ff ^^^^<:^n^;^^J^^:^:i^^^^:^d^^ 
 
Z.N.S. Traa.—No XXIII. JVew Edition, July, igoi. 
 
 ? -ft 
 
 A COLONIST'S Plea 
 
 FOR 
 
 Land Nationalisation: 
 
 BY 
 
 (of Tastnania). 
 
 Vice-President of the Land Nationalisation Society, 
 
 Originally Published by the Tasmanian Land Nationalisation Society. 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 ALFRED R. WALLACE, D.C.L. (Oxon), F.R.S., 
 
 Fresideyit of the Land Nationalisatior 
 
 THE LAND NATIONALISATION SOCIETY, 
 432, WEST STRAND, LONDON. ' 
 
 ^ PRICE THREEPENCE. 
 
 (^1 
 
 <bk 
 
 Printed for the L.N.S. by James Harwood, Defwent Bufldings, Tenant St., Derby. 
 

 Land Nationalisation Society, 
 
 432 WEST STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 Established In 1881 to fiestcre Lhe Land 1:0 ine Jr^eopie 
 and People to the Land. 
 
 Monthly Organ, LAND & LABOUE, Id. (Publislied on 1st each month). 
 
 President : 
 
 Alfeed Russel Wallace, D.C.L. (Oxon), F.R.S., &c. 
 
 Henry Bjboai 
 
 Willi 
 Michael Fi 
 T. Lough, M.P. 
 
 gitized by the Internet Arch' 
 in 2007 with funding fn 
 -Microsoft Gorporatioi 
 
 Vice-P7rsidents : — 
 
 M.A., W. P. Byles, 
 ;RD, D.D.. 
 
 kBDLBBTONE, B.A., 
 
 «,rt., Maurice Levy, M.P., 
 T. J. Macnamara, M.P., 
 Dadabhai ISiiroii^f^f^WIW^??., D'Arcy W. Reeve, 
 T. P. lliTZEMA, J.P., A. C. SwiNTON, Miss Helen Tatlor, 
 CAFr. Franklin Thomasson, J. P., Key. W. Tuckwell, W. Volckman, J.P., 
 T. P. W^^K'KH, J. p., Charles Wickstkkd, George Jacob Holyoakk. 
 Rev. Philip H. Wickstbed, M.A. 
 
 Treasurer :~Ali:x. W. Payne, F.CA.. F.S.S., 70 Finebury Pavement, E.G. 
 Bon. Secretary :~C. M. Bailhache, ll.b., c.c, 3 Elm Court, Temple, E.G. 
 
 Editor of " Land ^' Labour " :— George Crosoer. 
 
 Gentral Secretary :— Joseph Hyder. Assistant Secretary :— H. R. Aldhidge 
 
 Bankers : — London and County Bank, Limited. 
 
 MEMBERSHIP.— Open to Land Nationalisers who subscribe 
 to the Society's Funds. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/colonistspleaforOOogilrich 
 
L.I^.S. Trad. — No. XXIII. New Edition, June, igor. 
 
 A COLONIST'S PLEA 
 
 FOR 
 
 LAND NATIONALISATION 
 
 BY 
 
 (qf Tasmania). 
 
 Vice-President of the Land Nationalisation Society. 
 
 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE TASMANIAN LAND NATIONALISATION SOCIETY. 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 ALFRED R. WALLACE, D.C.L. (Oxon), F.R.S., 
 
 President of the Land Nationalisation Society ^ London. 
 
 ^ OF THE \ 
 
 THE LAND NATIONALISATION SOCIETY, 
 432, WEST STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 PRICE THREEPENCE, 
 
»3"' 
 
 \^^03 
 
 INTEODUOTOEY NOTE BY ALPEED E. WALLACE. 
 
 The following paper, which the Author has kindly permitted us 
 to add to our series of tracts, is an interesting and valuable contribution 
 to the literature of Land >iationalisation. The writer is himself a con- 
 siderable landholder in Tasmania, and it says much for his independence 
 of thought and freedom from prejudice that he has arrived at con- 
 clusions which are practically identical with ours as to the evil results 
 of private property in land, 
 
 Tasmania is by nature one of the most favoured countries in the 
 world. It possesses a delightful climate free from the extreme heats 
 and long droughts of Australia ; its soil is fertile, its forests are mag- 
 nificent, its streams numerous and overflowing ; all the products of the 
 temperate zone flourish there, while for fruits of every kind it is unsur- 
 passed ; it has excellent roads, with railroads and navigable rivers ; its 
 population is small, and a large proportion of the land still remains 
 uncultivated ; yet instead of universal happiness and well-being we find 
 the inevitable complaint, (as with us,) of trade depressed, capital 
 unemployed, farming unprofitable, and labourerers out of work ! 
 
 The Author shows us clearly the cause of this state of things, and 
 what is still more important, he explodes one of the commonest fallacies 
 of our opponents — that large farms lead to better cultivation and higher 
 pi eduction than small farms or peasant-holdings. This part of his work 
 is especially valuable, because he shows, as the results of observation 
 and owing to the inevitable working of the law of self-interest, that 
 the large owner or large tenant will often cultivate his land badly, or 
 even leave much of it uncultivated, because he obtains the largest net 
 returns by doing so. The peasant farmer, on the other hand, working 
 a small area by the help of his own family finds his profit in high 
 culture and the maximum of production from the land. By the former 
 system one man gets a large profit but small proportionate produce by 
 employing say ten men on a large area of land ; by the latter system 
 twice that number of men work for themselves on the same area, 
 produce double the amount of crops and stock, and live, all of them, 
 in independence, and in that healthy enjoyment of life which a man 
 obtains when he works freely upon the soil and knows that the whole 
 produce of his labour is his own. 
 
 These points, and many others of equal interest are so well 
 discussed and illustrated by the Author, that I strongly recommend 
 the study of his paper to all who are interested in the greatest problem 
 of the day — how to abolish pauperism by enabling every working man 
 to obtain some portion of his food directly from his native soil. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 A COLONIST'S PLEA 
 
 FOR 
 
 LAND NATIONALISATION. 
 
 The Unearned Increment: Its Nature. 
 
 1 ET na begin by taking the unearned increment ' in its 
 . I ^ simplest and clearest form. 
 
 Suppose I buy Government land at £1 per acre, and 
 quietly holding on while roads are being pushed forward, 
 settlement extending and land values rising, refuse offer after 
 offer till the price reaches £2, when I sell out. Of these £2, 
 one I have acquired by direct purchase; £1 worth of money 
 for £1 worth of land ; but the other I have done nothing to 
 acquire. 
 
 It is not interest on the purchase-money, for interest is pay- 
 ment for the use of capital, and comes out of the use. Who 
 would expect interest on money tied up in an old rag ? There 
 has been no use here. 
 
 It is not compensation for risk, for the land could not disappear 
 or deteriorate, and was sure to be wanted. 
 
 It may be quite right for all that, that I should have it. That 
 is not the point at present. The point at present is simply to 
 explain the term, and to show not only what it directly means, 
 but what it indirectly implies, for it implies a great deal — much 
 more than most people have any idea of. 
 
 I have neither done anything to create this increase of value 
 nor rendered any service in return for it. If a sovereign were 
 suddenly to drop into my pocket from the sky, it would not be 
 more completely unearned. 
 
 But it has not only been unearned. If that were all, it would 
 be no great matter. If, like the sovereign, it had dropped from 
 the sky, then, though I might be undeservedly the richer* 
 pobody else would be the poorer. My gain would be a clear 
 
 169963 
 
additiou to the sum total of human wealth, out of which others 
 besides myself would in one way or another derive benefit; 
 and, whether or no whatever benefits one without injuring 
 another is fair subject for congratulation. 
 
 But it has not only been unearned; it has been drawn from 
 the earnings of others. My gain is others' loss. 
 
 If I sell goods or perform work for another, then no matter 
 how high I may charge for the goods or the work, I am 
 rendering goods for goods, service for service, earnings for 
 earnings. What I ofFer is my labour, or the fruits of it, and 
 as the public are free to get the same goods or services elsewhere 
 if my terms don't suit, or to go without them, the fact of their 
 accepting my terms shows that the thing I offer is, under the 
 circumstances, worth the money. 
 
 But in the case of this unearned increment on land there is no 
 pretence of any exchange. I offer for it neither labour nor the 
 produce of labour. All I do is to place my hand on a certain 
 portion of the earth's surface, and say, "No one shall use this 
 without paying me for the mere permission to use it." I am 
 rendering no more service in return for this extra pound, either 
 to the purchaser or to society, than if I had acquired exclusive 
 title to the air, and charged people for permission to breathe. 
 And if, instead of selling my land for an additional pound, I let it at 
 a proportionately additional rent the principle would be the same. 
 
 The increase of value in my land has arisen from the execu- 
 tion of public works and increase of population, causing an 
 increased demand for the land ; in other words, it has arisen 
 from the national progress; and I, so far from aiding in this 
 progress have actually hindered it, by keeping my property locked 
 up and so forcing on intending producers to inferior or less 
 accessible lands ; and by holding so much land back have helped 
 to make land so much scarcer, and, therefore, so much dearer, and 
 so have helped to increase the tribute which industry has to pay 
 to monopoly for the mere privilege of exerting itself. 
 
 I have employed my land not as an iostrument of production, 
 but as a means of extortion. I have bought it, not to use but to 
 prevent other people from using it without my purchased leave j 
 
not to earn anything by it but to obtain the power of demanding 
 the earnings of others. 
 
 Suppose certain parties, knowing that a road would shortly be 
 made into a particular region, bought from Government the 
 privilege of placing bars across the road (when made) and 
 forbidding anybody to pass until he had paid toll ; toll not (as 
 under the old State tolls) to pay for the maintenance of the 
 road, but toll for the mere permission to pass along the road. 
 Every one would recognise that this toll was pure blackmail 
 and not earnings, and the obstructors mere para-<ites licensed to 
 prey upon the public. But where is the difference between 
 blocking the road and blocking the land that the roads lead to ? 
 Where is the difference between levying blackmail on the 
 transport of goods and levying it on their production ? 
 
 But it will be said^ " It was with real earnings that I bought 
 the right to demand this payment." 
 
 True. But the point is that whether I bought it or stole it, 
 the thing I have bought or stolen is the privilege of levying 
 blackmail upon industry ; of demanding something and giving 
 nothing in return ; of laying my hand on the earth's surface 
 and saying to all and sundry, " Give me of the produce of your 
 labour, or be off with you ; so much a year if I choose to let it ; 
 so much in a lump sum if I prefer to sell it." Whichever 
 of the two forms the demand assumes it is called by political 
 economists " rent," and by that name I shall henceforth call it, 
 because that is the accepted name, and because there is no other 
 compact and handy term by which to express it; but it is not to 
 be confounded with rent in the legal and commercial sense, 
 which includes interest on the cost of improvements. The rent 
 I shall mean is econom^'c rent only ; the price charged for the 
 mere use of the land as such, either without any improvements 
 or apart from them : I shall mean " ground rent" in short. 
 
 The fact that it was with real earnings that I bought the land 
 for which I charge rent does not make rent earnings. I may 
 invest earnings in buying a share in a pirate vessel (as a great 
 writer puts it), but the proceeds of piracy are not therefore 
 earnings. 
 
It is the Dature of the business whereby I make money, and 
 not the manner in which I got into it that makes the difference 
 between earnings and appropriation. 
 
 Earnings m6an taking payment for goods or service rendered ; 
 appropriation means taking something and giving nothing in 
 return ; no matter whether the taking be legal or illegal, or 
 how I acquired the privilege of taking. Anyone can recognise 
 that it is one thing to charge for the fish I caught in the sea, and 
 quite another thing to charge for permission to fish in the sea ; 
 one thing to charge for produce I have raised from the land, and 
 quite another thing to charge for permission to raise produce 
 from land. 
 
 " Still I have the right to make this charge ? " 
 
 I am not disputing that. 
 
 If Government, with the full consent of the governed, issued 
 licenses authorising to rob on the highway, the robbers, I suppose, 
 would be justified in acting on their privilege ; but their gains, 
 all the same, would be appropriation and not earnings, no matter 
 how high they paid for their license or how honestly they 
 came by the money to pay for it. And if the public, disgusted 
 with the system, demanded its immediate abolition, the robbers 
 would have a claim to compensation j but their compensation 
 would have to be assessed, not by the amount of plunder they had 
 expected to make, but by the fee they had paid for their license 
 and the actual loss to which, in one way or another, they had 
 been put by the sudden abolition of a privilege they had honestly 
 paid for. 
 
 But it will be said, " Rent is the result of a free contract." 
 
 Is it ? The Italian peasant who agrees to pay to the brigand 
 on the mountain so much a year in consideration of not being 
 robbed makes a contract, but is it a free contract? If he 
 refuses to pay it the brigand will take his earnings ; if the 
 applicant for land refuses to pay rent the landlord will refuse 
 to let him make any earnings. Where is the great difference 
 between the two capes ? There is a contract in each case, and 
 the one is about as free as the other. 
 
In neither case is anything given in return for the payment 
 received, except permission to work unmolested in a particular 
 place. 
 
 " But," it will be said " in practice the rent of an estate 
 represents real earnings in the shape of improvements made, 
 as well as mere permission to use the land, and how can you 
 separate the two values." 
 
 Not only is it quite possible to separate them, but the thing 
 is often done. In London, for instance, the ground rent and 
 the rent for the house often belong to quite different persons. 
 In Ulster, again, the retiring tenant receives the value of his 
 improvements while the landlord keeps the value of the land. 
 And in America, I am told^ the land and the improvements 
 are assessed separately and taxed separately. 
 
 But all this has really nothing to do with the subject in 
 hand. My concern at present is simply to explain the nature of 
 the unearned increment. 
 
 Whether the value of land and the value of the improvements 
 can be separated or not, they are quite distinct elements, just 
 as in a glass of grog, the brandy is brandy and the water water, 
 each with its own distinctive properties and effects, notwith- 
 standing their indistinguishable corn-mixture ; and he therefore 
 who lets land levies blackmail upon industry by charging for 
 something which represents no service at all, none the less that 
 at the same time he charges for something else that does 
 represent service. 
 
 No doubt there are many other things besides land in 
 which a monopoly of the article will enable the possessor to 
 levy something resembling blackmail ; but there are points 
 of difference that distinguish them all from the pure and 
 simple appropriation of land monopoly. 
 
 The first is that none of them excludes other people from 
 making a living or from making earnings to any extent by 
 other means than the article monopolised. 
 
 If by a day's labour or by pure accident I find a diamond, 
 I may ask a price entirely disproportionate to the value of my 
 labour ; but then the public need not buy my diamond unless 
 
8 
 
 they like. My finding a diamond does not prevent other 
 people from looking for diamonds with as much chance of find- 
 ing them as I had, and, if they don't think they are likely to 
 find any by looking for them they can go without, and be none 
 the worse. 
 
 But every piece of land appropriated shuts out so many other 
 people from that land, and as all the land (practically speaking) 
 is appropriated, or in one way or another out of reach of the 
 masses, they are at the mercy of the landholders, and have no 
 choice but either to rent it from them as tenants or work 
 for them as labourers on the hardest terms to which competition 
 can drive them ; which means that the landowner has the power 
 of appropriating the greater part of their earnings in return 
 for the mere permission to them to earn anything. 
 
 Or suppose that, instead of finding a diamond, I buy tin, 
 and that next week the price goes up to double — here there is 
 an additional distinction between my gains and the land specu- 
 lator's ; for not only are the public under no compulsion to buy 
 tin (while they are to rent land), and not only does tin repre- 
 sent the results of labour, and so represent earnings (which 
 land does not), but the magnitude of my gain in most cases 
 represents compensation for great risk. 
 
 The earnings of farmers and of miners may average the same, 
 but the farmers' average is made up of pretty equal profits all 
 round, while the miners' average is made up of a few big prizes 
 and many blanks. And what applies to the miner applies also to 
 the speculator in mining products. His occasional large profits 
 represent compensation for great risks, and is thus as much 
 of the nature of insurance as of profit. 
 
 No one would think of either mining or speculating in mining 
 products, unless the many blanks were compensated by occasional 
 large prizes. They are the necessary inducements to engage 
 in those callings, and therefore fair earnings when they come. 
 Land, however, is not a speculation in this sense (though even if 
 it were, its profits would still be appropriation and not earnings 
 for reasons ah^eady given) ; it is a sure investment in the sense 
 that it is subject to . no extraordinary risks : to no more risks, 
 
9 
 
 that is, than such as are inseparable from all human enterprise, 
 even the safest. 
 
 The value of land, as of everything else, will oscillate within 
 certain limits, and even in some exceptional cases, as in the sudden 
 diversion of traffic, fall for an indefinitely prolonged period ; but 
 these occasional or exceptional perturbations are but as the 
 advance and recession of the waves in a flowing tide. The 
 tide still comes in. 
 
 In every country which has any enterprise and progress, land 
 values must rise. The movement may be fast or slow, con- 
 tinuous or interrupted, but it is up not down. 
 
 There is not a single factor in a nation's progress that does 
 not add to the value of land. Every road improved and railway 
 laid down; every machine invented and process perfected; 
 every opening of new markets ; every improvement in fiscal 
 policy, in order and good Government, in the knowledge and 
 skill, in the morals, manners, and even numbers of the people, 
 every conceivable element, in short that adds to the productive- 
 ness of industry, adds to the value of land, and increases the 
 tribute which monopoly can wring from industry ; which the 
 man who merely owns the land can exact from him who uses it 
 for the mere permission to use it. 
 
 This is why the gradual rise of land value or rent (ground rent 
 only, remember), is called the unearned increment. 
 
 So far for its nature. Our next consideration will be its 
 magnitude. 
 
 The Unearned Increment : Its Magnitude. 
 
 Under the system prevailing all over the civilised world every 
 country is appropriated by a (comparatively) few owners. 
 
 What these owners do with the land is a matter the State 
 concerns itself very little about. Whether they occupy and 
 use it themselves, or let it to a tenant and live in idleness on 
 the fruits of his labour ; whether they cultivate it like a garden, 
 making it yield abundant wealth and maintain hundreds of 
 families, or leave it in a state of nature to carry sheep, exclud- 
 ing the whole rising tide of population from the opportunity 
 
10 
 
 of developing its boundless resources because tbe sheep pay 
 them rather better ; whether they open out the mineral treasures 
 hidden in its depths or lock them up by demanding such 
 exorbitant royalties that enterprise either will not attempt the 
 work, or attempts and fails; whether they construct factories 
 and build cities upon it, or turn out the whole population 
 and burn down their dwellings (as in the Scottish Highlands) 
 because a foreign millionaire offers them a higher price for the 
 privilege of turning it into a wilderness to shoot deer in than 
 the children of the soil can give for the mere privilege of earn- 
 ing a living ; all these things the State regards as matters of 
 quite secondary consideration with which it is not called upon 
 to interpose, because that would be interfering with the " sacred 
 rights " of property. 
 
 The one thing it does concern itself energetically about is to 
 establish "the sacred rights" as fast as possible and in all 
 directions, and ensure that every acre shall have its blackmailer 
 privileged to exclude everybody else from the land he has 
 acquired possession of, and to forbid access to all industry 
 except on payment of the heaviest toll which the keenest com- 
 petition can compel. 
 
 The whole country (that is the whole country worth occupy- 
 ing at any given moment) being thus apportioned amongst 
 these privileged few, they are masters of the situation. The 
 first thing a man requires is room to stand in ; and there is 
 no unappropriated room available for the purpose. If he 
 stands on private land he is liable to an action for trespass. 
 If he goes out into the street, the policeman may order him 
 to move on. When night ^omes on, matters are worse. If he 
 sleeps on somebody's premises he can be apprehended for being 
 on the premises for an unlawful purpose. If he sleeps in the 
 bush he may be locked up as a vagrant without any visible 
 means of support. The Stale insists that he shall pay black- 
 mail to somebody; not payment for service of any sort rendered, 
 but payment for the mere permission to be somewhere. 
 
 Land is the basis of all industry. 
 
11 
 
 All industry consists either — 
 
 1. In extracting the raw materials of wealth from the 
 land ; or 
 
 2. In working up, shifting about, or distributing these 
 materials, or in aiding in one way or another some of these 
 processes. 
 
 We shall call the one class primary and the other secondary 
 industries. 
 
 Farming and mining are the chief examples of the primaries. 
 As to the secondaries, they are legion ; and not only are all the 
 materials these last have to operate upon drawn from the 
 land, but so are the tools they work with as well as the food 
 the workmen consume. 
 
 It is clear that the extent of the secondary industries will 
 be strictly limited by the primaries ; that is, there can be 
 no more persons engaged in working up, shifting about and 
 distributing materials than there are materials (extracted from 
 the land) for them to work up, shift about and distribute — 
 and not only is the extent of the secondaries determined by 
 the extent of the primaries, but so also are the profits in the 
 secondaries determined by the profits in the primaries. 
 
 Materials must be extracted (or produced) from the land 
 before they can be put to any further use, and men will not 
 leave this necessary preliminary work to take to the secondary 
 work unless they can make as much by the new industry as 
 they could by the old ; and they cannot hope to make more, 
 because if they did, the opening in the secondary industries 
 being strictly limited, competitors would at once flock in and 
 bring their profits down. 
 
 If profits in the primary industries are high, that is, if the 
 land yields abundantly, and no one steps in to appropriate 
 the fruits, profits in the secondaries will be high too, for 
 otherwise people would leave the secondaries and betake 
 themselves to the land. 
 
 If, on the other hand, profits in the primaries are low — 
 that is, if either nature is niggardly or someone (the landlord 
 for instance) appropriates the fruits, profits in the secondaries 
 
12 
 
 will be low too ; for otherwise people would leave tlie land 
 and crowd into the secondaries till they brought profits down. 
 Now, if all the land is held by a comparatively few people 
 (as is the cate). then since the land is the basis of all industry, 
 there will be keen competition for it — a competition becomiing 
 keener year by year as the competitors multiply and wealth 
 increases, the result of which competition will be that the man 
 of average means and capacity will have to give the very highest 
 price for the land that he will consent to give, rather than 
 go without it, and this highest price will be determined, no^ 
 by the amount that it takes out of his pocket, but by the 
 amount it leaves behind. 
 
 Here, for instance, are three farms of differing fertility 
 estimated to yield to the customary system of farming, £200, 
 £300, and £400 net profit respectively. Then, if the first of 
 these fetches, after a pretty close competition, £100 a year, 
 this shows that no bidder will give more than will leave him 
 £100 to himself, but that the competition of the others will 
 not allow him to retain more ; in other words, that £100 is the 
 lowest he will consent to keep, and the highest he will be allowed 
 to keep, so that £100 a year is the average profit of farming 
 amongst farmers of that class and means. But since he cannot 
 hope to keep more than £100, it does not matter to him what 
 the surplus may be which he is compelled to give up to his 
 landlord; consequently the other two farms will fetch res- 
 pectively £200 and £300. Of course it is the rate of profit, 
 and not the actual profit of which we are speaking of. Ihe 
 £100 is only quoted as an example. Amongst one class of 
 farmers the reserve will be higher, among another lower, 
 according to their means and the magnitude of their 
 operations. 
 
 This is the theory, and it corresponds exactly with the facts ; 
 for whether a farmer settles here or there, near a market or far 
 off, whether he pays £100 a 3 ear for an indifferent farm,' £150 
 for a better, or £200 for a bet'.er still, he finds that except 
 by some lucky accident his profits as a farmer remain much 
 the same; which shows that his rent is determined, not by 
 
13 
 
 what he has to pay away, but by what he is determined to 
 keep; and this amount, this rate of profit, will, for reasons 
 already given, determine the rate of profit in all the secondary 
 industries, though they have no visible connection with the 
 land at all. 
 
 To put it compactly, the profits of industry all around 
 are determined by the rent of land. That amount of profit 
 which the worker on the land can save from his landlord 
 will be all that the worker at any industry can hope to get, 
 and it will represent that minimum margin to which he will 
 consent to be beaten down rather than go without the land. 
 
 What is the minimum margin ? 
 
 The applicant for the land has a certain amount of capital 
 
 (otherwise he could not be an applicant), and for this he knows 
 
 he could get interest, and he also has the capacity to work. 
 
 Consequently, the least he will determine to keep will be what 
 
 he could earn as a labourer, plus the interest he could get on his 
 
 capital. Actually (except in the case of the poorest competitors 
 
 for the smallest and worst farms) it will be something rather 
 
 more than this, for his capital, such as it is, gives him a certain 
 
 advantage in the position. He and his competitors being none 
 
 of them in danger of immediate want, and therefore not 
 
 pressed by necessity, will have a tendency to hold back in the 
 
 bidding when it begins to run high, and to cling to something 
 
 more than the closeness of the competition might seem to 
 
 demand ; and the larger his capital the greater will be his 
 
 advantage, not only because of his greater power and stronger 
 
 inclination to hold out for better terms, but also because the 
 
 men of sufficient means to require a large farm, such as he 
 
 wants, are fewer in number, and the competition in every way 
 
 less keen and forced. Hence the smallest and worst farms are 
 
 always the highest rented, which is only another way of saying 
 
 that the profits on them are smallest. 
 
 Still, be the farms large or small, competition will always 
 
 force rents up, and therefore profits down to the smallest 
 
 return the average applicant of his class will consent to accept 
 
 rather than go without the land. 
 
14 
 
 Land, as we have said, is the basis of all industry, and agri- 
 culture is the fundamental industry. 
 
 Everyone recognises this ; and in view of the hard struggle 
 and hand-to-mouth existence of the farmer, all sorts of projects 
 are proposed to ameliorate his lot. 
 
 One party advocates protection, another the lightening and 
 equalising of taxation, another cheapness of labour by assisted 
 immigration (making the labourer the scapegoat), another pins 
 its faith on railways, and so on. 
 
 Of these proposals some are good, some bad ; but their effects* 
 whichever way they tend, will not, except for the moment, affect 
 the farmers' profit one way or the other. 
 
 Let us suppose protection to be the true policy, and raising 
 the price of some particular article by a duty, say meat, see 
 what the result would be. 
 
 The rise of price in meat will produce two opposite effects. 
 It will immediately injure one class of farmers and benefit 
 another. Those who by reason of distance from market, 
 unsuitability of their land for grazing, or its still greater 
 suitability for something else, do not fatten stock, notwith- 
 standing the rise in price (and these will be a very large 
 number), will suffer a distinct appreciable loss in increased 
 household expenses and increased cost of feeding their men, 
 without any advantage to set off ; while those on the other 
 hand, with land specially adapted for grazing, who already 
 made a profit by it will make a larger profit still ; and those 
 on land passably suited for it, who formerly made their profit 
 by something else, may, perhaps, change their system, and make 
 their profit by grazing instead of by those other things. 
 
 But the point is, that after the first start neither those who 
 gain nor those who lose will be any the better or the worse off, 
 for their gain or loss, because at the first renewal of their lease 
 they will transfei the gain or loss to their landlords. 
 
 For so long as all the land of the country is in the hands of 
 a comparatively few, so that there are more farmers wanting 
 farms than there are farms for them to have, so long will com- 
 petition force land values up to their maximum, and rent will 
 
15 
 
 mean to tho farmer the utmost that he can see his way to giving 
 for the land rather than go without it and let another take 
 his place. 
 
 But for the very reason that competition is thus already at its 
 full stretch, it cannot be stretched any farther, and those farmers 
 whose narrow margin of profit is trenched on by their increased 
 expenses consequent on the rise in meat will insist on having that 
 margin restored, and they will be able to carry their point ; 
 for they were already giving full valae for their farms, and their 
 farms (since they produce no more and yet cost more to work) 
 are now worth less, less not only to the present occupants, but 
 to any one else who might want to take their place ; therefore, 
 the landlords cannot play off one against another, and so must 
 accept reduction. 
 
 Conversely, where the profits on land, already profitable for 
 grazing, have been increased by the duty, those lands will have 
 become just so much more valuable and will fetch so much 
 more rent. 
 
 So, if you made a railway to every farmer's door you would 
 simply make the land more valuable. Compare those districts 
 that have railways with those that have none. In the former 
 you will see a greater population : probably, more cultivation, 
 certainly higher rents, but no higher farm profits ; for where 
 the carcase is there will the eagles be gathered together; 
 where returns are high, thither will competitors flock. There 
 may be no actual bidding against each other among the applicants, 
 but this is only because the landlord will kindly take that 
 trouble off their hands. He will put up the rent as high as 
 he thinks he can — too high at first perhaps — if so his vacant 
 farm will soon cause him to correct his error ; but whatever the 
 process, the result will be the same. 
 
 So, if by assisted immigration, you reduce the cost of labour by 
 half, or if by mechanical inventions you enable the farmer to do 
 with half tho number of men (which would come to much the same 
 thing to him) you would be simply reducing the cost of working 
 the land, and so increasing the return to be got out of the land, 
 and so increasing the value of land, and so raising rents. 
 
16 
 
 Otoe after another labour-saving appliances have been intro- 
 duced within the last 20 years ; double-furrow ploughs, reapers 
 and binders, horse rakes, steam threshers, without improving 
 the condition of the farmer in the least. Never have there 
 been so many aids and appliances to industry as there are now, 
 and never has the struggle of the farmer been more severe. 
 
 So if you lightened taxation, or even abolished it altogether, 
 it would make no difference to the farmer, beyond the moment. 
 At present some leases stipulate that the landlord shall pay all 
 rates; others that the tenant shall pay them ; others again that 
 each shall pay half, but it is all a mere adjustment of rent. The 
 more taxes the less rent, and vice v.ersa. 
 
 If the farmer pays more rent it is because he has to pay less 
 taxes, and whether this is owing to the landlord paying them, or 
 to there being none to pay, makes not the least difference to the 
 farmer. 
 
 So if nature herself instead of the mere instruments of pro- 
 duction were improved ; if the soil were suddenly doubled jn 
 fertility ; if the sun could be got to shine and the rain to fall 
 exactly when and where it was wanted ; if all weeds and plagues 
 were abolished, it would come to the same thing, and for the 
 same reasons 
 
 The Press is continually preaching that the fault of things all 
 lies with the farmer. He should be more industrious or more 
 provident, he should know something about chemistry, he should 
 buy the best appliances, and use the most advanced methods. 
 It is very good advice in its way perhaps, but it does not touch 
 the question in the least. 
 
 If you passed every farmer through a technical college, if by a 
 network of meteorological stations and commercial agencies you 
 supplied him every day with a forecast of the weather, and the 
 state of the markets, if you supplied him gratis with all the 
 beat machinery, if you trained him in habits of industry and 
 economy, foresight and skill, till you made him as much superior 
 to what he now is as a steam thresher is superior to a flail, you 
 would enormously increase his efficiency no doubt, but you wonl(J 
 not add one farthing to his profits. The whole benefit would ^o 
 
17 
 
 as before to the landlord, and for the same reasons. You would 
 not have eased the pressure of competition, but only have put 
 it into the power of every competitor to offer more. Still, as 
 before, rent would mean the utmost the farmer could be forced 
 to bid for the land rather than go without it. 
 
 Granting that there are many things that swallow up much of 
 the surplus that would otherwise come to the farmer; heavy 
 taxes, injudicious laws, bad roads, scarce labour; all these matter 
 nothing (as a great writer says) so long as behind them stands 
 something which swallows all that is left. So long as that 
 something stands waiting with open mouth, abolishing any of 
 these only leaves so much more for it to swallow. 
 
 Some people shrink from these conclusions saying, " it is a hard 
 doctrine " (as if truths could be dodged by shrinking from them.) 
 
 Others say that the remedy is the fixing of a fair rent. 
 
 But what is meant by a fair rent ? 
 
 If Brown objects to his present rent of £100, saying it is too 
 high, and should be reduced to £80, and yet Jones is standing 
 by prepared to give £100, why should the rent be reduced ? 
 Why should Jones be forbidden to have what he is ready to give 
 £100 for, in order that Brown should have it for £80 ? It is 
 fair neither to Jones nor to the landlord whatever it may be to 
 Brown. 
 
 What would Brown think if Jones objected to [pay the 5s. 
 for his wheat that he had agreed to pay, saying it ought to be 
 reduced to 4s., when Smith is standing by ready to give 5s. ? 
 
 In the open market a *' fair price" has no meaning. Hudibras* 
 saying still holds good that '' The value of a thing is just as much 
 as it will bring." 
 
 There is a remedy for this evil, and a very simple one, but it is 
 not the fixing of a fair rent. 
 
 ** But," it will be said, " all farmers are not tenants. Many 
 own the land they occupy." True ; but all that this proves is, 
 not that the preceding remarks are incorrect, but that there is a 
 certain class to whom they do not apply. For the present we will 
 let the exception go for what it is worth. What I shall undertake 
 to show by- and- bye is that it is worth nothing. 
 
18 
 
 ^ I But we shall have to present one or two other considerations 
 at some length before we are prepared to deal fully with this. 
 For the present we will let it stand over, only remarking that in 
 farming, tenants are the rule, occupying owners the exception, 
 and that the exceptions grow steadily fewer year by year. Not 
 onl^ in Tasmania, but in all the other colonies, in the United 
 States, and wherever, in short, land is recognised as absolute 
 private property, the divorce between occupation and ownership 
 is proceeding apace, and the very institution which was designed 
 to secure to the producer the full fruits of his labour is becoming 
 the means by which he is compelled to surrender them to another. 
 
 The Real Sufferer. 
 
 As the landlord by virtue of his monopoly of the land holds the 
 applicant for it at his mercy, so the applicant once in possession 
 holds the labourer at his mercy. 
 
 The competition was first for possession of the land, it is now 
 for employment on the land. The competition is in the one case 
 open and direct, in the other disguised and indirect. 
 
 Labourers do not usually underbid each other for employment 
 as tenants overbid each other for possession, but it comes to 
 much the same thing as if they did : The more numerous the 
 labourers in proportion to the work to be done the lower the 
 wages, and vice versa. 
 
 If the landlords were to divide their land into as many pieces 
 of equal value as there were applicants for it, and were to offer 
 these pieces separately, there would be no competition to run 
 rents up, and the landlord would have to take what he could get 
 for it — a merely nominal rent. 
 
 To make money by his monopoly he must keep up its character 
 as a monopoly ; that is, he must offer his land in a single block 
 so to speak, and so compel competition. 
 
 And just as the landlord forces rents up by offering his whole 
 land for one tenant's occupation, and so setting all to compete 
 for the privilege of being that one, so the occupier in his turn 
 forces wages down by employing as few labourers as he can, and 
 so setting all to compete for the privilege of being among those 
 few. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 V OF y 
 
 \£^UFORt;ViK^ 19 
 
 The secret of his power over the labourer is the same as that 
 of his landlord over him. It is not in his capital as is generally 
 supposed, but in his getting possession of more laud than he can 
 use by his own personal labour, and preventing other people from 
 using it by their personal labour, except for his profit. 
 
 The landlord makes the occupier give him .his money ; the 
 occupier makes the labourer give him his work. 
 
 In so far as the occupier can keep his wage expenditure below 
 the general level by doing the same work with fewer men, or 
 paying them less wages, he can retain the savings to himself ; 
 but in so far as he only succeeds in keeping down the general 
 cost of labour, he is only keeping down the recognised cost of 
 working the land^ and so increasing the value of land, and so 
 raising rent ; and the result of his efforts (as a rule), is only to 
 keep down the general level, for all are playing the same game, 
 and any saving effected by one is soon copied by all, and absorbed 
 ia a general reduced cost of production, increasing the value of 
 land and raising rent. 
 
 The productiveness of any industry — that is, the amount it 
 adds to the general wealth or to the material comforts and 
 enjoyments of the people — is measured by the difference in 
 value between the thing produced and the materials used up 
 in producing it. 
 
 Thus, if a carpenter in a day makes a door worth £1, using up 
 8s. worth of timber and nails in the process, the result of his 
 work has been to convert 8s. worth of rough timber into 20s. 
 worth of finished product, exhibiting as the measure of its 
 productiveness a net increase of 12s. How this increase is 
 distributed and applied — whether, being an independent artisan, 
 the maker can keep it all to himself, or whether, being a hired 
 servant, he must be content with his day's pay, leaving the sur- 
 plus to his employer ; whether he receives his share in advance 
 or has to wait for it ; whether he consumes it or saves it up — all 
 these make no difference to the fact that the increase was 12s. 
 
 From which we can see that the maintenance of the labourer 
 forms no part of the real cost of production, but only of his 
 share, as distinguished from the employer's share, of the profit. 
 
20 
 
 If he is working on his own account and not for an employer 
 everyone sees that all he gets for his work is profit, and his 
 maintenance the use (or one of the uses) to which he puts that 
 profit, just as an employer'^ maintenance is the use (or one of 
 the uses) to which he puts his profit. 
 
 Or if the labourer, working for an employer, chooses to fast 
 till bis employer has realised the product and paid him out of 
 that ^product the wages agreed upon, again everyone will see 
 that they are not cost but profit ; the labourer's share and the 
 employer's share being the two parts into which the total profit 
 is divided. 
 
 But if instead of working for himself or waiting and fasting, 
 he arranges to receive in advance from his employer the value (or 
 part of it) of that profit which he would have made if he had 
 been working for himself, or the value of the wages he would 
 have received out of the product if he had waited and fasted, still 
 what he receives remains essentially the same, the profit and not 
 the cost of the work. It is only the time and the manner of his 
 receiving it that is changed ; still, as before, the proposition 
 holds good that wages (of which maintenance forms a part) is 
 something to be added to the employer's profit, not set ofiP against 
 it, in the national account, and that to reduce wages is not to 
 increase the general profits of industry but only to apportion a 
 smaller part of it to the labourer who is worst off and most in 
 need of it, and so leave a larger part for the employer, the 
 landlord, or some other person who is generally better off and 
 less in need of it. 
 
 An industry that does no more than provide bare maintenance 
 for a single man from day to day is to that extent a productive 
 industry, a gain and not a loss, though it provide neither rent 
 to a landlord nor profit to an employer. 
 
 An industry that provides not only for a man but for a 
 family is more productive still, a greater gain still, notwith- 
 standing that it represents increased consumption. 
 
 One that not only provides bare maintenance but comforts 
 and enjoyments as well is a still greater good, and gain to the 
 country, a cause for rejoicing, not regret. And yet if labourers' 
 
21 
 
 maintenance and wages are, as is generally thought, the cost and 
 not the profit of industry, all these earnings should be lamented 
 as expense, and the greater the productiveness of any such 
 industry as we have supposed, the greater the loss to the country. 
 The proceeds of labour, generally speaking, are divided amongst 
 three people, the labourer, the employer, and the landlord. No 
 one reckons the landlord's or the employer's maintenance as 
 part of the cost of production, and yet they persist in reckoning 
 the labourer's as such. Relatively, to the employer, it may be, 
 but absolutely, to the country, it is not. However, this is but a 
 Bide issue, of small consequence to my main purpose, so we will 
 pass on. 
 
 The employer always has to wait for his share till the product 
 is realised, while the labourer generally, and the landlord some 
 times, receives his in advance ; and the employer sometimes 
 makes a miscalculation and gives more to the landlord in rent 
 or to the labourer in wages than a due regard to his own profit 
 would warrant ; or the enterprise may miscarry, and there may 
 be no increase to divide, or to make good what he has advanced. 
 But such miscalculations and failures do not affect the general 
 proposition that, taking industry as a whole, wages, profits, and 
 rent, are the three different portions into which its proceeds 
 are divided. And since, as we have seen, the competition for 
 possession of the land keeps profits down to a minimum, either 
 rent will be determined by wages, or wages by rent ; that is to 
 say, the larger the share of the proceeds the labourer gets, the 
 ^ess will there be left for the landlord, and vice versa ; but as 
 the landloid owns the land, he is master of the situation, and 
 rent determines wages. 
 
 But to say that rent determines wages, is to say that rent 
 devours wages. The labourer gets so little because the landlord 
 gets so much. 
 
 [Note. — I have adopted the division into rent, wages, and 
 profits, instead of into rent, wages, and interest, because 
 though less scientifically accurate, it is sufficiently accurate for 
 my present purpose, and enables me to keep my subject 
 within more manageable limits.] 
 
22 
 
 Kent deyours wages. 
 
 Suppose the labourer to ask for a rise and the farmer to 
 refuse, on the ground that he cannot afford it. 
 
 But presently something happens. A railway is made or 
 a mine opened in the neighbourhood, or some improved process 
 enables a greater yield to be obtained at the same cost, and 
 there ift now an appreciable surplus. The labourer comes 
 forward again and says, "You can afford it now." 
 
 " Unfortunately, no," replies his employer. *' I might have 
 done so, but my lease is nearly up, and these advantages you 
 refer to having made the land more valuable, my landlord has 
 notified that he means to raise the rent ; and as there certainly 
 is a greater surplus available for rent than there was, I must 
 give it, for if I don't someone else will ; and so, as far as I am 
 concerned, the surplus you calculate upon has vanished." 
 
 In shoit, whenever there is an increase in the productiveness 
 of industry creating an additional surplus, and the labourer 
 stretches forth his hand for a share of it, the landlord pushes 
 him aside, and takes it all himself ; but as he keeps well out of 
 sight in doing so, using the employer as his instrument, his 
 action is not perceived. And as it is in the present so it has 
 been in the past. Inventions and discoveries have within the 
 last century doubled the productiveness of industry over and 
 over again, but the labourer has no more benefited by them 
 than the employer has. The increase has been enormous, but, 
 in the primary industries at any rate, the landlord has taken 
 it all. 
 
 But some will say, '' The labourer's exertion is a fixed 
 quantity. The increased productiveness of his industry is in 
 no degree due to himself, but to the improved appliances he 
 works with, and, that being so, the person who supplies these 
 appliances — that is, the employer — has a right to the increase. 
 
 There is enough prima facie appearance of reason in this to 
 have made it worth discussing if the employer really got it, but 
 he does not. He gets interest, no doubt, on the additional 
 expense he has incurred in procuring the appliance, but he gets 
 none of the increase of wealth due to the increased efficiency 
 
23 
 
 of labour when aided by the appliance, (once the appliance has 
 come into general use) ; that, as we have seen, goes to increase 
 the value of land and raise rents, and while the employer does 
 not gain, the labourer in most cases actually loses ; for the usual 
 result of labour-saving inventions, in the primary industries at 
 any rate, is not that the employer retains the same hands to do 
 more work, but that he discharges some of his men and does the 
 old amount of work with fewer hands. 
 
 It is the landlord, who has neither invented, nor supplied, 
 nor put to use the appliances, who gets the whole benefit of 
 them. 
 
 To see that it is rent that devours wages, look at it another 
 way. 
 
 Suppose the labourers demanding an increase and being 
 refused, were to say '* Well, in six months we shall strike, so 
 look out ; meanwhile we shall prepare for the struggle." So 
 they save money, subscribe funds, and organise ; and at the 
 time appointed present themselves, provisioned and prepared. 
 
 What would happen ? 
 
 Would the farmers refuse, and so all industry cease, or 
 would they consent to pay more than they could afford and 
 go bankrupt ? 
 
 Neither of these things would happen. The farmers would 
 simply turn to their landlords and say, '• You see how it is. 
 We cannot afford higher wages, and the labourers won't work 
 without them. Accept a reduced rent, or we throw our farms 
 on your hands." 
 
 What could the landlords do ? Their rents are determined 
 by competition, and here is competition suddenly come to a stop. 
 They must make the best of the situation, and accept the 
 reduction. 
 
 And so industry would go on as before, and the farmers make 
 the same profit as before. All that would have happened is 
 that labour would have gained a march upon monopoly and the 
 labourer have wrested from the landlord part of the blackmail 
 he was accustomed to pay. 
 
 For it is the labourer from whom it is wrung. It is by 
 keeping down wages that the landlord thrives. The employer 
 
24 
 
 is merely the instrument, who, for a consideration cut down by 
 competition to the lowest figure, undertakes all the trouble, the 
 risk, and the odium of the squeezing. 
 
 The price of labour, like the price of everything else, is 
 determined by supply and demand, and it is said that if employ- 
 ment is scarce it is because there is not profitable Employment 
 on the land for all. Ah ! but profitable for whom ^ For the 
 labourers, for the country, or for one or two privileged people ? 
 
 Here is a farm, selected from the assessment roll of this 
 district as a fair sample of a so-called agricultural farm con- 
 sisting of 640 acres and rented at £150. It keeps, I believe, at 
 the outside, two men at work the year round ; any other applic- 
 ants for employment being dismissed with the formula, " No 
 work for you." 
 
 Two men to a whole square mile I And this on a farm within 
 15 miles of the port of Hobart, and containing hardly an acre 
 unfit for cultivation. 
 
 All the produce that comes off this farm has to be raised by 
 the labour of these two men, and must realise over and above 
 their wages and keep and all collateral working expenses, a 
 surplus of rent, £150 ; rates and taxes, £20 ; employer's profit 
 (say), £100 ; total .£270 ; being a profit of £135 to each man. 
 No man, in short, is allowed the opportunity to earn a living 
 on this square mile of cultivable land unless he produces, 
 over and above the supply of his own modest wants, a net 
 annual surplus of £135 to hand over to somebody else. 
 
 If employment is restricted, it is land monopoly that 
 restricts it. 
 
 It is not that there is not abundance of land to use, abundance 
 of use to put it to, and abundance of profit to be made from 
 it, but that the tendency of monopoly is to keep hungry mouths 
 off rather than to take willing hands on. It is naturally 
 concerned only to get as big a share as possible to itself, and 
 is not concerned whether other people have a chance to get 
 a share or not. 
 
 The occupier will not engage more men than he can help. 
 
 But suppose his hand is forced. 
 
25 
 
 Suppose the Trade Unions were to change their tactics 
 (as they may do any day), and instead of trying to restrict the 
 field of employment were to undertake to extend it. Suppose 
 a Trade Union of farm labourers were to say to the farmer, 
 " You have been accustomed to employ two men only on this 
 farm. Well, not a man shall take service with you unless you 
 undertake to engage four, and at the same wages." 
 
 Does anybody doubt that the two extra men could produce 
 more than they consume and use up, and so be productively 
 employed ? And if the net surplus to hand over to the landlord 
 were less, why he would have to take less. 
 
 The earnings of the two extra men, reckoning their wages 
 and keep only, would be £100 a year, and if that left a 
 surplus of £20 less for the landlord, there would st'ill be £80 
 to the good. For, as I have elsewhere pointed out, the labourer's 
 maintenance (much more his whole earnings), so long as he 
 replaces what he receives, is not cost of production but 
 profit ; — the labourer's share of it. If an industry does nothing 
 more than maintain one man continuously it is to that extent 
 productive. 
 
 But the landlord's position is too strong for him to stand in 
 much fear of such combinations as these, and the whole 
 tendency of affairs is to increase his power. 
 
 The landlords as a class get more, without the least exertion, 
 outlay, or risk, out of the labour of the community than they 
 could if the whole working community were their slaves. 
 
 Proletarianism v. Slavery. 
 
 Suppose I own a sugar estate and 100 slaves, all the land 
 about being held in the same way by people of the same class as 
 myself. 
 
 It is a profitable business, but there are many expenses and 
 annoyances attached to it. 
 
 I must keep up my supply of slaves either by breeding or 
 buying them. 
 
 I must pay an overseer to keep them continually to their 
 work with the lash. I must keep them in a state of brutish 
 
26 
 
 ignorance (to the detriment of their efficiency), for fear they 
 should learn their rights and their power, and become dangerous. 
 
 I must tend them in sickness and when past work 
 
 And the slaves have all the vices and defects that slavery 
 engenders ; they have no self-respect or moral sense ; they lie, 
 they steal, they are lazy, shirking work whenever they dare ; 
 they do not care what mischief their carelessness occasions me 
 so long as it is not found out ; their labour is obtained by force, 
 and given grudgingly ; they have no heart in it. 
 
 All these things worry me. 
 
 Suddenly a brilliant idea strikes me. I reflect that there is no 
 unoccupied land in the neighbourhood, so that if my labourers 
 were free they would still have to look to me for work somehow. 
 
 So one day I announce to them that they are all free, intimat- 
 ing at the same time that I will be ready to employ as many as 
 I may require on such terms as we may mutually and independ- 
 ently agree. 
 
 What could be fairer ? They are overjoyed, and falling on 
 their knees, bless me as their benefactor. They then go away 
 and have a jollification, and next day come back to me to arrange 
 the new terms. Most of them think they would like to have a 
 piece of land and work it for themselves, and be their own 
 masters. All they want is the few tools they have been accus- 
 tomed to use, and some seed, and these they are ready to buy 
 from me, undertaking to pay me with reasonable interest when 
 the first crop comes in, offering the crop as security. As for 
 their keep they can easily earn that by working a few weeks on 
 and off any of the plantations, or by taking a job of clearing, 
 fencing, or such like. This will keep them going for the first 
 year, and after that they will be better able to take care of 
 themselves. 
 
 But " Softly," I observe, " you are going too fast. Your 
 proposals about the tools and seed and your maintenance are all 
 right enough, but the land, you must remember, belongs to me. 
 You cannot expect me to give you your own liberty and my 
 land too for nothing. That would not be reasonable, would 
 it?-"- They agree that it would not, and begin to propose terms. 
 
27 
 
 A fancies this bit of land and B that. But it soon appears that 
 I want this bit of land for my next year's clearing, and that for 
 my cows, and another is too close to my house, and would 
 interfere with my privacy, and another is thick forests or swamp, 
 and would require too long and costly preparation for men who 
 must have quick returns in order to live, and in short that there 
 is no land suitable that I care to part with. Still I am ready to 
 do what I promised — " to employ as many as I may require, on 
 such terms as we may mutually and independently agree to." 
 But as I have now to pay them wages instead of getting their 
 work for nothing, I cannot of course employ quite so many of 
 them. I can find work for ninety of them, however, and with 
 these I am prepared to discuss terms. 
 
 At once a number volunteer their services at such wages as 
 their imagination has been picturing to them. I tell the 
 ninety whose demands are most reasonable, to stand on 
 one side. The remaining ten look blank, and seeing that since I 
 won't let them have any of the land, it is a question of hired 
 employment or starvation, they offer to come for a little less 
 than the others. I tell these now to stand aside, and ten others 
 to stand out instead. These look blank now, and offer to work 
 for less still, and so the " mutual and voluntary " settlement of 
 terms proceeds. 
 
 But, meanwhile, I have been making a little calculation in my 
 head, and have reckoned up what the cost of keeping a slave, 
 with his food and clothes, and a trifle over to keep him con- 
 tented, would come to, and I offer that. 
 
 They won't hear of it, but as I know they can't help them- 
 selves, I say nothing, and presently first one and then another 
 gives in, till I have got my ninety, and still there are ten left 
 out, and very blank indeed they look. Whereupon, the terms 
 being settled, I graciously announce that though I don't really 
 want any more men, still I am willing (in my benevolence) to 
 take the ten, too, on the same terms, which they promptly 
 accept, and again hail me as their benefactor, only not quite so 
 rapturously as before. 
 
 So they all set to at the old work at the old place, and — on 
 
28 
 
 the old terms, only a little differently administered ; that is, 
 that whereas I formerly supplied thsm with food, clothes, etc., 
 direct from my stores, I now give them a weekly wage repre- 
 senting the value of those articles, which they will henceforth 
 have to buy for themselves. 
 
 There is a difference too in some other respects, indicating a 
 moral improvement in our relations. 
 
 I can no longer curse and flog them. But then I don't want 
 to ; it's no longer necessary ; the threat of dismissal is quite as 
 effective, even more so ; and much pleasanter for me. 
 
 I can no longer separate husband from wife, parent from 
 child. But then again, I don't want to. There would be no 
 profit in it ; leaving them their wives and children has the double 
 advantage of making them more contented with their lot, and 
 giving me greater power over them, for they have now got to 
 keep these wives and children out of their own earnings. 
 
 My men are now as eager to come to me to work as they 
 formerly were to run away from work. 
 
 I have neither to buy nor to breed them ; and if any suddenly 
 leave me, instead of letting loose the bloodhounds, I have 
 merely to hold up a finger or advertise^ and I have plenty of 
 others offering in their place. 
 
 I am saved the expense and worry of incessant watching and 
 driving. 
 
 I have no sick to tend, or worn-out pensioners to maintain. 
 If a man falls ill, there is nothing but my good nature to pre- 
 vent my turning him off at once; the whole affair is a purely 
 commercial transaction; so much wages for so much work. 
 The patriarchal relation of slave-owner and slave is gone, and no 
 other has taken its place. 
 
 When the man is worn out with long service, I can turn him 
 out with a clear business conscience, knowing that the State will 
 see that he does not starve. Instead of being forced to keep my* 
 men in brutish ignorance, I find public schools established at 
 other people's expense to stimulate their intelligence and improve 
 their minds, to my great advantage, and their children compelled 
 to attend these schools. 
 
29 
 
 The service I get, too, being now voluntarily rendered (or 
 apparently so) is much improved in quality. 
 
 In short, the arrangement pays me better in every way. 
 
 But I gain in other ways besides pecuniary profit. I have 
 lost the stigma of being a slave driver, and have acquired instead 
 the character of a man of energy and enterprise, of justice and 
 benevolence. I am a " large employer of labour," to whom 
 the whole country, and the labourer especially, is greatly 
 indebted. The people say, " See the power of capital ! These 
 poor labourers, having no capital, could not use the land if they 
 had it, so this great and far-seeing man wisely refuses to let 
 them have it, and keeps it all himself, but, by providing them with 
 employment, his capital saves them from pauperism, and enables 
 him to build up the wealth of the country, and his own fortune 
 together." 
 
 Whereas it is not my capital that does any of these things. 
 It is not my capital but the labourer's toil that builds up my 
 fortune and the wealth of the country. My capital at the most 
 only puts a few better instruments into his hands than he could 
 procure for himself. 
 
 It is not my employment that keeps him from pauperism, but 
 my monopoly of the land forcing him into my employment that 
 keeps him on the brink of it. It is not want of capital that pre- 
 vents the labourer from using the land, but my refusing him the 
 use of the land that prevents him from acquiring capital. All 
 the capital he wants (to begin with) is an axe and a spade, which 
 a week's earnings would buy him; and for his maintenance 
 during the first year, and at any subsequent time, he could work 
 for me or for others, tura about, with his work on his own 
 land. Henceforth with every year, his capital would grow of 
 itself, and his independence with it ; and that this is no fancy 
 sketch, anyone can see for himself by taking a trip to our North- 
 West Coast, (Tasmania) where he will find well-to-do farmers 
 who began with nothing but a spade and an axe (so to speak) 
 and worked their way up in the manner described. 
 
 But now another thought strikes me. Instead of paying 
 an overseer to work these men for me, I will make him pay me 
 for the privilege of doing it. 
 
30 
 
 I will let the land as it stands to him or to another, to whom- 
 soever will give the moat for the billet. 
 
 He shall be called my tenant instead of my overseer, but the 
 thing he shall do for me is essentially the same, only done by 
 contract instead of for yearly pay. 
 
 He, not I, shall find all the capital, take all the risk, and 
 engage and supervise the men, paying me a lump sum, called 
 rent, out of the proceeds of their toil, and make what he can for 
 himself out of the surplus. 
 
 The competition is as keen in its way for the land, among 
 people of his class, as it is among the laboui'ers for employment, 
 only that as they are all possessed of some little means (else they 
 could not compete) they are in no danger of immediate want> 
 and can stand out for rather better terms than the labourers who 
 are forced by necessity to take what terms they can get. 
 
 The minimum in each case amounts practically to a " mere 
 living," but the mere living they insist on is one of a rather 
 higher standard, than the labourer's ; it means a rather more 
 abundant supply, and better quality of those little comforts 
 which are next door to necessaries. It means, in short, a living 
 of the kind to which people of that class are accustomed. 
 
 For a moderate reduction in my profits then (a reduction equal 
 to the tenant's narrow margin of profit) I have all the toil and 
 worry of management taken off my hands and the risk too, for, 
 be the season good or bad, the rent is bound to be forthcoming, 
 and I can sell him up to the last rag if he fails of the full 
 amount, no matter for what reason, and my rent takes pre- 
 cedence of all other debts. 
 
 All my capital is set free for investment elsewhere, and I am 
 freed from the odium of a slaveowner, notwithstanding that the 
 men still toil for my enrichment as when they were my slaves, 
 and that I get more out of them than ever. 
 
 If I wax rich while they toil from hand to mouth, and in 
 depressed seasons find it hard to get work at all; it is not, 
 to all appearance, my doing, but merely the force of circum- 
 stances, the law of nature, the state of the labour market ; 
 fine-sounding names that hide the ugly reality. 
 
31 
 
 If wages are forced down, it is not I who do it, it is that greedy 
 and merciless man, the employer (my tenant) who does it. I 
 am a lofty and superior being, dwelling apart and above such 
 sordid circumstances. I would never dream of grinding these 
 poor labourers, not I ! I have nothing to do with them at all, I 
 oifly want my rent — and get it. Like the lilies of the field I toil 
 not, neither do I spin, and yet (so kind is Providence !) my daily 
 bread (well-buttered) comes to me of itself. Nay, people bid 
 against each other for the privilege of finding it for me ; and no 
 one seems to realise that the comfortable income that falls to me 
 like the refreshing dew is dew indeed, but it is the dew of sweat 
 wrung from the labourer's toil. It is the fruit of their labour 
 which they ought to have ; which they would have if I did not 
 take it from them. 
 
 Is this caricature ? 
 
 Take the farm of 640 acres before referred to, rented at £150, 
 and keeping two labourers. Could I, the landlord, make £150 
 a year net profit out of the labour of these two men if they were 
 my slaves, and the tenant my hired overseer, working them 
 under the lash ? I trow not 
 
 I should have to pay him about £150 a year as overseer 
 instead of getting it from him as a tenant, which makes £300 a 
 year leeway to make up, to begin with, I should have to find 
 all the capital which he now finds (practically) for my use ; to 
 run all the risks where I now run none ; while the men, working 
 in sullen discontent^ would not produce near as much as they do 
 now. No, thank you ! If the lot were offered me as slaves for 
 nothing, I wouldn't have them at the price I get more out of 
 them as things are, and I give absolutely nothing in return ; all 
 that I get is pure blackmail. 
 
 Some of these days the labourer will wake up to the facts of 
 the situation. If the awakening be sudden and universal he will 
 seize the broom and make a clean sweep, taking small account 
 the beetles he may tread upon, or the crockery he may break. 
 An awakening of this sort happened in Fiance, and we know 
 what it was like. He had terrible wrongs to avenge, and 
 be went mad over them, and in his madness committed great 
 
32 
 
 crimes ; but where he swept he swept clean ; the abuses he 
 swept away have never shown their heads since 
 
 But there was one abuse that he did not recognise to be an 
 abuse, and so he left it standing — to his loss. 
 
 Next time he sweeps he will clear that away too. 
 
 There is small fear of his ever going mad over it again, for his 
 knowledge, and the consciousness of his power are growing 
 year by year ; and by the time that he recognises the facts of 
 the situation, and sees what the change is that is wanted, he will 
 be strong enough to say calmly, " Let it be done ; " and it will 
 be done forthwith without violence or wrong. 
 
 Land Monopoly not only Absorbs the Fruit of Industry 
 * but also Hinders its Progress. 
 
 This system of allowing any one person to obtain absolute 
 ownership of as much land as he can get, and to use it (or not 
 use it) in what way he likes, not only absorbs the fruits of 
 industry, keeping down employers' profits and labourers' wages, 
 and making life, to all who have to live by work, a struggle for 
 existence, but it also restricts the field of employment, locking 
 up the greater part of our resources from full productive use, 
 and so hindering progress ; and it can only secure its profit by 
 so doing. 
 
 It is claimed in favour of the system that once the land is 
 appropriated to an owner, it becomes that owner's interest to 
 see that it is put to the most productive use ; and that rent is 
 the test of productiveness since that form of industry that can 
 offer the most rent must be the most productive. 
 
 Never was there a greater mistake. The man who can afford 
 to give the highest rent is not he who can make the land produce 
 most, but he who can secure the largest share of the produce to 
 himself ; and he can often more easily do this by keeping other 
 people off the land than by engaging them to make it produce 
 more ; for more produce generally implies more hands to 
 produce it, and more hands imply more claims to a share in the 
 produce. 
 
 If by one form of industry (say sheep) I can make the land 
 
38 
 
 produce £100, of which I can keep £70 to myself, I will 
 evidently prefer it to another (say agriculture) by which I could 
 make the land produce £200, but would have to pay away £150 
 to other people for their share in the work, and this none the 
 less that it may take many times more land to produce the £100 
 than it would to produce the £200. 
 
 Here is an estate divided into five farms, each farmer employ- 
 ing two labourers the year round, and raising £400 worth of 
 produce apportioned as follows : — 
 
 Direct assistance in the shape of wages to the two labourers, 
 
 representing their earnings £100 
 
 Indirect assistance in the shape of blacksmiths, saddlers, 
 carriers' work, goods bought, and services hired of all 
 
 sorts equal to the earnings of two men more 100 
 
 Rent 100 
 
 Profit to farmer 100 
 
 £400 
 
 These five farms together, then produce annually £2,000 
 worth of produce, and maintain 25 men with their families, viz. 
 one employer, two labourers, and indirect assistants equal to 
 two men more, to each farm; besides the landlord, who 
 receives £600. 
 
 If now a stockbreeder sees his way, with the help of one man 
 as shepherd and general assistant, to produce £800 worth of 
 wool and fat sheep off the five farms lumped together, he can 
 offer £550 rent (£50 more than the five agricultural farmers 
 put together), and yet, after paying £50 to his man and £50 
 more for such goods and services as he may require (repre- 
 senting the maintenance of another man) keep £150 for himself 
 (half as much more than any of the agriculturists). His offer 
 of course, will be accepted, and the five agriculturists with their 
 retainers will all have to go. 
 
 The amount of produce raised from the land will be only 
 £800 instead of £2,000, and the number of men (with their 
 families) will be three instead of 25. 
 
 The productiveness of the land will have been reduced to less 
 than half, and the population to about J. 
 
 But suppose the land instead of being apportioned amongst 
 
84 
 
 five farmers, producing £400 and paying £100 rent each had 
 been divided amongst 100 cottier labourers, producing only £50 
 of produce and paying £3 rent each. 
 
 Then the land would have been producing £5,000 worth of 
 produce instead of £2,000, and maintaining 100 men (with their 
 families) instead of 25 ; but inasmuch as the landlord would 
 only have been receiving £300 rent, this arrangement would 
 have been even more certainly and speedily outbid and swept 
 away than that of the five farmers. 
 
 " But the 100 cottier labourers could not have turned the 
 land to account if they had had it." 
 
 Could they not ? , 
 
 Here is a market garden, there an orchard. The owner in 
 each case, a man of means, making a handsome income by the 
 labour of a few men with common spades and hoes. Would the 
 land yield any less, or the produce be worth less if these labourers 
 were working it for themselves instead of for an employer ? 
 
 Could they not buy all the tools they want by merely saving 
 up a week or two's wages ? 
 
 Could they not turn any proportion they liked of their produce 
 into bacon, eggs, poultry, butter, things for which the demand 
 is practically unlimited ? 
 
 Could they not sell for less, if need were, than an employer, 
 and yet thrive, seeing that wages alone would satisfy them, 
 while an employer must make a good profit over and above their 
 wages ? But as we have seen, the whole surface of the earth 
 (so to speak) is parcelled out amongst a body of monopolists, 
 who will not allow the labourer to produce any thing unless he 
 produces. a large surplus over and above for their enrichment. 
 
 While the landlord gets all the profit (so to speak) of the 
 men's work the occupier gets all the credit. He is the producer. 
 The men are merely the tools he works with, like the spades 
 and hoes 
 
 Producer! He produces nothing. It is the labourers who 
 produce all, only, as he holds the land, he will not iallow them 
 to produce, except for his profit. 
 
 There is not a shilling of his income but what is due to their 
 labour. 
 
35 
 
 If he decides to apply manure they fetch and spread it ; if he 
 keeps the ground clean and well worked it is their arms that 
 do it; when he sells his produce it is they who gather and 
 deliver it. 
 
 I count it nothing" that he finds the tools ; that he arranges 
 the work ; that he keeps the accounts ; that he takes the risk. 
 I count as nothing anything he does which the men could do 
 just as well for themselves, and they could do all these things. 
 
 " Then why doesn't the labourer get the land and do it ? " 
 
 Who will sell him the three or four acres he requires for any 
 price within his means ? Near a town the labourer would have 
 to pay £20 to ^6100 an acre; in the country no estate owner 
 will sell him what he wants except at an extravagant fancy 
 price, hardly at any price at all. Owners do not like to cut 
 pieces out of their estates, nor to have small independent settlers 
 about them. They would generally rather sacrifice somethiug 
 to keep them out. 
 
 They will let the land no doubt sometimes, but not only do 
 they usually ask an extravagant price as rent directly a small 
 piece of land is asked for, greatly in excess of what they could 
 make off it themselves, but they offer no security of tenure, no 
 guarantee for improvements. 
 
 What heart will the labourer have in effecting the high 
 cultivation which his system demands when he may be turned 
 out any time at short notice ? How can he plant a tree when 
 he has no certainty of ever gathering the fruit ? How build 
 himself p, dwelling when he knows it can never be his home ? 
 
 How can he throw his heart into his work with the shadow of 
 an irresistible hand ever over him ready to turn him out and con- 
 fiscate his improvements whenever self-interest, caprice, or a 
 change of ownership so determines ? 
 
 Here is explanation enough why the labourer is not in 
 possession of land, but there are other reasons still which it is 
 not necessary here to stay to consider. 
 
 I shall be told though that the term " most productive " does 
 not mean producing the greatest bulk or weight or even the 
 greatest ^ross value, but the greatest net profit. 
 
36 
 
 Quite true ; but profit to whom ? To one particular person 
 only, or to all engaged in it ? 
 
 Take the case of a farm — 
 
 The earnings of all the blacksmiths, saddlers, importers, 
 carriers, etc., who assist the work, as well as of the labourers 
 who carry on the work are as much net profit as the earnings of 
 the farmer who conducts the work. 
 
 All alike represent services rendered in furthering the work, 
 the production of a crop ; and for all alike there can be no 
 return from the work till the work is finished ; till the crop is 
 gathered. 
 
 But as there would be great inconvenience if all had to wait 
 for their returns till the work was finished an arrangement has 
 been naturally fallen into by which, while the work is divided 
 amongst many, the control, the responsibility and the risk are 
 concentred in one, the farmer, who advances to each his share 
 by giving him what is supposed to represent the value of his 
 service, and makes what he can out of the surplus. 
 
 The profit of the crop is the gross value of the crop less the 
 seed, manure, and other goods consumed and wear and tear of 
 tools ; all the rest represents profits apportioned amongst a 
 number of people, some of whom receive their share in advance, 
 and others have to wait. 
 
 The profit made by the manager of the enterprise, (the 
 farmer,) no more represents the productiveness of the enterprise 
 than the salary of Mr. Manager Kayser represents the produc- 
 tiveness of Mount Bisohoff. All that the farmer's or manager's 
 profit represents, is that share of the produce which the 
 competition of his class for the office of farmer or manager 
 compels him to be content with. 
 
 Our habit of estimating the productiveness of every industry 
 by the profit of one person only out of the many concerned, 
 viz , the employer, is about as sensible as if we estimated the 
 size of a building by the size of a particular brick in it. 
 
 That industry is the most productive which converts raw 
 material into finished product of the greatest value and in the 
 shortest time, and the greater the number of people who are 
 
37 
 
 engaged in it and the larger the share of the proceeds that each 
 can get the better ; but the tendency of land monopoly is to 
 allow as few people as possible to take part in the work, and to 
 let them get as small a share of the proceeds as possible ; for in 
 the eyes of the monopolist, whether owner or occupier, other 
 people and their earnings are merely so many expenses to be 
 kept down. 
 
 As the landlord's interest is for each to own as large a portion 
 of the earth's surface as possible to the exclusion of other people 
 so that the competition for its possession shall be stimulated and 
 rents forced up, so the interest of the occupier is for each to 
 cultivate as small a portion as possible so that the field of 
 employment may be restricted and wages kept down. 
 
 If each occupier were to put to full productive use all the 
 land in his possession the demand for labour would run wages 
 up, and so, though the production ot wealth would be enormously 
 increased, it would be divided amongst a much larger number 
 of people in much larger shares, leaving less for himself ; but by 
 shutting out say 9-lOths of his land from full productive use and 
 inviting employment on th^ 1-lOth only, the field of employment 
 is narrowed and wages are kept down. 
 
 It is true, as we have seen, that though he gets the profit of 
 this he cannot keep it, the landlord taking it from him. Still 
 the necessities of his position compel him to try to get it, and in 
 this way. 
 
 I do not say that either landlord or occupier acts in this way 
 of set design. Each simply acts for his own interest in what he 
 would call a " practical " way ; that is he guides his conduct by 
 results, without troubling himself how the results are brought 
 about. 
 
 The landlord, for instance, lets his land in such sized pieces as 
 he finds fetch most rent (that is in large pieces) without caring 
 why pieces of such size fetch most rent, and, therefore, without 
 being conscious that the reason is that by this means its 
 character as a monopoly is kept up and competition for it 
 stimulated. 
 
 Simiiarily the occupier keeps most of his land under natural 
 
38 
 
 pasture, and only cultivates a small part, the best, because the 
 larger part so used^ though it yields much less, costs nothing, 
 and so he gets all the profit there is, and does not see, or care to 
 see, that it is his keeping this larger part out of cultivation, that 
 by restricting the field of employment and so keeping wages 
 down enables him to secure to himself the fruits of the labourer's 
 toil on the part he does cultivate. 
 
 In Great Britain this abuse by which the rights of the many 
 are eacrificed for the profit of one has been carried to such an 
 extent that whole counties have been nearly depopulated ; and 
 districts in the Highlands that, as Geo. Macdonald tells us, once 
 •turned out 1,000 fighting men now only carry a few game- 
 keepers. 
 
 The children of the soil have had their dwellings burnt down 
 before their eyes, and they themselves have been driven forth in 
 thousands to emigrate to distant lands, to crowd into the already 
 overcrowded cities, or, as in some cases, to die on the moun- 
 tains ; not because they could not pay their old accustomed rent 
 but because a foreign millionaire offered the landlord more for 
 the privilege of turning the counti^ into a wilderness to shoot 
 deer in than they could give for the bare permission to live. 
 
 A system that permits such atrocities is self-condemned. 
 
 As to Ireland, her population has within half a century sunk 
 from 8 millions to 4J millions, though knowledge and invention 
 have within chat period so increased the productiveness of 
 industry that it ought to have risen to 16 millions ; and yet the 
 cry is still that it is over-populated, and her sons have to 
 emigrate by thousands yearly. 
 
 But to see the fruits of land monopoly in hindering industry and 
 keeping down population we need not go out of our own island. 
 
 Within five miles of this is an estate that was once called the 
 granary of Tasmania. It is now a sheep run. 
 
 First came the absentee landlord, who, living 12,000 miles 
 away, cared nothing for his estate but to squeeze all he could 
 out of it. 
 
 Next came a worse form of landlordship still, a landlordship 
 of trustees, in which the very possibility of a personal interest 
 
39 
 
 was destroyed, and under which the estate fell into worse and 
 worse condition, houses in ruins, fences falling to decay. 
 
 Last came the kind of landlord on whom so many pin their 
 faith, the occupying landlord, and he swept all the farmers off 
 the land, and turned it into a sheepwalk. 
 
 I am not blaming him. He acted on his strict legal, and, in 
 one sense, equitable right. The law allowed, and we may say 
 encouraged him to buy the land in absolute possession to do with 
 it absolutely as he liked, and he naturally liked to do with it in 
 the way that paid him best. 
 
 It is the system, not the individual that we denounce. 
 
 But to judge of the system by such cases as these is to get 
 a very inadequate idea of the evil of it. To get a true idea of 
 this we have to consider the cases not only of cultivation 
 stopped that was already in existence, but of cultivation 
 prevented where it has never been allowed to come into 
 existence at all. The holders of such lands are only doing what 
 everybody else does, and has a recognised right to do, making 
 the most for themselves out of their capital ; and their land, 
 though land is not capital, is to them the same thing as capital ; 
 it is what they have exchanged so much capital tor, and from 
 which therefore they have a right to draw the best profit they 
 can in the way that seems best to them. 
 
 The wrong was in allowing them to acquire this right — in 
 selling the people's birthright for a mess of pottage — in giving 
 over, for the trumpery consideration of £1 an acre or so, to any 
 purchaser the legal power to exclude the whole human race 
 . from as large a portion of the earth's surface as he chooses 
 to buy. 
 
 William Kufus was considered a cruel despot for turning all 
 the inhabitants out of what was afterwards called the New 
 Forest to make himself a hunting ground, but the landlords in 
 this free self-governed country could do the same thing to-day 
 with the whole of Tasmania if they liked, and call in the officers 
 of the law to help them to do it. 
 
 I am myself a representative of the system I denounce. I 
 might sell, no doubt, and so get out of it; but what good would 
 
40 
 
 that do ? That would be,only to change one landlord for another 
 a landlord who at least sees and deplores the evils of the system 
 for one who probably does not recognise or care about them at 
 all. I can serve the good cause better in a number of ways by 
 staying in than by going out — amongst other ways, by affording 
 one standing example of a landlord pleading for land nationalisa- 
 tion and offering his own land, or so much of it as may be 
 wanted, as the first to be taken for the purpose at its actual 
 value, as may be decided, on whatever system may be adopted. 
 
 Review of the Situation. 
 
 Let us review the situation. 
 
 Here, in the primary industries, are farmers running rents up 
 to the point at which they can barely make both ends meet ; 
 temporary outsiders — men who have been outbid, vainly looking 
 out for a farm for months, and forced to take one at last on 
 almost any terms ; permanent outsiders — men brought up to 
 farming and thoroughly understanding it, but squeezed com- 
 pletely out of the competition who are now dealers, butchers, 
 one thing to-day and another to morrow, scraping up a living as 
 best they can. 
 
 And as profits in the secondaries are determined by profits in 
 the primaries, the state of affairs is the same in these. 
 
 Here are traders, half as many again as are wanted in every 
 township, running each other down in prices, touting for custom 
 with travelling agent and flaming advertisements, giving reck- 
 less credit in their scramble for customers, and every now and 
 then the weakest breaking down and falling out of the ranks 
 only to be succeeded by fresh aspirants trying to force them- 
 selves into the throng, and each with capital more or less which 
 he is eager to invest in the business he is trying to secure. 
 
 This in a country not a century old, containing barely six 
 inhabitants to the square mile, a country with resources that its 
 Press and public speakers are never weary of extolling, a coun- 
 try containing more natural resources than countries with ten 
 times its population, with tens of thousands of acres fit for 
 cultivation and untouched, with timber in such quantities that 
 
41 
 
 we pile it in heaps and burn it to get it out of the way, with 
 minerals in abundance, with fish in our seas, with an equable 
 climate, with everything- in our favour ; and yet men struggle 
 for employment and capital bids for investment. 
 
 Surely if we saw half a dozen men in a lO-acre field struggling 
 for room and gasping for breaih, we should think it a strange 
 spectacle, and wonder what it meant ; and yet it would not be a 
 bit more strange than our own condition, and not half so 
 interesting. 
 
 For the production of wealth there are but three factors 
 required, land, labour, and capital. Strictly speaking, two only ; 
 land and labour (= matter and force) for capital is but the 
 product of labour saved up and accumulated. Still it is 
 customary to reckon the three, so we shall continue to do so. 
 
 Which of the three is it that is wanting to us ? 
 
 Is it land ? The question is absurd. The land lies all around 
 us crying out to be used. 
 
 Is it capital ? There is not an enterprise put forth offering 
 good promise for which capital is not forthcoming in abundance. 
 Whether it be a brewery, a trusteeship company, or a mine, the 
 shares are snapped up at once ; not to speak of that other capital 
 without practical limit across the water ready to pour in at the 
 slightest encouragement. 
 
 Is it labour ? Why, the very essence of our complaint is that 
 people are struggling for work to do, not work languishing for 
 want of people to do it. 
 
 What are chiefly the resources that we talk so much about ? 
 Surely not the untrodden forests beyond the farthest roads ; 
 not the minerals we suspect but have not yet located ; not the 
 inaccessible and the undiscovered ; but the resources that lie all 
 about us, visible to the eye and palpable to the touch; the 
 occupied lands with roads through them and houses on them of 
 which a mere fraction has been cleared, the cleared lands of 
 which a mere fraction is cultivated, the cultivated lands that, 
 tilled in the roughest fashion, yield but a fraction of what they 
 might be made to yield. 
 
 It is not the want of land on the one hand, or of labour and 
 
42 
 
 capital on the other that is the matter with us, but the artificial 
 barrier of monopoly that keeps these factors apart. 
 
 We spend vast sums in roads and railways to open up new 
 land, and as fast as we open it up we sell, for a paltiy £1 an 
 acre or so to anyone who applies, the right of shutting it up 
 again if he likes, with the certainty that he will like to shut 
 up the greater part of it. 
 
 We try to import labour and entice over capital. Labour and 
 capital ! into a country where labour (that is people trying to 
 earn a living) is struggling for every opportunity to live, and 
 capital has burnt its fingers so often by rushing into rash 
 ventures that it hangs back disheartened. 
 
 Labour and capital ! As if the way to ease the pressure of a 
 crowd was to squeeze more people into it. 
 
 Break down the barrier that confines the crowd, and let it 
 spread, and then if there is room for more, more will come of 
 itself, more both of labour and capital, only too glad of the 
 chance. 
 
 How can labour or capital find employment when every 
 national resource is in the hands of some monopolist who has got 
 hold of other people's shares as well as his own, and puts the 
 greater part of it to the mere mockery of a use, while for the 
 rest he either frightens enterprise away by his extravagant 
 demands or by forcing competition runs his blackmail up to the 
 uttermost the user will give, so that new-comers, if you had 
 them by the thousand, would not offer more ; and if they did, 
 could only get in by displacing others 
 
 Take any natural advantage you like to name — extent of area, 
 mineral deposit, or commanding situation — and what is not in 
 reasonable use already ip either locked up for sheep or barred by 
 extravagant demands for royalties or paid-up shares ; or, if in 
 use, is let out for the uttermost it will fetch. 
 
 We have now reached the point at which we can take up the 
 objection, previously postponed, that "all farmers are not 
 tenants," and the implication that were they all to own the land 
 they occupy, objections must vanish. 
 
 But it ought to be clear by this time that if all existing land- 
 
43 
 
 lords were swept away and all the land in use confirmed 
 absolutely upon the occupiers, things would be no better than 
 they are now. 
 
 For the evil that weighs upon society, hindering- progress, 
 forcing down earnings, and making life to all who have to live 
 by work a struggle for existence is the monopoly of the land ; 
 and whether it is A or B who monopolises it, is of no con- 
 sequence to anybody but A and B. 
 
 Wherever one man is allowed to acquire more land than he can 
 use by his own labour for the purpose of preventing other people 
 from using it by their labour except for his profit, that man is 
 master of the situation, and the class of which he is the repre- 
 sentative has the world at its feet. And whether the monopo- 
 list turns his monopoly to account as an occupying owner 
 by working the labourers for his profit directly, or as a non- 
 occupier by selling to somebody else (called a tenant) for a 
 yearly payment (called rent) the privilege of working them, is a 
 difference not worth talking about. 
 
 Indeed if the system is to go on, it is better, in some respects 
 at any rate, for society at large and the labourer in particular 
 that the owner and the occupier should be separate persons. 
 
 For where the land is in the hands of a mere tenant he is 
 forced to put it to sufficiently effective use, to make it realise 
 enough to pay his rent over and above his own profit, whereas, 
 as experience shows, when he has no rent to pay, he is often 
 tempted to take things easily, and working enough of the land 
 to keep himself comfortable, put the rest to very poor use indeed 
 in order to save himself trouble, expense, and risk. 
 
 This is by no means an unusual result of occupying ownership. 
 There are many occupying owners who have no rent to pay, yet 
 make no more off their farms than other men not more com- 
 petent, who have a good stiff rent to meet, and this merely 
 because finding themselves able to make enough easily to keep 
 themselves in the style they have been accustomed to, they do 
 not trouble themselves to earn more. 
 
 And the easier the occupier takes matters, and the less use he 
 makes of his land, the less employment there is for labour, the 
 
u 
 
 more wages and profits are kept down, the less raw material is 
 there raised for the secondary industries to concern themselves 
 with, the more difficult it is for carriers, artizans, tradesmen and 
 workers of all sorts to get a living, and the keener the struggle 
 for existence all round. 
 
 No. King Log is worse than King Stork. The whole system 
 is a legalised robbery of the public, and what we want is not to 
 change the robbers but to stop the robbery. 
 
 In Ireland they are now trying to set matters right by 
 changing their robbers. The landlord's rent is to be reduced bit 
 by bit till nothing of it is left, but the monopoly of the land is to 
 continue. The tenant is to become the landlord. 
 
 What difference will that make to the labourers who will still 
 have to compete for the privilege of working for their 
 employer's profit so much of the land as he graciously allows 
 them employment on ? 
 
 What difference to the thousands who have no land nor 
 employment on the land, but are forced to struggle for existence 
 because the land is not put to its full use ? 
 
 What difference to the country whose natural resources are 
 still left in the absolute power of a class whose interest it is 
 to hold back the greater part of those resources in order to 
 narrow the field of employment, and so force wages and earnings 
 down and their own profits up. 
 
 There is but one remedy for this great wrong, the NATIONAL- 
 ISATION OF THE LAND. 
 
 We in Tasmania, like our co-thinkers in other parts, have 
 established a society for this purpose, viz., for "the gradual 
 nationalisation of the land as opportunity offers and public 
 opinion ripens ; " and my whole purpose in these pages has been 
 to lead up to the elucidation and advocacy of our views, and to 
 give notice and opportunity to all who may wish to join our 
 ranks. 
 
 The State, gradually resuming possession of the land on 
 equitable terms, is to apply the ever-increasing unearned 
 increment to the reduction of taxation, and the multiplication of 
 public benefits. The occupier is to become a State tenant, but 
 
46 
 
 on a tenancy that while it secures to the State the full value of 
 the land from year to year and provides for its bona fide use, yet 
 assures the tenant as perfect security of tenure and of the fruits 
 of his labour as if the land belonged to him. 
 
 The occupation of large tracts by a single person (except for 
 temporary use in places where it is not yet wanted for other 
 people) will be done away with, and the land eventually made 
 so accessible to all that every person, even the humblest, shall 
 have the opportunity, if he wishes it, of acquiring, within 
 accessible distance of a market, enough land to make himself a 
 home and for the exercise of his own personal labour. 
 
 Our Principles and Proposals. 
 
 Our principle is that the legitimate use of the land is as an 
 instrument of production, not as a means of extortion, and its 
 possession to be permitted to secure to its possessor the fruits of 
 his own labour, not the fruits of other people's. 
 
 Our aim is to break down the barrier that keeps the two 
 factors of production, land and labour (the matter and force 
 of industry) apart, and throw open to full productive use 
 the resources of the country ; to abolish the accursed monopoly 
 that lives upon industry as the tick lives upon the sheep, sucking 
 its juices and hindering its growth, and thrives, not by doing a 
 hand's turn or contributing a penny's worth for the good of 
 society, but by getting possession of the means of existence, and 
 making people pay for the permission to live ; to appropriate the 
 unearned increment of the future to the State, taking its vast 
 and constantly accumulating wealth from those who do not 
 create it, and giving it those who do, by applying it to the 
 reduction of taxation and the multiplication of public benefits ; 
 above all, though unfortunately not before all, to give the 
 labourer access to the land, and consequently the choice between 
 working for himself and working for another, instead of, as 
 at present, between hired employment and starvation. 
 
 This last, which should be first, we are obliged to postpone, 
 because till the labourer begins to recognise his rights, and to 
 demand their recognition by the State it is useless for others to 
 
46 
 
 more on his behalf. He must be his own deliverer. Others 
 may point out the way for him to go, his must be the force to 
 break down the barriers of vested interest and class prejudice 
 that bar the way. 
 
 For the present we propose four simple measures only ; not 
 one of them representing* any new or revolutionary principle, 
 but giving principles already recognised and acted on a more 
 extended application ; not one of them seeking to confiscate the 
 wealth of any one, no matter how improperly that wealth may 
 have been acquired ; not one of them interfering with the 
 course of industry but on the contrary all together opening out 
 a thousand fresh channels for it to flow in. 
 
 These four proposals are : — 
 
 1. That no more public land be alienated on any consider- 
 ation. 
 
 2. That the State be empowered to retake possession of any 
 particular land which may be required in the public interest, 
 giving fair compensation for the land taken, and letting this land 
 out in lots of limited size at a rent subject to periodical revision 
 at stated intervals, and the rent raised as the value of the land 
 (apart from its improvement) rises, or lowered if it should chance 
 to fall, and to give the occupier the assurance of undisturbed 
 possession so long as he fulfils the simple and reasonable condi- 
 tions of his tenure (unless it should be required for a railway or 
 some such very special purpose) with recognition of his right to 
 the value of his improvements (if the land should be taken from 
 him) at the time of the taking. 
 
 8. That it is the surface of the land only that is let for pro- 
 ductive purposes ; all mineral rights being reserved. 
 
 4. That the absorption by the state of the unearned incre- 
 ment on lands which it does not retake in possession be com- 
 menced by taxation on the unimproved value of the land, 
 beginning with a moderate percentage, and gradually increasing. 
 
 This is all we propose for the present. For the future we will 
 be guided by circumstances 
 
 In regard to the first proposal — " That no more public land be 
 alienated" the State already exercises its power of reserve, 
 
47 
 
 often over large areas, as in the case of mineral lands. We pro- 
 pose to apply it to all cases. 
 
 In regard to the third — " The reservation of mineral rights/ 
 the practice of reserving rights in letting land is so common 
 that nothing further need he said about it. 
 
 In the case of minerals being discovered, the State could 
 either let by tender the right of working them, compensating 
 the occupier for loss and disturbance or could leave them to be 
 worked by the occupier at a fixed royalty, or on such terms as 
 might seem best. 
 
 In regard to the fourth, " The taxation on unimproved value,'' 
 it has been objected that it is a class tax. Well, there are many 
 class taxes levied for different reasons, generally good and 
 sufficient ; there is (or was) the carriage tax, levied as a tax on 
 luxuries ; there is the auctioneers* license fee, levied as an 
 indirect way of taxing the transfer of stock at public sales. 
 There is the chemists' license fee, a way (in part) of securing 
 that the making up of prescriptions and the dispensing of drugs 
 be confined to properly qualified persons ; so also we propose a 
 tax on the unimproved value of land as a step towards the 
 gradual abolition of the system of blackmailing industry, and 
 towards the restoration to the State of what it should never 
 have parted with. 
 
 In regard to the second (kept till the last because it requires 
 most comment) the power to the State to retake land wanted in 
 the public interest and the re-letting of it on the conditions 
 sketched out ; the State already has the power to take land for 
 railway purposes. But as there is nothing specially sacred in the 
 nature of a railway to make it an exception to all other works of 
 public utility, as it is simply a concern of great public import- 
 ance, and that is all the justification there is for taking the land 
 required for it, then if we can show (as I think I may fairly 
 claim to have shown) that the breaking up of land monopoly and 
 the throwing open to use of the national resources is a matter of 
 more consequence than all the railways in the world, there seems 
 no conceivable reason why the State should not take the land for 
 for this purpose too 
 
48 
 
 As to the circumstances under which the land shall be taken, 
 the manner in which compensation shall be determined and rent 
 re-valued and so on, all these are questions of detail to be well 
 thought out and freely and thoroughly discussed, but the dis- 
 cussion of which would be for many reasons out of place in a 
 prelininary address like this. One thing only must be insisted 
 on ; that the taking, the re-valuing, the letting, the recovery of 
 rent, and every process connected with the disposal of the land 
 shall be entirely removed from the control of party politics and 
 personal influence, and be made strict processes of the law, 
 guided by definite rules and administered by properly appointed 
 and independent courts, just as the valuation of property, the 
 granting of mineral leases, and the recovery of rates and taxes 
 are now. 
 
 '* But," we are told, " you forget the land hunger. Man 
 naturally craves for the absolute ownership of the soil he tills, 
 and without it loses half the stimulus to exertion. He wants to 
 sit under his own vine and fig-tree." 
 
 Here are three statements rolled into one. Take the last 
 first. 
 
 ** He wants to sit under his own vine and fig-tree." 
 
 True ; and the result of your system of absolute ownership is 
 that 99 men out of 100 can get no vine or fig-tree to sit under, 
 and the hundredth finds that the vine and fig-tree under which 
 he sits are not his but his landlord's who charges him heavily for 
 the privilege, and this even though he has planted the tree him- 
 self, and watered it with the sweat of his toil. 
 
 Year by year, all over the civilised world, the ownership of 
 the land is passing out of the hands of the occupier. One man 
 rears the fruit, another stretches forth his hand and takes it. 
 The very institution which you defend as securing to the 
 producer the full value of his produce is the institution that com- 
 pels him to part with it. 
 
 How comes this ? 
 
 Because the unearned increment, though certain, is deferred, 
 and falls, therefore, to him who can afford to wait, and who 
 accordingly lies in wait. 
 
49 
 
 Sooner or later the day comes when a mortgage has to be 
 redeemed, or death brings the property into the market, and then 
 the man of large and independent means, who does not mind 
 getting a low rate of interest for a while in consideration 
 of large profits hereafter, easily out-bids the working owner, 
 who has to earn his living, and must have quick returns. 
 
 Thus it is that not only is the rich non-occupying owner fast 
 superseding the poorer working owner, but the large non- 
 occupying owners are also eating up the small ones, and the 
 tendency of the times is for the whole land of the country to pass 
 gradually into the hands of a few enormously rich people. 
 
 We have not got into this second stage yet out here, but we 
 are well on into the first. And so inevitably and steadily land 
 is coming to belong, not to him who has the best right to it, not 
 to him who wants it most, not to him who will put it to the most 
 productive use, or even to any use at all, but to him who can 
 afford to give most for it for the mere purpose of squeez- 
 ing other people. 
 
 You offer the name, but you cannot confer the reality. We 
 withhold the name, but guarantee the reality. 
 
 For what is the land-hunger ? 
 
 It is the natural craving for a permanent home, and for the 
 fruits of our labour ; and we guarantee both these ; you do not. 
 
 The natural desire of a man is for a dwelling that he can 
 regard as his home for so long as he chooses to dwell in it ; for 
 a piece of land which he can cultivate and build upon and 
 improve as his interest or fancy may dictate without the fear of a 
 notice to quit, and the certainty that when he quits of his own 
 accord he can realise the full value of his improvements at the 
 time of his retiring. 
 
 If you say further that all these things shall be his own you 
 are conferring no further privilege. You are only summing up 
 the privileges already enumerated in a compact, sweet-sounding 
 phrase. 
 
 That he shall possess his home so long as he chooses to dwell 
 in it, his land so long as he chooses to till it, this is the land 
 bungler. But to want to own the land without using it, to leave 
 
50 
 
 and yet retain the ownership for the mere purpose of preventing 
 other people from using it except on payment, this is not the land 
 hunger at all. 
 
 Directly a man has lost the desire to dwell in his home and till 
 his land, and wants to go elsewhere and live on the rent, he has 
 lost the land hunger, and retains only the ordinary desire to make 
 money. 
 
 Therefore, when under these circumstances we require him to 
 give up the land, securing to him the value of his improvements, 
 we violate no craving of his nature ; we only take from him 
 what he has ceased to value, the land ; and allow him the one 
 thing he continues to value, his money, to invest elsewhere. 
 
 Further, it is the nature and not the extent of the occupancy 
 that satisfies the land hunger. A home and land enough to 
 afford employment are all that is wanted for the purpose. 
 
 The Irishman's poor cabin is as much his home to him, as the 
 Duke's palace is to him ; and an acre or two satisfies the craving 
 to be working for one's-self as thoroughly as 1,000 acres would. 
 Therefore so long as we leave a man land enough to provide 
 him full employment, much more when we leave him enough to 
 employ many hired servants, we may take, at a valuation, the 
 broad acres on which he merely runs his flocks without jarring 
 any legitimate feeling. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Now let us note the results of our plan to each of the parties 
 concerned. 
 
 1. In regard to the dispossessed landlord. 
 
 So much land is taken from him, so much money of equal 
 value is returned to him He is certainly no worse off than 
 before. He is really much better off. 
 
 Formerly his income ceased every time the land was vacant 
 between one tenancy and another, and disappeared altogether 
 every time a tenant bolted or broke. Now it is guaranteed to 
 him with absolute regularity. 
 
 Formerly he was constantly liable to demands from his 
 tenants for repairs and improvements, to which he was com 
 
51 
 
 pelled, to some extent at any rate, to attend. Now he is freed 
 from all this, his income comes to him without deductions. 
 
 He is better oflf all round for his dispossession. 
 
 2. In regard to the occupier. 
 
 He holds at present on (say) a five or seven years' lease. All 
 his operations are bounded by this prospective limit. No 
 improvement or enterprise can he attempt which will not be 
 completely repaid with interest within that ever narrowing 
 period. But such a limit is fatal to the proper development of 
 the resources of the land. The very first condition necessary is 
 security of tenure ; not for five or seven years, but for so long 
 as the occupier desires to hold it, with assurance of full compen- 
 sation for unexhausted improvements should he decide to retire 
 A hand to mouth system that farms from year to year is but a 
 step in advance of the practice of the savage who supplies his 
 wants from day to day. To get the full results from the land 
 you must improve it. To work the land without being free to 
 improve it is to work it with one hand tied. The most valuable 
 works, those that return the greatest results to a given labour, 
 are those that are most far-reaching, but slowest in yielding 
 their results. 
 
 To drain, to plant, to build, for example are things the 
 occupier must not dream of. Many a thing that he sees the 
 land wants, and that it seems a pity to neglect, must he leave 
 undone ; and his interest in the land, little enough at any time, 
 diminishes daily, till in the last year of his lease he is in the 
 position of a yearly tenant, a position proverbially unproductive 
 and unsatisfactory for both landlord and tenant. It is no longer 
 his interest to manure, to keep down weeds, to effect a hand's 
 turn of repairs more than is absolutely and immediately 
 necessary. 
 
 As the end of the lease approaches he is further paralysed by 
 the uncertainty whether his lease will be renewed or not, on 
 such terms as he can accept. He does not know often whether 
 to fallow or what crop to sow, or what to undertake ; and if 
 through the landlord's asking too much or wanting to resume 
 possession, or for any reason he is obliged to leave, he has to 
 
52 
 
 sell off everything", no matter whether the times are favourable 
 or not, and be at a loose end for months looking out for another 
 farm, wasting his time and consuming his capital. 
 
 Finally he has to take a new untried farm, the peculiarities of 
 which he has to learn by gradual experience, and has hurriedly 
 to get together fresh stock and implements. Never has he any 
 abiding interest in the land ; never is it anything more to him 
 than a temporary residence, and an instrument out of which to 
 squeeze as much money as possible within a given time. 
 
 Turn to State ownership and all this is reversed. The tenant 
 is now in as secure possession of the land as if he owned it (only 
 subject to a yearly payment) without having to find the capital 
 to buy it 
 
 It is practically his ; his as a home to dwell in ; his as an 
 instrument to put to fullest use ; his as a trust, not as a 
 possession ; but as a trust in which he knows he will never be 
 disturbed so long as he fulfils its reasonable conditions ; condi- 
 tions devised for the public good, not, for the- aggrandisement of 
 an individual. 
 
 He holds a portion of the public estate to the exclusion of 
 other people with equal rights, and therefore he must pay from 
 year to year the fullest value of that privilege. As the land rises 
 in value through the execution of public works and the growing 
 prosperity of the country he will naturally have to pay so much 
 the more for the use of it, but nothing the more for the improve- 
 ments he may have made on it. If from any cause it falls in 
 value, he will have to pay less. Whatever its value from time 
 to time, as ascertained by periodical valuations, he will have to 
 pay it 
 
 What could be more reasonable ? 
 
 Moreover, the more he improves the smaller will become the 
 proportion which his rent bears to the total value, or productive 
 power, of the property ; and therefore the easier will it be to 
 meet it, and the more the remote the chance of his ever being 
 being disturbed in his possession. 
 
 Formerly his hands were tied by the shortness and uncertainty 
 of his tenure and the absence of any claim for improvements. 
 
53 
 
 Now his hands are free ; the land is practically his, though 
 nominally the State's. It will be less in extent no doubt ; that 
 is, he can no longer hold large areas to the exclusion of other 
 people, except temporarily, in remote parte where the land is not 
 yet wanted for more productive use. 
 
 He can no longer hold more than he can personally use for the 
 mere purpose of preventing other people from using it except 
 for hi8 profit j but he can hold as much as is his fair share and 
 whereon his home stands, in perpetuity, and as much more as is 
 not wanted by other people until it is wanted ; and as the State is 
 not likely to want it so long as it is being put to full productive 
 use, and will have to pay him the full value of his improvements 
 if it does, the more he improves it the less likely will he be ever 
 to be disturbed. 
 
 Secure in his tenure, and in the fruits of his labour, the 
 occupier will acquire a permanent interest in his land, and a pride 
 in and affection for it such as he has no chance of acquiring now, 
 and will have every inducement man can have to put it to the 
 fullest use, and draw the greatest enjoyment from it. 
 
 " But as he has still to pay rent, it seems — rent to the full 
 value — how is he better off, after all? What difference can it 
 make to him whether he pays his rent to the State or to a private 
 landlord ? " 
 
 Just the diflerence between paying money into the bank to 
 your account and paying it in to another's. For by so much 
 the more as the State receives in rent the less it requires in 
 taxation. 
 
 In paying rent to a private landlord the tenant pays it away 
 to a stranger for the stranger's enjoyment or enrichment, and 
 the payer sees it no more. But in paying it to the State he gets 
 back with one hand what he gives with the other ; what he gives 
 goes to the great public trustee to be turned into public benefits 
 of which he has the full use and enjoyment in common with 
 other people. 
 
 His payment to the State, in short, is not a payment away 
 at all, but an investment, and generally speaking, the best 
 investment he makes. After making every allowance for 
 
54 
 
 Government mismanagement, jobbery and extravagance, there 
 is yet no outlay from which we receive so many and so great 
 returns It secures for the payer benefits which he could not 
 by his own resource, labour or outlay secure at all, and without 
 which he could secure nothing else. 
 
 What sort of a living could any man make if in addition to 
 his ordinary business he had to be his own policeman, road- 
 maker, schoolmaster, etc. ? 
 
 What we pay to the State in taxation we get back in full 
 measure, running over. 
 
 But the returns from State rents are far greater than the 
 returns from taxation; for taxation gives you those public 
 benefits only in return for your money, while for State rents 
 you get the use of a piece of land in itself worth the money, 
 and you have all the public benefits thrown in ; or (to put it 
 differently) for taxation you get your money back once only, 
 for the State rent you get it twice over. 
 
 At thft commencement of the system there may be no 
 immediate gain, as far as mere money payment goes; for 
 a great part of what the tenant pays to the State in rent, the 
 State will have to transfer to the dispossessed landlord as 
 compensation. 
 
 It is only as the land increases in value (which it will quickly 
 begin to do), and the unearned increment begins to accrue, that 
 the State revenue will begin to expand and to go to the 
 reduction of taxation and multiplication of public benefits ; but, 
 from the moment it begins to accrue, it begins to increase, and 
 increases at accelerating speed. 
 
 3. In regard to the labourer. 
 
 As for the labourer's full rights, which it is the ultimate 
 aim of our policy to secure, that is a subject on which I may 
 have something to say on another occasion ; but for the present 
 all I am concerned about is to show how the particular 
 initiative measures which our society proposes will affect him. 
 ' Rent, as we have seen, devours wages ; and what enables it 
 chiefly to do so is the power the landowner or land occupier has 
 of restricting the field of employment; of keeping back the 
 
55 
 
 greater part of the national resources from full productive use, 
 and compelling the labourers to compete for the privilege of 
 employment on the small portion which he permits to be used. 
 
 We have but to notice how the opening up or enlargement of 
 one particular department of employment affects the labour 
 market to form some idea of the effect that would be produced 
 by throwing open the whole field. 
 
 The undertaking of a single line of railway sends wages up at 
 once perceptibly along the whole line and for some distance on 
 each side. The discovery of mineral deposits on Crown land, 
 where the labourer requires nothing but a pick and shovel and a 
 miner's right to find employment for himself at once, sends them 
 up with a rush. 
 
 Throw open all the land for cultivation and all the minerals for 
 development, and whether the labourer or the capitalist takes 
 possession, work is wanted in all directions ; the labourer either 
 finds work for his own hand or somebody calling out for him, and 
 can ask any wages he likes up the limit of the productiveness of 
 his labour. 
 
 If the land is thrown open to the labourer himself, as in the 
 case of minerals discovered on Crown land, or of allotments for 
 cultivation on unused land, he will not work for an employer for 
 less than he can make for himself ; nor even for as much, for 
 independence is sweet, and he will rather work for himself than 
 for another for the same money. 
 
 To get labour, the employer will have to offer him even more 
 than he can make for himself. 
 
 Some people are quite shocked at the idea of such a state of 
 things. They think high wages are ruin to the whole country, 
 not seeing that the very fact that wages are so high is a sign that 
 labour is highly productive and industry prospering ; not seeing 
 either that it is impossible for wages ever to rise so as to check 
 the progress of enterprise ; for no employer, no matter under what 
 pressure, will continue to give such high wages as will leave him 
 without sufficient profit to maintain himself and carry on his 
 business. If, therefore, he continues to give high wages, no 
 matter how high, it can only be because his business is so profit- 
 
56 
 
 able that he finds it pays him better to give those high wages 
 rather than to throw up or contract his business, and so business 
 goes on. 
 
 And if any employer can not pay the high wages going, then if 
 wages do not at once, of themselves so to speak, come down to his 
 requirements, it is clear either that his business is less productive 
 that those other businesses that can and do give the wages that 
 he cannot, or that he is an incapable manager ; in which case, 
 since the labourer cannot be in two places at once, it is better both 
 for himself and the country, that he should go to the business or 
 manager where he can do best, best in every sense ; and thus High 
 Wages, like Free Trade, are a potent factor in the work of natural 
 selection, weeding out the weak enterprises and incapable man- 
 agers and concentrating labour where it is most effective. 
 
 But high wages are not only a sign of progress, they are 
 also a factor of progress in many ways ; for high wages 
 stimulate the invention and adoption of labour-saving con 
 trivances, which add to the productiveness of labour. Where 
 wages are low, employers do not much trouble themselves to 
 seek for such contrivances or even to adopt them when placed 
 before them. 
 
 In making the Suez canal, the earth was excavated with 
 common hoes and carried out in baskets on women's heads, 
 though steam dredges and lifts were in full use elsewhere- 
 and this simply because labour was so cheap that it was scarpe 
 worth while to buy machinery to save it. 
 
 So in England where wages are higher than on the Continent, 
 improved appliances are in fuller use : and in Australia and 
 America, where wages are higher still, improved appliances 
 (such at any rate as are suited to their circumstances) are in 
 fuller use still In Tasmania the scythe and the sickle may be 
 said to be obsolete instruments, all harvest work being done 
 with horse-mowers and reapers and binders ; but nearly all the 
 hay I saw lately (1889) cut in England was cut with the sCythe. 
 
 People are so used to seeing the labourer toiling for a mere 
 subsistence, and never rising above his condition, while the employer 
 ftnd th§ landlord ^hare the produce of his toil between them, that 
 
57 
 
 they have come to look upon this as the order of Nature ; they 
 seem to think that those who have money have a right to the labour 
 of those who have none ; that the whole purpose of industry is to pro- 
 vide rent for landlords, interest for capital, and profits for employers, 
 and that the wages of the labourer are an unfortunate necessity of 
 the position, to be minimised as much as possible ; in short, that 
 Providence has evidently designed and ordained that the fruits 
 of labour shall go not to him who produces them, but to somebody 
 else who permits or employs him to produce them. The idea 
 (which you will hear expressed any day in all directions) that 
 wages should be kept down or the labourer forbidden to have 
 access to the land because employers in such case could not make 
 sufficient profit, means (put in plain terms) that A, who has little, 
 should get less, in order that B, who has much, should get more ; 
 a proposition too absurd to be discussed, but which seems to be 
 a fundamental article of belief with almost the whole class of 
 employers. 
 
 If the labourer will not work for an employer for wages that 
 will yield the employer a profit, it is clearly because he can put 
 his labour to better use himself, and if so, it is but just to himself 
 and good for society that he should so employ himself. Indeed it 
 is much better for society that in such case he should work for 
 himself rather than for an employer, for it sets the employer's 
 capital free to make his own labour more effective, or his life more 
 comfortable. 
 
 If I have 1,000 acres and £1,000 capital, and have hitherto 
 employed 10 labourers on my land to produce .£500 of produce, 
 and the land being now thrown open for selection, the labourers 
 can make the £500 for themselves on half the land, this simply 
 sets free the other half of my land, and all my capital for other 
 use. 
 
 But even if the vast resources which we propose to throw open 
 are not thrown open to the labourer personally, but are at once 
 taken up by capitalist employers, still it will require a greatly 
 increased number of employers and amount of capital to take them 
 up and put them to use, and this means a proportionate increase 
 in the demand for labour and consequent rise in wages. 
 
58 
 
 4. Tu regard to society. 
 
 The throwing open of the resources of the land means a great 
 increase of both production and population. 
 
 The more farm produce there is raised and mineral wealth 
 extracted, the more commerce, manufactures, the secondary 
 industries of all sorts will there be ; for the greater the produce 
 extracted from the land, the greater the number of people must 
 there be required to work up, shift about, and distribute that 
 produce. 
 
 Again, the greater number of people in the country, and the 
 greater the number to the square mile, the greater the variety of 
 their wants, and the greater the number of trades to satisfy those 
 wants. 
 
 Also the more the labourers within the given area, the greater 
 the opportunity for the division of labour, for the acquirement of 
 «kill, and for the economy of production. 
 
 The greater the number of people and the more they produce 
 the greater will be the amount of rates that can be levied (if more 
 rates should be wanted) and the better the roads, the better and 
 more numerous the schools, libraries, hospitals, and public con- 
 veniences of all sorts, and the greater the number of people who 
 will benefit by them. 
 
 In short, the advantages to society are endless. 
 
 5. In regard to Revenue. 
 
 The greater the number of people settled on the land, and the 
 greater the productiveness of their labour, the greater the value of 
 the land and the higher the rent, and the rent will be State rent, 
 i.e.y revenue. 
 
 And though this increase of rent will be checked at first, and 
 even thrown back by the rise of wages (for as rent formerly 
 denoured wages, so wages will now devour rent) still this increase 
 of wages will soon reach its limit, while the increase in population 
 and in the productiveness of labour will be practically without 
 limit. 
 
 The condition of both employer and labourer will be contin- 
 uously improving, though neither profits nor wages will increase 
 (after the limit spoken of is reached.) Increasing rent will swallow 
 
59 
 
 up increasing profits and wages ; but increasing rent will mean 
 increasing revenue, and increasing revenue will mean increasing 
 public benefits, benefiting all. 
 
 Employers and labourers will continue to gain, only not as 
 employers and labourers but as citizens of the State. 
 
 Tax after tax, will be knocked off" as increasing State rent swells 
 State revenue till no taxes are left, and still the increase will 
 accumulate. 
 
 The farmer will have his roads put and kept in first-rate order 
 without paying any rates ; the parent will be able to get the best 
 education for his children without paying any school fees ; the 
 traveller for a sixpenny or shilling railway ticket will be able to 
 go from one end of the island to the other, as his letter will go 
 from one end of the island to the other for a penny stamp. 
 
 Scholarships and rewards of one kind or another will, by a sort 
 of natural selection, pick out all the special talent of our youth 
 and develop it to its utmost pitch, to the advantage of society and 
 the enrichment of its possessor. 
 
 Railways and telegraphs can be made in all directions, libraries 
 established in every township, the best medical attendance 
 obtained at numerous hospitals and dispensaries at nominal 
 charges. But the prospect is boundless. The further we go the 
 wider it opens out. 
 
 Advantages now confined to the wealthy will be available to the 
 humblest, and yet no one will be pauperised, because the help 
 that pauperises is that which takes unjustly from one to give to 
 another, or assumes the form of degrading charity. 
 
 But this steady and continuous multiplication of public benefits 
 will nj more pauperise because it is free to all, than the rain and 
 the sun pauperise because they are free to all ; for it represents 
 neither robbery nor charity. It will be the product of the natural 
 growth of wealth from sources to which all have an equal and just 
 claim. It will all spring from State rent, and represent the price 
 paid by each appropriator of natural advantages for the privilege 
 of using those advantages — advantages to which, being the free 
 gift of nature, all have an equal right, and for the use of which it 
 can therefore injure no one's self respect to receive payment* 
 
60 
 
 All that increase of wealth, in short, which now goes as black- 
 mail to privileged monopolists will go to public benefits, and the 
 amount of that increase will at the same time be swelled to 
 proportions yet undreamt of. 
 
 But to those who wish to master the whole subject I cannot 
 do better than refer them to the works of far deeper thinkers and 
 better writers than I ; to the *' Progress and Poverty " of Henry 
 George, a work which revolutionized all my thoughts and feelings, 
 and which ought not only to enlighten, but to fire every thinking 
 man — and to the " Land Nationalisation," and later writings of 
 our great leader in England, Alfred Russel Wallace. 
 
 
 DERBY: 
 
 Printed for the L N.S. by James Harwoou, Derwent Buildings, Tenant St. 
 
WANTED, NEW MEMBERS 
 
 We earnestly invite all who sympathise with 
 the movement for abolislmig Landlordism to become 
 Members of the Land Nationalisation Society. 
 
 We are conducting a great National Propa- 
 ganda, and funds are needed for its contimmnce ■ 
 and extension. 
 
 Subscribers receive the Society's Journal 
 Land and Labour, every month. 
 
 Please Note the Address : 
 
 Land Nationalisation Society, 
 432 West Strand, 
 
 London, W.C, 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 TOi-^- 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 HOME USE 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. 
 
 Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405. 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 
 
 .j£C 1 4 lyy 
 
 u 
 
 
 iioTODiscMARl3*9 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 FORM NO. DD6 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
 tyfrn-mtfTm ' 
 
 MEMBERSHIP. —Payment of an Annual Subscription 'of not TeffS 
 
 conferB Membership. A Subscription of i/6 or more entitles the giver to a regular 
 movihjy copy of Land and Labour. Subscribera of five guineas or more become Life 
 Members. 
 
 LECTURES.— The Secretary will be glad to hear from Political Asgociations and Land 
 aeformers generally, with a view to holding meetings, supplying lecturers, or 
 attending debates. 
 
 Those who desire a just solution of the Land Problem are earnestly Invited 
 
 to become Members. 
 
 oVifiqneR. Postal Orders, &c„ to be crossed " London and County Banking Co., 
 
 a/c Land Nationalisation Society." 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CDDflfi3fifiTT