil, but also weap- 
 ons to protect himself from wild beasts. So 
 gold derives its value from the community ; so 
 do the precious stones; so does nearly every 
 article known to civilized man. And this added 
 value is a selling value and should therefore be 
 taxed. 
 
 "The dangerous classes politically are the very 
 rich and the very poor. It is not the taxes that 
 he is conscious of paying that gives a man a 
 stake in the country, an interest in its govern- 
 ment ; it is the consciousness of feeling that he 
 is an integral part of the community; that its 
 prosperity is his prosperity, and its disgrace his 
 shame. Let but the citizen feel this . . . 
 and the community may rely on him even to 
 limb or life." [Henry George. 
 
 Politically, the rich are not, as a class, danger- 
 ous, unless their property rights are threatened. 
 If a government is true to its original function 
 that of protecting the persons and the prop- 
 erty of its people it usually has the support of 
 all classes. Of course there are individual ex- 
 ceptions to all rules. 
 
 Economically, the very rich and the very poor 
 are parasites on the body politic, and they may 
 be anything from an annoyance to a national 
 menace. 
 
 Let a man feel that his person and his property 
 are safe, and that the government is also work- 
 ing for the prosperity, or protection, of its citi- 
 zens, and it will receive his loyal support. But 
 let him feel that his property is not safe. That 
 
40 PROGRESS. 
 
 any avaricious rich man, or corporation, (wheth- 
 er it be communal or otherwise), may dispossess 
 him and throw him into prison on some fake 
 charge, and you have a man that is very near an 
 anarchist. For why should a man be loyal to a 
 government that does not protect him? 
 
 Some horses will go if you cluck to them, but 
 others require the whip, or spur. Some men 
 are only aroused to an interest in the affairs of 
 government by an injustice coming to their 
 notice. An indirect tax, because they are not 
 conscious of paying it, does not arouse them, a 
 while a direct tax has caused many to sit up * i 
 and take notice. 
 
 "There is a definite and powerful interest op- 
 posed to the taxation of land values; but to the 
 other taxes upon which modern governments so 
 largely rely there is no special opposition. Ibid. 
 
 This does not agree with the reports of Con- 
 gressmen and Senators who claim that whenever 
 it is necessary to revise the tariff they are be- 
 sieged by powerful interests. So powerful, in- 
 deed, that they have been known to seat and 
 unseat members. Who has not heard of the 
 whiskey; or oil, or railroad ring? Influences so 
 powerful that they keep some of their own mem- 
 bers in Congress constantly. 
 
 "The report of the investigation by Congress 
 in 1893 notes the fact that on the strength of a 
 rumor that the internal revenue tax was to be 
 increased by Congress, the Trust raised its 
 prices 25 cents per gallon. This would amount 
 to a profit of $12,500,000 on its yearly output." 
 [Wealth vs. Commonwealth. 
 
DANGER OF UNTAXED VOTER 41 
 
 By February, 1888, all the distilleries (nearly 
 eighty) in the Northern States were in the trust, 
 except two, the larger of these two being in 
 Chicago. In September of that year it was dis- 
 covered that a valve in a vat had been tampered 
 with in such a way as to have caused an explo- 
 sion had it not been found in time to prevent it. 
 The next month the owners made known that 
 they had been offered and refused $1,000,000 for 
 their works by the Trust. In December this 
 distillery was the scene of an explosion of dyna- 
 mite. The buildings in the neighborhood were 
 shaken and many panes of glass broken. A 
 jagged hole about three feet square was torn in 
 the roof. A package of dynamite which had 
 failed to explode, though the fuse had been 
 lighted, was found on the premises by the Chi- 
 cago police. 
 
 On Wednesday, Feb. 11, 1891, the secretary of 
 the Distillery Trust was arrested as he was about 
 to enter the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago for 
 attempting to bribe a government gauger to 
 blow up the competing distillery. 
 
 If the explosion had been carried out, 150 men 
 employed in the distillery would have been de- 
 stroyed. The gauger had been selected because 
 he had access to all parts of the distillery at all 
 hours, and hence would have the opportunity to 
 do the foul deed without being suspected. 
 
 The infernal-machine consisted of a small 
 cannon which would shoot a sharp-pointed, coni- 
 cal ball through the bottom of a cistern or tank 
 of alcohol or high proof spirits; this gun was 
 supplied with three fuses, one of which would 
 
42 PROGRESS 
 
 remain lighted under water. There was also a 
 bottle of yellow-colored liquid, which when ex- 
 posed to a temperature of 65 degrees would 
 produce a flame caused by evaporation. The 
 secretary of the Distillery Trust said this would, 
 "in three or four hours, go off, and no person 
 would know what it was or who did it, and all 
 the trouble that has been caused us will be 
 stopped at once, and the sufferings of many 
 people stopped, and no loss to those folks, as 
 they are well insured." 
 
 The chemist who testified before the city 
 grand jury said (in the anteroom after he had 
 given his testimony) that in his opinion it would 
 have or might have gone off in three seconds. 
 Fire would have caused the shooting of the ball, 
 and the ball making a hole in the tub, and alco- 
 hol or high-proof spirits coming down, an ex- 
 plosion would have followed at once, not from 
 the machine, but from the contents of the 
 cistern. 
 
 All honor to the gauger, Mr. Thomas S. De- 
 war. He was true to his trust and exposed the 
 plot. By so doing he saved his own life, for if 
 the explosion had occurred within a few seconds, 
 when he thought he had three or four hours in 
 which to get away, he would surely have been 
 caught, and his life would have paid the penalty. 
 
 June 8, 1891, the judge of the United States 
 court in Chicago quashed the Federal indict- 
 ment on the ground that it is not a crime under 
 any of the United States laws for an internal 
 revenue officer to set fire to a distillery of his 
 own volition and impulse, and that it is not a 
 
DANGER OF UNTAXED VOTER 43 
 
 crime against the United States for another per- 
 son to bribe him to do such an act. He held 
 that the offender could be punished only through 
 the State courts. 
 
 The United States had property in this distill- 
 ery to the extent of $800,000 due for taxes, 
 which was a legal lien on the property. 
 
 In the State court the case agaist the secre- 
 tary of the Distillery Trust was postponed sev- 
 eral times, and June 24, 1892, he was released 
 on a nolle prosequi entered by the State Attorney 
 because the evidence was insufficient, and be- 
 came a free man. 
 
 (We would refer to Wealth Against Common- 
 wealth for further details of this story and the 
 authorities there cited.) 
 
 These "definite and powerful interests" (mean- 
 ing the trusts, the grafters, the non-taxpayer and 
 the men and who pay only a poll-tax) have in- 
 creased the cost of living to such an extent that 
 the tax rate in many if not most of the cities are 
 50 to 75 per cent higher today than they were 
 when the civil war was on, and the assessments 
 have also increased, 100 percent in many in- 
 stances, and the greater part of this increase has 
 been while we were at peace with the world, and 
 no famine, or serious internal trouble. 
 *" It has been said there is a value added to the 
 land by the community, and that value should 
 belong to the community. How about it if thei^ N\ ^ 
 is a decrease in land value? Is not that the x 
 fault of the community? Should not the com- 
 munity make restitution to the land owner for 
 the decrease in value, especially if it is to claim 
 
44 PROGRESS. 
 
 all the increase in value as a community asset? 
 That would be fair. But no; this landless class 
 of single-taxers, who imagine they give value to 
 the land, the moment a depression in business 
 or a deterioration in the personnel of the com- 
 munity comes (as by a colored man moving into 
 the neighborhood), they are off to some other 
 place, and the owner of the land is left to pay 
 the exorbitant taxes caused by the extravagance 
 and graft of the landless, nontaxpaying voter, or 
 lose all he has. Not a few estates have been 
 sold for taxes. 
 

 CHAPTER IX. 
 BASES OF TAXATION. 
 
 Masters, render unto your servants that which is just and equal ; 
 knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven. Colossians iv, 1. 
 
 Let us consider some of the bases of taxation. 
 
 Many different interpretations have been put 
 to Smith's rule of taxation. "The subjects of 
 every state ought to contribute to the support 
 of its government as nearly as possible in pro- 
 portion to their respective abilities," has been 
 held to imply, first, thafevery government has a 
 right to exact support from all its subjects. This 
 is opposed to the American idea that only those 
 who share in the powers should bear the bur- 
 dens of government, or, "no taxation without 
 representation." If this latter opinion is strictly 
 construed it would follow that all taxes on arti- 
 cles of universal consumption are unjust, except 
 in a country where all have the right to vote. 
 
 The idea that all who share in the protection 
 and benefits of a country should bear their 
 share in the defense of the same (in person as 
 well as by taxation) is growing in the United 
 States. The large number of aliens who escape 
 military duty is the cause of this change in 
 opinion. 
 
 The doctrine of sovereignty as the basis of 
 
46 PROGRESS 
 
 taxation results in the maxim that a govern- 
 ment should impose such taxes as are "most 
 easily assessed and collected, and are at the 
 same time most conducive to the public inter- 
 ests" (McCulloch). As a general looks to the 
 efficiency of his army as a whole, and is pre- 
 pared to sacrifice any portion of it, if necessary, 
 so the state should not regard the particular 
 interests of individuals, but should consider the 
 nation as a whole. But no such ideal in any 
 nation has become popular enough to render a 
 complete neglect of private interests acceptable. 
 
 Second, the word "abilities," used by Adam 
 Smith, led to the idea advocated by Mill and 
 Fawcett that taxes ought to be levied so as to 
 involve equality of sacrifice on the part of the 
 contributors. 
 
 "Equality of taxation as a maxim of politics," 
 says Mill, "means equality of sacrifice. It means 
 the apportioning of the contribution of each 
 person towards the expenses of government, so 
 that he shall feel neither more nor less incon- 
 venience from his share of the payment than 
 every other person experiences from his." It is 
 admitted that this cannot be realized, but it fur- 
 nishes a basis. 
 
 Third, Adam Smith goes on to say that sub- 
 jects should pay "in proportion to the revenue 
 which they respectively enjoy under the protec- 
 tion of the state." This shows that taxes ought 
 to be considered as payment for valuable services 
 rendered by the state to individuals. It can 
 readily be seen that in one sense the poor need 
 
BASES OF TAXATION 47 
 
 protection more than the rich, but, if stress is 
 laid on protection and assistance afforded by the 
 state in the acquisition of individual fortunes, 
 you obtain a view of taxation sometimes called 
 "the social dividend theory." 
 
 It is on this ground that Mill proposed that 
 the "unearned increment" from the land should 
 be taken by the state, but it has often been 
 pointed out that "unearned increments" are by 
 no means confined to the land. The state may 
 be looked upon as a partner in all industrial un- 
 dertakings and therefore entitled to share in the 
 proceeds. Poor taxes and education taxes have 
 been regared as an insurance paid by the rich 
 against the poor. 
 
 As a fourth basis of taxation it has been main- 
 tained that the state ought to use/ its powers of 
 taxation for the promotion of various social 
 ends. 
 
 Adam Smith says : "It has for some time past 
 been the policy of Great Britain to discourage 
 the consumption of spirituous liquors, on ac- 
 count of their supposed tendency to ruin the 
 health and corrupt the morals of the common 
 people." Mill opposed the graduated income 
 tax, but favored the imposition of extremely 
 heavy inheritance taxes, with the double object 
 of promoting a better distribution of national 
 wealth and compelling individuals to rely on 
 themselves. 
 
 In early times court fines were an important 
 source of revenue. A protective tariff has been 
 
48 PROGRESS 
 
 a source of revenue always, to a greater or less 
 extent. 
 
 "In every civilized community a complex sys- 
 tem of taxation is adopted. [Encyc. Brit. 
 
 Certainty Adam Smith says : "The time of 
 payment, the manner of payment, the quantity 
 to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the 
 contributor and to every other person [to prevent 
 the use of arbitrary powers by the tax gatherer]. 
 
 . . . The certainty of what each individual 
 ought to pay is in taxation a matter of so great 
 importance that a very considerable degree of 
 inequality, it appears, I believe, from the experi- 
 ence of nations, is not near so great an evil as a 
 very small degree of uncertainty." 
 
 Another canon of taxation is convenience. 
 "Every tax ought to be levied at the time or in 
 the manner to which it is most likely to be con- 
 venient for the contributor to pay it," for it is 
 good government to have the tax paid in the 
 manner that will be least annoying to the payer. 
 It has been found possible to raise large reve- 
 nues by taxes on commodities, the payments of 
 which are made in inconsiderable sums by the 
 consumer, when it would have been impossible 
 to collect the same amount by direct taxation at 
 comparatively long intervals. 
 
 The canon of economy states that "every tax 
 ought to be so contrived as both to take out and 
 to keep out of the pockets of the people as little 
 as possible over and above what it brings into 
 the public treasury of the state." Taxes may 
 
BASES OF TAXATION 49 
 
 break this rule by requiring a large number of 
 officials for their collection, by restraint of trade 
 and production, by encouraging smuggling, and 
 by causing unnecessary vexation; "and, though 
 vexation is not, strictly speaking, expense, it is 
 certainly equivalent to the expense at which 
 every man would be willing to redeem himself 
 from it." 
 
 "To pretend to have any scruple about buying 
 smuggled goods would in most countries be 
 regarded as one of those pedantic species of 
 hypocrisy which serve only to expose the person 
 who affects to practice them to the suspicion of 
 being a greater knave than his neighbors." 
 
 To these general rules of taxation given by 
 Adam Smith may be added others : We will 
 mention two : 
 
 1. All sovereignties, or governments, derive 
 their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
 erned. 
 
 This does not mean that every individual shall 
 have a part in the governing. Many people do 
 not care to vote. The majority of women do 
 not, and a large number of men do not care 
 enough about it to register. Certain criminals 
 and people of unsound mind are debarred from 
 voting. In most countries children are not sup- 
 posed to have sufficient judgment to vote. 
 
 But even these need a government, and the 
 more helpless they are the more they need it, 
 and there is no just reason why the weak ones 
 
50 PROGRESS 
 
 should not contribute to the support of the gov- 
 ernment if they have the ability. The weaker 
 they are the more readily would they become 
 prey to the unscrupulous and predatory. 
 
 There is, of course, a good argument why 
 women should be allowed to vote, and, we opine, 
 she will be just as soon as a majority of her sex 
 wishes it. 
 
 The unjust powers of government ought not 
 to exist. But how those powers were acquired 
 and how to obliterate them it is not our purpose 
 to consider here. 
 
 2. Governments were originally formed and 
 still exist for the purpose of protection. 
 
 Protection to life and property were among 
 the requirements of the earliest forms of govern- 
 ment, but as civilization progressed protection 
 was demanded in thousands of directions not 
 dreamed of by primitive man. Protection from 
 disease has caused the enactment of sanitary 
 laws, quarantine laws, laws regulating the 
 amount of air space per individual in sleeping 
 room, and caused the establishment of water 
 works and sewer systems. Protection from 
 ignorance resulted in our school system. Grade 
 crossings are abolished, life-saving devices or- 
 dered on steamships and railways and building- 
 laws enacted to protect the people. 
 
 All these things must be thought of in consid- 
 ering the matter of taxation. Is it any wonder 
 that taxation in a civilized community is a com- 
 plex affair? 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 EFFECT OF TAXES ON PRODUCTION 
 
 In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 "Until its ownership will confer some advan- 
 tage, land has no value." Henry George. 
 
 If this statement is true, what does cause 
 the value of land? Certainly it is not ownership. 
 
 The same might be said of ownership of any- 
 thing. The error consists in thinking land is 
 different from anything else in that regard. 
 
 The town that takes over an abandoned farm 
 has not added to its value by so doing. Land, 
 except as it is touched by, or comes in contact 
 with either labor or capital has no value. 
 
 Are not the higher rents in city than in coun- 
 try places caused in part by the difference in 
 taxes ; including the difference in valuation as 
 well as the rate? 
 
 Does not any increase in taxes cause an at- 
 tempt to be made to shift that tax on to some- 
 one else by an increase in the price? Some- 
 times the attempt is successful and sometimes 
 it is not. 
 
 "While the value of a railroad or telegraph 
 line, the price of gas or of a patent medicine, 
 
52 PROGRESS 
 
 may express the price of monopoly, it also ex- 
 presses the exertion of labor and capital; but 
 the value of land, or economic rent, as we have 
 seen, is in no part made up from these factors, 
 and expresses nothing but the advantage of ap- 
 propriation. " Ibid. 
 
 Why should we assume that the price of gas 
 or a patent medicine expresses the exertion of 
 labor and capital and that the price of land does 
 not? 
 
 The farmer who drains his land, or builds a 
 dike, or takes a sand lot and by fertilizing and 
 manuring it causes it to raise a crop, uses both 
 capital and labor, by which he frequently makes 
 worthless land valuable, and shall we say that 
 the value of such land expresses nothing but 
 the price of monopoly. 
 
 ^ "The whole value of the land may be taken 
 in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimu- 
 late industry to open new opportunities to capi- 
 
 \tal, and to increase the production of wealth." 
 
 Ylbid. 
 
 The effect would be that when "hard times" 
 came, caused by any one of the score of causes 
 previously enumerated, as come they will, sooner 
 or later, the city will retrograde, the shops and 
 tenements will become vacant, the taxes will be 
 increased to support those out of work, and, if 
 the cause of the hard times should continue for 
 a number of years you would be likely to have 
 another of those "deserted cities" for future 
 generations to wonder at. 
 The effect of taxation on farming land is to 
 
EFFECT OF TAXES ON PRODUCTION 53 
 
 decrease the value of the land, and if the land 
 is of the kind that it is barely possible for the 
 farmer to make a living of the standard to which 
 he has been accustomed, whether it be from 
 lack of fertility or inaccessibility to markets, it 
 is likely to cause an abandonment of the farm. 
 
 The farmer whose farm is such that he can 
 stand an increase in taxation, because it merely 
 affects his income, is apt to search for some 
 other business in which the profits are larger, 
 and sell his farm at a reduced price. 
 i/The value of ownership of land, or anything 
 else, depends in part on the security of posses- 
 sion, and anything which affects that security 
 affects the value of property, whether it be war, 
 a defective title or an uncertain and ever in- 
 creasing tax rate. 
 
 Sydney Smith (1820) : "The schoolboy whips 
 his taxed top ; the beardless youth manages his 
 taxed horse, with a taxed bridle on a taxed road ; 
 and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, 
 which has paid 7 percent, into a spoon that 
 has paid 15 percent, flings himself back onto a 
 chintz bed which which has paid 22 percent, and 
 expires in the arms of an apothecary who has 
 paid 100 for the privilege of putting him to 
 death." 
 
 In so far as taxes protect production, and en- 
 able it to progress in safety they are a benefit, 
 but anything more than this is an injury. The 
 people are entitled to have their government 
 run on as economical a basis as is consistent 
 with efficiency. 
 

 CHAPTER XL 
 LAND. 
 
 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land 
 of thy sojournings, for an everlasting possession. 
 
 They shall dwell securely in their land, and none shall make 
 them afraid. 
 
 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own? 
 
 The Bible. 
 
 Land, labor and capital are the factors of pro- 
 duction and of progress according to political 
 economists. In order that these three factors 
 may cover the entire realm of progress and pro- 
 duction it is necessary to consider air and water 
 as land and food clothing and shelter as some- 
 belonging to one and sometimes to another of 
 these factors. 
 
 Of course in order for humanity to exist land 
 is necessary, and the question to be solved is as 
 to what is the best method in which to hold the 
 the land. 
 
 Of coure, also, food, clothing and shelter are 
 necessary, but that does not make it right to 
 take them from any possessor who happens to 
 have them, simply because you have the power 
 to do so. 
 
 There is hardly any scheme, or system, of oc- 
 cupation of the land that has not been tried, and 
 our present system is the result of experience. 
 
LAND 55 
 
 Arthur Young says : "The magic of property 
 turns sand into gold." "Give a man the secure 
 possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it 
 into a garden ; give him a nine years' lease of a 
 garden, and he will convert it into a desert." 
 
 The nine-year lease was a common form of 
 land tenure in his day. 
 
 Sismondi writes: "What endowed man with 
 intelligence and perseverance in labor, what 
 made him direct all his efforts toward an end 
 useful to his race, was the sentiment of perpe- 
 tuity. The lands which the streams have de- 
 posited along their courses are always the most 
 fertile, but are also those which they menace 
 with their inundations or corrupt by marshes. 
 Under the guarantee of perpetuity men under- 
 took long and painful labors to give the marshes 
 an outlet, to erect embankments against inunda- 
 tions, to distribute by irrigation-channels fertil- 
 izing waters over the same fields which the 
 same waters had condemned to sterility. Under 
 the same guarantee, man, no longer contenting 
 himself with the annual products of the earth, 
 distinguished among the wild vegetation the 
 perennial plants, shrubs and trees which would 
 be useful to him, improved them by culture, 
 changed it may be almost said, their very na- 
 ture, and multiplied their amount. .There are 
 fruits which require centuries of cultivation to 
 bring to their present perfection, and others 
 which have been introduced from the most re- 
 mote regions. Men have opened the earth to a 
 great depth to renew the soil, and fertilize it by 
 the mixture of its parts and by contact with the 
 
56 PROGRESS 
 
 air; they have fixed on the hillsides the soil 
 which would have slid off, and have covered the 
 face of the country with a vegetation every- 
 where abundant, and everywhere useful to the 
 human race. Among their labors there are 
 some which the fruits can only be reaped at the 
 end of ten or twenty years ; there are others by 
 which their posterity will still benefit after sev- 
 eral centuries. All have concurred in augment- 
 ing the productive force of nature, in giving to 
 mankind a revenue infinitely more abundant, 
 a revenue of which a considerable part is con- 
 sumed by those who have no share in the owner- 
 ship of the land, but who would not have found 
 a maintenance but for that appropriation of the 
 soil by which they seem, at first sight, to have 
 been disinherited." 
 
 John Stuart Mill writes: "But though land is 
 not the produce of industry most of its valuable 
 qualities are so. ... One of the barrenest 
 soils in the world, composed of the material 
 of the Goodwin sands, the Pays de Waes in 
 Flanders, has been so far fertilized by industry 
 as to have become one of the most productive 
 in Europe. Cultivation requires buildings and 
 fences, which are wholly the produce of labor. 
 The fruits of this industry cannot be reaped in a 
 short period. The labor and outlay are imme- 
 diate, the benefit is spread over many years, per- 
 haps over all future time. A holder will not 
 incur this labor and outlay when strangers and 
 not himself will be benefited by it. If he under- 
 takes such improvements, he must have a suffi- 
 cient period before him in which to profit by 
 
LAND 57 
 
 them ; and he is in no way so sure of having 
 always a sufficient period as when his tenure is 
 perpetual." 
 
 Mill, in speaking of peasant proprietors in 
 Flanders, says that a man, his wife and three 
 children, a cow and a hog can live on the 
 produce of two and one-half acres of land, and, 
 and if he has a six-acre place, the produce of 
 three and one-half acres may be sold to pay rent, 
 or interest on purchase money, wear and tear 
 of implements, extra manure, and clothes for 
 the family. With 15 acres and the addition of a 
 man and a woman to the family, and a horse 
 and cart, a farmer may live, bring up a family, 
 pay a good rent and accumulate a considerable 
 sum in the course of a lifetime. "But the inde- 
 fatigable industry by which he accomplishes 
 this, and of which so large a portion is expend- 
 ed, not in the mere cultivation, but in improve- 
 ment, for a distant return, of the soil itself has 
 that industry no connection with NOT paying 
 rent? Could it exist, without presupposing, at 
 least, a virtually permanent tenure?" 
 
 According to the World Almanac there are 
 29.5 persons per square mile on this earth. Of 
 the 57,255,000 square miles the "fertile regions" 
 contain only about 29,000,000 square miles ; the 
 other 28,000,000 square miles being divided be- 
 tween deserts, steppes, the polar regions and 
 inland lakes and rivers. This would make 58 
 persons per square mile for the fertile regions 
 to support. 
 
 As it requires about two square miles to sup- 
 
58 PROGRESS 
 
 port one hunter it is plain that the human fam- 
 ily is forced to agriculture if it would live. 
 
 Massachusetts has a population of 480 per 
 square mile, and the (continental) United States 
 28.4; while England in 1911 had 618; Scotland, 
 156.5; and Ireland, 135.6. 
 
 The figures not only show the necessity of 
 cultivating the land but of cultivating it in 
 the most efficient manner, and, judging by 
 the past, the land has produced more when 
 privately owned than under any other system of 
 tenure. 
 
 Of course, in farming, as in any other busi- 
 ness, there is an advantage when the proprietor 
 is a practical man and superintends his farm 
 personally. How shall we prevent a man from 
 doing what he will with his own ? Can we lay 
 any claim to justice if we do? 
 
 It must not be forgotten that custom and not 
 competition often fixes the rent and the tenure 
 of land. In some sections the tenant can sell 
 his tenancy for quite a substantial sum, and yet 
 legally he is only a tenant-at-will. And the right 
 of the heirs to inherit the tenancy is also recog- 
 nized. 
 
 Sometimes sentiment rather than competition 
 fixes the value of the land. Many a man con- 
 tinues to own land, because he inherited it, when 
 it is not worth the taxes. 
 
 Sentiment fixes the value of many things and 
 its power is recognized in regard to other things, 
 why not in regard to land ? A man may be 
 offered a big price for his business, by some 
 
LAND 59 
 
 corporation that wishes to form a monopoly, but 
 he refuses to sell. Years of work and habit has 
 endeared that business to him and he does not 
 wish to sell at any price. 
 
 Land probably will continue to be bought 
 and sold as private property, because, consider- 
 ing all things, it is the nearest approach possible 
 to what is right in dealing with the problem. 
 
 Tis heaven alone that is given away 
 Tis only God may be had for the asking. 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
.CHAPTER XIL 
 LABOR 
 
 Laborin' man an* laborin' woman 
 
 Hev one glory and one shame; 
 Evty thin' that's done inhuman 
 
 Injures all on 'em the same. 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
 Labor is one the factors of production and of 
 progress and is divided, perhaps somewhat arbi- 
 trarily, by economists into productive and un- 
 productive labor. 
 
 Productive labor produces utilities which are 
 embodied in material objects, as a horseshoe, or 
 the iron from which the horseshoe is made. 
 
 Unproductive labor embraces other kinds, 
 such as the footman in livery whose labor is for 
 ostentation and show. 
 
 There is such a thing as productive and un- 
 productive consumption. The food and clothing 
 consumed by the insane is an instance of unpro- 
 ductive consumption, while that consumed by 
 the farmer is productive consumption. 
 
 Labor is employed either directly about the 
 thing produced or in operations preparatory to 
 its production, as labor employed in producing 
 subsistence for subsequent labor, in producing 
 materials or implements, in the protection of 
 
LABOR 61 
 
 labor, in the transportation and distribution of 
 produce, in invention and discovery, in agricul- 
 ture, manufacturing and commerce, as well as 
 labor which relates to human beings, as teach- 
 ing, doctoring, nursing, etc. 
 
 The tendency of competition is to reduce the 
 recompense of labor to the smallest amount that 
 will sustain life, or to a bare existence. 
 
 It is fortunate for the average laborer that 
 there are several things that tend to regulate 
 the price of labor besides competition. 
 
 One of these is the ratio between the amount 
 of money available for wages and the number 
 of laborers. 
 
 This ratio is subject to changes caused (1) by 
 an increase in number of laborers, (2) by a de- 
 crease in number of laborers, (3) by an increase 
 in amount of money, (4) by a decrease in the 
 amount of money, (5) by improved machinery 
 or methods, which have the same effect as an 
 increase in number of laborers. 
 
 Custom in many instances fixes the price of 
 labor, and in such cases competition has little 
 effect. Fishermen fish "on shares," and the 
 price of fish is supposed to be governed by sup- 
 ply and demand. The expose of some of the 
 combinations of wholesale fish dealers has led 
 us to doubt whether supply has much to do 
 with regulating the price of fish ; and demand is 
 governed more by religious ideas than anything 
 else. If it is not so, why is Friday looked upon 
 as the day for eating fish more than any other 
 day? 
 
62 PROGRESS 
 
 Access to the means of production tends to 
 prevent competition from reducing the price of 
 labor. This is particularly true of the fishing 
 industry. Several year ago we heard a Cape 
 Cod farmer complaining that he had to pay $2 
 per day for laborers, while farmers in the mid- 
 dle and western parts of the State could hire 
 help for $20 a month and board. When asked 
 why, he said : 
 
 "Well, you see, the men go clamming. At low 
 tide they can get enough clams to sell for $1 or 
 $1.25, and as there are two tides a day that ena- 
 bles them to earn $2 or $.50 per day." 
 
 This condition is somewhat changed today. 
 Owing to the great probability that the sup- 
 ply of clams would become exhausted, laws 
 were passed protecting people who planted 
 clams ; and the towns have been obliged to pass 
 laws to prevent any but citizens from digging 
 clams, and also, in some instances, limiting the 
 amount which each individual would be allowed 
 to dig. Neverthelees, if a man would take the 
 precaution which the savage does, of keeping a 
 boat, he could fish as much as he wished. 
 
 An inflation of the currency, or an increase 
 in the circulating medium usually causes an 
 increase in wages, in name, at least, if not in re- 
 ality. '144JE v 
 
 The advance in the cost of necessities owing 
 to the European war has caused a demand on 
 the part of labor for an increase in pay, which 
 has generally been granted, and yet, in spite of 
 this increase in pay, as expressed in the necessi- 
 
LABOR 63 
 
 ties or comforts of life, the real wages of labor 
 are not as large as they were before the war. 
 
 This nominal advance in the price of labor 
 and real advance in the cost of living may be 
 attributed to the large number of men taken for 
 war purposes from the ranks of labor, but this 
 can have affected it only in a limited degree. 
 The larger portion of this boom in prices occur- 
 red before the United States was a participant 
 in the war and may have continued to even 
 higher levels had we remained neutral. 
 
 The new births in the country more than 
 offset the men called to war. In order for the 
 population to double in 25 years, as it has in the 
 past, there must be an addition of over five- 
 and-a-half million persons every year. About 
 one-half of these are males. 
 
 Number of births per year necesssry 
 for a population of 102,826,309 to 
 double in 25 years, if there were 
 neither immigration nor death . . . 4,113,052 
 
 Births necessary to make up for 
 deaths, per year (13.5 per 1000) . . 1,388,155 
 
 5,501,207 
 Less gain by immigration per year . . 746,361 
 
 Births necessary to double population . 4,754,846 
 
 The World's Almanac gives the death rate of 
 the United States as 13.5 per 1000, and the 
 number of immigrants for the five years, 1910 to 
 1914 inclusive, as 5,174,701, and the number of 
 alien emigrants for the same period as 1,442,892. 
 
64 PROGRESS 
 
 Thus we have in continental United States 
 an increase in births of nearly 2,500,000 males, 
 and if the Philippines and other insular posses- 
 sions we taken into consideration it would 
 amount to more than that. 
 
 If we were to have 2,000,000 men in the Army 
 and Navy the casualties would hardly reach 25 
 percent, or 500,000, which is only one-fifth of 
 the males born each year. 
 
 It would appear that the increase in the cost 
 of living is not due to a diminution of men, 
 but to some other cause. 
 
 The nations at war are going in debt, and 
 spending money lavishly; the stress will come 
 when payment of these vast debts have to be 
 made. 
 
 So far as the war was necessary for the pro- 
 tection of labor, labor should bear its share of 
 the expense. But capital has been protected as 
 well as labor, and, unless great care is taken, 
 capital will shift its share of the burden so that 
 labor and land will bear it all. 
 
 Henry George says: "If I take a piece of 
 leather and work it up into a pair of shoes, the 
 shoes are my wages the reward of my exer- 
 tion. Surely they are not drawn from capital 
 either my capital or any one else's capital." 
 
 If capital is "stored-up labor" then leather is 
 capital as it requires weeks to make it, and it is 
 capital i. e., stored-up labor, whether one makes 
 it himself and earns his living while making it 
 by some other labor, as fishing, or whether he 
 buys it with money, and the food and clothing 
 
LABOR 65 
 
 which he eats and wears while making the shoes 
 are either his own stored-up labor (capital), or 
 the stored-up labor of someone else. 
 
 There is no doubt but what labor produces 
 wages and capital, but labor produces practi- 
 cally nothing without the aid of previous labor 
 which must have been stored-up to be in exist- 
 ence. 
 
 "The people of a country are maintained and 
 have their wants supplied, not by the produce 
 of present labor, but of past." John Stuart Mill. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 CAPITAL 
 
 But thou shalt remember Jehovah, thy, God, for it is He that 
 giveth thee the power to get wealth. Deut. viii, 18. 
 
 Most writers on political economy have de- 
 voted considerable space to the definition of 
 words or terms, oftentimes giving them a much 
 more limited meaning than they have in ordi- 
 nary use. Also, most writers have forgotten the 
 limited meaning which they gave to the words 
 and have used them in a different or wider sense 
 before they have finished their works. 
 
 "Capital is but stored-up labor," says Henry 
 George. That definition seems best because it 
 is brief, and it embraces most of the other defi- 
 nitions. 
 
 "The capital of a nation really comprises all 
 those portions of the produce of industry exist- 
 ing in it that may be directly employed either to 
 support human existence or to facilitate produc- 
 tion. " McCulloch. 
 
 "Capital is that part of the wealth of a 
 country which is employed in production, and 
 consists of food, clothing, tools, raw mate- 
 rials, machinery, etc., necessary to give effect to 
 labor." Ricardo. 
 
CAPITAL 67 
 
 "That part of a man's stock which he expects 
 to afford him a revenue, is called capital," says 
 Adam Smith, and he makes some fine distinc- 
 tions as to when certain things are capital and 
 when they are not. Food if a man has it to sell 
 is capital, but if he has it to eat it is not capital. 
 Coal if a man uses it to run his engine in his 
 shop is capital, if he uses it to cook his dinner it 
 is not capital, according to Adam Smith. 
 
 Is not the food that a man eats, in order that 
 he may perform his day's work, capital, as much 
 as the coal which he burns in his engine that he 
 may perform his day's work? Are they not 
 both the product of previous labor, or stored-up 
 labor ? 
 
 Karl Marx devotes two large quarto volumes 
 to telling what "Capital" is and is not. 
 
 "Whatever things are destined to supply pro- 
 ductive labor with shelter, protection, tools and 
 materials which the work requires, and to feed 
 and otherwise maintain the laborer during the 
 process, are capital." John Stuart Mill. 
 
 "The word capital is used in two senses. In 
 relation to product it means any substance on 
 which industry is to be exerted. In relation to 
 industry, the material on which industry is about 
 to confer value, that on which it has conferred 
 value ; the instruments which are used for the 
 conferring of value, as well as the means of 
 sustenance by which the being is supported 
 while he is engaged in performing the opera- 
 tion." Prof. Wayland. 
 
 Henry C. Carey says capital "is the instru- 
 
68 PROGRESS 
 
 ment by which man obtains mastery over nature, 
 including in it the physical and mental powers 
 of man himself." 
 
 Prof. Perry defines capital as "any valuable 
 thing outside of man himself from whose use 
 springs a pecuniary increase or profit." 
 
 William Thornton, an English economic writer, 
 says ("On Labor") that he would include land 
 with capital. Prof. Francis A. Walker, an Amer- 
 ican writer, makes the same declaration in his 
 work on "The Wages Question." 
 
 N. A. Nicholson, London, 1873, says: "Capital 
 must of course be accumulated by saving," and 
 "the land which produces a crop, the plow which 
 turns the soil, the labor which secures the 
 produce, and the produce itself, if a material 
 profit is to be derived from its employment, are 
 all alike capital." 
 
 Henry George cannot understand how "land 
 and labor are to be accumulated by saving." 
 
 Mr. A. having saved the product of his labor, 
 i. e., saved his labor, for years, with that sayed- 
 up, or stored-up labor (money) he buys a piece 
 of land. He has accumulated the land just as 
 surely as he has accumulated the money. 
 
 If a man were to say, "I made $5 yesterday," 
 no one with a modicum of sense would think 
 that he meant that he manufactured a $5 gold 
 piece out of crude gold, or that he printed a $5 
 bill. The man who saves his "wages" saves his 
 labor not in the sense of sparing his labor, but 
 in the sense of hoarding it. 
 
 "The gold washed out by the self-employing 
 
CAPITAL 69 
 
 gold digger is as much his wages as the money 
 paid to the hired coal miner by the purchaser of 
 his labor," says Henry George. It is also his 
 saved labor, or stored labor, or capital. If not, 
 why not? 
 
 Prof. Amasa Walker says capital arises from 
 the net savings of labor, and then afterward 
 declares that land is capital. 
 
 By excluding wealth, all natural resources, 
 mines, waterfalls, water, bank bills and all forms 
 of money (except coin) from his definition of 
 capital, Henry George tries to make out a case. 
 But it amounts to "words, words." 
 
 As well define heaven as a place of darkness 
 and sin, or hell as a place of happiness where 
 there is no night, and on such definitions build 
 an argument. 
 
 Having considered the various definitions of 
 capital it appears that "stored-up labor" is as 
 good a one as can be found, whether it be in the 
 shape of knowledge, or gold, or houses, or land, 
 or cattle, or sheep, or any of the forms of 
 wealth. It is a pretty fine distinction to say 
 that whether a thing is capital or not depends 
 on the use to which the owner intends to put 
 that thing whether to use it himself or to sell 
 it because it not unfrequently happens that a 
 man does not know what use he will make of a 
 thing. 
 
 A certain man, named Jacob, made for him- 
 self a savory "pottage," or "pot roast," and, 
 when it was all ready to be served, his brother 
 arrived at the camp all tired out from a long 
 
70 PROGRESS 
 
 hunting trip, and the brother was faint. This 
 brother's name was Esau. 
 
 "And Esau said to Jacob, Teed me, I pray 
 thee, with that same red pottage; for I am 
 faint.' . . . 
 
 "And Jacob said, 'Sell me first thy birthright/ 
 
 "And Esau said, 'Behold I am about to die ; 
 and what profit shall the birthright do to me?' 
 
 "And Jacob said, 'Swear to me first ; and he 
 swore unto him ; and he sold his birthright unto 
 Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage 
 of lentils ; and he did eat and drink, and he rose 
 up and went his way." 
 
 Now Jacob prepared the pottage for himself, 
 but he saw a chance to make a good trade and 
 he sold it. According to some writers the pot- 
 tage was not capital until his brother came into 
 camp and asked for the pottage, and then it sud- 
 denly became capital. It was "stored-up labor" 
 from the raising of the animal to the killing, 
 dressing and cooking of it, and did not have to 
 do any lightning-change trick at the last moment 
 to become capital. 
 
 That the laborer may and usually does use 
 capital, even when working for himself, is a fact 
 that many writers overlook, or, if they mention 
 it, they proceed with illustrations and argu- 
 ments in which that fact is ignored. A naked 
 man may pick wild berries and eat them, but, if 
 he is to sell the berries, he must first manufac- 
 ture baskets to carry them in, even though they 
 are birch-bark ones, and both the berries and 
 the baskets are "stored-up labor." And these 
 baskets could scarcely be called "wages," unless 
 
CAPITAL 71 
 
 we consider wages and capital one; they are his 
 capital by means of which he expects to market 
 the product of his labor. 
 
 The savage who uses a steel knife, hatchet or 
 gun is using that which requires thousands of 
 dollars capital. There is nothing which civilized 
 man uses for food, clothing or shelter, or arts, 
 literature or amusement that does not require 
 capital as well as labor. It is not good logic to 
 say labor creates capital and therefore can get 
 along without it. If the products of labor and 
 "wages" are to be spoken of as one, then capital, 
 wealth, profit, interest, wages, etc., are all one, 
 and philosophy becomes merely words, words. 
 
 The civilized man must have capital in some 
 shape in order to labor, and while labor may 
 precede capital in the case of the nude savage, 
 even with him capital is more often used than 
 not. 
 
 "Many months must elapse between the sow- 
 ing of the seed and the time when the produce 
 of that seed is converted into a loaf of bread," 
 and "it is therefore evident that laborers cannot 
 live upon that which their labor is assisting to 
 produce, but are maintained by that wealth 
 which their labor, or the labor of others, has 
 previously produced, which wealth is capital." 
 [Fawcett. 
 
 Henry George says : "These propositions are 
 seen to be not self-evident, but absurd ; for they 
 involve the idea that labor cannot be exerted 
 until the products of labor are saved thus put- 
 ting the product before the producer." 
 
 With the civilized laborer is it not invariably 
 
72 PROGRESS 
 
 the case that another's labor must precede our 
 own? We labor by means of the product of 
 some other man's labor. 
 
 Take the printer, for instance, he goes to the 
 office (a building made by other men's labor), 
 sets type (made by other men), he takes a proof 
 using roller, ink, paper and press (made by 
 others), he reads, corrects, imposes and prints 
 (with materials made by others), and, if it is a 
 book he is working on, it has to go to the binder, 
 thence to the publishers, thence to the book- 
 stores, and it would be months before any 
 money would be derived from his labor or its 
 product, unless someone with capital advanced 
 him his wages. 
 
 "The canoe which Robinson Crusoe made with 
 infinite pains was a production in which his 
 labor could not yield an immediate return. 
 . . . It was necessary only that he should 
 devote part of his time to the procurement of 
 food while he was devoting part of his time to 
 the building and launching of the canoe." 
 [Henry George. 
 
 Is it not plain the the canoe became Crusoe's 
 capital, or stored-up labor, as soon as he com- 
 menced to build it, and the nearer it approached 
 completion the greater was his capital (stored-up 
 labor). 
 
 The nude savage may gather wild fruits and 
 eat them, and thus have no capital, but if he 
 makes a bow and arrow, or any other weapon, 
 to kill game with, he thereby stores up labor and 
 has capital in the bow and arrow. 
 
CAPITAL 73 
 
 Does subsistence come from the past or from 
 productive labor that is going on around us? 
 asks Henry George. 
 
 The greater portion of present production ex- 
 ists because of past labor. Years of labor were 
 required to build the boats, nets and equipment 
 with which to catch the fresh fish on the break- 
 fast table ; at least one year's labor was required 
 to raise the cow from which the fresh milk was 
 obtained; fresh vegetables were planted and 
 labored on months before they were put on the 
 table ; while the orchard from which the fresh 
 fruit is obtained must have been planted from 
 two to seven years before it bore anything. 
 
 Daily labor supplies daily bread only because 
 it makes use of the stored-up labor (capital) of 
 the past. The rich man might, because of his 
 capital, have his food placed on his table, and by 
 refusing to eat might die of starvation. The 
 labor of feeding himself would hardly be called 
 earning his daily bread by daily labor, and yet 
 that may be the only labor which he performs. 
 
 Nearly all taxes, in this country, at least, are 
 collected in the shape of money, and money is 
 capital ; money never exists until labor has been 
 expended, and it represents stored-up labor. If 
 one should say money is not capital, the error 
 would be in the definition of money. Calling 
 black white does not make it so. But a single- 
 taxer does not stop at a little thing like that. 
 
 H. Besser in his book thus describes such a 
 person : 
 
 "A very frequent form of obstinacy is that 
 which is familiarly known as the 'fixed idea/ 
 
74 PROGRESS 
 
 that is to say the persistence of a single idea 
 that has become so exaggerated that it finally 
 developes into an obsession from which nothing 
 can turn those who have fallen victims to it. 
 . . . Pushed to its limit the 'fixed idea' be- 
 comes a monomania. This state of mind has 
 the essential characteristic of causing every 
 occurrence, whatever its nature may happen to 
 be, to take on the color of the dominant thought 
 that one cultivates so sedulously. Things which, 
 at first glance, seem to be absolutely incompati- 
 ble with this point of view, and quite at variance 
 with the obsession in question, always become a 
 part of it in the end. They become bound to it 
 by threads more or less slender, but which, after 
 a thousand twists and turns, ultimately attach 
 themselves fast to it, thus effecting a heteroge- 
 neous jumble of ideas in which the victim of the 
 obsession will always manage in some myste- 
 rious way to find a point of contact." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL 
 
 "Know from a bounteous heaven all riches flow." Pope. 
 
 We are so accustomed to breathing that we 
 do it unconsciously ; we are also so accustomed 
 to using capital (stored-up labor) that we do it 
 unconsciously. 
 
 Capital, therefore, increases the power labor to 
 produce wealth : 
 
 1. "By enabling labor to apply itself in more 
 effective ways, as by digging up clams with a 
 spade instead of the hand, or by moving a vessel 
 by shovelling coal into a furnace instead of 
 tugging at an oar." [Henry George. 
 
 [Furnishing the clam-digger with a spade is 
 increasing the power of labor to produce wealth, 
 but moving a vessel (capital) by shoveling coal 
 (more capital) into a furnace (also capital) in- 
 stead of tugging at an oar (capital), is not so 
 much increasing the power of labor as it is in- 
 creasing the efficiency of capital. It must be 
 remembered that capital, unless used efficiently, 
 wastes itself. The primitive man who wished 
 to navigate a stream (without capital) would 
 have selected a drifting tree and propelled it by 
 paddling with his hands, or with a broken 
 
76 PROGRESS 
 
 branch of the tree. The oar was as much cap- 
 ital in the foregoing illustration as was the 
 spade, yet the author did not seem to appreciate 
 the fact.] 
 
 2. By assisting labor to avail itself of the re- 
 productive forces of nature, as to obtain pototoes 
 by planting them, or cattle by breeding them. 
 
 3. By permitting the division of labor, and 
 thus increasing the efficiency of the human 
 being by the utilization of special capabilities, 
 the acquisition of skill, and the reduction of 
 waste ; and also by using the powers of nature 
 at their best, by taking advantage of the diversi- 
 ties of soil, climate and situation, so as to obtain 
 each particular kind of wealth where nature 
 is most favorable to its production. 
 
 4. By paying wages and supporting labor dur- 
 ing production. 
 
 5. By supplying materials which labor works 
 up into wealth. 
 
 6. By supplying machinery and tools, build- 
 ings, factories, stores, houses and land to the 
 laborers. 
 
 7. By supplying transportation. 
 
 8. By supplying money and means of ex- 
 change. 
 
 9. Lack of capital, and the inefficient use of 
 capital, limits industry. 
 
 There is no dispute as to the second and 
 third propositions stated above ; they are self- 
 evident ; so we will pass to the fourth. It is only 
 by putting a limited and false meaning to the 
 word "capital" that any ambiguity arises, and 
 
THE FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL 77 
 
 we have previously quoted the authorities on 
 this subject. 
 
 If you bear in mind that "stored-up labor" is 
 capital, can there be any doubt that the civilized 
 man lives and eats because of capital? 
 
 It has been said in regard to the fifth proposi- 
 tion that nature, rather than capital, supplies 
 materials which are made up into wealth by 
 labor. This may be true, in some few instances, 
 with the savage man, but with the civilized man 
 nature yields her materials only to labor when 
 assisted by capital. 
 
 Sixth. It is admitted (Progress and Poverty, 
 p. 80) that capital, or the lack of it, may limit 
 the "form" and the "productiveness" of labor. 
 Without the factory there could be no factory 
 operatives. If the farmer must use a stick, be- 
 cause he has not capital enough for a spade or 
 a horse and plow, there is a great limitation put 
 on the productiveness of his labor. 
 
 Do you not limit labor when you limit its form 
 and productiveness? Can you think of a single 
 instance in which the civilized man exerts his 
 labor power and reaps the product of that labor, 
 without the use of capital? 
 
 Physical exercise, or calisthenics, is the only 
 labor I know which yields its product without 
 the use of capital, and a man would starve if his 
 labor were limited to that. 
 
 Seventh. That capital by supplying trans- 
 portation aids labor is so patent that it needs 
 scarcely be stated. 
 
 Think of the labor of bringing copper from 
 
78 PROGRESS 
 
 Lake Superior to New York or Boston, if it had 
 to be packed on the backs of men. 
 
 Eighth. It seems self-evident that capital sup- 
 plies money and the means of exchange. Even 
 though credit is a large factor in banking and 
 exchange, credit could not long exist without 
 capital. 
 
 Ninth. As the power of labor to produce 
 wealth is increased by capital in the aforemen- 
 tioned ways, so the lack of capital and its ineffi- 
 cient use limit the power of labor to produce 
 wealth. This limit is not necessarily an absolute 
 stoppage of labor. "Limited liability" does not 
 mean no liabitity. 
 
 "A portion of wealth production is constantly 
 going to the replacement of capital, which is 
 constantly consumed and constantly replaced. 
 But it is not necessary to take this into account, 
 as it is eliminated by considering capital as con- 
 tinuous." [Henry George. 
 
 The annual increase of wealth is estimated to 
 be from 3 to 7 percent only. The wealth of the 
 United States in 1900 was $88,517,303,775 ; in 
 1912 it was $187,739,071,090; an increase of less 
 than 7 percent. The other 93 percent must 
 have gone for (1) what was consumed in produc- 
 tion and (2) the replacement of capital. 
 
 To "eliminate" consideration of 97 percent of 
 production and remember only the 7 percent is 
 rather absurd, and yet that is what you do if you 
 consider capital continuous. 
 
 "When we speak of produce, we mean there- 
 fore, that part of the wealth produced above 
 
THE FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL 79 
 
 what is necessary to replace the capital con- 
 sumed in production." Ibid. 
 
 The product of a farm or a factory is its gross 
 output, regardless of whether the capital is re- 
 placed or not. Profit is the word generally used 
 to denote the gain over and above that necessary 
 to replace capital. When we say of a certain 
 shoe factory that its "production is ten cases of 
 shoes per day," no man would think we meant 
 that there were that many cases "above what is 
 necessary to replace the capital consumed in 
 production." 
 
 "Some portion of the produce is taken in tax- 
 ation and consumed by government. But it is 
 not necessary, in seeking the laws of distribu- 
 tion, to take this into consideration." Ibid. 
 
 Not considering the produce taken by the gov- 
 ernment and the transportation problem and the 
 calls upon capital to settle these matters resulted 
 in the coal and sugar famine in New England in 
 1917-18, and caused the banks to call in their 
 loans and boost the rate of interest. 
 
 Single-tax writers claim that the whole social 
 fabric is dependent up three factors land, labor 
 and capital and that all social wrongs are be- 
 cause of the inequitable division of production 
 between these three factors. 
 
 A certain rich Arab was making his way 
 across the desert of Sahara, as it was a business 
 trip his belt was well supplied with precious 
 stones and gold ; when in the midst of the desert 
 his camel sickened and died. The land as far 
 as he could see was his to use as he would ; he 
 had plenty of capital, and his labor power was 
 
80 PROGRESS 
 
 unimpared, for he was in his prime. Land, labor 
 and capital were his, and yet death stared him 
 in the face, unless some caravan should chance 
 his way. 
 
 A Robinson Crusoe might have a cave of gold, 
 more land than he could possibly use, and be as 
 strong as Samson, or, in other words, have land 
 labor and capital, and yet be nothing but a mis- 
 erable castaway, like a bird fretting his life away 
 in gilded cage. 
 
 You never saw a watch or a clock with only 
 three wheels, and yet single-tax writers think 
 the weal or woe of the whole social fabric is de- 
 pendent on the three wheels land, labor and 
 capital. 
 
 For a community to be successful it must 
 have not land alone, but land containing many 
 and diversified elements, or those elements must 
 be readily obtainable. Of course farm lands are 
 necessary, but what would farm lands avail with- 
 out the plow, mowing machine, harrow, etc.? And 
 how shall we obtain these without iron? If you 
 consider all these as land, the question becomes 
 one of transportation for the necessary elements 
 are seldom if ever to be found in one locality, 
 and to furnish transportation is one of the 
 functions of capital. 
 
 Also for a community to be progressive it 
 must not only have labor, but it also must have 
 labor skilled in the various arts and crafts. It 
 must not only have capital, but it must also have 
 it in the shape and form most readily adaptable 
 to the multiple uses of a modern civilization. 
 
 It must also have men of educution and to 
 
THE FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL 81 
 
 obtain these schools and colleges are necessary, 
 furnishing which is also a function of capital. 
 
 And last, but by no means least, that country 
 that would spell success must have God-fearing 
 justice-loving, right-living men, and these to a 
 great extent depend on the religious training, 
 which training, in modern days at least, requires 
 capital. 
 
 The present world war is because the Kaiser 
 and the junkers who rule the German Empire 
 had neglected the Biblical teaching of love, 
 which "suffereth long and is kind ; love envieth 
 not ; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 
 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its 
 own, is not provoked." They were puffed up 
 with pride, which "goeth before a fall;" they 
 were envious of Great Britain and France and 
 claimed not only their own but everything in 
 sight. 
 
 "Labor exerted upon the land can produce 
 wealth without the aid of capital, . . . there- 
 fore the law of rent and the law of wages must 
 correlate each other and form a perfect whole 
 without reference to the law of capital, as other- 
 wise these laws would not fit the cases ... in 
 which capital takes no part in production." "As 
 capital is but stored-up labor ... its laws 
 must be subordinate to, and independently cor- 
 relate with, the law of wages, so as to fit cases 
 in which the whole produce is divided between 
 labor and capital without any deduction for 
 rent." [Progress and Poverty. 
 
 These quotations show the fallacy of the three 
 factors, for this author admits that there are 
 
82 PROGRESS 
 
 times when but two factors are used and not 
 always the same two factors at that. 
 
 Furthermore, with primitive man, labor pre- 
 ceded both wages and capital, and with civilized 
 man, labor usually precedes wages; very few 
 persons receive their pay in advance, that being 
 the case, how can the law of labor (whether 
 stored-up or otherwise) be subordinate to the 
 law of wages? Labor and capital can both exist 
 without wages, and, quite often do so exist, as 
 where the small farmer owns and operates his 
 farm. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 RENT, AND ITS LAW 
 
 The land is to be let for life or years, 
 The rent paid in money, produce or tears. 
 
 We ordinarily speak of rent only when the 
 owner and user are distinct persons. But there 
 is also rent where the owner and user are the 
 same person. Whatever part of an income an 
 owner might obtain by letting his land to 
 another is rent. Because it represents (or is) 
 the interest which he might obtain had he put 
 his money in the bank instead of investing it in 
 land. 
 
 If a man buys a piece of land at a low price 
 and after a lapse of time sells it at a much 
 higher price, whether he has made or lost 
 money depends upon whether he has received 
 enough rent to pay the taxes, plus the amount 
 of interest he would have received had his 
 money been in the bank, plus the amount of 
 money necessary to pay for the care and collec- 
 tion of rents. Many a man has sold land at a 
 much higher price than he gave for it and yet 
 lost money, owing to taxes and loss of interest. 
 
84 PROGRESS 
 
 "Until its ownership will confer some advan- 
 tage, land has no value." [Henry George. 
 
 Rent or land value arises from (1) productive- 
 ness, and (2) accessibility to markets. 
 
 Two farms of equal size and equidistant from 
 market may be of unequal value, because one 
 will produce six or eight times as much as the 
 other ; and that productiveness may be the re- 
 sult of labor which one owner had been expend- 
 ing for years on the land, while the other owner 
 was shiftless. 
 
 And is not this productiveness, which has 
 been added to the land, capital, and entitled to 
 its interest indefinitely, the same as any other 
 capital ? And how can this interest be separated 
 from rent? 
 
 Ricardo's law of rent is : 
 
 "The rent of land is determined by the excess 
 of its produce over that which the same applica- 
 tion can secure from the least productive land 
 
 in use." 
 
 "Rent is in short the price of monopoly . . . 
 but, in the modern form of society, the land, 
 though generally reduced to individual owner- 
 ship, is in the hands of too many different per- 
 sons to permit the price which can be obtained 
 for its use to be fixed by mere caprice or de- 
 sire." [Henry George. 
 
 If the last part of this statement is true, how 
 can there be a monopoly? 
 
 There are hundreds of farms in New England 
 that can be bought for less than the cost of the 
 buildings, and many city properties, also. That 
 
RENT, AND ITS LAW 85 
 
 being the case, how can there be a monopoly of 
 land? 
 
 "In speaking of the value of land I use and 
 shall use the words as referring to the value of 
 the bare land. When I wish to speak of the 
 land and improvements I shall use those words." 
 Ibid. 
 
 But how can you separate those values? 
 
 A. bought a house and lot for $3100 ; the asses- 
 sors say the house and lot are worth $4000 ; a 
 reputable builder says the house could not be 
 built for $4000. What becomes of the value of 
 the land? What is the value of the house? 
 
 The value of a thing is what it will sell for. 
 This is well known in the stock market. The 
 man who values his stock above the market 
 price is trying to fool himself. This does not 
 mean that he must sell at the market price. 
 
 A man buys two pounds of sugar for 20c. 
 He may not wish to sell it, but you would be 
 foolish to pay more when you can go to the 
 store and buy it for 20c. So 20c is the value of 
 that sugar, whether he sells it or not. 
 
 There are hundreds of farms in New England 
 that can be bought for less than the cost of 
 the buildings, and many city properties also. 
 That being the case how can there be a monop- 
 oly of land? You pay for the buildings and you 
 get the land for nothing, and how can there be 
 a monopoly of what you can get for nothing? 
 
 Single-taxers would divide produce into : Rent 
 plus wages plus interest. Why? They omit 
 the most important factor taxes. Taxes have, 
 
86 PROGRESS 
 
 in the history of the world, frequently been so 
 high and levied so ruthlessly, as to leave the 
 producers to starve. 
 
 The single-taxer may tell you that taxes are 
 included in the rent ; but so frequently are inter- 
 v /est, wages, heat and gas. 
 V There are cases every year in which land 
 passes to the government city or town be- 
 cause people cannot pay the taxes. 
 
 If Ricardo's law of rent is true, it does not 
 follow that the "least productive land in use" is 
 a stationary point. It varies from year to year, 
 owing to a number of reasons. 
 
 One of the chief reasons why there are aban- 
 doned farms is not because the soil is less pro- 
 ductive than it was one hundred years ago, but 
 because the railroads have made the products of 
 other farms, which are more distant from the 
 market, more accessible. 
 
 There were no railroads when these aban- 
 doned farms were first reclaimed from the wil- 
 derness. The first railroad in the United States 
 was built in 1828-30. In 1830 there were 40 
 miles of railroad in the United States. 
 
 You will find, if you take the trouble to in- 
 vestigate, that the abandoned farms are all three 
 or more miles from a railroad station. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 INTEREST 
 
 Interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of 
 parts, even that of disinterestedness. 
 
 Francis, Due De La Rochefoucauld. 
 
 In a state of society in which the monetary 
 system, and hence all business, is on an interest 
 basis it is exceedingly difficult to avoid interest. 
 
 A man in business is obliged to charge inter- 
 est or he wonld be forced out of business. It 
 may be called by some other name as profit or 
 rent. 
 
 A builder borrows money to build a house. 
 If he lets the house for hire, he must receive 
 enough money to pay for the taxes, the wear and 
 tear of the property, the interest on the money 
 borrowed as well as interest on his profit (or on 
 the selling price of the house); in this case the 
 interest would be called "rent." If he sold the 
 house the interest might be called "profit." 
 
 The following quotations will show what the 
 Biblical writers thought of interest : 
 
 "If thou lend money to any of my people with 
 thee that is poor, thou shalt not be to him as a 
 creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him inter- 
 est." [Exodus xxii, 25. 
 
 "Take thou no interest of him [thy brother] 
 
88 PROGRESS 
 
 or increase, but fear thy God, that thy brother 
 may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him 
 thy money upon interest nor give him thy 
 victuals for increase." [Leviticus xxv, 36, 37. 
 
 "Thou shalt not lend upon interest to thy 
 brother ; interest of money interest of victuals, 
 interest of anything that is lent upon interest : 
 unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest ; 
 but unto thy brother thou shall not lend upon 
 interest." [Deuteronomy xxiii, 19, 20. 
 
 "Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. 
 . . . The thing that ye do is not good. . . . 
 And I likewise, my brethren and my servants, 
 do lend them money and grain. I pray you, let 
 us leave off this usury. [Nehemiah v, 7-10. 
 
 "Jehovah, who shall sojourn in thy tabernacle? 
 Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? ... He 
 that putteth not out his money to interest, nor 
 taketh reward against the innocent." [Psalms 
 xv, 1, 5. 
 
 "He that augmenteth his substance by interest 
 and increase, gathereth it for him that hath pity 
 on the poor." [Proverbs xxviii, 8. 
 
 "As with the taker of interest, so with the 
 giver of interest to him. The earth shall be 
 utterly emptied, and utterly laid waste; for Jeho- 
 vah hath spoken this word." [Isaiah xxiv, 2, 3. 
 
 "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne 
 me a man of strife and a man of contention to 
 the whole earth ! I have not lent, neither have 
 men lent to me; yet every one of them doth 
 curse me." [Jeremiah xv, 10. 
 
 "He that hath not given forth upon interest, 
 neither hath taken any increase, that hath with- 
 
INTEREST 89 
 
 drawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed 
 true justice between man and man, hath walked 
 in my statutes, and hath kept mine ordinances, 
 to deal truly ; he is just, he shall surely live, saith 
 the Lord Jehovah." Ezekiel xviii, 8. 
 
 "Now, lo, if he beget a son, that seeth all his 
 father's sins, which he hath done, and feareth, 
 and doeth not such like ; . . . that hath with- 
 drawn his hand from the poor, that hath not 
 received interest nor increase, hath executed 
 mine ordinances, hath walked in my statutes, he 
 shall not die for the iniquity of the father, he 
 shall surely live." [Ezekiel xviii, 14. 
 
 "If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder 
 of blood, and that doeth any one of these things, 
 . . . hath given forth upon interest, and hath 
 taken increase, shall he then live? He shall not 
 live : he hath done all these abominations ; he 
 shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him." 
 [Ezekiel xviii, 10, 13. 
 
 "In thee (Jerusalem) have they taken bribes 
 to shed blood ; thou hast taken interest and in- 
 crease, and thou hast greedily gained of thy 
 neighbors by oppression, and hast forgotten me, 
 saith the Lord Jehovah." [Ezekiel xxii, 12. 
 
 "Thou oughtest therefore to have put my 
 money to the bankers, and at my coming I 
 should have received back my own with inter- 
 est." [Matthew xxv, 27. 
 
 "Then wherefore gavest thou not my money 
 into the bank, and I at my coming should have 
 required it with interest?" Luke xix, 23. 
 
 The only places in the Bible where interest is 
 spoken of as anything but evil are in the two last 
 
90 PROGRESS 
 
 quotations. In these parables Christ made use 
 of the well-known custom of giving and taking 
 interest to illustrate the truth that "God giveth 
 the increase," and hence the increase belongs to 
 God, and we should do nothing to hinder God 
 from giving his natural increase. In other 
 words we should not be stumbling-blocks. 
 
 There are a number of things which tend to 
 fix the current rate of interest. Perhaps the 
 most important is the government's financial 
 system. 
 
 If a government borrows money, as most 
 civilized governments do, the rate of interest 
 which she pays becomes the minimum rate of 
 interest in that country. 
 
 When the United States paid 7 3-10 percent, 
 as she did during the civil war, that was the 
 minimum rate, and most loans were for 10 or 12 
 percent. 
 
 When the United States paid 3 percent, 4 
 to 6 percent was the prevailing rate of interest. 
 When the United States issued her Liberty loans 
 at 3 1-2 and 4 percent, the savings banks noti- 
 fied the borrowers that the interest rate would 
 be one-half of one percent higher, and they also 
 began to call in their loans. 
 
 The reason why the government's loans al- 
 ways command the lowest rate of interest is be- 
 cause they are the very best securities. The 
 right of a government to take everything and 
 everybody in a country, when necessary for the 
 defense of that country, necessarily makes the 
 
INTEREST 91 
 
 promises of that government superior to the 
 promises of any of her subjects. 
 
 Then, of course, supply and demand and 
 security have their influence in fixing the rate 
 of interest. For, while the government estab- 
 lishes the minimum rate, in periods when the 
 government rate is stationary there are varia- 
 tions in the rate of interest which the ordinary 
 borrower must pay. 
 
 If interest, in itself, is a curse ; and a great 
 many sacred and profane writers seem to think 
 that it is, why would it not be a good thing if 
 the government should establish zero as the 
 minimum interest rate? Why should the gov- 
 ernment pay any interest? 
 
 Why should not the government issues its 
 bills and pay them directly to whomsoever it may 
 happen to owe, whether it be the soldier or the 
 United States Senator or the contractor? 
 
 And, to prevent depreciation of the currency, 
 why should not the annual tax levy be sufficient 
 to meet the annual expenses ? 
 
 Is not a bill issued by the government of the 
 United States as good as one issued by any bank 
 or combination of banks? What if the bank 
 bill does have a government bond (another kind 
 of bill) or a railroad security back of it, does 
 make it any better than a bill issued by the 
 United States government, without using the 
 banks as an intermediary ? 
 
 There is what is known as a quitclaim deed, 
 and if a piece of real estate were sold a dozen 
 times, each seller giving a quitclaim deed, and 
 
92 PROGRESS 
 
 it should develop that the first seller had no 
 valid title, the last buyer would be the loser, for 
 each seller had simply quit whatever claim he 
 might have had in the estate. 
 
 Is it not thus with the United States govern- 
 ment's promise to pay? Does passing through 
 the hands of one bank or a dozen banks increase 
 its value? 
 
 If in the present war the United States should 
 be whipped and government bonds become 
 worthless, do you think the banks would re- 
 deem their bills in gold? 
 
 The setting forth the principles of money and 
 credit would take more space than was intended 
 when this book was contemplated, and the rate 
 of interest is of course affected by these. 
 
 "Money is a representative of value" is one 
 of the best definitions that we have read. If 
 that is correct why is not the the cheapest and 
 most convenient kind of "representative" the 
 best? 
 
 Is this not the reason why bank checks are 
 used more than any other form of money? 
 
 Gold is said to represent the value of the labor 
 which is required, on the average, to produce it. 
 
 Why should the government fix the value of 
 the average price of gold? Why should the 
 government not fix the average prices of the rep- 
 resentatives of other forms of labor, as iron, 
 copper, wheat, corn, potatoes, sugar, etc? 
 
 If it is a good thing for the government to 
 issue a paper representative of one kind of labor, 
 why not of other kinds of labor ? 
 
 Of course to maintain the value of these rep- 
 
INTEREST 93 
 
 resentatives there must always be value back of 
 them. When the government issues paper rep- 
 resentatives of labor (in place of silver, or gold) 
 it stores the thing represented, and when the 
 thing represented is taken out of storage its rep- 
 resentative is retired from circulation. 
 
 To carry out this idea on many commodities 
 it would be necessary for the government to 
 have storage warehouses, but it would not be 
 necessary for the producer to pay interest on 
 the produce while it was being stored, his "rep- 
 resentative of value" would be "ready money." 
 
 The currency thus issued would be an elastic 
 currency, retiring from circulation automatically 
 when the commodity is withdrawn from the 
 government warehouse for consumption. 
 
 It is for benefit of the bankers that we have a 
 monetary system founded on an interest-bearing 
 debt. Whenever this matter has been up for 
 discussion the bankers of the country have had 
 influence enough to down it. Are they not the 
 financiers of the country? Is it not presump- 
 tion for a layman to assume to know anything 
 about finance? 
 
 There is no prospect that we shall have any 
 such change in the financial system as we have 
 here indicated, and it is mentioned merely be- 
 cause we should be false to our light if we did 
 not. 
 
CHAPTER XVH. 
 WAGES 
 
 For the Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when 
 he treadeth out the corn. And, the laborer is worthy of his 
 hire. I Timothy v, 18 
 
 Men seek to gratify their desires with the 
 least exertion. That they work at all is simply 
 because they cannot gratify their desires with- 
 out work. 
 
 The "Wages Question," by Prof Walker, de- 
 fines wages as "the reward of those who are 
 employed in production with a view to the profit 
 of their employers and are paid at stipulated 
 rates." 
 
 It has been said that "the reward for labor" is 
 too broad a definition, as it would apply to the 
 the capitalist whose only work is to scheme to 
 make money ; or to the gambler who studies to 
 swindle ; it includes labor of mind as well as of 
 hands. 
 
 We must confess that we do not sense any of 
 these objections. There are some kinds of work 
 that are no benefit to mankind and some that 
 are injurious, but "the wages of sin is death," 
 and the "reward for labor" is its wage. The 
 Chinaman laboring in the cultivation of the 
 
WAGES 95 
 
 poppy, and extracting and marketing the opium, 
 may be doing a greater injury to mankind than 
 than the robber, but who would say that the pit- 
 tance he receives is not his wage? 
 
 The lawyer or doctor may give you advice 
 for which he receives a "fee," is not that fee a 
 reward for the years of work as a student? If 
 so, why is it not a wage ? 
 
 Wages "include all returns received from 
 labor" and vary with the differing powers of the 
 individuals, and also, as society becomes more 
 complex, vary largely as between occupations. 
 
 Wages are measured (1) by the amount of 
 money earned in a certain time, and (2) by the 
 amount of money obtained for a given amount 
 of work of a given quality. One is spoken of as 
 "time work" and the other "piece work." This 
 is a rough way of measuring, but in many in- 
 stances it is sufficient. 
 
 In comparing wages of different places and 
 even the same place at different times it is nec- 
 essary to consider the difference between "nom- 
 inal" and "real" wages. 
 
 A nominal wage is the amount of money re- 
 ceived per hour, day, week, month, year, or 
 "piece," as the case may be. 
 
 Real wages are affected (1) by variations in the 
 purchasing power of money; (2) by varieties in 
 form of payment ; (3) by opportunities for extra 
 earnings; (4) by regularity of employment; 
 (5) by the longer or shorter duration of the 
 power to labor ; (6) by causes which change the 
 rate of wages in any country at any time. 
 
 The actual rate of wages depends partly on 
 
96 PROGRESS 
 
 causes affecting one group of employments com- 
 pared with others, and partly on the general 
 conditions which determine the relations be- 
 tween labor, capital and production over the 
 whole area in which the industrial competition 
 is effective. 
 This theory gives rise to two questions : 
 
 1. What are the causes which determine the 
 general rate of wages? 
 
 2. Why are wages in some occupations and at 
 some times and places above or below this gen- 
 eral rate? 
 
 Natural causes which determine the rate of 
 wages are : 
 
 1. The agreeableness or disagreeableness of 
 the employment. 
 
 2. The cheapness or the reverse of learning 
 the business. 
 
 3. The constancy or inconstancy of employ- 
 ment (also mentioned as affecting real wages). 
 
 4. The great or small trust reposed in the 
 workmen, an important consideration in the 
 higher grades of labor as doctors, lawyers, etc. 
 
 5. The chance of success or the reverse. 
 Mankind in general is inclined to overestimate 
 
 the chances of success. The fact that 95 per- 
 cent of new business ventures are failures proves 
 this. 
 
 Artificial causes which determine the rate of 
 wages : 
 
 1. Industrial competion restrained by limiting 
 the number of any particular group. Many 
 labor unions limit the number of apprentices, 
 
WAGES 97 
 
 thus restricting the number of those who can 
 learn the business. 
 
 2. Competition increased or diminished by 
 law and custom. Free education tends to in- 
 crease competition in those pursuits requiring 
 education, while educational qualification in 
 many instances tends to limit competition, es- 
 pecially where the education required is not free 
 and is technical, as doctors, lawyers, engineers, 
 firemen, plumbers, etc. In many states the law 
 requires anyone desiring to practice one of these 
 avocations to pass a rigid examination. 
 
 3. Law or custom may impede or promote the 
 circulation of labor. England once had laws 
 which prevented a laboring man from moving 
 from one town to anothor. 
 
 4. Many times in the history of the past the 
 laws have directly interfered to regulate wages. 
 And those regulations have usually been against 
 the working man. 
 
 Between 1796 and 1834 in England the giving 
 of relief in aid of wages to able-bodied persons 
 outside of the poorhouses was legal, according 
 Fowle's "Poor Law." The justices determined 
 a natural rate of wages, regard being paid to 
 the price of necessaries and the size of the labor- 
 er's family, and an amount was given from the 
 taxes sufficient to make up the wages received 
 to this natural level. 
 
 In one parish the poor-tax swallowed up the 
 whole value of the land (thus nationalizing it), 
 which was fast going out of cultivation. (The 
 usual result of public ownership.) The real 
 
98 PROGRESS 
 
 wages obtained were, in spite of this relief, 
 lower than otherwise they would have been, 
 proving that wages are paid out of the produce 
 of labor. 
 
 The report of the Poor Law Commissioners 
 (1834) states : "The severest sufferers are those 
 for whose benefit the system is supposed to have 
 been introduced and to be perpetuated, the 
 laborers and their families." In every district 
 the general condition of the independent laborer 
 was strikingly distinguishable from and superior 
 to that of the pauper, though the independent 
 laborers were commonly maintained upon less 
 money. 
 
 What has been called the "wages-fund" theory 
 also is entitled to some consideration in deciding 
 what determines the rate of wages : 
 
 The ratio between the aggregate amount of 
 money at a given time which is destined for the 
 payment of wages and the number of laborers 
 among whom this money is to be divided. Any 
 increase in population would cause a diminution 
 in the rate of wages, unless there were a corre- 
 sponding increase in the wages fund; any in- 
 crease in the wages fund would cause a rise in 
 wages. 
 
 According to this view wages can only rise 
 either owing to an increase in capital or a de- 
 crease in population, and this accounts for the 
 exaggerated importance attached to the Malthu- 
 sian theory, viz : That the natural increase of 
 population constantly presses on the means of 
 subsistence. 
 
 The great improvement in the condition of 
 
WAGES 99 
 
 the laboring classes in England immediately after 
 the occurrence of the Black Death, in the mid- 
 dle of the 14th century was manifestly due to 
 the sudden and extensive thinning of the ranks 
 of labor. 
 
 If we regard labor as a commodity and wages 
 as the price paid for it, then we may say that 
 the price will be so adjusted that the quantity 
 demanded will be made equal to the quantity 
 offered at that price the agency through which 
 the equation is reached being competion. This 
 harmonizes with the law of supply and demand. 
 
 But this "wages-fund" theory is not infallible, 
 and Mill says it is a popular delusion that high 
 prices make high wages. 
 
 Ireland, after the potato famine, affords an 
 instance of a rapidly declining population with- 
 out any corresponding rise in wages, while in 
 new countries we often find a very rapid increase 
 in population accompanied by an increase in 
 wages. 
 
 As far as any direct regulation of wages by 
 law is concerned, it is possible only within nar- 
 row limits. The government might institute 
 certain complex scales for different classes of 
 labor and make them compulsory. But any 
 rate which the state of trade would not bear 
 could not be enforced ; business men could not 
 be compelled to work at a loss or to keep their 
 capital employed in one place at one occupation 
 when it might be more advantageously trans- 
 ferred to another place or occupation. Thus the 
 legal rate could not exceed to any considerable 
 extent the market rate. Nor could a lower rate 
 
100 PROGRESS 
 
 in general be enforced, especially since laborers 
 have the right to combine and possess powerful 
 organizations. The competition of capitalists for 
 labor would tend to raise wages above the legal 
 rate, and evasion would be extremely easy. 
 
 "Industrial competition is the principal force 
 in the regulating the rate of wages," says one 
 writer. "Wages are forced to a minimum fixed 
 by what is called the 'standard of comfort' that 
 is, the amount of necessaries and comforts 
 which habit leads the working classes to demand 
 as the lowest on which they will consent to 
 maintain their numbers," says another writer. 
 
 Increase in the quantity of work caused by 
 the invention of new machinery and by the 
 division of labor also affect the rate of wages. 
 
 The division of labor makes it possible that 
 the different agents in the joint product should 
 be remunerated at different rates; whereas if 
 the process were begun and completed by one 
 man, the commonest or easiest labor bestowed 
 by him would have to be paid at the rate of the 
 highest and best. 
 
 The division of labor also causes an increase in 
 the dexterity of every individual workman, and, 
 also, a saving of time which is lost in passing 
 from one kind of work to another. 
 
 So we see that wages are not governed by 
 any one rule. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 There is no better motto . . . than these words of Bishop 
 Wilson : "To make reason and the will of God prevail." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 "The whole economy of every nation is the 
 result of a long evolution in which there has 
 been both continuity and change, and of which 
 the economical side is only a particular aspect. 
 And the laws of which it is the result must be 
 sought in history and the general laws of society 
 and social evolution." [T. E. Cliffe Leslie." 
 
 "The economic condition of society at this 
 day is the outcome of the entire movement 
 which has evolved the political constitution, the 
 structure of the family, the forms of religion, 
 the learned professions, the arts and sciences, 
 the state of agriculture, manufactures, and com- 
 merce." Ibid. 
 
 Back of all economic investigation must lie 
 the idea that wealth is for the maintenance and 
 evolution of society. Nor is it right to assume 
 that all men desire wealth and dislike exertion, 
 nor that self-interest is always the dominant 
 power. The laws of wealth must be inferred 
 from the facts of wealth, not from supposition 
 of human selfishness. 
 
102 PROGRESS 
 
 The field of human endeavor which would be 
 of the greatest benefit to society as well as to 
 the individual would seem to be the study of 
 how society has and is working out its own con- 
 servation and evolution through the supply of its 
 material wants; what organs it has developed 
 and how they operate (these are questions of 
 fact and capable of being studied through obser- 
 vation and history) ; and also how best to over- 
 come the natural obstacles to progress. Much 
 has been accomplished the lightning-rod has 
 rendered lightning harmless but there are 
 many problems yet to be solved. 
 
 "Freedom is for society, as for the individual, 
 the necessary condition precedent of the solu- 
 tion of practical problems, both as allowing 
 natural forces to develop themselves and as ex- 
 hibiting their spontaneous tendencies ; but it is 
 not in itself the solution. . . . The solution, 
 indeed, must be at all times largely a MORAL one ; 
 it is the SPIRITUAL rather than the temporal 
 power that is the natural agency for redressing 
 or mitigating most of the evils associated with 
 industrial life. The neglect of this considera- 
 tion, and the consequent undue exaltation of 
 state action, . . . appears to us the principle 
 danger to which the contemporary German 
 school is exposed." Encyc. Brit. 
 
 Competition causes both profit and wages to 
 tend to a minimum; capital tends to waste TtseiJ 
 (moth and rust doth corrupt and theives bre^k 
 through and steal); land left uncultivated soon 
 changes to a wilderness and thorns and weeds 
 
CONCLUSION 103 
 
 grow where once was the vine and fig tree, and 
 when cultivated it "runs out" and tends to pro- 
 duce less as the years go by. 
 
 Eternal vigilance is not only the price of lib- 
 erty, but it is the price of progress, yes, even of 
 existence. 
 
 We started to write this book with the inten- 
 tion of showing that human progress was not 
 to be achieved by partaking of any fountain of 
 eternal youth, nor by adopting any one economic 
 cure-all like the single tax, but rather was de- 
 pendent upon a great variety of causes. If we 
 have succeeded in this we are satisfied. 
 
 We were at first of the opinion that the Nat- 
 ural Enemies (Supra Chapter III) were the chief 
 enemies of progress, but the 
 
 country into the World WariaslOTC^cKIs to the 
 conclusion that war a man-made evil is the 
 greatest enemy of progress. 
 
 If I have done well, and as is fitting, . . . it is that which 
 I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could 
 attain unto. II Maccabees xv, 38. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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