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THE LIBRARY OF 
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 THE COMPLETE WORKS 
OF HENRY GEORGE 

• 

OUR LAND 

AND 

LAND POLICY 

SPEECHES, LECTURES AND 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS 

NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY 
PAGE & COMPANY 3 1904 

 Copyright, 1871, by 
HENRY GEORGE 

 PKEFATOKY NOTE. 

THIS volume is made up of selections from the miscella 
neous written and spoken utterances of Henry George not 
otherwise appearing in book form. It does not purport 
to contain all of this class of his productions. To make 
such a publication would require several volumes like 
this. The present volume is intended to contain only such 
speeches, lectures, sermons, essays and other writings as 
serve to exhibit Mr. George's varied powers of tongue arid 
pen and set forth in many of its phases his philosophy of 
the natural order. 

The most important matter in this collection is that 
with which it opens—"Our Land and Land Policy"—given 
to the public for the first time since its original limited 
publication in 1871, when its author .was only locally 
known in San Francisco as a newspaper writer. It en 
gaged, with other work, four months in the writing, and 
was Mr. George's first attempt to set forth the essentials 
of his philosophy. Of it he said long afterwards: "Some 
thing like a thousand copies were sold, but I saw that 
to command attention the work must be done more thor 
oughly." The work was done more thoroughly in "Prog 
ress and Poverty" eight years later. To that celebrated 
book "Our Land and Land Policy" bears the relation of 
acorn to oak. Mr. George towards the end of his life con 
templated republishing the little work, believing that it 
might interest many whom the larger book would not at 

 first reach. Death intervened between the plan and its 
carrying out. Mr. George thought of making such changes 
in "Our Land and Land Policy" as in his opinion would 
fit it more nearly to the present times, but as his was 
the only hand that could properly do this, it is here pre 
sented precisely as he published it in 1871. 

HBNBY GEORGE, JB. 

NEW YORK, December. 1900. 

 CONTENTS. 

CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY ..... 1 

THE LANDS OF THE UNITED STATES ... 3 
THE LANDS OF CALIFORNIA . . . .36 

LAND AND LABOUR ...... 75 

THE TENDENCY OF DUE PRESENT LAND POLICY . 89 
WHAT OUB LAND POLICY SHOULD BE . . .98 

THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY . . . 133 
THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC ..... 155 

THE CRIME OF POVERTY ...... 185 

LAND AND TAXATION ...... 219 

"THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" . . . . .241 

TO WORKINGMEN ....... 263 

"THY KINGDOM COME" . . . . . .277 

JUSTICE THE OBJECT—TAXATION THE MEANS . . 295 
CAUSES OF THE BUSINESS DEPRESSION . . . 323 
PEACE BY STANDING ARMY ..... 333 

 OUR LAND AND 
LAND POLICY 

 I. 

THE LANDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

EXTENT OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. 

CCORDING to the latest report of the Commissioner 
of the General Land Office, the public domain not yet 
disposed of amounted on the 30th of June, 1870, to 
1,387,732,209 acres. 

These figures are truly enormous, and paraded as they 
always are whenever land enough for a small empire is 
asked for by some new railroad company, or it is pro 
posed to vote away a few million acres to encourage 
steamship building, it is no wonder that they have a daz 
zling effect, and that our public lands should really seem 
"practically inexhaustible." For this vast area is more 
than eleven times as large as the great State of California; 
more than six times as large as the united area of the 
thirteen original States; three times as large as all Europe 
outside of Russia. Thirteen hundred and eighty-seven 
millions of acres! Room for thirteen million good-sized 
American farms; for two hundred million such farms as 
the peasants of France and Belgium consider themselves 
rich to own; or for four hundred million such tracts as 
constituted the patrimony of an ancient Roman! Yet 
when we come to look closely at the homestead possibili- 

3 

 4 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

ties expressed by these figures, their grandeur begins to 
melt away. In the first place, in these 1,387,732,209 acres 
are included the lands which have been granted, but not 
yet patented, to railroad and other corporations, which, 
counting the grants made at the last session, amount to 
about 200,000,000 acres in round numbers; in the next 
place, we must deduct the 369,000,000 acres of Alaska, 
for in all human probability it will be some hundreds if 
not some thousands of years before that Territory will 
be of much avail for agricultural purposes; in the third 
place, we must deduct the water surface of all the land 
States and Territories (exclusive of Alaska), which, tak 
ing as a basis the 5,000,000 acres of water surface con 
tained in California, cannot be less than 80,000,000 acres, 
and probably largely exceeds that amount. Still further, 
we must deduct the amount which will be given under 
existing laws to the States yet to be erected, and which 
has been granted, or reserved for other purposes, which in 
the aggregate cannot fall short of 100,000,000 acres; leav 
ing a net area of 650,000,000 acres—less than half the 
gross amount of public land as given by the Commis 
sioner. 

When we come to consider what this land is, the mag 
nificence of our first conception is subject to still further 
curtailment. For it includes that portion of the United 
States which is of the least value for agricultural pur 
poses. It includes the three greatest mountain chains of the 
continent, the dry elevated plains of the eastern slope of 
the Rocky Mountains and the arid alkali-cursed stretches 
of the great interior basin; and it includes, too, a great 
deal of land in the older land States which has been 
passed by the settler as worthless. Colorado, Wyoming, 
Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona, 
though having an abundance of natural wealth of another 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 6 

kind, probably contain less good land in proportion to 
their area than any other States or Territories of the 
Union, excepting Alaska. They contain numerous val 
leys which with irrigation will produce heavy crops, and 
vast areas of good grazing lands which will make this sec 
tion the great stock range of the Union; but the propor 
tion of available agricultural land which they contain is 
very small. 

Taking everything into consideration, and remembering 
that by the necessities of their construction the railroads 
follow the water courses and pass through the lowest val 
leys, and therefore get the best land, and that it is fair 
to presume that other grants also take the best, it is not 
too high an estimate to assume that, out of the 650,000,000 
acres which we have seen are left to the United States, 
' there are at least 200,000,000 acres which for agricultural 
or even for grazing purposes are absolutely worthless, and 
which if ever reclaimed will not be reclaimed until the 
pressure of population upon our lands is greater than is 
the present pressure of population upon the lands of 
Great Britain. 

And, thus, the 1,387,732,209 acres which make such 
a showing in the Land Office Eeports come down in 
round numbers to but 450,000,000 acres out of which 
farms can be carved, and even of this a great proportion 
consists of land which can be cultivated only by means 
of irrigation, and of land which is only useful for 
grazing. 

This estimate is a high one. Mr. E. T. Peters, of the 
Statistical Bureau, estimates the absolutely worthless land 
at 241,000,000 acres. Senator Stewart, in a recent 
speech, puts the land fit for homes at one third of the 
whole—332,000,000 acres by his figuring, as he makes 
no deductions except for Alaska and the Texas Pacific 

 « OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY 

grant. Assuming his proportion to be correct, and ad 
mitting that the railroads, etc., take their proportion of 
the bad as well as of the good land, we would have, after 
making the proper deductions, but 216,000,000 acres of 
arable land yet left to the United States. 

But taking it at 450,000,000 acres, our present popu 
lation is in round numbers 40,000,000, and thus our "lim 
itless domain," of which Congressmen talk so much when 
about to vote a few million acres of it away, after all 
amounts to but twelve acres per head of our present 
population. 

OUB COMING POPULATION. 

BUT let us look at those who are coming. The amount 
of our public land is but one factor; the number of those 
for whose use it will be needed is the other. Our popu 
lation, as shown by the census of last year, is 38,307,399. 
In 1860 it was 31,443,321, giving an increase for the 
decade of 6,864,078, or of a fraction less than twenty-two 
per cent. Previous to this, each decade had shown a 
steady increase at the rate of thirty-five per cent., and 
this may be considered the rate of our normal growth. 
The war, with its losses and burdens, and the political, 
financial and industrial perturbations to which it gave 
rise, checked our growth during the last decade, but in 
that on which we have now entered, there is little doubt 
that the growth of the nation will resume its normal rate, 
to go on without retardation, unless by some such disturb 
ing influence as that of our great Civil War, until the 
pressure of population begins to approximate to the pres 
sure of population in the older countries. 

Taking, then, this normal rate as the basis of our cal- 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 7 

culation, let us see what the increase of our population 
for the next fifty years will be: 

Onr population -will be in An Increase in that decade of 

1880 ....... 51,714,989 ........ 13,407,590 

1890 ....... 69,815,235 ........ 18,100,246 

1900 ....... 94,250,567 ........ 24,435,332 

1910 ....... 127,238,267 ........ 32,987,700 

1920 ....... 171,771,610 ........ 44,533,593 

This estimate is a low one. The best estimates here 
tofore made give us a population of from 100,000,000 to 
115,000,000 in 1900, and from 185,000,000 to 200,000,- 
000 in 1920, and there is little doubt that the Census of 
1870, on which the calculation is based, does not show the 
true numbers of our people. But it is best to be on the 
safe side, and the figures given are sufficiently imposing. 
In truth, it is difficult to appreciate, certainly impossible 
to overestimate, the tremendous significance of these fig 
ures when applied to the matter we are considering. 

By 1880, the end of the present decade, our population 
will be thirteen millions and a half more than in 1870— 
that is to say, we shall have an addition to our popula 
tion of more than twice as many people as are now living 
in all the States and Territories west of the Mississippi 
(including the whole of Louisiana), an addition in ten 
years of as many people as there were in the whole of the 
United States in 1832. 

By 1890 we shall have added to our present population 
thirty-one and a half millions, an addition equal to the 
present population of the whole of Great Britain. 

By the year 1900—twenty-nine years off—we shall have 
an addition of fifty-six millions of people; that is, we shall 
have doubled, and have increased eighteen millions beside. 

 8 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

By 1910, the end of the fourth decade, our increase 
over the population of 1870 will be eighty-nine millions, 
and by 1920 the increase will be nearly one hundred and 
thirty-four millions; that is to say, at the end of a half 
century from 1870 we shall have multiplied four and a 
half times, and the United States will then contain their 
present population plus another population half as large 
as the present population of the whole of Europe. 

What becomes of our accustomed idea of the immensity 
of our public domain in the light of these sober facts? 
Does our 450,000,000 acres of available public land seem 
"practically inexhaustible" when we turn our faces towards 
the future, and hear in imagination, in the years that are 
almost on us, the steady tramp of the tens of millions, 
and of the hundreds of millions, who are coming? 

Vast as this area is, it amounts to but thirty-three acres 
per head to the increased population which we will gain in 
the present decade; to but fourteen acres per head to the 
new population which we will have in twenty years; to but 
four acres per head to the additional population which we 
will have by the close of the century! 

We need not carry the calculation any further. Our 
public domain will not last so long. In fact, if we go 
ahead, disposing of it at the rate we are now doing, it will 
not begin to last so long, and we may even count upon 
our ten fingers the years beyond which our public lands 
will be hardly worth speaking of. 

Between the years 1800 and 1870 our population in 
creased about thirty-three millions. During this increase 
of population, besides the disposal of vast tracts of wild 
lands held by the original States, the Government has dis 
posed of some 650,000,000 acres of the public domain. 
We have now some 450,000,000 acres of available land 
left, which, in the aggregate, is not of near as good a qual- 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 8 

ity as that previously disposed of. The increase of popu 
lation will amount to thirty-two millions in the next twenty 
years! Evidently, if we get rid of our remaining public 
land at the rate which we have been getting rid of it since 
the organisation of the General Land Office, it will be all 
gone some time before the year 1890, and no child born 
this year or last year, or even three years before that, can 
possibly get himself a homestead out of Uncle Sam's farm, 
unless he is willing to take a mountain-top or alkali patch, 
or to emigrate to Alaska. 

But the rate at which we are disposing of our public 
lands is increasing more rapidly than the rate at which 
our population grows. Over 200,000,000 acres have been 
granted during the last ten years to railroads alone, while 
bills are now pending in Congress which call for about all 
there is left. And as our population increases, the public 
domain becomes less and less, and the prospective value 
of land greater and greater, so will the desire of speculators 
to get hold of land increase, and unless there is a radical 
change in our land policy, we may expect to see the public 
domain passing into private hands at a constantly increas 
ing rate. When a thing is plenty, nobody wants it; when 
it begins to get scarce, there is a general rush for it. 

It will be said: Even if the public domain does pass into 
private hands, there will be as much unoccupied land as 
there otherwise would be, and let our population increase 
as rapidly as it may, it will be a long time before there 
can be any real scarcity of land in the United States. 
This is very true. Before we become as populous as France 
or England, we must have a population, not of one hun 
dred millions or two hundred millions, or even five hun 
dred millions; but of one thousand millions, and even then, 
if it is properly divided and properly cultivated, we shall 
not have reached the limit of our land to support popula- 

 10 OUB LAND AND LAND POLICY 

tion. That limit is far, far off—so far in fact that we 
need give ourselves no more trouble about it than about the 
exhaustion of our coal measures. The danger that we 
have to fear, is not the overcrowding, but the monopolisa 
tion of our land—not that there will not be land enough 
to support all, but that land will be so high that the poor 
man cannot buy it. That time is not very far distant. 

THE PROSPECTIVE VALUE OF LAND. 

SOME years ago an Ohio Senator1 asserted that by the 
close of the century there would not be an acre of average 
land in the United States that would not be worth fifty 
dollars in gold. 

Supposing that our present land policy is to be con 
tinued, if he was mistaken at all, it was in setting the time 
too far off. 

Between the years 1810 and 1870, the increase in the 
population of the United States was no greater than it will 
be between the years 1870 and 1890. Coincident with this 
increase of population we have seen the value of land go 
up from nothing to from $20 to $150 per acre over a 
much larger area than our public domain now includes of 
good agricultural land. 

And as soon as the public domain becomes nearly monop 
olised, land will go up with a rush. The Government, 
with its millions of acres of public land, has been the 
great bear in the land market. When it withdraws, the 
bulls will have it their own way. That there is land to 
be had for $2.50 per acre in Dakota lessens the value of 
New York farms. Because there is yet cheap land to be 

1 Ben Wade. 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 11 

had in some parts of the State, land in the Santa Clara 
and Alameda valleys is not worth as much. 

And in considering the prospective value of land in the 
United States, there are two other things to be kept in 
mind: First, that with our shiftless farming we are ex 
hausting our land. That is, that year by year we require 
not only more land for an increased population, but more 
land for the same population. And, second, that the ten 
dency of cheapened processes of manufacture is to increase 
the value of land. 

LAND POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

THE best commentary upon our national land policy is the 
fact, stated by Senator Stewart, that of the 447,000,000 
acres disposed of by the Government, not 100,000,000 have 
passed directly into the hands of cultivators. If we add 
to this amount the lands which have been granted, but 
not delivered, we have an aggregate of 650,000,000 acres 
disposed of to but 100,000,000 acres directly to cultivators 

—that is to say, six sevenths of the land have been put into 
the hands of people who did not want to use it themselves, 
but to make a profit (that is, to exact a tax) from those 

•who do use it. 

A generation hence our children will look with astonish 
ment at the recklessness with which the public domain has 
been squandered. It will seem to them that we must have 
been mad. For certainly our whole land policy, with here 
and there a gleam of common sense shooting through it, 
seems to have been dictated by the desire to get rid of our 
lands as fast as possible. As the Commissioner of the 
General Land Office puts it, seemingly without conscious 
ness of the sarcasm involved, "It has ever been the am- 

 12 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

ious desire of the Government to transmute its title to the 
soil into private ownership by the most speedy processes 
that could be devised." 

In one sense our land dealings have been liberal enough. 
The Government has made nothing to speak of from its 
lands, for the receipts from sales have been not much more 
than sufficient to pay the cost of acquisition or extinguish 
ment of Indian title, and the expenses of surveying and of 
the land office. But our liberality has been that of a 
prince who gives away a dukedom to gratify a whim, or 
lets at a nominal rent to a favoured Farmer-General the 
collection of taxes for a province. We have been liberal, 
very liberal, to everybody but those who have a right to our 
liberality, and to every importunate beggar to whom we 
would have refused money we have given land—that is, 
we have given to him or to them the privilege of taxing 
the people who alone would put this land to any use. 

So far as the Indians, on the one hand, and the English 
proprietaries of Crown grants, on the other, were con 
cerned, the founders of the American Eepublic were clearly 
of the opinion that the land belongs to him who will use 
it; but farther than this they did not seem to inquire. In 
the early days of the Government the sale of wild lands 
was looked upon as a source from which abundant 
revenue might be drawn. Sales were at first made in 
tracts of not less than a quarter township, or nine square 
miles, to the highest bidder, at a minimum of $2 per acre, 
on long credits. It was not until 1820 that the minimum 
price was reduced to $1.25 cash, and the Government con 
descended to retail in tracts of 160 acres. And it was 
not until 1841, sixty-five years after the Declaration of 
Independence, that the right of pre-emption was given to 
settlers upon surveyed land. In 1862 this right was ex 
tended to unsurveyed land. And in the same year, 1862, 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 13 

the right of every citizen to land, upon the sole condition 
of cultivating it, was first recognised by the passage of 
the Homestead law, which gives to the settler, after five 
years' occupancy and the payment of $22 in fees, 160 acres 
of minimum ($1.25) or 80 acres of double-minimum 
($2.50) land. 

Still further in the right direction did the zeal of Con 
gress for the newly enfranchised slaves carry it in 1866, 
when all the public lands in the five Southern land States 

—Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Arkansas 

—were reserved for homestead entry.1 

But this growing liberality to the settler has been accom 
panied by a still more rapidly growing liberality to specu 
lators and corporations, and since the pre-emption and 
homestead laws were passed, land monopolisation has gone 
on at a faster rate than ever. Without dwelling on the 
special means, such as the exercise of the treaty-making 
power, by which large tracts of land in some of the West 
ern States have been given to railroad corporations and 
individuals for a few cents per acre, let us look at the gen 
eral methods by which the monopolisation of Government 
land has been and is being accomplished. 

PUBLIC SALE AND PRIVATE ENTRY. 

THE first method adopted for the disposal of public lands 
was their sale to the highest bidder. This theory has never 
been abandoned. After lands have been surveyed, they 
may, at any time, be ordered to be offered at public sale. 
This public sale is only a matter of form, purchasers at 

1This reservation has been broken through by the passage of the 
Southern Pacific Railroad bill, which gives 5,000,000 acres to a branch 
road in Louisiana, which would be sure to be constructed without any aid. 

 14 OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY 

more than the minimum price seldom or never appearing. 
But the offering makes an important difference in the dis 
position of the lands. Before being offered at public sale 
they are open only to pre-emption and homestead entry— 
that is, to actual settlers, in tracts not exceeding 160 acres. 
After being offered, they are open to private entry—that is, 
they may be purchased by any one in any amount, at the 
minimum price, $1.25 per acre. 

Whether by the misrepresentations of speculators or the 
inadvertence of the authorities, public sales, as a general 
thing, have been ordered before the line of settlement had 
fairly reached the land, and thus the speculator has been 
able to keep in advance, picking out the choice lands in 
quantities to retail at a largely advanced price, or to hold 
back from improvement for years. 

By means of cabins built on wheels or at the intersection 
of quarter section lines, and false affidavits, a good deal of 
land grabbing has also been done under the pre-emption 
and homestead laws. More, however, in the Mississippi 
Valley States than elsewhere. 

DONATIONS OF PUBLIC LANDS. 

THUS land monopolisation has gone on in the ordinary 
course of our land dealings. But the extraordinary means 
which have done most to hasten it, have been the donations 
of land in immense bodies. 

It is a trite saying that men are always disposed to be 
liberal with that which is not their own—a saying which 
has had exemplifications enough in the history of all our 
legislative bodies. But there is a check to the appropria 
tion of money, in the taxation involved, which, if not felt 
by those who vote the money away, is felt by their con- 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 15 

stituents. Not so with appropriations of land. No extra 
taxation is caused, and the people at whose expense the 
appropriations are made—the settlers upon the land— 
have not yet appeared. And so Congress has always been 
extremely liberal in giving away the public lands on all 
pretexts, and its liberality has generally been sanctioned, 
or at least never seriously questioned by public opinion. 

The donations of land by Congress have been to indi 
viduals, to States, and to corporations. 

THE BOUNTY LAND GEANTS. 

THE grants to individuals consist chiefly of bounties to 
soldiers and sailors of the War of 1812 and the Mexican 
War, and amount to about 73,000,000 acres, for which 
transferable warrants were issued. Nearly all of this 
scrip passed into the hands of speculators, not one warrant 
in five hundred having been located by or for the original 
holder. It has been estimated that, on an average, the 
warrants did not yield the donees twenty-five cents per 
acre. But taking fifty cents as a basis, we are able to 
form an idea of the disproportion between the cost of the 
gift to the nation and the benefit to the soldiers. Leav 
ing out of the calculation the few that have taken the 
land given them, we find that the Government gave up a 
revenue of $91,067,500, which it would have received from 
the sale of the land at $1.25 per acre, in order to give the 
soldiers $36,427,000, or, in other words, every dollar the 
soldiers got cost the nation $2.50! Nor does this tell 
the whole story. Though some of this scrip was located by 
settlers who purchased it from brokers at an advance on the 
price paid soldiers, most of it has been located by specula 
tors who, with the same capital, have been enabled to mo- 

 16 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

nopolise much more land than they could otherwise have 
monopolised, and to monopolise land even before it was 
offered at public sale. If we estimate the advance which 
settlers have had to pay in consequence of this speculation 
at $2 per acre for the amount of transferred scrip, we 
have a tax upon settlers of $145,708,000, which, added to 
the loss of the Government, gives a total of $236,775,500, 
given by the Government and exacted from settlers in 
order to give the soldiers $36,427,000! And yet the story 
is not told. To get at the true cost of this comparatively 
insignificant gift, we should also have to estimate the loss 
caused by dispersion—by the widening of the distance be 
tween producer and consumer—which the land specula 
tion, resulting from the issue of bounty warrants, has 
caused. But here figures fail us. 

GEANTS TO STATES. 

THE donations of land by the general Government to indi 
vidual States have been large. Besides special donations 
to particular States, the general donations are 500,000 acres 
for internal improvements, ten sections for public build 
ings, seventy-two sections for seminaries, two sections in 
each township (or l-18th) for common schools, and all 
the swamp and overflowed lands, for purposes of reclama 
tion. These grants have been made to the States which 
contain public land, of land within their borders. In 
addition, all the States have been given 30,000 acres for 
each of their Senators and Eepresentatives, for the estab 
lishment of agricultural colleges. 

If land is to be sold, it is certainly more just that the 
proceeds should go to the States in which it is located 
than to the general Government, and the purposes for 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 17 

which these grants have been made are of the best. Yet 
judging from the standpoint of a right land policy, which 
would give the settler his land at the mere cost of sur 
veying and book-keeping, even in theory, they are bad. 
For why should the cost of public buildings, or even of 
public education, be saddled upon the men who are just 
making themselves farms, who, as a class, have the least 
capital, and to whom their capital is of the most im 
portance? 

But whether right or wrong in theory, in practice, like 
the military bounties, these grants have proved of but little 
benefit to the States in comparison with their cost to the 
nation and to settlers. As a general rule they have been 
squandered by the States, and their principal effect has 
been to aid in the monopolisation of land. How true this 
is will be seen more clearly when we come to look at the 
land policy of the State of California. 

THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE GRANT. 

THE Agricultural College grant was made in 1862, and 
has since been extended as the Eepresentatives of other 
States have been admitted. It aggregates 9,510,000 acres, 
and if extended to the Territories as they come in, will 
take at least 11,000,000 acres. This grant differs from 
the other State grants in this: that it is given to all States, 
whether they contain public land or not; those in which 
there is no public land being permitted to take their land 
in other States which do contain it. This feature makes 
this grant, in theory at least, the very worst of the grants, 
for it throws upon the settlers in new and poor States the 
burden of supporting colleges not merely for their own 
State but for other and far richer States. 

 18 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

For instance, the State of New York, the most popu 
lous and wealthy member of the Union, receives 990,000 
acres, which must all be located in the poor far-Western 
States. Thus to this old and rich State is given the power 
of taxing the settlers upon nearly a million acres in far- 
off and poor States for the maintenance of a college which 
she is far more able to support than they are. If New 
York has located this land well, and retains it (as I be 
lieve is the intention), in a very few years she will be able 
to rent it for one fourth or even one third of the crop. 
That is, for the support of" one of her own institutions, 
New York will be privileged to tax 50,000 people, fifteen 
hundred or two thousand miles away, to the amount of 
one fourth or one third of their gross earnings. And as 
time passes, and population becomes denser, and land more 
valuable, the number of people thus taxed will increase 
and the tax become larger. The Cornell University, to 
which the New York grant has been made over, is a noble 
and beneficent institution; but will any one say that it is 
just to throw the burden of its support upon the labour 
ing classes of far-off States? 

The same thing is true of all the old and rich States 
which are thus given the right to tax the producers of 
new and poorer States. That most of these States have 
sold this right to speculators at rates ranging from 37*£ to 
80 cents per acre, only makes the matter worse. 

But perhaps this injustice is even more evident in the 
case of those Southern States which do contain public 
land. The public land of Texas (of which there are some 
80,000,000 acres left) belongs to the State; that in the 
other Southern land States was reserved for homestead 
entry by the Act of 1866. These States get the same 
amount of land under this grant as the others; but none 
of it is taken from their own lands, and their college 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 19 

scrip is now being plastered over the public lands in Cali 
fornia and the Northwest, much of it being located here. 

California gets 150,000 acres under the Act. Yet, be 
sides this, there have been located here up to June of last 
year more than 750,000 acres of the land scrip of other 
States, and large amounts have since been located or are 
here ready for location as soon as immigration sets in. 
This scrip brought to the States to which it was issued 
an average of, probably, 50 cents per acre. What the giv 
ing of this paltry donation has cost us we know too well. 
A great deal of the land thus located at a cost to the 
speculator of 50 cents per acre has been sold to settlers at 
prices ranging from $5 to $10 per acre, much of it is held 
for higher prices than can now be obtained; and a great 
deal of it is being rented for one fourth of the gross pro 
duce, the renter supplying all the labour and furnishing 
all the seed; while the land monopolisation, of which this 
agricultural scrip has been one of the causes, has turned 
back immigration from California, has made business of 
all kinds dull, and kept idle thousands of mechanics and 
producers who would gladly have been adding to the gen 
eral wealth. 

Badly as California has suffered, other States have suf 
fered worse. Wisconsin is entitled to 210,000 acres; yet, 
up to June, 1870, 1,111,385 acres had been located in that 
State with agricultural scrip. Nebraska gets only 90,000 
acres, yet the agricultural scrip locations in Nebraska up 
to the same time were nearly a million acres. 

RAILROAD GRANTS. 

SOME four millions of acres have been donated for the 
construction of various wagon roads, and some four mil- 

 20 OUB LAND AND LAND POLICY 

lions and a half for the construction of canals; but by far 
the largest grants have been to railroads—the amount 
given to these companies within the last ten years aggre 
gating nearly one half as much as all the public lands dis 
posed of in other ways since the formation of the Govern 
ment. This policy was not commenced until 1850, when 
six sections per mile, or in all 2,595,053 acres, were granted 
for the construction of the Illinois Central road. This 
donation was made to the State, and by it assigned to the 
company on condition of the payment to the State of 
seven per cent, of its gross receipts in lieu of taxation. 
This grant, which now seems so insignificant, was then 
regarded as princely, and so it was, as it has more than 
paid for the building and equipment of the road. The 
example being set, other grants of course followed. In 
1862, a long leap ahead in the rapidity of the disposal of 
the public lands was taken in the passage of the first 
Pacific Eailroad bill, giving directly, without the inter 
vention of States, to the Union, Central and Kansas com 
panies ten sections of land per mile (at that time the larg 
est amount ever granted), and $16,000 per mile in bonds. 
In 186-1 this grant was doubled, making it twenty sections 
or 12,800 acres per mile, and at the same time the bonded 
subsidy was trebled for the mountain districts and dou 
bled for the interior basin while the Government first 
mortgage for the payment of the bonds was changed into 
a second mortgage. 

But the disposition to give away lands kept on increas 
ing, and the Northern and Southern Pacific getting no 
bonds, the land grant to them was again doubled—mak 
ing it forty sections or 25,600 acres per mile, or, to speak 
exactly, twenty sections in the States and forty sections 
in the Territories. To these three Pacific roads alone 
have been given 150,000,000 acres in round numbers— 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 21 

more than is contained in all Germany, Holland ard Bel 
gium, with their population of over fifty millions—more 
land than that of any single European state except Russia. 
The largest single grant—and it is a grant unparalleled in 
the history of the world—is that to the Northern Pacific, 
which aggregates 58,000,000 acres. And besides this these 
roads get 400 feet right of way (which in the case of the 
Northern Pacific amounts to 100,000 acres), what land 
they want for depots, stations, etc., and the privilege of 
taking material from Government land, which means that 
they may cut all the timber they wish off Government 
sections, reserving that on their own. With these later 
grants has also been inaugurated the plan of setting aside 
a tract on each side of the grant in which the companies 
may make up any deficiency within the original limits 
by reason of settlement. Thus the grant to the Southern 
Pacific withdraws from settlement a belt of land sixty 
miles wide in California and one hundred miles wide in 
the Territories, and that to the Northern Pacific withdraws 
a belt one hundred and twenty miles wide from the west 
ern boundary of Minnesota to Puget Sound and the Co 
lumbia River. 

Since the day when Esau sold his birthright for a mess 
of pottage we may search history in vain for any parallel 
to such concessions. Munificence, we call it! Why, our 
common use of words leaves no term in the English tongue 
strong enough to express such reckless prodigality. Just 
think of it! 25,GOO acres of land for the building of one 
mile of railroad—land enough to make 256 good-sized 
American farms; land enough to make 4,400 such farms 
as in Belgium support a family each in independence and 
comfort. And this given to a corporation, not for build 
ing a railroad for the Government or for the people:, but 
for building a railroad for themselves; a railroad which 

 22 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

they will own as absolutely as they will own the land—a 
railroad for the use of which both Government and people 
must pay as much as though they had given nothing for 
its construction. 

THE VALUE OF THESE GRANTS. 

IF we look but a few years ahead, to the time when we 
shall begin to feel the pressure of a population of one 
hundred millions, the value of these enormous grants is 
simply incalculable. But their immediate value is greatly 
underestimated. Land was given to the first Pacific roads 
as though it had not and never would have any value. 
Money enough to build the roads and leave princely for 
tunes besides was placed in the hands of the companies, 
and the land was thrown in as a liberal grocer might 
throw an extra lump of sugar into the already falling 
scale. Yet it is already apparent that by far the most 
valuable part of these franchises are these land grants. 
The timber which the Central Pacific gets in the Sierras 
will of itself yield more than the cost of the whole road. 
In addition, it has large amounts of good agricultural lands 
in California and along the Nevada river bottoms, and 
millions of acres of the best grazing lands in the sage 
brush plains of Nevada and Utah, while there are thou 
sands of acres of its lands which will have enormous value 
from the coal, salt, iron, lead, copper and other minerals 
they contain. The Union Pacific lands in the Platte Val 
ley have, so far as sold, yielded it an average of $5 per 
acre; and though it gets no timber to speak of, it has 
millions of acres which will soon be valuable for grazing, 
and for a long distance its route passes through the great 
est coal and iron deposits of the continent, where much 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 23 

of its 12,600 acres per mile will in time be valued at 
thousands of dollars per acre. 

Twenty years ago, when the Illinois Central received its 
grant, its lands were worth no more than those now given 
the Northern Pacific. Yet the lands sold by the Illinois 
Central have averaged over $12 per acre, and those yet 
remaining on hand are held at a still higher price. Count 
ing at the company's price what is held, the grant has 
yielded over $30,000,000—much more than the cost of the 
road. If six sections per mile will do this in twenty years, 
what should forty sections per mile do ? 

The Directors of the Northern Pacific have themselves 
estimated their grant to be worth $10 per acre on the com 
pletion of the road. I think they rather under- than 
over-estimated it, and for an obvious reason. A true state 
ment of the real value of the grant would tend to dis 
credit the whole affair in the eyes of the cautious foreign 
capitalists, from whom the company seeks to borrow 
money, for they would not believe that any Government 
could be extravagant enough to make such a donation. 
But it must be remembered that the line of the Northern 
Pacific passes for nearly its whole length through as fine 
an agricultural country as that of Illinois; that its grant 
consists, in large part, of immensely valuable timber and 
mineral land, and that it will build up town after town, 
one of them at least a great commercial city, on its own 
soil. 

Furthermore, for reasons before stated, the increase in 
the value of land during the next twenty years must 
be much greater than it has been in the last twenty years. 
Taking these things into consideration, is it too much to 
say that in twenty years from now the lands of the com 
pany will have sold for or will be worth an average of at 
least $20 per acre? At this rate the grant amounts to 

 24 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

over half a million dollars per mile, or in the aggregate 
to the enormous sum of $1,160,000,000—a sum more than 
half the national debt. This donated absolutely to one 
corporation. And for what? For building a road which 
cannot cost more than eighty millions, and for building it 
for themselves! 

No keener satire upon our land-grant policy could be writ 
ten than that which is to be found in the published adver 
tisement of this Northern Pacific Company. The Directors 
show that if they get an average of but $2 per acre for 
their land, they can pay the whole cost of building and 
equipping the road and have a surplus of some $20,000,000 
left. That is to say, the Government might have built 
the road by merely raising the average price of the lands 
$1 per acre, and have made a profit by the operation, 
while it would then own the road, and could give or lease 
it to the company which would agree to charge the lowest 
rates. As it is, the Government has raised the price to 
settlers on one half the land $1.25 per acre; the other half 
it has given to the company to charge settlers just what 
it pleases; and then on this railroad which it has made 
the settlers pay for over and over again both Government 
and settlers must pay for transportation just as though 
the road had been built by private means. 

THE ARGUMENT FOR RAILROAD GRANTS. 

So plausible and so ably urged are the arguments for these 
grants, such general acceptance have they gained, and so 
seldom are they challenged (for the opposition which has 
been made has been rather against the extravagance than 
the theory of the grants) that it is worth while to consider 
them with some care. 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 25 

The plea for railroad land grants is about this: By 
giving land to secure the building of railroads, we develop 
the country without expense, or at least at the expense 
of those who largely profit by the operation. The land 
which we give is useless as it is; the railroad makes it use 
ful and valuable. The Government giving really nothing 
of present value, does not even deprive itself of that which 
it might receive in the future, for it is reimbursed for the 
selling price of the land it gives by doubling the price of 
the land it retains. The Government in fact acts like a 
sagacious individual, who having an unsaleable estate, gives 
half of it away to secure improvements which will enable 
him to sell the other half for as much as he at first asked 
for the whole. The settler is also the gainer, for land 
at $2.50 per acre with a railroad is worth more to him 
than land at $1.25 per acre without a railroad, and vast 
stretches of territory are opened to him to which he could 
not otherwise go for lack of means to transport his pro 
duce to market; while the country at large is greatly the 
gainer by the enormous wealth which railroads always 
create. 

"Here are thousands of square miles of fertile land," 
cries an eloquent Senator, "the haunt of the bear, the 
buffalo and the wandering savage, but of no use whatever 
to civilised man, for there is no railroad to furnish cheap 
and quick communication with the rest of the world. Give 
away a few millions of these acres for the building of a 
railroad and all this land may be used. People will go 
there to settle, farms will be tilled and towns will arise, 
and these square miles, now worth nothing, will have a 
market and a taxable value, while their productions will 
stream across the continent, making your existing cities 
still greater and their people still richer; giving freight 
to your ships and work to your mills." 

 26 OUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

All this sounds very eloquent to the land-grant man 
who stands in the lobby waiting for the little bill to go 
through which is to make him a millionaire, and really 
convinces him that he is a benefactor of humanity, the 
Joshua of the hardy settler and the Moses of the down 
trodden immigrant. And backed up, as it is, by columns 
of figures showing the saving in railroad over wagon trans 
portation, the rapidity of settlement where land grants 
have been already made, and the increase in the value of 
real estate, it sounds very plausible to those who have not 
anything like the reason to be as easily convinced as has 
the land-grant man. But will it bear the test of examina 
tion? Let us see: 

In the first place it must be observed that the considera 
tion for which we make these grants is purely one of time 
—to get railroads built before they would otherwise be 
built. No one will seriously pretend that without land 
grants railroads would never be built; all that can be 
claimed is that without grants they would not be built so 
soon—that is, until the prospective business would war 
rant the outlay. This is what we get, or rather expect to 
get, for we do not always get it. What do we give? We 
give land. That is, we give the company, in addition to 
the power of charging (practically what it pleases) for 
the carrying it does, the unlimited power of charging the 
people who are to settle upon one half the land for the 
privilege of settling there. If the Government loses noth 
ing, it is because the settlers on one half of the land must 
pay double price to reimburse it, while the settlers on the 
other half must pay just what the company chooses to ask 
them. 

Now, in the course of the settlement of this land there 
comes a time when there are enough settlers, together with 
the prospective increase of settlers, to warrant the build- 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 27 

ing of a railroad without a land grant. Admitting that 
the settlers who come upon the land before that time are 
gainers by the land grant in getting a railroad before they 
otherwise would,1 it is evident that the settlers after that 
time are losers by the amount of the additional price which 
they must pay for their land, for they would have had a 
railroad anyhow. 

1 But as to this it must be remembered that the gain to the settler is 
not to be measured by the increased advantage which the railroad gives 
to the new land through which it is built, but by the difference in advan 
tage which that laud offers over the land on which he would otherwise 
have settled. Thus we cannot estimate the gain from the building of the 
Northern Pacific road to the people now settling along its route in Minne 
sota and Dakota by the saving in the cost of transportation of the produce 
of that land ; for had the road not been projected, they would not have 
settled there, but would have settled in Iowa or Nebraska, where rail 
roads are already built; and thus the gain they derive from the building 
of the Northern Pacific is not to be measured by the increased advantage 
which the railroad gives for the cultivation of the land on which they are 
settling, but by the advantage which the railroad gives that land over 
land in Iowa or Nebraska, on which they would otherwise have settled. 

At first look, it would appear that all the people who go where a new 
railroad is built must gain something that they could not gain elsewhere, 
as otherwise they would not go there. This is doubtless true as regards 
such gain as inures to the individual without regard to other individuals, 
but not always true as regards such individual gain as is also a gain to 
the community. For some part of the population which accompanies 
the building of a railroad through an unsettled country comes to minis 
ter to the needs and desires of those who build it, and is merely to be 
regarded as an appendage of the building force, and with many of the 
others the expectation of advantage is prospective and speculative. They 
settle in the new country which the road is opening up, not because their 
labour will yield them a larger return than in other places to which they 
might go, but because they can get choice locations or a larger amount of 
land, which population afterwards to come will make valuable. That is, 
the gain which they expect is not from the increased productiveness of 
their own labour, but from the appropriation of some portion of other 
people's labour—and is not a gain to the community, though it may be a 

 28 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

And this point where the gain of settlers ceases, and 
the loss of settlers commences, is very much nearer the 
beginning of settlement—that is to say, there are fewer 
gainers and more losers, than might at first glance be 
supposed. For if there were no land grants at all, the 
land would be open to settlers as homesteads, or at $1.25 
per acre, and therefore the number of actual settlers which 
would justify the construction of a non-land-grant railroad 
would be very much smaller than that which would suffice 
to furnish a land-grant railroad with a paying business, 
as the prospective increase during and upon the comple 
tion of the road would be very much greater. 

So therefore, when, by giving a land grant, we get a 
railroad to precede settlement, if the first settlers gain 
at all, the others lose. The gain of the first is lessened 
by their having to pay double price for their lands; the 
loss of the others is mitigated by no gain. So that, as 
far as settlers are concerned, we are sacrificing the future 
for the present; we are taxing the many for the very ques 
tionable benefit of the few. And even in the case of the 
gainers, their first advantage, in having a railroad before 
its natural time, is offset by the subsequent retardation 
of settlement in their neighbourhood which the land grant 
causes. 

For if the first effect of the land grant is to hasten set 
tlement by getting a railroad built, its second effect is to 
retard it by enhancing the price of lands. Illinois, where 
the first railroad land grant was made, may in a year or 
two after have had more people, but for years back her 
population has certainly been less because of it. For 
nearly half a million acres—one fifth of this grant—re 
mained unoccupied in 1870, the company holding it at an 
average price of $13 per acre. If this land could have 
been had for $1.25 per acre, it would have been occupied 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 29 

years ago. This is the case wherever land grants have 
been made, and long before the Territories, in which we 
are now giving away 25,000 acres per mile for the building 
of railroads, fire one tenth settled, we will be asked to 
give away like amounts of other unappropriated territory 
(if there is any by that time left) in order to furnish 
"cheap homes to the settlers I" 

Considering all the people who are to come upon our 
now unoccupied lands, weighing the near future with the 
present, is it not evident that the policy of land grants 
is a most ruinous one even in theory—even when we get 
by it that which we bargain to get? Let us see how it 
affects the community at large in the present. 

Where a land grant is necessary to induce the building 
of a road, it is because the enterprise itself will not pay— 
that is to say, at least, that it will not yield as large a 
return for the investment as the same amount of capital 
would yield if invested somewhere else. The land grant 
is a subsidy which we give to the investors to make up 
this loss. 

Is it not too plain for argument, that where capital is 
invested in a less remunerative enterprise than it other 
wise would be, there is a loss to the whole community? 
Whether that loss is made up to the individuals by a sub 
sidy or not, only affects the distribution of the loss among 
individuals—the loss to the community, which includes all 
its individuals, is the same. 

But it will be said: Though this may be true so far as 
the direct returns of the railroad are concerned, there are 
other advantages from railroad building besides the re 
ceipts from fares and freights. The owners of the land 
through which the road passes, the producer and the con 
sumer of the freight which it carries, and the passenger 
who rides upon it, are all benefited to an amount far ex- 

 30 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

ceeding the sums paid as fares and freight. When we 
give a land grant, we merely give the railroad company 
a share in these diffused profits, which will make up to it 
the loss which would accrue were it confined to its legiti 
mate share. Thus: Here is a railroad, the business of 
which would not pay for building it for five years yet. 
The loss to the unsubsidised company which would build 
it now and run it for five years would be $10,000,000. 
But the gain to landowners and others would be $100,000,- 
000. Now, if by a land grant or otherwise, we secure to 
the railroad company a share of this collateral gain, 
amounting to $20,000,000, the railroad company will make 
a profit of $10,000,000, instead of a loss of $10,000,000, 
by building the road, and others would make a profit of 
$80,000,000. 

But it must be remembered that every productive enter 
prise, besides its return to those who undertake it, yields 
collateral advantages to others. It is the law of the uni 
verse—each for all, and all for each. If a man only plant 
a fruit tree, his gain is that he gathers its fruit in its time 
and its season. But in addition to his gain, there is a 
gain to the whole community in the increased supply of 
fruit, and in the beneficial effect of the tree upon the cli 
mate. If he build a factory, besides his own profit 
he furnishes others with employment and with profit; he 
adds to the value of surrounding property. And if he 
build a railroad, whether it be here or there, there are 
diffused benefits, besides the direct benefit to himself from 
its receipts. 

Now, as a general rule, is it not safe to assume that 
the direct profits of any enterprise are the test of its 
diffused profits? For instance: It will pay to put up an 
ice-making machine rather in New Orleans than in Ban- 
gor. Why? Because more people in New Orleans need 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 31 

ice, and they need it more than those in Bangor. The 
individual profit will be greater, because the general profit 
will be greater. It will pay capitalists better to build 
a railroad between San Francisco and Santa Cruz than 
it will to build a like railroad in Washington Territory. 
Why? Because there are more people who will ride, and 
more freight to be carried, on the one than on the other. 
And as the diffused benefit of a railroad can only inure 
from the carrying of passengers and freight, is it not evi 
dent that the diffused benefit is greater in the one case 
than in the other, just in proportion as the direct benefit 
is greater? 

In the second place, in any particular case in which we 
have to offer a subsidy to get a railroad built, the ques 
tion is not, shall we have this railroad or nothing?—but, 
shall we have this road in preference to something else ?— 
for the investment of capital in one enterprise prevents 
its investment in another. No legislative act, no issue 
of bonds, no grant of lands, can create capital. Capital, 
BO to speak, is stored-up labour, and only labour can create 
it. The available capital of the United States at any 
given time is but a given quantity. It may be invested 
here or it may be invested there, but it is only here or 
there that it can be invested. Nor is there any illimitable 
supply abroad to borrow from. The amount of foreign 
capital seeking investment in the United States is about 
so much each year; and if by increasing our offers we get 
any more, we must pay more, not merely for the increased 
amount which we get, but for all which we get. 

To recur, now, to our former example: Here is a rail 
road through an unsettled country, which to build now 
would, relying upon its direct receipts, entail a loss of 
$10,000,000, the diffused benefits of which may be esti 
mated at $100,000,000. Here is another railroad which 

 32 OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY 

it would take the same capital to build, which, in the same 
time, would yield a direct profit of $5,000,000, and the dif 
fused benefits of which it is fair to presume might be 
expressed by $300,000,000. Now if we offer to the build 
ers of the first road a land grant which will enable them 
to obtain one fifth of the diffused benefits of the road, we 
could induce them to build that road rather than the 
other, for they would make twice as much by doing so. 
But what would be the net result to the community? 
Clearly a loss of $215,000,000. That is to say: By offer 
ing a land grant we could induce capitalists to build a 
road in Washington Territory, rather than between San 
Francisco P id Santa Cruz. But if we did do so, the peo 
ple between San Francisco and Santa Cruz would lose far 
more than the capitalists and the Washington Territory 
settlers would gain; the people of the Pacific Coast, as a 
whole, and the United States, as a whole, would be poorer 
than if we had left capital free to seek the investments 
which would of themselves return to it the largest profits. 

The comparison between an individual and the nation 
is fallacious. The one is a part, the other is the whole. 
The individual lives but a few years, the lifetime of the 
nation is counted by centuries. It may profit an indi 
vidual to induce people to settle or capital to be invested 
in certain places; the nation can only profit by having its 
population and its capital so located and invested that the 
largest returns will be realised. It may profit an indi 
vidual to sacrifice the near future to the present, but it 
cannot profit a nation. 

As concerns the statistics hy which the benefits of land- 
grant railroads are attempted to be shown, it must be re 
membered, first, that the population of the United States 
is growing at the rate of a million per year, and next, 
that increase in the value of land is not increase in wealth. 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 33 

That whatever population railroads have brought to new 
States and Territories is dispersion, not increase, is proven 
by the fact that the population of the United States is not 
increasing faster than it did before railroad building com 
menced, while the slightest consideration of economic laws 
shows that whatever gain has resulted from their building 
is at the expense of a greater gain which would have 
resulted from the investment of the same capital where it 
was more needed—in fact, that there is no gain, but a 
loss. We have been supposing that land grants secure the 
consideration for which they are given—the building of 
roads before they would otherwise be built; but this is far 
from being always the case. With the exception, per 
haps, of the little Stockton and Copperopolis i-oad, the 
California grants have not hastened the building of rail 
roads, but have actually retarded it, by retarding settle 
ment. The fact is, that in nearly all cases these land 
grants are made to men who do not propose, and who 
have not the means, to build the road. They keep them 
(procuring extensions of time, when necessary*) until 
they can sell out to others who wish to build, and who, on 
their part, generally delay until they can see a profit in 
the regular business. 

To sum up: When we give a land grant for the build 
ing of a railroad, we either get a railroad built before it 
would be built by private enterprise, or we do not. 

If we do not, our land is given for nothing; if we do, 
capital is diverted from more to less productive invest 
ments, and we are the poorer for the operation. 

In either case the land grant tends to disperse popula 
tion; in either case it causes the monopolisation of land; 

1 Congress, in 1870, actually passed a bill extending the time for the 
completion of the first twenty miles of Western road to which a land 
grant was made in 1853. 

 34 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

in either case it makes the many poorer, and a few the 
richer. 

I have devoted this much space to answering directly 
the argument for railroad land grants, because they are 
constantly urged, and are seldom squarely met, and •be 
cause so long as we admit that we may profit by thus 
granting away land in "reasonable amounts," we shall 
certainly find our lands going in "unreasonable amounts." 
But surely it requires no argument to show that this thing 
of giving away from twelve to twenty-five thousand acres 
per mile of road in order to get people to build a rail 
road for themselves, is a wicked extravagance for which 
no satisfactory excuse can be made. This land, now so 
worthless that we give it away by the million acres with 
out a thought, is only worthless because the people who are 
to cultivate it have not yet arrived. They are coming fast 
—we have seen how fast. While there is plenty of uncul 
tivated land in the older States, we are giving away the 
land in the Territories under the plea of hastening settle 
ment, and when the time comes that these lands are really 
needed for cultivation, they will all be monopolised, and 
the settler, go where he will, must pay largely for the 
privilege of cultivating soil which since the dawn of cre 
ation has been waiting his coming. We need not trouble 
ourselves about railroads; settlement will go on without 
them—as it went on in Ohio and Indiana, as it has gone 
on since our Aryan forefathers left the Asiatic cradle of 
the race on their long westward journey. Without any 
giving away of the land, railroads, with every other appli 
ance of civilisation, will come in their own good time. Of 
all people, the American people need no paternal Govern 
ment to direct their enterprise. All they ask is fair play, 
as between man and man; all the best Government can 
do for them is to preserve order and administer justice. 

 UNITED STATES LANDS 35 

There may be cases in which political or other non- 
economic reasons may make the giving of a subsidy for 
the building of a road advisable. In such cases, a money 
subsidy is the best, a land subsidy the worst. But if the 
policy of selling our lands is continued, and it is desirable 
to make the payment of the subsidy contingent upon the 
sale of the land, then the proceeds of the land, not the 
land itself, should be granted. 

There is one argument for railroad land grants which 
I have neglected to notice. Senator Stewart pleads that 
these grants have kept the laud from passing into the 
hands of speculators, who would have taken more than the 
railroad companies, and have treated the settlers less lib 
erally than the companies. Perhaps he is right; there is 
certainly some truth in his plea. But if he is right, what 
does that prove? Not the goodness of railroad grants; 
but the badness of the laws which allow speculation in 
the public lands. 

 II. 

THE LANDS OF CALIFORNIA. 

HOW FAB LAND MONOPOLISATION HAS ALREADY GONE. 

IN all the new States of the Union land monopolisation 
has gone on at an alarming rate, but in none of them so 
fast as in California, and in none of them, perhaps, are 
its evil effects so manifest. 

California is the greatest land State in the Union, both 
in extent (for Texas owns her own land) and in the 
amount of land still credited to the Government in De 
partment reports. With an ai^a of 188,981 square miles, 
or, in round numbers, 121,000,000 acres, she has a popula 
tion of less than 600,000—that is to say, with an area 
twenty-four times as large as Massachusetts, she has a 
population not half as great. Of this population not one 
third is engaged in agriculture, and the amount of land 
under cultivation does not exceed 2,500,000 acres. Surely 
land should here be cheap, and the immigrant should come 
with the certainty of getting a homestead at Government 
price! But this is not so. Of the 100,000,000 acres of 
public land which, according to the last report of the 
Department, yet remain in California (which of course 
includes all the mountains and sterile plains), some 20,- 

36 

 LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 37 

000,000 acres are withheld from settlement by railroad 
reservations, and millions of acres more are held under 
unsettled Mexican grants, or by individuals under the pos 
sessory laws of the State, without color of title. Though 
here or there, if he knew where to find it, there may be a 
little piece of Government land left, the notorious fact is 
that the immigrant coming to the State to-day must, as 
a general thing, pay their price to the middlemen before 
he can begin to cultivate the soil. Although the popula 
tion of California, all told—miners, city residents, China 
men and Diggers—does not amount to three to the square 
mile; although the arable land of the State has hardly 
been scratched (and with all her mountains and dry plains 
California has an arable surface greater than the entire 
area of Ohio), it is already so far monopolised that a 
large part of the farming is done by renters, or by men 
who cultivate their thousands of acres in a single field. 
For the land of California is already to a great extent 
monopolised by a few individuals, who hold thousands and 
hundreds of thousands of acres apiece. Across many of 
these vast estates a strong horse cannot gallop in a day, 
and one may travel for miles and miles over fertile ground 
where no plough has ever struck, but which is all owned, 
and on which no settler can come to make himself a home, 
unless he pay such tribute as the lord of the domain chooses 
to exact. 

Nor is there any State in the Union in which settlers 
in good faith have been so persecuted, so robbed, as in 
California. Men have grown rich, and men still make a 
regular business of blackmailing settlers upon public land, 
or of appropriating their homes, and this by the power of 
the law and in the name of justice. Land grabbers have 
had it pretty much their own way in California—they 
have moulded the policy of the general Government; have 

 38 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

dictated the legislation of the State; have run the land 
offices and used the courts. 

Let us look briefly at the modes by which this land mo 
nopolisation has been carried on. 

THE MEXICAN GRANTS. 

CALIFORNIA has had one curse which the other States 
have not had1—the Mexican grants. The Mexican land 
policy was a good one for a sparsely settled pastoral coun 
try, such as California before the American occupation. 
To every citizen who would settle on it, a town lot was 
given; to every citizen who wanted it, a cattle range was 
granted. By the terms of the cession of California to 
the United States it was provided that these rights should 
be recognised. 

It would have been better, far better, if the American 
Government had agreed to permit these grant-holders to 
retain a certain definite amount of land around their im 
provements, and compounded for the rest of the grants 
called for by the payment of a certain sum per acre, turn 
ing it into the public domain. This would have been best, 
not only for the future population of California, but for 
the grant-holders themselves as the event has proved. 

Or, if means had been taken for a summary and definite 
settlement of these claims, the evils entailed by them would 
have been infinitesimal compared with what have resulted. 
For it is not the extent of the grants (and all told the 
lona fide ones call for probably nine or ten million acres 
of the best land of California) which has wrought the 
mischief, so much as their unsettled condition—not the 
treaty with Mexico, but our own subsequent policy. 

1 The Territory of New Mexico is afflicted in the same way. 

 LANDS OF CALIFOBNIA 39 

It is difficult in a brief space to give anything like an 
adequate idea of the villainies for which these grants have 
been made the cover. If the history of the Mexican grants 
of California is ever written, it will be a history of greed, 
of perjury, of corruption, of spoliation and high-handed 
robbery, for which it will be difficult to find a parallel. 

The Mexican grants were vague, running merely for 
so many leagues within certain natural boundaries, or be 
tween other grants, though they were generally marked 
out in rough fashion. It is this indefiniteness which has 
given such an opportunity for rascality, and has made 
them such a curse to California, and which, at the same 
time, has prevented in nearly all cases their original owners 
from reaping from them any commensurate benefit. Be 
tween the Commission which first passed upon the validity 
of the grants and final patent, a thousand places were 
found where the grant could be tied up, and where, indeed, 
after twenty-three years of litigation the majority of them 
still rest. Ignorant of the language, of the customs, of 
the laws of the new rulers of their country, without the 
slightest idea of technical subtleties and legal delays, mere 
children as to business—the native grant-holders were com 
pletely at the mercy of shrewd lawyers and sharp specu 
lators, and at a very early day nearly all the grants passed 
into other hands. % 

HOW THE GRANTS FLOAT. 

As soon as settlers began to cultivate farms and make 
improvements, the grants began to float. The grant-hold 
ers watched the farmers coming into their neighbourhood, 
much as a robber chief of the Middle Ages might have 
watched a rich Jew taking up his abode within striking 
distance of his castle. The settler may have been abso- 

 40 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

lutely certain that he was on Government land, and may 
even have been so assured by the grant-holder himself; 
but so soon as he had built his house and fenced his land 
and planted his orchard, he would wake up some morn 
ing to find that the grant had been floated upon him, and 
that his land and improvements were claimed by some 
land shark who had gouged a native Californian out of 
his claim to a cattle-run, or wanting an opportunity to 
do this, had set up a fraudulent grant, supported by 
forged papers and suborned witnesses. Then he must 
either pay the blackmailer's price, abandon the results of 
his hard labour, or fight the claim before surveyor-gen 
eral, courts, commissioner, secretary, and Congress itself, 
while his own property, parcelled out into contingent fees, 
furnished the means for carrying the case from one tri 
bunal to another, for buying witnesses and bribing corrupt 
officials. And then, frequently, after one set of settlers 
had been thus robbed, new testimony would be discovered, 
a new survey would be ordered, and the grant would 
stretch out in another direction over another body of set 
tlers, who would then suffer in the same way, while in 
many cases, as soon as one grant had been bought off or 
beaten away, another grant would come, and there are 
pieces of land in California for which four or five differ 
ent titles have been purchased. 

The ruling of the courts has been, that so long as the 
grants had not been finally located, their owners might 
hold possession within their exterior boundaries and eject 
settlers. Thus, if a grant is for one league, within cer 
tain natural boundaries which include fifty, the claimant 
can put settlers off any part of the fifty leagues. 

Whenever any valuable mine or spring is discovered in the 
neighbourhood of any of these grants, then the grant jumps. 
If they prove worthless, then it floats back again. Thus 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 41 

the celebrated Mariposa claim, after two or three locations 
in the valley, was finally carried up into the mountains, 
where it had as much business as it would have had in 
Massachusetts or Ohio, and stretched out into the shape 
of a boot to cover a rich mining district. Among the 
property given to John Charles Fremont and his partners, 
by this location, was the Ophir mine and mill, upon which 
an English company had spent over $100,000, after assur 
ances from the Mariposa people that the mine was outside 
their claim. In the southern half of California, where 
these grants run, there has been hardly a valuable spring 
or mine discovered that was not pounced upon by a grant. 
One of the latest instances was the attempt to float the 
Cuyamaca grant over the new San Diego mining district, 
and to include some sixty-five mines—one of them, the Pio 
neer, on which $300,000 has been expended. Another was 
the attempt to float a grant over the noted Geyser Springs, 
in Sonoina county. In both these cases the attempt was 
defeated, General Hardenburgh refusing to approve the 
surveys. In the latter case, however, it was dog eat dog, 
the great scrip locator, W. S. Chapman, having plastered 
a Sioux warrant over the wonderful springs. He has 
since obtained a patent, though I understand that some 
body else laid a school-land warrant on the springs before 
Chapman. 

HOW THE GRANTS ABE STRETCHED OUT. 

HARDLY any attention seems to have been paid to the 
amount of land granted by the Mexican authorities. 
Though, under the colonisation laws, eleven leagues (a 
^Mexican league contains 4,438 acres) constituted the larg 
est amount that could be granted, many of these grants 
have been confirmed and patented for much more (in 

 42 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

the teeth of a decision of the United States Supreme 
Court), and under others yet unsettled, much larger 
amounts are still held. Grants for one league have been 
confirmed for eleven. Claims rejected by the Commis 
sion have been confirmed by the District Courts, and claims 
rejected by other decisions of the Supreme Court have been 
got through by the connivance of law officers of the Gov 
ernment who would suffer the time for appeal to lapse or 
take it so that it would be thrown out on a technicality. 
As for the surveys they might almost as well have been 
made by the grant-holders themselves, and seem, as a gen 
eral thing, to have run about as the grant-holders wished. 
The grants have been extended here, contracted there, 
made to assume all sorts of fantastic shapes, for the pur 
pose of covering the improvements of settlers and taking 
in the best land. There is one of them that on the map 
looks for all the world like a tarantula—a fit emblem of 
the whole class. In numbers of cases, the names of which 
might be recited, grants of four leagues have been stretched 
in the survey to eight; grants of two leagues to six; grants 
of five to ten; and in one case it has been attempted to 
stretch one league to forty. In one case, the Saucal Ee- 
dondo, where a two-league grant had been confirmed to 
five, and a survey of 22,190 acres made, a new survey was 
ordered by a clerk of the surveyor-general, and a survey 
taking in 25,000 acres more of United States land covered 
by settlers was made and fixed up in the office; and it was 
not until after some years of litigation before the Depart 
ment that this fact was discovered. In some cases specula 
tors who were "on the inside" would buy from a Spanish 
grantee the use of the name of his claim, and get a new 
survey which would take in for them thousands of acres 
more. The original claimant of Eancho la Laguna asked 
for three leagues, or 13,314 acres; the survey was made 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 43 

and confirmed for 18,000. Afterwards it was set aside, 
on the pretence that the Santa Barbara paper, in which 
the advertisement of survey had been published, was 
printed for part of the time in San Francisco, and a sur 
vey taking in 48,703 acres made, which, after being re 
jected by Commissioner Edwards, was patented by Com 
missioner Wilson. The Eancho Guadaloupe, a grant of 
21,520 acres, was surveyed for 32,408 acres in 1860, the 
survey approved, a patent issued, and the ranch sold. 
Now the new owner, supported by an affidavit from the 
surveyor that objection was made to the 32,000 acre survey 
in 1860 by the two Mexican owners (one of whom died 
in 1858), is trying to get a new survey confirmed which 
takes in 11,000 acres more. The survey of Los Nogales 
was made in 1861, under a decree for one league and no 
more, and now an application for a new survey which will 
include 11,000 acres more is being pushed. The land is 
covered by settlers. 

THE BIG GBAPE-VINE EANCHO. 

PERHAPS the most daring attempt to grab lands and rob 
settlers under pretence of a Mexican grant—so daring that 
it has almost a touch of the comic—is the case of Los 
Prietos y Najalayegua, which was shown up first in a little 
pamphlet by James F. Stuart, of San Francisco, and after 
wards in Congress by Mr. Julian, to whom the settlers of 
California are indebted for many signal services. In 
Santa Barbara county there is living an old Mexican, 
named Jose Dominguez, on whose little ranch grows an 
immense grape-vine. In the old times Dominguez had 
petitioned for another tract of land of about a league and 
a half, but he neglected to comply with the conditions, and 

 44 OUB LAND AND LAND POLICY 

sold it for the sum of one dollar. In fact he seems to 
have sold it twice. Finally the claim passed into the hands 
of Thomas A. Scott, the Pennsylvania railroad king, and 
Edward J. Pringle, of San Francisco. It had never been 
presented to the United States Commission, and was con 
sequently barred. But in 18CC a bill confirming the grant, 
and accompanied by a memorial purporting to be from 
Dominguez, but which Dominguez swears he never saw, 
was introduced by Mr. Conness, and slipped quietly 
through, under pretence of giving the old man, with his 
sixty children and grandchildren, the big grape-vine which 
his mother had planted. 

The bill was assisted in the House by the reading of a 
letter from Mr. Levi Parsons, in which a visit to the Mexi 
can Patriarch and his great grape-vine, the only support 
of a greater family, was most touchingly described, and 
the intervention of Congress asked as a matter of justice 
and humanity. Then came the survey; and the specula 
tors, emboldened by their success with Congress, went in for 
a big grab, taking in the modest amount of 208,742 acres * 
—a pretty good dollar's worth of land, considering that it 
included many valuable farms and vineyards. They asked 
too much, for an outcry was made and a resurvey was 
ordered, which is now pending. 

BOGUS GRANTS. 

THE real grants have been bad enough, the bogus grants 
have been worse. Their manufacture commenced early— 
the signatures of living ex-Mexican officials being some- 

1 The survey was not strictly official, though made by a United States 
Deputy, he having reported that the calls were uncertain, and the grantees 
asking a survey according to their views. 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 46 

times procured. Of this class was the famous Limantour 
claim to a great portion of San Francisco. It was finally 
defeated, but not until a large amount had been paid to 
its holders, and enormous expenses incurred in fighting it. 
Many of these claims have been pressed to final patent, 
and settlers driven from their homes by sheriff's posses 
or the bayonets of the United States troops. Others have 
only been used for purposes of blackmail, the owners of 
threatened property being compelled to remove the shadow 
from their title when obliged to borrow or to sell, and find 
ing it cheaper to pay the sums asked than to incur the 
expense of long and tedious litigation, many steps in which 
had to be taken in Washington. 

Thanks to the possessory law of the State, as interpreted 
by State courts, where the holders of a bogus claim secure 
possession they have been all right as long as they could 
delay final action. After the action of the District Court 
five years are allowed for appeal to the Supreme Court, 
and then a smart attorney can easily keep the case hang 
ing from year to year. In one case where a modest de 
mand for some forty leagues was rejected, because in 
forging the Mexican seal on the grant, the head of the 
cactus-mounted eagle had been carelessly put where his 
tail ought to be, the appeal has been kept at the foot of 
the docket for years, while the claimants are enjoying the 
land just as fully as if they had paid the Government for 
it, and are actually selling it to settlers, who know the 
claim to be fraudulent, at from $2 to $10 per acre. If the 
Supreme Court ever does reach the case, the appeal will 
be dismissed. A new motion will then be made, and 
finally, when all the law's delays are exhausted, the set 
tlers will have to pay the Government $1.25 per acre for 
the land. Meantime they can get it only by paying his 
price to the holder of this notoriously fraudulent claim. 

 46 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

It has at all times been within the power of Congress 
to end this uncertainty as to land titles, and settle these 
Mexican claims. There has been a great deal of legisla 
tion on the subject, but somehow or other it has always 
turned out for the benefit of the land grabbers. Modes of 
procedure have been changed; cases have been thrown from 
the courts into the land offices; from the land offices 
back to the courts, and then from the courts back to the 
land offices again. Always some excuse for delay; al 
ways some loophole in the law, through which the land 
grabber could easily pass, but in which the settler would 
be crushed. The majority of these Mexican grants are 
yet unsettled. Their owners do not want them settled 
so long as they can hold thousands of acres more than they 
have a shadow of claim to, and delay as much as possible. 
These are cases where the last step to secure patent can 
be taken at any time, by the making of a motion or the 
payment of a fee; but which are suffered to remain in that 
condition, while in the meantime the claim holders are 
Belling quitclaim deeds to settlers, for land which their 
patents would show they do not own. 

THE PUEBLO OP SAN FRANCISCO. 

FOE the injuries which these Mexican grants have done to 
California, the Mexican land policy is not responsible. 
That merely furnished the pretext under cover of which 
our policy has fostered land monopolisation. What of the 
Mexican policy was bad under our different conditions, we 
have made infinitely worse; what would still have been 
good, we have discarded. The same colonisation laws 
under which these great grants M'erc made gave four square 
leagues to each town in which to provide homes for its 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 47 

inhabitants, the only conditions being good character and 
occupancy. The American city of San Francisco, as the 
successor of the Mexican pueblo, came into a heritage such 
as no great city of modern times has enjoyed—land enough 
for a city as large as London, dedicated to the purpose of 
providing every family with a free homestead. Here was 
an opportunity to build up a great city, in which tenement 
houses and blind alleys would be unknown; in which there 
would be less poverty, suffering, crime and social and 
political corruption than in any city of our time, of equal 
numbers. This magnificent opportunity has been thrown 
away, and with the exception of a great sand bank, the worst 
that could be found, reserved for a part, and a few squares 
reserved for public buildings, the heritage of all the people 
of San Francisco has been divided among a few hundred. 
Of the successive steps, culminating in the United States 
law of 18CC, by which this was accomplished, of the battles 
of land grabbers to take and to keep, and of the municipal 
corruption engendered, it is not worth while here to speak. 
The deed is done. We have made a few millionaires, and 
now the citizen of San Francisco who needs a home must 
pay a large sum for permission to build it on land dedi 
cated to its use ere the American flag had been raised in 
California. 

THE RAILROAD GRANTS OP CALIFORNIA. 

THE grants made to railroads of public lands in the State 
of California are: The grant to the Western Pacific and 
Central Pacific, of ten alternate sections on each side per 
mile (12,800 acres), made to half that amount in 1862, 
and doubled in 1864; the grants to the Southern Pacific 
and to the California and Oregon, of ten alternate sec 
tions on each side, with ten miles on each side in which 

 48 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

to make up deficiencies, made in 18C6; the grant to the 
Stockton and Copperopolis, of five alternate sections on 
each side, with twenty miles on each side in which to make 
up deficiencies, made in 1867; the grants to the Texas 
Pacific1 and to the connecting branch of the Southern 
Pacific, of ten alternate sections on each side, with ten 
miles for deficiencies, made in 1871. A grant was also 
made in 1866 to the Sacramento and Placerville road, but 
the idea of building the road was abandoned, and the 
grant has lapsed. 

Upon the map of California (see frontispiece) the reser 
vations for these grants are marked in red. This marking 
does not show the exact limits of the reservations, as they 
follow the rectilinear section lines, which it is, of course, 
impossible to show on so small a scale—nor are the routes 
of the roads precisely drawn. But it gives a perfectly cor 
rect idea of the extent and general course of these reserva 
tions. The exhibit is absolutely startling—a commentary 
on the railroad land-grant policy of Congress to the force 
of which no words can add. Observe the proportion which 
these reservations bear to the total area of the State, and 
observe at the same time the topography of California— 
how the railroad reservations cover nearly all the great 
central valleys, and leave but the mountains, and you may 
get an idea of how these reservations are cursing-the State. 

It is true that the companies do not get all of the land 
included in these reservations, nor even half of it; but 
for the present, at least, so far as the greater part of it 
is concerned, they might as well get it all. Pre-emption 
or homestead settlers may still go upon the even sections, 
but the trouble is to find them. The greater part of this 

1 Between the line of the road and the Mexican boundary this 
company gets all the public land. 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 49 

land is unsurveyed, or having been once surveyed, the 
vaqueros, who share in the prejudices of their employers 
against settlers, have pulled up the stakes, and the settler 
cannot tell whether he gets on Government or on railroad 
land. If on Government land, he is all right, and can 
get 80 acres for $22, as a homestead; or 160 acres for 
$400 by pre-emption. But it is an even chance that he is 
on railroad land, and if so, he is at the mercy of a cor 
poration which will make with him no terms, in advance. 
Settlers will not take such chances. 

These railroad grants have worked nothing but evil to 
California. Though given under pretext of aiding settle 
ment, they have really retarded it. Of all the roads ever 
subsidised in the United States, the Central Pacific is the 
one to which the giving of a subsidy is the most defensible. 
But so large was the subsidy, in money and bonds, that 
the road could have been built, and would have been built, 
just as soon without the land grant. The Western Pacific 
land grant became the property of a single individual, 
who did nothing towards building the road—the company 
that did build the road (the Central) buying the fran 
chise minus the land grant. The Southern Pacific land 
grant has actually postponed the building of a road south 
ward through California, and had the grant never been 
made, it is certain that an unsubsidised road would already 
have been running farther into Southern California than 
the land-grant road yet does. Of the California and Ore 
gon land grant, the same thing may be said. The Stock- 
ton and Copperopolis grant was made in 1867, but the 
building of the road has only been commenced this year. 
And it is exceedingly probable that had this land been 
open to settlers, the business, actual and prospective, would 
by this time have offered sufficient inducements for the 
building of the road. 

 60 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

All these land grants, with the exception perhaps of that 
from the Eastern boundary to San Diego, and with the 
exception of the Western Pacific grant, are owned by a 
single firm, who also own all the railroads in California, 
having bought what they did not build. 

It is generally argued when land grants are made, that 
it is to the interest of the companies to sell their lands 
cheaply, because settlement will bring them business. But 
the land-grant companies of California seem in no hurry 
to sell their lands, preferring to wait for the greater 
promise of the future. Neither the Southern Pacific nor 
the California and Oregon will make any terms with set 
tlers until their lands are surveyed and listed over to them. 
It is, of course, to their interest to have the Government 
sections settled first, and to reserve their own land for 
higher prices after the Government land is gone. The 
Central Pacific advertises to sell good farming land for 
$2.50 per acre; but when one goes to buy good farming 
land for that price, he finds that it has been sold to the 
Sacramento Land Company, a convenient corporation, 
which stands to the company in its land business just as 
the Contract and Finance Company did in the building 
of the road. 

PRIVATE ENTET AND SCRIP LOCATIONS. 

LARGE bodies of the public lands of California were offered 
at public sale long before there was any demand for them. 
When the failure of placer mining directed industry to 
wards agriculture, and the beginnings of the railroad sys 
tem led to hopes of a large immigration, these lands were 
gobbled up by a few large speculators, by the hundred 
thousand acres. The larger part of the available portion 

 LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 61 

of the great San Joaquin Valley went in this way, and the 
process has gone on from Siskiyou on the north to San 
Diego on the south. 

According to common report, the speculators have re 
ceived every facility in the land offices. While the poor 
settler who wanted a farm would have to trudge off to 
look at the land himself, the speculator or his agent had 
all the information which could be furnished. Land, which 
had never been sold or applied for, would be marked on 
the maps as taken, in order to keep it from settlers and 
reserve it for speculators; and in some eases, it is even 
said that settlers selecting land and going to the Land 
Office to apply for it, would be put off for a few minutes 
while the land they wanted would be taken up in behalf 
of the speculator, and then they would be referred to him, 
if they desired to purchase. 

A great deal of this land has been located with the Agri 
cultural College scrip of Eastern States, bought by the 
speculators at an average of about fifty cents per acre, 
in greenbacks, when greenbacks were low, and sold or held 
at prices varying from $-1 to $20 per acre, in gold. AVhole 
townships have been taken up at once in this way; but 
the law was amended in 18G7, so that only three sections 
in the same township can now be located with this scrip. 
The Agricultural scrip of California has been sold at 
about $5 per acre, having special privileges. 

The Act of last year, making this California scrip locat- 
able on unsurveyed land, within railroad reservations, etc., 
is a good sample of the recklessness of Congressional leg 
islation on land matters. It is so loosely drawn that by 
the purchase of forty acres a speculator can tie up a whole 
township. The Land Agent of the University has only 
to give notice to the United States Register that he has 
an application for land (without specifying amount or 

 52 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

locality) in a certain township, and the Register must hold 
the plats of survey for sixty days after their return. 
Should a pre-emptor go on before this time, there is noth 
ing to prevent the speculator from swooping down upon 
him and asserting that his farm is the particular piece of 
ground he wanted. Happily, nearly all this scrip will be 
used for locating timber land, for which the scrip of other 
States is not available, as it can only be located on sur 
veyed land, and the surveyed timber land has long since 
been taken up. 

Besides the Agricultural scrip, a large amount of Half 
Breed scrip has been located by speculators. This scrip 
was issued to Indians in lieu of their lands, and was 
made by law locatable only by the Indians themselves, 
and though the speculators pretended to locate as the at 
torneys of the Indians, the location was illegal. How 
ever, it was made, and patents have been issued. 

In this way millions of acres in California have been 
monopolised by a handful of men. The chief of these 
speculators now holds some 350,000 acres, while thousands 
and thousands of acres which he located with scrip or paid 
$1.25 per acre for, have been sold to settlers at rates vary 
ing from $5 to $20 per acre, the settlers paying cash 
enough to clear him and leave a balance, and then giving 
a mortgage for and paying interest on the remainder; 
and a large quantity of his land is rented—cultivators 
furnishing everything and paying the landlord one fourth 
of their crop. 

And as has been the case in all the methods of land 
monopolisation in California, these scrip locations have 
been used not only to grab unoccupied lands, but to rob 
actual settlers of their improved farms. In one instance 
a large scrip speculator got a tool of his appointed to 
make the survey of a tract of land in one of the southern 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 53 

counties which had heen long occupied by actual settlers. 
This deputy surveyor persuaded the settlers that it would 
be cheaper for them to get a State title to their lands than 
to file pre-emption claims, and they accordingly proceeded 
to do this. But as the clock struck nine, and the doors 
of the Land Office in San Francisco were thrown open on 
the morning the plats were filed, another agent of the 
speculator entered with an armful of scrip which he pro 
ceeded to plaster over the settlers' farms. 

MANAGEMENT OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE LANDS. 

WE have seen what Federal legislation has done to inflict 
the curse of land monopoly upon California. Let us now 
see what has been done by the State herself. We shall 
find that reckless as have been the dealings of the general 
Government with our lands, the dealings of the State have 
been even worse. 

And here let it be remarked that for most of these wrong 
acts of the Federal Government, the people of California 
are themselves largely responsible. For the public mani 
festation of a strong sentiment here could not have failed 
to exert great influence upon Congress. But, for instance, 
instead of objecting to railroad grants, we have, for the 
most part, hailed them as an evidence of Congressional 
liberality; and when the Southern Pacific had once for 
feited its grant, the California Legislature asked Congress 
to give it back without suggesting a single restriction on 
the sale or management of the lands. In 1870, a bill 
actually passed the House reserving the public lands of 
California for homestead entry, as the lands of the South 
ern States had been reserved, but it went over in the Sen 
ate on the objection of Senator Nye, of Nevada. There is 

 64 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

little doubt that the manifestation of a strong desire on 
our part would, at any time, secure the passage of such 
a bill. 

The specific grants made to California, in common with 
other land States, which have been before enumerated, 
amount to an aggregate of 7,421,804 acres—an area al 
most as large as that of Massachusetts and Connecticut 
combined. Besides these grants, all the swamp lands are 
given to the State for purposes of reclamation, of which 
3,381,691 acres have already been sold—about all there is. 

These large donations have proved an evil rather than 
a benefit to the people of California; for in disposing of 
them, the State has given even greater facilities for mo 
nopoly than has the Federal Government, and the prac 
tical effect of the creation of two sources of title to public 
land has been to harass settlers and to give opportunity 
for a great deal of robbery and rascality. 

The land policy of the State of California must be 
traced through some thirty-five or forty Acts, in whose 
changes and technicalities the non-expert will soon be 
come bewildered. It is only necessary here to give its 
salient features. 

It must be understood in the first place that the only 
grant of specific pieces of land is that of the IGth and 
36th sections of each township. When these are occupied 
or otherwise disposed of, other sections are given in lieu 
of them. These lieu lands, as well as the lands granted 
in specific amounts, the State has had the privilege of 
taking from any unappropriated Government land, the 
ownership of the swamp lands being decided by the nature 
of the land itself. With this large floating grant, as it 
may be termed, the general policy of the State has been, 
not to select the lands and then to sell them, but in effect 
to sell to individuals its right of selection. 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 55 

Now, under the general laws of the United States, until 
land is offered at public sale, there is no way of getting 
title to it save by actual settlement, and then in tracts 
of not over 160 acres to each individual. And though 
since 1862 the pre-emption right has applied to unsur- 
veyed lands, yet until land is surveyed and the plats filed, 
the settler can make no record of his pre-emption. 

To this land thus reserved by the general laws for the 
small farms of actual settlers, the State grants gave an 
opportunity of obtaining title without regard to settle 
ment or amount—an opportunity which speculators have 
well improved. In defiance of the laws of the United 
States, and even of the Act admitting California into the 
Union, the State at first sold even unsurveyed land, a 
policy which continued until the courts declared it illegal 
in 1863. In 1852, to dispose of the 500,000 acre grant 
(which the Constitution of the State gave to the School 
Fund), warrants were issued purchasable at $2 per acre in 
depreciated scrip, and locatable on any unoccupied Gov 
ernment land, surveyed or unsurveyed. These warrants, 
however, were not saleable to any one person in amounts 
of more than G40 acres, and the buyer had to make affi 
davit that he intended to make permanent settlement on 
the land. But as the warrants were assignable, and affi 
davits cheap, these restrictions were of but little avail. 
Passing for the most part into the hands of speculators, 
the warrants enabled them to forestall the settler and even 
in many cases to take his farm from him; for though by 
the terms of the law the warrants could only be laid on 
unoccupied land, yet when once laid, they were prima facie 
evidence of title, and the difficulty could be got over only 
by collusion with county officers and false affidavits. These 
school-land warrants have been a terror to the California 
settler, and many a man who has made himself a home, 

 56 OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY 

relying upon the general laws of the Federal Government, 
has seen the results of his years of toil and privation pass 
into the hands of some soulless cormorant, who, without 
his knowledge, had plastered over his farm with school- 
land warrants. The law under which the warrants were 
issued was repealed in 1858, and the policy adopted of 
settling the State title to applicants for land, in amounts 
not to exceed 320 acres to each individual, at the rate 
of $1.25 per acre, payable either in cash, or twenty per 
cent, in cash, and the balance on credit with interest at 
ten per cent. The 16th and 36th sections, or the lands 
in lieu of them, were at first given to the respective town 
ships, to be sold for the benefit of the Township School 
Fund; but were afterwards made saleable as other lands 
for the benefit of the General Fund. 

The swamp lands were from the first made saleable in 
tracts not exceeding 320 acres to each person, for $1 per 
acre, cash or credit, the proceeds to be applied to the 
reclamation of the land, under regulations varied by differ 
ent laws, from time to time. This was virtually giving 
them away—the true policy; but the trouble is that for 
the most part they have been given to a few men. 

Up to 1868, the State had always, in words at least, 
recognised the principle that one man should not be per 
mitted to take more than a certain amount of land; but 
by the Act of March 28th, of that year, which repealed 
all previous laws, and is still, with some trifling amend 
ments, the land law of the State, all restrictions of amount, 
except as to the 16th and 36th sections proper, were swept 
away; and with reference to those lands, the form of affi 
davit was so changed that the applicant was not required 
to swear that he wanted the land for settlement, or wanted 
it for himself. This Act has some good features; but from 
enacting clause to repealing section, its central idea seems 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 67 

to be the making easy of land monopolisation, and the 
favouring of speculators at the expense of settlers. In 
addition to sweeping away the restrictions as to amount 
and to use, it provided that the settlers upon the 16th 
and 36th sections should only be protected in their occu 
pancy for six months after the passage of the Act, after 
which the protection should only be for sixty days; and 
changed the affidavit previously required, from a denial 
of other settlement to a denial of valid adverse claim. 
Under this provision a regular business has been driven 
in robbing eettlers of their homes. Unless a new law 
is very generally discussed in the newspapers (and land 
laws seldom are) it takes a long time for the people 
to become acquainted with it; and there were many set 
tlers on State land who knew nothing of the limitation 
until they received notification that somebody else had 
possession of a clear title to their farms. Did space per 
mit, numbers of cases of this kind of robbery might be 
cited—some of them of widows and orphans, whose all 
was ruthlessly taken from them; but I will confine myself 
to one case of recent occurrence, where the looked-for 
plunder is unusually large. 

The town of Amador, and the very valuable Keystone 
Mine, are situated on the east half of a 36th section. The 
survey which developed this fact was only made in the 
early part of the present year. The Deputy Surveyor, 
who was evidently in the plot, returned to the United 
States Land Office the plat of the township, with the mine 
and the town marked in the west half. Application was 
at the same time made to the State Surveyor-General, in 
the name of Henry Casey, for the east half. In regular 
course, the Surveyor-General sent the application to the 
United States Land Office, whence it was returned, with 
a certificate that the land was free; whereupon, the Sur- 

 58 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

veyor-General approved the application, and twenty-five 
cents per acre was paid the State. And thus for $80 cash, 
and $32 per annum interest, a little knot of speculators 
have secured title to the Keystone Mine, worth at least a 
million dollars, and the whole town of Amador, besides. 

And as further evidence of the recklessness of Califor 
nia land legislation, and of the lengths to which the land 
grabbers are prepared to go, two facts may be cited: The 
last Legislature, instead of repealing or removing the ob 
jectionable features from this Green law, actually passed a 
special bill legalising all applications for State lands, even 
where the affidavits by which they were supported did not 
conform to the requirements of the law, either in form or 
in substance. After this had been passed, on the last day 
of the session a bill was got through and was signed by 
the Governor, designed to restrict applicants for lieu lands 
to 320 acres. But after the Legislature had adjourned, 
when the Act came to be copied in the Secretary of 
State's office, lo, and behold! it was discovered that the 
engrossed and signed copy did not contain this provision. 

Yet, to understand fully what a premium the State has 
offered for the monopolisation of her school lands, there 
is another thing to be explained. To purchase land of 
the State, an application must be filed in the State Land 
Office, describing the land by range, township and section, 
and stating under what grant the title is asked. This 
application must be accompanied by a fee of five dollars. 
The Surveyor-General then issues a certificate to the appli 
cant, and sends the application to the United States Land 
Office, for certification that the land is free, before he 
approves the application and demands payment for the 
land. If there be no record in his office of pre-emption, 
homestead or other occupation, the United States Eegister 
thereupon marks the land off on his map, but he does not 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 59 

certify to the State Surveyor-General until he gets his fee. 
The State Surveyor-General has no appropriation to pay 
the fee, although the present incumbent asked for one in 
his first report; and so the payment of the fee and the 
return of the United States certificate depend upon the 
applicant, whose interest it is, of course, not to get it 
until he wishes to pay for his land. And thus, by the 
payment of five dollars, a whole section of United States 
land can be shut up from the settler. There are 1,244,696 
acres monopolised in California to-day in this way. For 
thousands and thousands of the acres which are offered for 
sale on California and Montgomery streets there is no 
other title than the payment of this five dollars. When 
the immigrant buys of the speculator for two, five, ten or 
twenty dollars an acre, as the case may be, then the specu 
lator goes to the United States Land Office, pays the 
Ecgister's fee, gets his certificate and the State Surveyor- 
General's approval, and pays the State $1.25 per acre; or, 
if with the immigrant he has made a bargain of that kind, 
he pays twenty-five cents per acre, and leaves his pur 
chaser to pay the dollar at some future time, with interest 
at ten per cent. 

SWAMP LAND GRABBING. 

AND as the speculator has had a far better opportunity in 
dealing with the State than with the United States, there 
has been every inducement to get as much land as possible 
under the jurisdiction of the State, by declaring it swamp 
land. The certificate of United States officers as to the 
character of the land has not been waited for; but the 
State has sold to every purchaser who would get the County 
Surveyor to segregate the land he wanted, and procure a 
couple of affidavits as to its swampy character. Probably, 

 60 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

one half of the land sold (or rather given, as the money 
is returned) by the State as swamp, is not swamp at all, 
but good dry land, that has been sworn to as swamp, in 
order to take it out of the control of the pre-emption 
laws of the United States. The State has been made the 
catspaw of speculators, and her name used as the cover 
under which the richest lands in California might be mo 
nopolised and settlers robbed. The seizure of these lands 
of the State (or rather by speculators in the name of the 
State) is for the most part entirely illegal; but by the 
Act of 1866, previous seizures were confirmed, and the land 
grabbers of California, though Mr. Julian occasionally 
makes them some trouble, have powerful friends in Wash 
ington, and unless energetic remonstrance is made, gen 
erally get what they ask. This swamp land grant has not 
yielded a cent to the State, but it has enabled speculators 
to monopolise hundreds of thousands of acres of the most 
valuable lands in California, and, of course, to rob settlers. 
For the settler, though he has a right under United States 
laws, can get no record nor evidence of title until his land 
is surveyed and the plats filed. In the meantime, if the 
speculator comes along and can get a couple of affidavits 
as to the swampy character of the settler's farm, he has 
been able to buy the title of the State. Lands thousands 
of feet above the level of the sea have been purchased as 
swamp; lands over which a heavily loaded wagon can be 
driven in the month of May; and even lands which can 
not be cultivated without irrigation. 

Sierra Valley is in Plumas county, in the very heart 
of the mountains. Standing on its edge, you may at your 
option toss a biscuit into a stream which finally sinks in 
the great Nevada Basin, or into the waters which join the 
Pacific. When the snow melts in the early spring, the 
mountain streams which run through the valley overflow 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 61 

and spread over a portion of the land; but after a freshet 
has passed, water has to be turned in through irrigating 
ditches to enable the lands to produce their most valuable 
crop, hay. The valley is filled with pre-emption and home 
stead settlers, who, besides their own homes and improve 
ments, have built two churches and seven schoolhouses. 
Many of their farms are worth $20 per acre. The swamp 
land robbers cast their c}'cs on this pretty little valley and 
its thrifty settlement, and the first thing the settlers knew 
their farms had been bought of the State as swamp lands, 
and the United States was asked to list them over. En 
ergetic remonstrance was made, and the matter was re 
ferred by the Department to the United States Surveyor- 
General to take testimony. His investigation has just 
been concluded, and the attempted grab has probably 
failed. But in hundreds of cases, similar ones on a smaller 
scale have succeeded. 

Another recent attempt has been made to get hold of 
46,000 acres adjoining Sacramento. This land was for 
merly overshadowed by the rejected Sutter grant, and for 
some time has been all pre-empted. Something like a 
year ago it was surveyed and the plats returned to the 
United States Land Office, with this land marked as 
swamp; applications being at the same time made to the 
State for the land. The ex-Surveyor-General, Sherman 
Day, signed the plats, and the land had actually been listed 
over by the Department, when a protest was made and for 
warded to Washington, accompanied by his own personal 
testimony, by the new Surveyor-General, Hardenburgh, 
who, having been long a resident of Sacramento, knew the 
character of the land. This forced the suspension of the 
lists, very much, it seems, to the indignation of the Acting 
Commissioner of the General Land Office, W. W. Curtis, 
who wrote a letter to the Surveyor-General, which has 

 62 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

been published in the newspapers (which is a curiosity 
of official impudence), and which betrays a very suspi 
cious anger with what the Acting Commissioner seems to 
consider the interference of the Surveyor-General. 

Mr. Julian, in his speech entitled "Swamp Land Swin 
dles," has detailed how a party of speculators, one of whom 
was ex-State Surveyor-General Houghton, and another the 
son of the then United States Surveyor-General Upson, 
got hold of sixteen thousand acres in Colusa (as to the 
dry character of which he gives affidavits), under the 
swamp-land laws, by having the survey of two townships 
made and approved in a few days, just before the map 
of the California and Oregon Railroad Company was filed. 
These swamp-land speculators are in many cases attempt 
ing to shelter themselves behind the growing feeling 
against railroad grants; but bad as the railroad grants are, 
the operations of these speculators are worse. The rail 
road companies can only take half the lands; the specu 
lators take it all. The railroad companies cannot easily 
disturb previous settlers; but the speculators take the set 
tler's home from under his feet. 

IWHO HAVE OUB LANDS. 

THE State Surveyor-General ought to give in his next 
report (and if he does not the Legislature ought to call 
for it) a list of the amounts of State lands taken in large 
quantities by single individuals (with their names) under 
the Act of 1868. Such a list would go far to open the 
eyes of the people of California to the extent their State 
Government has been used to foster the land monopoly of 
which they are beginning to complain. Yet such a list 
would not fully show what has been done, as a great deal 

 LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 63 

of land has been taken by means of dummies. Of the 
16th and 3Gth sections proper, to which even now one 
individual cannot apply for more than 320 acres, one 
speculator has secured 8000 acres in Colusa county alone. 
Among those who have secured the largest amount from 
the State, either in their own names or as attorneys for 
others, are W. S. Chapman, George W. Roberts, ex-Sur 
veyor-General Houghton, John Mullan, Will S. Green, H. 
C. Logan, George H. Thompson, B. P. Maulden, I. N". 
Chapman, Leander Ransom, N. N". Clay, E. H. Miller and 
James W. Shanklin. The larger amounts secured by sin 
gle individuals range from 20,000 acres to over 100,000. 

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE. 

THE true course in regard to State lands is that urged 
upon the Legislature by the present Surveyor-General in 
his first annual report—to issue title only to the actual 
settler who has resided on the land three years, and who 
has shown his intention to make it his home by placing 
upon it at least $500 worth of improvements.1 Had this 
course been adopted from the start, California would to 
day have had thousands more of people and millions more 
of property. Had it even been adopted when urged by 
General Best, over half a million acres of land would have 

1 In his biennial message to the same Legislature (the last) Governor 
Haight speaks in the same strain. He says: " Our land system seems to 
be mainly framed to facilitate the acquisition of large bodies of land by 
capitalists and corporations, either as donations or at nominal prices. It 
ia to be regretted that the land granted by Congress to railroad corpora 
tions had not been subject to continued pre-emption by settlers, giving to 
the corporation the proceeds at some fixed price, and it would have been 
much better for the State and country if the public lands had never been 
disposed of except to actual settlers under the pre-emption law." 

 64 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

been saved to settlers—that is to say, four thousand fami 
lies might have found homesteads in California at nominal 
rates—at rates so much lower than that which they must 
now pay that the difference would more than have sufficed 
for all the expenses of their transportation from the East. 
To amend our policy in regard to sales of State land 
now, is a good deal like locking the stable door after the 
horse is stolen. Still it should be done. Our swamp 
lands are all gone, and the most available of the school 
lands have gone also. Yet there may be a million acres 
of good land left. These we cannot guard with too jeal 
ous care. 

THE POSSESSORY LAW. 

BUT the catalogue of what the State of California has done 
towards the monopolisation of her land does not end with 
a recital of her acts as trustee of the land donated her 
by the general Government. Besides giving these lands 
for the most part to monopolists, she has, by her legisla 
tion, made possible the monopolisation of other vast bodies 
of the public lands. Under her possessory laws before 
alluded to, millions of acres are shut out from settlement, 
without their holders having the least shadow of title. 
It is Government land, but unsurveycd. The only way 
of getting title to it is to go upon it and live; but the 
laws of California say that no one can go upon it until 
he has a better title than the holder—that of possession. 
Tracts of from two to ten thousand acres thus held are 
common, and in one case at least (in Lake county) a 
single firm has 28,000 acres of Government land, open 
by the laws of the United States to pre-emption settlers, 
enclosed by a board fence, and held under the State laws. 
It is these laws that enable the Mexican grant owners to 

 LANDS OP CALIFORNIA 66 

hold all the land they can possibly shadow with their 
claims, and that offer them a premium to delay the adjust 
ment of their titles, in order that they may continue to 
hold, and in many cases, to sell, far more than their grants 
call for. 

HOW A LARGE QUANTITY OF PUBLIC LAND MAY 
BE FREED. 

A LARGE appropriation for the survey of the public lands 
in California, managed by a Surveyor-General who really 
wished to do his duty,1 would open to settlers millions of 
acres from which they are now excluded by railroad reser 
vations or the monopolisation of individuals. If our Rep 
resentatives in Congress desire to really benefit their State, 
they will neglect the works at Mare Island, the erection 
of public buildings in San Francisco, and the appropria 
tions for useless fortifications, until they can get this. 
And one of the first acts of the next Legislature should 
be to limit the possessory law to 160 acres, which would 
be a quick method of breaking up possessory monopolisa 
tions. In the meantime there is a remedy, though a slower 
and more cumbrous one. At the last session of Congress 
an Act was passed (introduced by Mr. Sargent) authoris 
ing the credit to settlers, on payments for their lands, of 
money advanced for surveying them. Here is a means 
by which, with combined effort, a large amount of public 
land may be freed. Let a number of settlers, sufficient 
to bear the expense, go upon one of these large possessory 
claims. If ejected, let them deposit the money for a sur 
vey with the United States Surveyor-General, and the 
moment the lines are run and the plats are filed they have 
a sure title to the land. 

1 And we seem to hare secured one in the present Surveyor-General 

 66 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

MORE MONOPOLISATION THREATENED—FOOD AND WATER. 

THERE is little doubt that one of the greatest attempts 
at monopolisation yet made in California would have fol 
lowed the passage of Sargent's bill for the sale of the 
Pacific Coast timber lands, which was rushed through the 
House at the last session, but was passed over by the Sen 
ate, and which has been re-introduced. These timber 
lands are of incalculable value, for from them must come 
the timber supply, not of the Pacific States alone, but of 
the whole Interior Basin, and nearly all the Southern 
Coast. The present value of these lands when they can 
be got at, may be judged by the fact that there are single 
trees upon the railroad lands which yield at present prices 
over $500 worth of lumber. Under this bill, these lands 
would have been saleable at $2.50 per acre. The limita 
tion of each purchaser to 640 acres would of course amount 
to nothing, and within a short time after the passage of 
the bill, the available timber lands would have passed into 
the hands of a small ring of large capitalists, who would 
then have put the price of lumber at what figure they 
pleased. The amount of capital required to do this would 
be by no means large when compared with the returns, 
which would be enormous, for though some estimates of 
the timber lands of California go as high as 30,000,000 
acres, the means of transportation as yet make but a small 
portion of this available. And it would be only necessary 
to buy the land as it is opened, to virtually control the 
whole of it. There is, however, a good deal to be said 
in favour of the sale of these lands, and some legislation 
is needed, as there is a great deal of land of no use but 
for its timber, but upon which individuals cannot cut, 
except as trespassers, while the railroad company in the 

 LANDS OF CALIPOENIA 67 

Sierras, having been given the privilege of taking timber 
off Government land for construction, has a monopoly 
there, and is clearing Government land in preference to 
its own. If waste could be prevented, it would perhaps 
be best to leave the timber free to all who chose to cut, 
on the principle that all the gifts of nature, whenever pos 
sible, should be free. This is problematical, perhaps im 
possible. If so, the plan proposed by Honourable Will S. 
Green, of Colusa, seems to be the best of those yet brought 
forward; that is, to sell the lands only to the builders of 
saw-mills, in amounts proportioned to the capacity of the 
mill. At all events, almost anything would be better than 
the creation of such a monstrous monopoly as would at 
once have sprung up under the Sargent bill—a monopoly 
which would have taxed the people of California millions 
annually, and would have raised the price of timber on 
the whole coast. 

It is not only the land and the timber, but even the 
water of California that is threatened with monopoly, as 
by virtue of laws designed to encourage the construction 
of mining and irrigation ditches, the mountain streams 
and natural reservoirs are being made private property, 
and already we are told that all the water of a large section 
of the State is the property of a corporation of San Fran 
cisco capitalists. 

THE EFFECT OF LAND MONOPOLISATION IN CALIFORNIA. 

IT is not we, of this generation, but our children of the 
next, who will fully realise the evils of the land monopo 
lisation which we have permitted and encouraged; for 
those evils do not begin to fully show themselves until 
population becomes dense. 

 68 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

But already, while our great State, with an area larger 
than that of France or Spain or Turkey—with an area 
equal to that of all of Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, 
Denmark and Greece combined—does not contain the 
population of a third-class modern city; already, ere we 
have commenced to manure our lands or to more than 
prospect the treasures of our hills, the evils of land mo 
nopolisation are showing themselves in such unmistakable 
signs that he who runs may read. This is the blight that 
has fallen upon California, stunting her growth and mock 
ing her golden promise, offsetting to the immigrant the 
richness of her soil and the beneficence of her climate. 

It has already impressed its mark upon the character 
of our agriculture—more shiftless, perhaps, than that of 
any State in the Union where slavery has not reigned. 
For California is not a country of farms, but a country of 
plantations and estates. Agriculture is a speculation. 
The farm-houses, as a class, are unpainted frame shanties, 
without garden or flower or tree. The farmer raises wheat; 
he buys his meat, his flour, his butter, his vegetables, and, 
frequently, even his eggs. He has too much land to spare 
time for such little things, C7t for beautifying his home, 
or he is merely a renter, or an occupant of land menaced 
by some adverse title, and his interest is but to get for 
this season the greatest crop that can be made to grow with 
the least labour. He hires labour for his planting and his 
reaping, and his hands shift for themselves at other sea 
sons of the year. His plough he leaves standing in the 
furrow, when the year's ploughing is done; his mustangs 
he turns upon the hills, to be lassoed when again needed. 
He buys on credit at the nearest store, and when his crop 
is gathered must sell it to the Grain King's agent, at the 
Grain King's prices. 

And there is another type of California farmer. He 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 69 

boards at the San Francisco hotels, and drives a spanking 
team over the Cliff House road; or, perhaps, he spends 
his time in the gayer capitals of the East or Europe. His 
land is rented for one third or one fourth of the crop, or 
is covered by scraggy cattle, which need to look after them 
only a few half-civilised vaqueros; or his great wheat 
fields, of from ten to twenty thousand acres, are ploughed 
and sown and reaped by contract. And over our ill-kept, 
shadeless, dusty roads, where a house is an unwonted land 
mark, and which run frequently for miles through the 
same man's land, plod the tramps, with blankets on back 
—the labourers of the California farmer—looking for 
work, in its seasons, or toiling back to the city when the 
ploughing is ended or the wheat crop is gathered. I do 
not say that this picture is a universal one, but it is a 
characteristic one.1 

It is not only in agriculture, but in all other avocations, 
and in all the manifestations of social life, that the effect 
of land monopoly may be seen—in the knotting up of 
business into the control of little rings, in the concentra 
tion of capital into a few hands, in the reduction of wages 
in the mechanical trades, in the gradual decadence of 
that independent personal habit both of thought and action 
which gave to California life its greatest charm, in the 
palpable differentiation of our people into the classes of 
rich and poor. Of the "general stagnation" of which we 

1 An old Californian, a gentleman of high intelligence, who has recently 
travelled extensively through the State upon official business, which com 
pelled him to pay particular attention to the material condition of the 
people, writes: "The whole country is poverty-stricken; the farmers 
shiftles?, and crazy on wheat. I have seen farms cropped for eighteen 
years with wheat, and not a vine, tree, shrub or flower on the place. The 
roads are too wide, and are nnworked, and a nest for noxious weeds. The 
effect of going through California is to make you wish to leave it, if you 
are poor and want to farm." 

 70 OUB LAND AND LAND POLICY 

of California have been so long complaining, this is the 
most efficient cause. Had the unused land of California 
been free, at Government terms, to those who would cul 
tivate it, instead of this "general stagnation" of the past 
two years, we should have seen a growth unexampled in 
the history of even the American States. For with all 
our hyperbole, it is almost impossible to overestimate the 
advantages with which nature has so lavishly endowed 
this Empire State of ours. "God's Country," the return 
ing prospectors used to call it, and the strong expression 
loses half of its irreverence as, coming over sage-brush 
plains, from the still frost-bound East, the traveller winds, 
in the early spring, down the slope of the Sierras, through 
interminable ranks of evergreen giants, past laughing rills 
and banks of wild flowers, and sees under their cloudless 
sky the vast fertile valleys stretching out to the dark blue 
Coast Range in the distance. But while nature has done 
her best to invite newcomers, our land policy has done 
its best to repel them. We have said to the immigrant: 
"It is a fair country which God has made between the 
Sierras and the sea, but before you settle in it and begin 
to reap His bounty, you must pay a forestaller roundly for 
his permission." And the immigrant having far to come 
and but scanty capital, has as a general thing stayed away. 

THE LANDED ARISTOCRACY OP CALIFORNIA. 

THOUGH California is a young State; though she is a poor 
State, and though a few years ago she was a State in which 
there was less class distinction than in any State in the 
Union, she can already boast of an aristocracy based on 
the surest foundation—that of landownership. 

I have been at some trouble to secure a list of the 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 71 

large landowners of California, but find exact and reliable 
information on that point difficult to obtain. The prop 
erty of most of the largest landowners is scattered through 
various counties of the State, and a comparison of the 
books of the various assessors would be the only means of 
forming even an approximate list. These returns, however, 
are far from reliable. It has not been the custom to list 
land held by mere possessory title, and the practice of 
most of the assessors has been to favour large landholders. 
The Board of Equalisation have ferreted out many inter 
esting facts in this regard, which will probably be set 
forth in their coming report. Some remarkable discrep 
ancies, of which the proportion is frequently as one to 
ten, are shown between the assessors' lists and the in 
ventories of deceased landowners. In San Luis Obispo, 
one of the largest landowners and land speculators in the 
State returns to the assessor a total of 4366 acres. Ref 
erence to the United States Land Offices shows that he 
holds in that county, of United States land, 43,266 
acres. 

The largest landowners in California are probably the 
members of the great Central-Southern Pacific Railroad 
Corporation. Were the company land divided, it would 
give them something like two million acres apiece; and in 
addition to their company land, most of the individual 
members own considerable tracts in their own name. 

McLaughlin, who got the Western Pacific land grant, 
has some three or four hundred thousand acres. Outside 
of these railroad grants, the largest single holder is, prob 
ably, Win. S. Chapman, of San Francisco, the "pioneer" 
scrip speculator, who has some 350,000 acres; though ex- 
State Surveyor-General Houghton is said by some to 
own still more. Ex-United States Surveyor-General Beals 
has some 300,000 acres. Across his estate one may ride 

 72 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

for seventy-five miles. Miller & Lux, San Francisco 
wholesale butchers, have 450,000. Around one of their 
patches of ground there are ICO miles of fence. An 
other San Francisco firm, Bixby, Flint & Co., have between 
150,000 and 200,000 acres. George W. Koberts & Co. own 
some 120,000 acres of swamp land. Isaac Friedlander, 
San Francisco grain merchant, has about 100,000 acres. 
Throckmorton, of Mendocino, some 146,000; the Murphy 
family of Santa Clara, about 150,000; John Foster of Los 
Angeles, 120,000; Thomas Fowler, of Frcsno, Tulare and 
Kern, about 200,000. Abel Stearns, of Los Angeles, had 
some 200,000 acres, but has sold a good deal. A firm in 
Santa Barbara advertises for sale 200,000 acres, owned by 
Philadelphia capitalists. 

As for the poorer members of our California peerage— 
the Marquises, Counts, Viscounts, Lords and Barons—who 
hold but from 80,000 to 20,000 acres, they are so numer 
ous, that, though I have a long list, I am afraid to name 
them for fear of making invidious distinctions, while the 
simple country squires, who hold but from five to twenty 
thousand acres, are more numerous still. 

These men are the lords of California—lords as truly 
as ever were ribboned Dukes or belted Barons in any 
country under the sun. We have discarded the titles of 
an earlier age; but we have preserved the substance, and, 
though instead of "your grace," or "my lord," we may 
style them simply "Mr.," the difference is only in a name. 
They are our Land Lords just as truly. If they do not 
exert the same influence and wield the same power, and 
enjoy the same wealth, it is merely because our population 
is but six hundred thousand, and their tenantry have not 
yet arrived. Of the millions of acres of our virgin soil 
which their vast domains enclose, they are absolute mas 
ters, and upon it no human creature can come, save by 

 LANDS OF CALIFORNIA 73 

their permission and upon their terms.1 From the zenith 
above, to the centre of the earth below (so our laws run), 
the universe is theirs. 

It must not be imagined that these large landholders 
are merely speculators—that they have got hold of land 
for the purpose of quickly selling it again. On the con 
trary, as a class, they have a far better appreciation of the 
future value of land and the power which its ownership 
gives, than have the people at large who have thought 
lessly permitted this monopolisation to go on. Many of 
the largest landholders do not desire to sell, and will not 
sell for anything like current prices; but on the contrary 
are continually adding to their domains. Among these, 
is one Irish family, who have seen at home what the own 
ership of the soil of a country means. They rent their 
land; they will not sell it; and this is true of many others. 
Sometimes this indisposition to sell is merely the result 
of considerations of present interest. As for instance: 
An agent of a society of settlers recently went to a large 
landholder in a southern county, and offered him a good 
price for enough land to provide about two hundred people 
with small farms. The landholder refused the offer, and 
the agent proceeded to call his attention to the increase 
in the value of his remaining land which this settlement 
would cause. "It may be," said the landholder, "but I 
should lose money. If you bring two hundred settlers 
here, they will begin agitating for a repeal of the fence 
law, and will soon compel it by their votes. Then I will 
be obliged to spend two or three hundred thousand dollars 
to fence in the rest of my ranch, and as fences do not 
fatten cattle, it will be worth no more to me than now." 

* 

1 They are coming. According to Government statisticians, California 
•will, in 1890, contain a population of 3,500,000. 

 74 OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY 

Let me not be understood as reproaching the men who 
have honestly acquired large tracts of land. As the, world 
goes, they are not to be blamed. If the people put sad 
dles on their backs, they must expect somebody to jump 
astride to ride. If we must have an aristocracy, I would 
prefer that my children should be members of it, rather 
than of the common herd. While as for the men who 
have resorted to dishonest means, the probabilities are 
that most of them enjoy more of the respect of their fel 
lows, and its fruits, than if they had been honest and got 
less land. 

The division of our land into these vast estates derives 
additional significance from the threatening wave of Asi 
atic immigration whose first ripples are already breaking 
upon our shores. What the barbarians enslaved by for 
eign wars were to the great landlords of ancient Italy, 
what the blacks of the African coast were to the great 
landlords of the Southern States, the Chinese coolies may 
be, in fact are already beginning to be, to the great land 
lords of our Pacific slope. 

 III. 

LAND AND LABOUR. 

WHAT LAND IS. 

LAND, for our purpose, may be defined as that part of 
the globe's surface habitable by man—not merely his habi 
tation, but the storehouse upon which he must draw for 
all his needs, and the material to which his labour must 
be applied for the supply of all his desires, for even the 
products of the sea cannot be taken, or any of the forces 
of nature utilised without the aid of land or its products. 
On the land we are born, from it we live, to it we return 
again—children of the soil as truly as is the blade of grass 
or the flower of the field. 

OF THE VALUE OF LAND. 

THOUGH land is the basis of all that we have, yet neither 
land nor its natural products constitute wealth. Wealth 
is the product—or to speak more precisely, the equiva 
lent of labour. That which may be had without labour 
has no value, for the value of any object is measured by 
the labour for which it will exchange.1 And when in 

11 use the word value throughout in the sense in which it is used by 
the writers on political economy—that of exchangeable power, not of 
utility. 

75 

 76 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

speaking of "natural wealth," we mean anything else than 
the general possibilities which nature offers to labour, we 
mean such peculiar natural advantages as will yield to 
labour a larger return than the ordinary, and which are 
thus equivalent to the amount of labour dispensed with— 
that is, such natural objects or advantages as are scarce 
as well as desirable. If I find a diamond, I may not have 
expended much labour, but I am rich because I have some 
thing which it usually takes an immense amount of labour 
to obtain. If I own a coal mine which is valuable, it is 
because other people have not coal mines, and cannot ob 
tain fuel with as little expenditure of labour as I can, and 
will therefore give me the equivalent of more labour for 
my coal than I have to bestow to get it. If diamonds 
were as plenty as pebbles, they would be worth by the cart 
load just the cost of loading and hauling. If coal could 
everywhere be had by digging a hole in the ground, the 
possession of a coal mine would make nobody rich. 

And so it is with land. It is only valuable as it is 
scarce. Land (of the average quality) is not naturally 
scarce, but abundant, and it may be doubted whether there 
is any country, even the most populous, where the soil 
could not easily support in comfort all the people, though 
the law of diminishing return, as laid down by the Eng 
lish economists, is doubtless true. But the density of 
population permits other economies which go far to make 
up for, and which, probably, in a right social state would 
fully make up for, any increase in the amount of labour 
necessarily devoted to agricultural production. 

But land is a fixed quantity, which man can neither in 
crease nor diminish, and is therefore very easily made arti 
ficially scarce by monopolisation. And artificial scarcity 
arising from unequal division produces the same effect as 
real scarcity in giving land a value. There is no scarcity 

 LAND AND LABOUE 77 

of building lots in San Francisco, for there is room yet 
within the settled limits for ten thousand more houses. 
But if I want to put up a house I must pay for the privi 
lege, just as if there were more people wanting to put up 
houses than there is room to put them up on. 

And the value of land is the power which its owner 
ship gives of appropriating the labour of those who have 
it not; and in proportion as those who own are few, and 
those who do not own are many, so does this power which 
is expressed by the selling price of land increase. We 
speak of railroads raising the value of land by reducing 
the time and cost of transportation. But if we analyse 
the operation by imagining the construction of a railroad 
through a country in which there are few settlers and 
land can be had for the taking, we will see that the direct 
effect of the railroad or other improvement which in 
creases the value of the product of land is to increase the 
value of labour—or to speak more precisely, of the value 
of labour and capital, in the relative proportions deter 
mined by the circumstances which fix the shares of each— 
and that it is only when the land is so far monopolised as 
to enable the landowners to appropriate to themselves this 
benefit that the value of land is increased. No matter how 
few people there might be, if the land were all in private 
hands the owners might appropriate to themselves the 
whole benefit. This is the result in a country like Eng 
land, but in a new country, those owners having more 
land than they can work or desire to work, will, in selling 
or renting their lands, yield some of the new advantage 
in order to induce people to take their surplus land. It 
will be said: If the value of land is the power which its 
ownership gives of appropriating the labour of others, so 
is the value of everything else, from a twenty-dollar piece 
to a keg of nails. But in this is the distinction: The 

 78 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

twenty-dollar piece or the keg of nails are themselves the 
result of labour, and when given for labour the transac 
tion is an exchange. Land is not the result of labour, 
but is the creation of God, and when labour must be 
given for it the transaction is an appropriation. In the 
one case labour is given for labour; in the other, labour 
is given for something that existed before labour was. 

OF THE VALUE OF LAND AND THE COMMON WEALTH. 

AND thus we see that the value of land, being intrinsically 
merely the power which its ownership gives to appropriate 
the fruits of labour, is not an element of the wealth of a 
community. This principle is as self-evident as that two 
and two make four, yet we seem to have lost sight of it 
altogether. All over the country the increase in the value 
of land is cited as an increase of wealth. Year after year 
we add up the increased price which land will bring, and 
exclaim, Behold how rapidly the United States is growing 
rich! Yet \ve might with equal propriety count the debts 
which men owe each other, in estimating the assets of a 
community. The increased price of his land may be in 
creased wealth to the owner, because it enables him to 
obtain a larger share in the distribution of its products, 
but it is not increased wealth to the community, because 
the shares of other people are at the same time cut down. 
The wealth of a community depends upon the product of 
the community. But the productive powers of land are 
precisely the same whether its price is low or high. In 
other words, the price of land indicates the distribution of 
wealth, not the production. The manner of distribution 
certainly reacts on production, and so the price of land 
indirectly and gradually affects the wealth of the com- 

 LAND AND LABOUR 79 

munity; but this effect is the reverse of what seems gen 
erally imagined. High prices for land tend to decrease 
instead of adding to the wealth of a community. For high 
priced land means luxury on the one side, and low wages 
on the other. Luxury means waste, and low wages mean 
unintelligent and inefficient labour. 

OF THE VALUE OF LAND AND THE VALUE OF LABOUR. 

THE value of land and of labour must bear to each other 
an inverse ratio. These two are the "terms" of produc 
tion, and while production remains the same, to give more 
to the one is to give less to the other. The value of land 
is the power which its ownership gives to appropriate the 
product of labour, and, as a sequence, where rents (the 
share of the landowner) are high, wages (the share of the 
labourer) are low. And thus we see it all over the world, 
in the countries where land is high, wages are low, and 
where land is low, wages are high. In a new country the 
value of labour is at first at its maximum, the value of 
land at its minimum. As population grows and land be 
comes monopolised and increases in value, the value of 
labour steadily decreases. And the higher land and the 
lower wages, the stronger the tendency towards still lower 
wages, until this tendency is met by the very necessities 
of existence. For the higher land and the lower wages, 
the more difficult is it for the man who starts with noth 
ing but his labour to become his own employer, and the 
more he is at the mercy of the landowner and the capitalist. 

OF SPECULATION IN LAND. 

THE old prejudice against speculators in food and other 
articles of necessity is passing away, for more exact habits 

 80 OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY 

of thought have shown that where speculators do not con 
trol all the sources and means of production (which is 
impossible as to most things in this age of the world *), 
and speculation does not become monopoly, instead of caus 
ing scarcity, it tends to alleviate it; and this, on the one 
side, by giving notice of the impending scarcity, and thus 
inducing economy, and on the other by stimulating pro 
duction. 

But land not being a thing of human production, specu 
lation in land cannot have this result. A country may 
export people, but it cannot import land. Whatever be 
the price put upon it, the number of acres in any given 
place is just so many, with just such capabilities. And 
though high prices for land may lessen the demand by 
driving people farther away, this is not economy, but 
waste, as the labour of a diffused population cannot be so 
productive as that of a more concentrated population, com 
bined action cannot be so effective and economical, and 
exchanges must be much more difficult and at a greater 
cost. It is sometimes said (and the English landlords 
piously believe that in raising their rents to the highest 
figure they are doing their best for their fellow-men) that 
the increase in the price of land leads to increased thor 
oughness of cultivation, yet how can that be when the in 
crease in the price of land must take from the means of 
the cultivator, either by reducing his capital when he buys, 
or by reducing his earnings when he rents?2 That the 

1 Possible as to some things. The Rothschilds and the Bank of Cali 
fornia control the quicksilver production of the world, and sell quicksilver 
in China cheaper than in California, where it is produced. 

2 It may be said (and it is probably to some extent true in new coun 
tries), that where land is low a man will buy as much as he can ; where 
land is higher, and he must take less for the same money, he will cul 
tivate it better. But if a man takes more than he can well use, this in 

 LAND AND LABOUR 81 

two things go together is undoubtedly true; but it seems 
to me that the increased thoroughness of cultivation is 
due to the increased pressure of population—to higher 
prices for produce and lower prices for labour rather 
than directly to the increased price of land. 

There is another attribute in which land differs from 
things of human production. It is imperishable. The 
speculator in grain must sell quickly, not merely because 
he knows another crop will soon come in, but because his 
grain will spoil by keeping; the speculator in a manufac 
tured article must also sell quickly, not merely because 
the mills are at work, but because the articles in which 
he IB speculating will spoil or go out of fashion. Not so 
with land. The speculator in land can wait; his land will 
still be there as good as ever. If he dies before he reaps 
the benefit, the land will be there for his children. 

Thus land, being a thing of limited quantity, of imper 
ishable nature and of unchanging demand, is a thing in 
which there are more inducements for speculation than 
in anything else. And being, not the result of human 
labour, but the field for human labour, the increased price 
caused by speculation is a tax for which there can be no 
beneficial return. Speculation in land is, in fact, but a 
shutting out from the land of those who want to use it, 
until they agree to pay the price demanded—the land 
speculator is a true "dog in the manger." He does not 
want to use the land himself, but he finds his profit in 
preventing other people from using it. The speculator 

itself is speculation, and another remedy should be looked for than the 
increase of speculation. Whereas, if by high prices a man is driven to 
bestow the same labour on a smaller piece of ground than he would with 
greater profit expend on a larger piece—the increased thoroughness of 
cultivation redncea production instead of increasing it—is an evil, not a 
benefit. 

 82 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

knows that more people are coming, and that they must 
have land, and he gets hold of the land which they will 
want to use, in order that he may force them to pay him 
a price for which he gives them no return—that is, that he 
may appropriate a portion of their labour. Our emigrat 
ing race may be likened to a caravan crossing the desert, 
and the land speculator to one of their number who rides 
a little in advance, taking possession of the springs as 
they are reached and exacting a price from his comrades 
for the water which nature furnishes without price. 

OF PROSPECTIVE VALUE AS AFFECTING THE PRESENT 
VALUE OF LAND. 

ACCORDING to the doctrine of rent advanced by Eicardo 
and Malthus,1 and generally accepted by the best authori 
ties on political economy, the value of land should be de 
termined by the advantages which it possesses over the 
least advantageous land in use. This would be true, 
though subject to the modifications arising from custom 
and the inertia of population, were it not for the influ 
ence which prospective value exercises upon present value. 
Where speculation in land is permitted—more so, where 
it is encouraged, as it is with us—the prospective value 
of land (the incentive to speculation) must exercise a 
very great influence upon the present value of land, and 
the value of land be determined, not by its actual advan 
tages over the poorest land in use, but by its advantages, 
prospective as well as actual, over land which offers just 
sufficient prospective advantage to make its possession de- 

1 Henry George made no real study of the authorities on political econ 
omy until the "Progress and Poverty" period.—H. O., JB. 

 LAND AND LABOUK 83 

sirable. The prices of land in the United States to-day 
are not warranted by our present population, but are sus 
tained by speculation founded upon the certainty of the 
greater population which is coming. Every promise, every 
hope, is discounted by land speculation. And land being 
indestructible and costing less to keep than anything else 
(for the taxes on. unimproved land are generally lighter 
than on anything else), and being limited in amount (so 
that no increase in price brings about increase in supply), 
these anticipations form a firm basis for price. Land has 
no intrinsic value. It is not like a keg of nails, which costs 
about so much to produce, and the price of which cannot, 
therefore, go much above or fall much below that point. 
It is worth just what can be had for it. If a man must 
have land where speculative prices rule, he must pay the 
price asked, and the price he pays is the gauge by which 
all the surrounding holders measure the value and assess 
the price of their lands. One rise encourages another 
rise, and the course of prices is up and up, so long as 
there is expectation of future demand. And whenever a 
temporary panic comes, the land prices recover as quickly 
as it is natural for hope to reassert itself in the human 
breast. A great singer buys a lot in a little Illinois town 
and real estate advances fifty per cent.; a train of cars 
comes to Oakland, and for miles around land cannot be 
bought for less than a thousand dollars an acre; a few men 
in San Francisco say to each other that the city is sure 
to be the second on the continent, and straightway the 
hill-tops for long distances are being bought and sold at 
rates which would be exorbitant if San Francisco really 
contained a million people, and he who wants a piece of 
land to use must pay the speculative price. We are thus 
compelled to pay in the present, prices based on what 
people will be compelled to pay in the future. 

 84 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

OF SPECULATION IN LAND, AND THE SUPPLY OF CAPITAL. 

WE frequently hear it said: "Times are hard because land 
speculation has locked up so much capital." Now it is 
evident that no amount of buying and selling in a com 
munity can lock up capital, and the direct effect of a 
rise in land values, is to alter the distribution of wealth, 
not to affect its amount. But to some extent the same 
effect is produced as would be by the locking up of capital. 
When a rise in land values takes place, certain men find 
themselves much richer, without any addition to the capi 
tal of the community having been made. Some of these 
will employ part of their new wealth in unproductive uses 
—in building finer houses, buying diamonds for their 
wives, or travelling in the East, or in Europe. This re 
duces the supply of productive capital. At the same time 
the profits of land speculation, and the new security which 
the rise in values gives, will increase the number of bor 
rowers, and competition between them will have a ten 
dency to keep up rates of interest. But a fall in land 
prices does not at once increase the available supply of 
capital, as capitalists are made timid, and there is a ten 
dency to hoard rather than lend. 

OF THE NECESSARY VALUE OF LAND. 

WHERE the monopolisation of land IB not permitted, where 
a man can only take land which he wants to use, unused 
land can have no value—at least, none above the price 
fixed by the State for the privilege of occupying it. But 
as land becomes occupied, most of it would acquire a value 
—either from the possession of natural advantages supe- 

 LAND AND LABOUR 86 

rior to that still unoccupied, or from its more central posi 
tion as respects population. This we may call the neces 
sary or real value of land, in contradistinction to the un 
necessary or fictitious value of land which results from 
monopolisation. To illustrate: If, on the outskirts of San 
Francisco, any one who wished to build a house might 
take a lot from the unused ground, outside land would 
be worth nothing, but Montgomery or Kearney street prop 
erty would still be very valuable, as, being in the heart 
of the city, it is more convenient for residences or more 
useful for business purposes. The difference, however, 
between this necessary value of the land of the United 
States and the aggregate value at which it is held must 
be most enormous, and the difference represents the un 
necessary tax which land monopolisation levies upon 
labour. 

OF PROPERTY IN LAND. 

THE right of every human being to himself is the foun 
dation of the right of property. That which a man pro 
duces is rightfully his own, to keep, to sell, to give, or 
to bequeath, and upon this sure title alone can ownership 
of anything rightfully rest. But man has also another 
right, declared by the fact of his existence—the right to 
the use of so much of the free gifts of nature as may 
be necessary to supply all the wants of that existence, and 
as he may use without interfering with the equal rights 
of any one else, and to this he has a title as against all 
the world. 

This right is natural; it cannot be alienated. It is the 
free gift of his Creator to every man that comes into the 
world—a right as sacred, as indefeasible as his right to 
life itself. 

 86 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

Land being the creation of God and the natural habi 
tation of man, the repcrvoir from which man must draw 
the means of maintaining his life and satisfying his wants; 
the material to which it was pre-ordained that his labour 
should be applied, it follows that every man born into 
this world has a natural right to as much land as is 
necessary for his own uses, and that no man has a right 
to any more. To deny this is to deny the right of man 
to himself, to assert the atrocious doctrine that the Al 
mighty has created some men to be the slaves of others. 

For, to permit one man to monopolise the land from 
which the support of others is to be drawn, is to permit 
him to appropriate their labour, and, in so far as he is 
permitted to do this, to appropriate them. It is to insti 
tute slavery. 

For whether a man owns the bodies of his fellow beings, 
or owns only the land from which they must obtain a 
subsistence, makes but little difference to him or to them. 
In the one case it is slavery just as much as the other. 
And of the two forms of slavery, that which pretends to 
the ownership of flesh and blood seems to me, on the 
whole, far the more preferable. For in England, where 
the monopolisation of land has reached a point which 
gives to the mere labourer a share of the product of his 
labour just sufficient to maintain his existence, the land 
owner gets from the labourer all that any master can get 
from his slave, while he is not affected by the selfish 
interest which prompts the master to look out for the well- 
being of his slave, and is not influenced by those warmer 
feelings which any ordinarily well-disposed man feels to 
wards any living thing of which he claims the ownership, 
be it even a dog. For in free, rich England of the Nine 
teenth Century—England, whose boast it is that no slave 
can breathe her air—England, that has spent millions of 

 LAND AND LABOUR 87 

pounds for the abolition of slavery in far-off lands, and 
that sends abroad annually hundreds of thousands of 
pounds for the conversion of the heathen—the condition 
of the agricultural labourer is to-day harder, more hope 
less and more brutalising than that of the average slave 
under any system of slavery which has prevailed in mod 
ern times. And, going even further, I do not believe that 
the cold-blooded horrors brought to light by the various 
Parliamentary Commissions which have investigated the 
condition of the labouring poor of England, can be matched 
even by the records of ancient slavery, under which sys 
tem slaves were sometimes fed to fishes, or tortured for 
sport, or even by the annals of Spanish conquests in the 
New World. Certain it is that the condition of the slaves 
upon our Southern plantations was not half so bad as 
that of the land monopoly slaves of England. Legrees 
there may have been in plenty, but I have yet to hear of 
the Legree who worked children to physical and moral 
death in his fields, or ground them, body and soul, in 
his mills. 

There is in nature no such thing as a fee simple in 
land. The Almighty, who created the earth for man and 
man for the earth, lias entailed it upon all the genera 
tions of the children of men by a decree written upon the 
constitution of all things—a decree which no human action 
can bar and no prescription determine. Let the parch 
ments be ever so many, or possession ever so long, in the 
Courts of Natural Justice there can be but one title to 
land recognised—the using of it to satisfy reasonable 
wants. 

Now, from this, it by no means follows that there should 
be no such thing as property in land, but merely that 
there should be no monopolisation—no standing between 
the man who is willing to work and the field which nature 

 88 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

offers for his labour. For while it is true that the land 
of a country is a free gift of the Creator to all the people 
of that country, to the enjoyment of which each has an 
equal natural right, it is also true that the recognition 
of private ownership in land is necessary to its proper use 
—is, in fact, a condition of civilisation. When the millen 
nium comes, and the old savage, selfish instincts have died 
out in men, land may perhaps be held in common; but 
not till then. In our present state, at least, the "magic 
of property which turns even sand into gold" must be 
applied to our lands if we would reap the largest benefits 
they are capable of yielding—must be retained if we would 
keep from relapsing into barbarism. 

And a full appreciation of the value of landownership 
tends to the same practical conclusion as the considera 
tions I have been presenting. If the worker upon land is 
a better worker and a better man because he owns the 
land, it should be our effort to make this stimulus felt 
by all—to make, as far as possible, all land-users also 
landowners. 

Nor is there any difficulty in combining a full recogni 
tion of private property in land with a recognition of the 
right of all to the benefits conferred by the Creator, as 
I will hereafter attempt to show. 

We are not called upon to guarantee to all men equal 
conditions, and could not if we would, any more than we 
could guarantee to them equal intelligence, equal indus 
try or equal prudence; but we are called upon to give to 
all men an equal chance. If we do not, our republicanism, 
is a snare and a delusion, our clatter about the rights of 
man the veriest buncombe in which a people ever indulged. 

 IV. 

THE TENDENCY OF OUK PKESENT LAND 
POLICY. 

WHAT CUE LAND POLICY IS. 

Is our land policy calculated to give to all men an equal 
chance? We have seen what it is—how we are enabling 
speculators to rob settlers; how we are by every means 
enhancing the tax which the many must pay to the few; 
how we are making away with the heritage of our children, 
and putting in immense bodies into the hands of a few 
individuals the soil from which the coming millions of 
our people must draw their support. If we continue this 
policy a few years, the public domain will all be gone; 
the homestead law and the pre-emption law will remain 
upon the statute books but to remind the poor man of the 
good time past, and we shall find ourselves embarrassed 
by all the difficulties which beset the statesmen of Europe 
—the social disease of England; the seething discontent 
of France. 

Was there ever national blunder so great—ever national 
crime so tremendous as ours in dealing with our land? 
It is not in the heat and flush of conquest that we are 
thus doing what has been done in every country under the 
sun where a ruling class has been built up and the masses 

89 

 90 OUK LAND AND LAND POLICY 

condemned to hopeless toil; it is not in ignorance of true 
political principles and in the conscientious belief that 
the God-appointed order of things is that the many should 
serve the few. We are monopolising our land deliber 
ately—our land, not the land of a conquered nation, and 
we are doing it while prating of the equal rights of the 
citizen and of the brotherhood of men. 

THE VALUE OP CUE PUBLIC DOMAIN. 

THIS public domain that we are getting rid of as recklessly 
as though we esteemed its possession a curse, can never 
be replaced, nor are there other limitless bodies of land 
which we may subdue. Of the whole continent, we now 
occupy nearly the whole of the zone in which all the 
real progressive life of the world has been lived. North 
of us are the cold high latitudes, south of us the tropical 
heats. The table-lands of Mexico and the valleys of the 
Saskatchewan and Red rivers, which comprise almost all 
of the temperate portions of the continent yet unoccupied 
by our race, are of very small extent when compared with 
the vast country we have already overrun, and when our 
emigration is compelled to set upon them will be filled as 
we now populate a new State. 

It is not pleasant to think of the time when the public 
domain will all be gone. "This will be a great country," 
we say, "when it is all fenced in." Great it will be— 
great it must be, in arts and arms, in population and in 
wealth. But will it be as great in all that constitutes 
true greatness? Will it be such a good country for the 
poor man? Will there be such an average of comfort and 
independence and virtue among the masses? And which 
to me is the important fact—that I am one of a nation 

 PRESENT LAND POLICY 91 

of BO many more millions, or that I can buy my chil 
dren shoes when they need them? "The greatest glory of 
America," says Carlyle, "is that there every bootblack may 
have a turkey in his pot." We shall be credited with no 
such glory when the country is all "fenced in" as we are 
now rapidly fencing it. 

From this public domain of ours have sprung and still 
spring subtle influences which strengthen our national 
character and tinge all our thought. This vast back 
ground of unfcnced land has given a consciousness of 
freedom even to the dweller in crowded cities, and has 
been a well-spring of hope even to those who never thought 
of taking refuge upon it. The child of the people as he 
grows to manhood in Europe finds every seat at the ban 
quet of life marked "taken," and must struggle with his 
fellows for the crumbs that fall, without one chance in a 
thousand of forcing or sneaking his way to a seat. In 
America, whatever be his condition, there is always more 
or less clearly and vividly the consciousness that the pub- 
lie domain is behind him; that there is a new country 
where all the places are not yet taken, where opportu 
nities are still open; and the knowledge of this fact, act 
ing and reacting, penetrates our whole national life, 
giving to it generosity and independence, elasticity and 
ambition. 

Why should we seek so diligently to get rid of this 
public domain as if for the mere pleasure of getting rid 
of it ? What have the buffaloes done to us that we should 
sacrifice the heritage of our children to see the last of 
them extirpated before we die? Are the operatives of 
New England, the farmers of Ohio, the mechanics of San 
Francisco better off for the progress of this thing which 
we call national development—this scattering of a thou 
sand people over the land which would suffice for a mil- 

 92 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

lion; this fencing in for a dozen of the soil to which tens 
of millions must before long look for subsistence? 

All that we are proud of in the American character, all 
that makes our condition and institutions better than 
those of the older countries, we may trace to the fact 
that land has been cheap in the United States; and yet 
we are doing our utmost to make it dear, and actually 
seem pleased to see it become dear, looking upon the lien 
which the few are taking upon the labour of the many as 
an actual increase in the wealth of all. 

NO TENDENCY TO EQUALISATION. 

NOB can we flatter ourselves that the inequality in con 
dition which we are creating will right itself by easy and 
peaceful means. It is not merely present inequality which 
we are creating, but a tendency to further inequality. 
When we allow one man to take the land which should 
belong to a hundred, and give to a corporation the soil 
from which a million must shortly draw their subsistence, 
we are not only giving in the present wealth to the few 
by taking it from the many, but we are putting it in the 
power of the few to levy a constant and an increasing tax 
upon the many, and we are increasing the tendency to 
the concentration of wealth not merely upon the land 
which is thus monopolised, but all over the United 
States. 

Even if the large bodies of land which we are giving 
away for nothing, or selling to speculators for a nominal 
price, are subdivided and sold for small farms, the mis 
chief we have done is not at an end. The capital of the 
settlers has been taken from them, and put in large masses 
into the hands of the speculators or railroad kings. The 

 PRESENT LAND POLICY 93 

many are thereafter the poorer; the few thereafter the 
richer. We have concentrated wealth; that is, we have 
concentrated the power of getting wealth. We have set in 
operation the law of attraction—the law that "unto him 
that hath shall it be given," and never in any age of the 
world has this law worked so powerfully as now. 

It must not be thought that because we have no laws 
of entail and primogeniture the vast estates which we are 
creating will in time break up of themselves. There were 
no laws of entail and primogeniture in ancient Rome 
where the monopolisation of land and the concentration 
of wealth went so far that the empire, and even civilisa 
tion itself, perished of the social diseases engendered. It 
is not the laws of entail and primogeniture that have pro 
duced the concentration of wealth in England which makes 
the richest country in the world the abode of the most 
hopeless poverty. In spite of entail and primogeniture, 
wealth is constantly changing from hand to hand, but al 
ways in large masses. The richest families of a few cen 
turies back are extinct, the blood of the noblest of a com 
paratively recent time flows in the veins of people who 
live in garrets and toil in kitchens. And the same causes 
which have reduced the 374,000 landholders of England 
in the middle of the last century to 30,000 now are work 
ing in this country as powerfully as they are working 
there. Wealth is concentrating in a few hands as rapidly 
in New York as in London; the condition of the labouring 
classes of New England is steadily approximating to that 
of Old England. 

Nor, if we are to have a very rich class and a very poor 
class, is there any particular advantage in the fact that 
one is constantly being recruited from the other, though 
there are people who seem to think that the fact that 
most of our millionaires were poor boys is a sufficient an- 

 94 DUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

swer to anything that may be said of the evils of a con 
centration of wealth. As wealth concentrates, the chance 
for any particular individual to escape from one class to 
another becomes less and less, until practically worth noth 
ing, while there is nothing in human nature to cause us 
to believe, and nothing in history to show that members 
of a privileged class are less grasping because they once 
belonged to an unprivileged class. Nor, after wealth has 
become concentrated, is there any tendency in this chang 
ing of the individuals who hold it to diffuse it again. 
The social structure is like the flame of a gas-burner, 
which retains its form though the particles which com 
pose it are constantly changing. 

THE TENDENCY TO CONCENTRATION. 

THERE is no tendency yet to the breaking up of large 
landholdings in the United States; but the reverse is 
rather the case. The railroad lands are not being sold 
anything like as fast as they are being granted, and large 
private estates are increasing instead of diminishing. It 
is true that tracts bought for speculation are frequently 
cut up and sold, but it will generally be found that others 
are at the same time secured farther ahead, though not 
always by the same parties. And as wealth concentrates, 
population becomes denser, and the advantages of land- 
ownership greater, the tendency on the part of the rich 
to invest in land increases, and the same cause which has 
so largely reduced the number of landowners in Great 
Britain is put in operation. Already the custom of rent 
ing land is unmistakably gaining ground, and the con 
centration of landownership seems to be going on in our 
older States almost as fast as the monopolisation of new 

 PRESENT LAND POLICY 95 

and goes on in the younger ones.1 And at last the steam 
jlough and the steam wagon have appeared—to develop, 
perhaps, in agriculture the same tendencies to concen 
tration which the power loom and the triphammer have 
developed in manufacturing. 

We are not only putting large bodies of our new lands 
in the hands of the few; but we are doing our best to 
keep them there, and to cause the absorption of small 
farms into large estates. The whole pressure of our reve 
nue system, National and State, tends to the concentra 
tion of wealth and the monopolisation of land. A hun- 

1 "Our farms in older States instead of being divided and subdivided 
as they ought to be, are growing larger and more unwieldy. The ten 
dency of the times is unquestionably towards immense estates, each with 
a manorial mansion in the center and a dependent tenantry crouching in 
the shadow."—North American Review, 1859. 

"A non-resident proprietary like that of Ireland isgettiug to be the 
characteristic of large farming districts in New England, adding yearly to 
the nominal value of leasehold farms, advancing yearly the rent de 
manded, and steadily degrading the character of the tenantry, until, in 
the place of the boasted intelligence of rural New England, a competent 
authority can to-day write: ' The general educational condition of the 
farm laborer is very low, even below that of the factory operative ; a large 
percentage of them can neither read nor write.'"—New York World, 
May, 1871, in an article on the returns for New England of (he Census 
0/1870. 

"The part of the report [Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics], 
however, which of all is, in our opinion, the most remarkable, is that 
relating to agriculture in Massachusetts. It may be summed up in two 
words: rapid decay. Increased nominal value of land, higher rents, 
fewer farms occupied by owners; diminished product, general decline of 
prosperity, lower wages ; a more ignorant population, increasing number 
of womeu employed at hard outdoor labor (surest sign of a declining civ 
ilization), and steady deterioration in the style of farming—these are the 
conditions described by a cumulative mass of evidence that is perfectly 
irresistible, and that is unfortunately only too strongly confirmed by such 
details of census statistics as have been so far made public."—New York 
Nation, June, 1871. 

 96 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

dred thousand dollars in the hands of one man pays but 
a slight proportion of the taxes which are paid by the 
same sum in the hands of fifty; a hundred thousand acres 
owned by a single landholder are assessed but for a frac 
tion of the amount assessed upon the hundred thousand 
acres of six hundred farms. Especially is this true of 
the State of California, where the large landholders are 
frequently assessed at the rate of one dollar per acre on 
land for which they are charging settlers twenty or thirty, 
and where the small farmer sometimes pays taxes at a 
rate one hundredfold greater than his neighbour of the 
eleven league ranch. Our whole policy is of a piece— 
everything is tending with irresistible force to make us a 
nation of landlords and tenants—of great capitalists and 
their poverty-stricken employes. 

The 'life of all the older nations shows the bitterness 
of the curse of land monopolisation; we cannot turn a 
page of their history without finding the blood stains and 
the tear marks it has left. But never since commerce and 
manufactures grew up, and men began to engage largely 
in other occupations than those connected directly with 
the soil, has it been so important to prevent land monopo 
lisation as now. The tendency of all the improved means 
and forms of production and exchange—of the greater 
and greater subdivision of labour, of the enslavement of 
steam, of the utilisation of electricity, of the ten thou 
sand great labour-saving appliances which modern inven 
tion has brought forth, is strongly and more strongly to 
extend the dominion of capital and to make of labour its 
abject slave. Once to set up in the business of making 
cloth required only the purchase of a hand loom and a 
little yarn, the means for which any journeyman could 
soon save from his earnings; now it requires a great fac 
tory, costly machinery, large stocks and credits, and to 

 PRESENT LAND POLICY 97 

go into business on his own account one must be a mil 
lionaire. So it is in all branches of manufacture; so, too, 
it is in trade. Concentration is the law of the time. The 
great city is swallowing up the little towns; the great mer 
chant is driving his poorer rivals out of business; a thou 
sand little dealers become the clerks and shopmen of the 
proprietor of the marble-fronted palace; a thousand mas 
ter workmen, the employes of one rich manufacturer, and 
the gigantic corporations, the alarming product of the 
new social forces which Watt and Stephenson introduced 
to the world, are themselves being welded into still more 
titanic corporations. From present appearances, ten years 
from now we shall have but three, possibly but one railroad 
company in the United States, yet our young men remem 
ber the time when these giants were such feeble infants 
that we deemed it charity to shelter them from the cold, 
and feed them, as it were, with a spoon. In the new con 
dition of things what chance will there be for a poor man 
if our land also is monopolised? 

Of the political tendency of our land policy, it is hardly 
necessary to speak. To say that the land of a country 
shall be owned by a small class, is to say that that class 
shall rule it; to say—which is the same thing—that the 
people of a country shall consist of the very rich and the 
very poor, is to say that republicanism is impossible. Its 
forms may be preserved; but the real government which 
clothes itself with these forms, as if in mockery, will be 
many degrees worse than an avowed and intelligent des 
potism. 

 V. 

WHAT DUE LAND POLICY SHOULD BE. 

HOW WE SHOULD DISPOSE OF OUR NEW LAND. 

WHEN we reflect what land is; when we consider the rela 
tions between it and labour; when we remember that to 
own the land upon which a man must gain his subsist 
ence is to all intents and purposes to own the man himself, 
we cannot remain in doubt as to what should be our policy 
in disposing of our public lands. 

We have no right to dispose of them except to actual 
settlers—to the men who really want to use them; no 
right to sell them to speculators, to give them to railroad 
companies or to grant them for agricultural colleges; no 
more right to do so than we have to sell or to grant the 
labour of the people who must some day live upon 
them. 

And to actual settlers we should give them. Give, not 
sell. For we have no right to step between the man who 
wants to use land and land which is as yet unused, and 
to demand of him a price for our permission to avail him 
self of his Creator's bounty. The cost of surveying and 
the cost of administering the Land Office may be proper 
charges; but even these it were juster and wiser to charge 
as general expenses, to be borne by the surplus wealth of 

98 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 99 

•v 

the country, by the property which settlement will make 
more valuable. We can better afford to bear the neces 
sary expenses of the Land Office than we can the expense 
of keeping useless men-of-war at sea or idle troops in 
garrison posts. When we can give a few rich bankers 
twenty or thirty millions a year we can afford to pay a 
few millions in order to make our public lands perfectly 
free. Let the settler keep all of his little capital; it is his 
seed wheat. When he has gathered his crop, then we may 
take our toll, with usury if need be. 

And we should give but in limited quantities. For 
while every man has a right to as much land as he can 
properly use, no man has a right to any more, and when 
others do or will want it, cannot take any more without 
infringing on their rights. One hundred and sixty acres 
is too much to give one person; it is more than he can cul 
tivate; and our great object should be to give every one 
an opportunity of employing his own labour, and to give 
no opportunity to any one to appropriate the labour of 
others. We cannot afford to give so much in view of the 
extent of the public domain and the demand for homes 
yet to be made upon it. While we are calling upon all 
the world to come in and take our land, let us save a little 
for our own children. Nor can we afford to give so 
much in view of the economic loss consequent upon the 
dispersion of population. Four families to the square 
mile are not enough to secure the greatest return to labour 
and the least waste in exchanges. Eighty acres is quite 
enough for any one, and I am inclined to think forty acres 
still nearer the proper amount. 

There should be but this one way of disposing of the 
agricultural lands. None at all should be given to the 
States, except such as was actually needed for sites of 
public buildings; none at all for school funds or agricul- 

 100 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

tural colleges. The earnings of a self-employing, inde 
pendent people, upon which the State may at any time 
draw, constitute the best school fund; to diffuse wealth so 
that the masses may enjoy the luxury of learning is the 
best way to provide for colleges. 

SOME OBJECTIONS. 

IT will be said: If the public land is to be morselled out 
in this way, what is to be done for stock ranches and 
sheep farms? There will be the unused land, the public 
commons. Let the large herds and flocks keep upon that, 
moving farther along as it is needed for settlement. But 
there would be plenty of stock kept on eighty-acre or even 
forty-acre farms. In Belgium each six-acre farmer has 
his cow or two of the best breed, and kept in the best 
condition. 

And it may be said: There is some land which requires 
extensive work for its reclamation. Capital cannot be 
induced to undertake this work if the land be given away 
in small pieces. But if capital cannot, labour can. The 
most difficult reclamation in the world—that of turning 
the shifting sands of the French sea-coast into gardens 
has been done by ten- and twelve-acre farmers. Observe 
that it is proposed to give the lands only to actual settlers. 
Is there any of our land which requires for its reclama 
tion greater capital than that involved in the labour of 
sixteen men to the square mile, working to make them 
selves homes? The cost of reclaiming the swamp lands 
of California, which has been made an excuse for giving 
them away by the hundred thousand acres, does not in 
most cases equal the cost of the fencing required on the 
uplands. Let men be sure that they are working for them- 

 TKUE LAND POLICY 101 

selves, give them a little stake in the general prosperity, 
and labour will combine intelligently and economically, 
enough. 

HOW SETTLEMENT WOULD GO ON. 

UNDER such a policy as this, settlement would go on regu 
larly and thoroughly. Population would not in the same 
time spread over as much ground as under the present 
policy; but what it did spread over would be well settled 
and well cultivated. There would be no necessity for 
building costly railroads to connect settlers with a mar 
ket. The market would accompany settlement. No one 
would go out into the wilderness, to brave all the hardships 
and discomforts of the solitary frontier life; but with the 
foremost line of settlement would go church and school- 
house and lecture-room. The ill-paid, overworked me 
chanic of the city could find a home on the soil, where 
he would not have to abandon all the comforts of civili 
sation, but where there would be society enough to make 
life attractive, and where the wants of his neighbours 
would give a market for his surplus labour until his land 
began to produce; and to tell those who complain of want 
of employment and low wages to make for themselves 
homes on the public domain would then be no idle taunt. 
Consider, too, the general gain from this mode of set 
tlement. How much of our labour is now given to trans 
portation, and wasted in various ways, because of the scat 
tering of our population which land grabbing has caused ? 

SOMETHING STILL MORE RADICAL NEEDED. 

BUT still the adoption of such a policy would affect only 
the land that is left us. It would be preventive, not reme- 

 102 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

dial. It would still leave the great belts granted to rail 
roads, the vast estates such as those with which California 
is cursed, and the large bodies of land which everywhere 
have been made the subject of speculation. It would 
leave, moreover, still in full force, the tendency which is 
concentrating the ownership of the land in a few hands 
in the older settled States. And further than this, I 
hardly think, agitate as we may, that we can secure the 
adoption of such a preventive policy until we can do some 
thing to make the monopolisation of land unprofitable. 

What we want, therefore, is something which shall de 
stroy the tendency to the aggregation of land, which shall 
break up present monopolisation, and which shall prevent 
(by doing away with the temptation) future monopolisa 
tion. And as arbitrary and restrictive laws are always 
difficult to enforce, we want a measure which shall be 
equal, uniform and constant in its operation; a measure 
which will not restrict enterprise, which will not curtail 
production, and which will not offend the natural sense 
of justice. 

When our 40,000,000 of people have to raise $800,000,- 
000 per year for public purposes1 we cannot have any diffi 
culty in discovering such a remedy, in the adjustment of 
taxation. 

A LESSON FROM THE PAST. 

LET us turn for a moment from the glare of the Nine 
teenth Century to the darkness of mediaeval times. The 
spirit of the Feudal System dealt far more wisely with 
the land than the system which has succeeded it, and rude 
outcome of a barbarous age though it was, we may, remem- 

1 Estimate of Commissioner Wells. 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 103 

bering the difference of times and conditions, go back to 
it for many valuable lessons. The Feudal System an 
nexed duties to privileges. In theory, at least, protection 
was the corollary of allegiance, and honour brought with 
it the obligation to a good life and noble deeds, while the 
ownership of land involved the necessity of bearing the 
public expenses. One portion of the land, allotted to the 
Crown, defrayed the expenses of the State; out of the 
profits of another portion, allotted to the military tenants, 
the army was provided and maintained; the profits of a 
third portion, given to religious uses, supported the Church 
and relieved the sick, the indigent and the wayworn, while 
there was a fourth portion, the commons, of which no 
man was master, but which was free to all the people. 
The great debt, the grinding taxation, which now falls 
on the labouring classes of England, are but the results of 
a departure from this system. Before Henry VIII. sup 
pressed the monasteries and enclosed the commons there 
were no poor laws in England and no need for any; until 
the Crown lands were got rid of there was no necessity 
for taxation for the support of the Government; until the 
military tenants shirked the condition on which they had 
been originally permitted to reap the profits of landowner- 
ship, England could at any time put an army in the field 
without borrowing and without taxation; and a recent 
English writer has estimated that had the feudal tenures 
been continued, England would have now had at her com 
mand a completely appointed army of six hundred thou 
sand men, without the cost of a penny to the public trea 
sury or to the labouring classes. Had this system been con 
tinued the vast war expenses of England would have come 
from the surplus wealth of those who make war; the ex 
penses of government would have borne upon the classes 
who direct the Government; and the deep gangrene of 

 104 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

pauperism, which perplexes the statesman and baffles the 
philanthropist, would have had no existence. England 
would have been stronger, richer, happier. Why should 
we not go back to the old system, and charge the expenses 
of government upon our lands? 

If we do, we shall go far towards breaking up land mo 
nopoly and all its evils, and towards counteracting the 
causes now so rapidly concentrating wealth in a few hands. 
We shall raise our revenues by the most just and the most 
simple means, and with the least possible burden upon 
production. 

TAXATION OF LAND FAtLS ONLY ON ITS OWNER. 

THERE is one peculiarity in a land tax. With a few tri 
fling exceptions of no practical importance it is the only 
tax which must be paid by the holder of the thing taxed. 
If we impose a tax upon money loaned, the lender will 
charge it to the borrower, and the borrower must pay it, 
otherwise the money will be sent out of the country for 
investment, and if the borrower uses it in his business 
he, in his turn, must charge it to his customers or his 
business becomes unprofitable. If we impose a tax upon 
buildings, those who use them must pay it, as otherwise 
the erection of buildings becomes unprofitable, and will 
cease until rents become high enough to pay the regular 
profit on the cost of building and the tax besides. But 
not so with land. Land is not an article of production. 
Its quantity is fixed. No matter how little you tax it there 
will be no more of it; no matter how much you tax it 
there will be no less. It can neither be removed nor made 
scarce by cessation of production. There is no possible 
way in which owners of land can shift the tax upon the 

 TBUE LAND POLICY 105 

user. And BO while the effect of taxation upon all other 
things is to increase their value, and thus to make the 
consumer pay the tax—the effect of a tax upon land is 
to reduce its value—that is, its selling price, as it reduces 
the profit of its ownership without reducing its supply. 
It will not, however, reduce its renting price. The same 
amount of rent will be paid; but a portion of it will now 
go to the State instead of to the landlord. And were we 
to impose upon land a tax equal to the whole annual profit 
of its ownership, land would be worth nothing and might 
in many cases be abandoned by its owners. But the users 
would still have to pay as much as before—paying in 
taxes what they formerly paid as rent. And reversely, if 
we were to reduce or take off the taxes on land, the owner, 
not the user, would get the benefit. Rents would be no 
higher, but would leave more profit, and the value of land 
would be more. 

LAND TAXATION THE BEST TAXATION. 

THE best tax is that which comes nearest to filling the 
three following conditions: 

That it bear as lightly as possible upon production. 

That it can be easily and cheaply collected, and cost 
the people as little as possible in addition to what it yields 
the Government. 

That it bear equally—that is, according to the ability 
to pay. 

The tax upon land better fulfils these conditions than 
any tax it is possible to impose. 

1.—As we have seen, it does not bear at all upon produc 
tion—it adds nothing to prices, and does not affect the 
cost of living. 

 106 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

2.—As it does not add to prices, it costs the people noth 
ing in addition to what it yields the Government; while 
as land cannot be hid and cannot be moved, it can be col 
lected with more ease and certainty, and with less expense 
than any other tax. 

3.—A tax upon the value of land is the most equal of 
all taxes, not that it is paid by all in equal amounts, or 
even in equal amounts upon equal means, but because the 
value of land is something which belongs to all, and in 
taxing land values we are merely taking for the use of the 
community something which belongs to the community, 
which by the necessities of our social organisation we are 
obliged to permit individuals to hold. 

Of course, in speaking of the value of land, I mean the 
value of the land itself, not the value of any improvement 
which has been made upon it—I mean what I believe is 
sometimes called in England the unearned value of land. 

From its very nature it must be apparent that property 
in land differs essentially from other property, and if the 
principles I have endeavoured to state in the third section 
of this paper are correct, it must be evident that it is 
not unjust to impose taxes upon land values which are not 
imposed on other property. But as the proposition may 
be somewhat startling, it may be worth while to dwell a 
little on this point. 

OF THE JUSTICE OF TAXING LAND. 

HEEE is a lot in the central part of San Francisco, which, 
irrespective of the building upon it, is worth $100,000. 
What gives that value? Not what its owner has done,1 

1 Though he may have done some part, aa in grading, etc. 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 107 

but the fact that 150,000 people have settled around it. 
This lot yields its owner $10,000 annually. Where does 
this $10,000 come from? Evidently from the earnings 
of the workers of the community, for it can come from no 
where else. 

Here is a lot on the outskirts. It is in the same condi 
tion in which nature left it. Intrinsically it is worth 
no more than when there were but a hundred people at 
Yerba Buena Cove. Then it was worth nothing. Now 
that there are 150,000 people here and more coming, it is 
worth $3000. That is, its owner can command $3000 
worth of the labour or of the wealth of the community. 
What does he give for this? Nothing; the land was there 
before he was. 

Suppose a community like that of San Francisco, in 
which land, though in individual hands as now, has no 
value. Suppose, then, that all at once the land was given 
a value of, say, $150,000,000, which is about the present 
value of land in San Francisco. What would be the effect? 
That a tax, of which $150,000,000 is the capitalised value, 
would be levied upon the whole community for the benefit 
of a portion. There would be no more in the community 
than before, and no greater means of producing wealth. 
But of that wealth, beyond the share which they formerly 
had, the landowners would now command $150,000,000. 
That is, there would be $150,000,000 less for other people 
who were not landholders. 

And does not this consideration of the nature and effect 
of land values go far to explain the puzzling fact that not 
withstanding all the economies in production and distri 
bution which a dense population admits, just as a com 
munity increases in population and wealth, so does the 
reward of the labourer decrease and poverty deepen? 

One hundred men settle in a new place. Land has at 

 108 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

first little or no value. The net result of their labour is 
divided pretty equally between them. Each one gets pretty 
nearly the full value of his contribution to the general 
stock. The community becomes 100,000. Land has be 
come valuable, its value perhaps aggregating as much as 
the value of all other property. The production of the 
community may now be more per capita for each indi 
vidual who works, but before the division is made, one 
half of the product must go to the landholders. How 
then can the labourer get so much as he could in the small 
community ? 

Now in this view of the matter—considering land values 
as an indication of the appropriation (though doubtless 
the necessary appropriation) of the wealth of all; consid 
ering land rentals as a tax upon the labour of the com 
munity, is not a tax upon land values the most just and 
the most equal tax that can be levied? Should we not 
take that which rightfully belongs to the whole before we 
take that which rightfully belongs to the individual? 
Should we not tax this tax upon labour before we tax 
productive labour itself? 

That the value of our land, even the "necessary value" 
which it would have when stripped of speculative value, 
would easily bear the whole burden of taxation, there 
can be no doubt. The statistics are too confused and 
too unreliable to enable us to judge accurately of the value 
of land as compared with the value of other property; 
but we have high authority for the belief that the value 
of our land is equal to the value of all other property, 
including the improvements upon it. The New York 
Commissioners for the Kevision of the Kevcnue Laws— 
David A. Wells, Edwin Dodge and George W. Cuyler, the 
first named of whom, as United States Special Commis 
sioner of the Kevenue, has had better opportunities for 

 TEUE LAND POLICY 109 

studying all matters connected with taxation than any 
other man in the United States—say in their report, ren 
dered this year: "A careful consideration and study of the 
nature and classification of property inclines the Com 
missioners to indorse the correctness of an opinion which 
appears to have been originally proposed by a financial 
writer of New York [George Opdyke] as far back as 1851, 
viz.: 'That universally the market value of the aggregate 
of land and that of the aggregate of productive capital are 
equal.'"1 

And it may be here remarked that these New York Com 
missioners in their elaborate report recommend the total 
abolition of the tax on personal property on the ground 

1 By " productive capital" Opdyke means all property other than land. 
In his Treatise on Political Economy he says: " The statistics presented 
by assessments of property for the purposes of taxation invariably exhibit 
the estimated value of land and its meliorations under the head of ' real 
estate,' and the estimated value of all other productive capital nnder the 
head of 'personal estate.' Thus divided, we may readily infer that the 
value of real estate greatly exceeds that of personal estate, and so these 
statistics invariably indicate. But if we take the estimate for any given 
village, town or city, and from the gross value of the real estate deduct 
the valne of the buildings, and add to it the personal estate, we shall 
then find them equal, provided the assessment has been correctly made, 
which, by the way, very rarely occurs." 

After citing examples from New York and Cincinnati, he goes on to 
say: "It is thus of all other cities, towns and villages throughout the 
civilized world; and it is thus in all agricultural districts, but in these 
the land and its meliorations are so much more intimately blended that 
we cannot perceive the facts so readily. The truth is, the market valne 
of land is merely the reflection of the value of the productive capital 
placed upon it and its immediate vicinity. It has no real value of its 
own; it costs nothing to produce; but since the laws have endowed it 
with the vital principle of wealth by subjecting it to individual owner 
ship, it can no longer be obtained without giving in exchange for it an 
equivalent portion of the capital present and designed to concur with it 
in the production of wealth." 

 110 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

(which has been proved in every State in the Union, 
and, in fact, by every nation of ancient or modern times) 
that it is utterly impossible to collect it with any degree 
of fulness and anything like fairness, and that the at 
tempt to do so results in injury both to the material and 
the moral interests of the community. They propose in 
stead of the tax on personal property, to tax every indi 
vidual on an amount three times as great as the annual 
rental of the house or place of business he occupies, and 
present a strong array of reasons to show that this would 
be a much more equitable and productive mode of taxa 
tion. Better still, for the reasons I have given, to abandon 
the attempt to tax personal property or anything in lieu 
of it, and to put the bulk of taxation entirely on land 
values. 

Nevertheless, after all that can be said, it must be con 
fessed that there would be some slight injustice in doing 
so. I had ten thousand dollars, let us say, which I might 
have put out at high interest, or invested in my business. 
Supposing the existing policy would be continued, I bought 
land with it, calculating that in a few years, when popu 
lation became greater, people would be glad to buy it of 
me for a much higher price, or give me one fourth of the 
crop for the privilege of cultivating it. You now im 
pose taxation, which will lower the value of my land. If 
you do this, you make my speculation less profitable than 
others I might have gone into, and thus do me injustice, 
for you gave me no notice. 

This is true, and it is this consideration which makes 
men like John Stuart Mill shrink from the practical ap 
plication of deductions from their own doctrines, and pro 
pose that in resuming their ownership of the land of Eng 
land, the people of England shall pay its present proprie 
tors not only its actual value, but also the present value 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 111 

of its prospective increase in value. But if we once do a 
public wrong, we can never right it without doing some 
body injustice. England sought to right the wrong of 
slavery without injustice to the slaveholders who had in 
vested their capital in human flesh and blood. She suc 
ceeded by making them pecuniary compensation; but in 
doing this she did a worse injustice to her own white 
slaves on whom the burden of the payment has been im 
posed. And by shrinking from doing this slight injustice 
which would affect but very few people in the community, 
and those most able to stand it, we continue a ten thou 
sandfold greater injustice; and the longer we delay action, 
the greater will be the injustice which we must do. 

OF SOME EXEMPTIONS, AND SOME ADDITIONS. 

FOB the purpose of making it still more sure that taxation 
should not bear heavily upon any one; for the purpose 
of still further counteracting the tendency to the con 
centration of wealth, and for the purpose of securing as 
far as possible to every citizen an interest in the soil, 
there should be a uniform exemption to a small amount 
made to each landholder—perhaps a smaller amount in 
the cities, where land is only used for residences and busi 
ness purposes, than in the country, where labour is di 
rectly applied to the land. Those whose land did not ex 
ceed in value this minimum would have no taxes to pay; 
those whose land did, would pay upon the surplus. This 
would reverse the present effect of our revenue system, 
and tend to make the holding of land in large bodies less 
profitable than the holding of it in small bodies. 

And while, perhaps, it might not be wise to attempt to 
limit the accumulations of any individual during Ms life- 

 112 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

time, or at any rate it is not yet necessary to try the ex 
periment, tliere should be a very heavy duty, amounting to 
a considerable part of the whole, levied upon the estates 
of deceased persons, and in the case of intestates the 
whole should escheat to the State, where there were no 
heirs of the first or second degree. 

There is still another source from which a large reve 
nue might be harmlessly drawn—license taxes upon such 
businesses as it is public policy to restrict and discourage, 
such as liquor selling, the keeping of gambling houses 
(where this cannot be prevented), etc. All other taxes 
of whatever kind or nature, whether National, State, 
County, or Municipal, might then be swept away. 

THE EFFECTS OF SUCH A CHANGE. 

CONSIDER the effects of the adoption of such a system: 

The mere holder of land would be called on to pay just 
as much taxes as the user of land. The owner of a vacant 
city lot would have to pay as much for the privilege of 
keeping other people off it till he wanted to use it, as his 
neighbour who has a fine house upon his lot, and is either 
using or deriving rent from it. The monopoliser of agri 
cultural land would be taxed as much as though his land 
were covered with improvements, with crops and with stock. 
Land prices would fall; land speculation would receive 
its death-blow; land monopolisation would no longer pay. 
Millions and millions of acres from which settlers are now 
shut out would be abandoned by their present owners, or 
sold to settlers on nominal terms. It is only in rare cases 
that it would pay any one to get land before he wanted 
to use it, so that those who really wanted to use land 
would find it easy to get. 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 113 

The whole weight of taxation would be lifted from pro 
ductive industry. The million dollar manufactory, and 
the needle of the seamstress, the mechanic's cottage, and 
the grand hotel, the farmer's plough, and the ocean steam 
ship, would be alike untaxed. All would be free to buy 
or sell, to make or save, unannoyed by the tax-gatherer. 

Imagine this country with all taxes removed from pro 
duction and exchange! How demand would spring up; 
how trade would increase; what a powerful stimulus would 
be applied to every branch of industry; what an enormous 
development of wealth would take place. Imagine this 
country free of taxation, with its unused land free to 
those who would use it! Would there be many industrious 
men walking our streets, or tramping over our roads in 
the vain search for employment? Would we hear much 
of stagnation in business, and of "over production" of 
the things that millions of us want? Consider the enor 
mous gain which would result from leaving capital and 
labour, untrammelled by tax or restriction, to seek the 
most remunerative fields; the enormous saving which 
would result from the settling of people near each other, 
as they would settle, if any one could get enough unused 
land for his needs, and it would pay nobody to get any 
more. 

Consider the effects of this policy on the distribution of 
wealth—directly, by reversing the effect of taxation— 
which is now to make the poor poorer, and the rich richer; 
indirectly, by freeing and cheapening land, and thus put 
ting labour in a position to make better terms with capital. 
And consider how equalisation in the distribution of wealth 
would react on production—how it would lessen the great 
army of involuntary idlers; how it would increase the 
vigour and industry and skill of workers; for poorly re 
warded labour is poor labour all the world over, and the 

 114 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

greater its reward, the greater the efficiency of labour. 
Consider, too, the moral effects: Sharp alternations of 
wealth and poverty breed vice and crime, as surely as they 
breed misery. Personal independence is the foundation 
of all the virtues. Deep poverty brutalises men. Where 
it exists, the preacher will preach in vain; and the philan 
thropist will toil in vain; they are dumping their good 
words and good deeds into such a Slough of Despond as 
Pilgrim saw. 

WHO WOULD GAIN AND WHO WOULD LOSE. 

THAT the policy proposed would be to the advantage of 
all who do not hold land is clear enough. But it must 
not be imagined that all who hold land would lose. On 
the contrary, the large majority of landholders would be 
gainers. Whether a landholder would gain or lose, would 
depend upon whether his interest as a landholder, which 
would be adversely affected, was greater or less than his 
other interests, which would be beneficially affected. The 
man who owns a house and lot of equal value would have 
less taxes to pay if taxation were taken off of buildings 
and put on land, as the aggregate value of land is greater 
than that of buildings. His homestead would sell for less 
than before, but the money it sold for would buy just as 
good a house and lot as before; so that, if his intention 
is to always keep a homestead, he would not lose any 
thing by the shrinkage in its value; or even if it was not, 
he would not have to keep it long before his gain on taxes 
would make up for the loss in value. While, if he was 
a mechanic, engaged in or connected with any of the 
building trades, he would gain in more constant work and 
better wages by the stimulus which the exemption of im- 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 116 

provements from taxation, and the reduction in the value 
of land would give to building. Or if he kept a store, or 
was engage'd in any business or profession, he would gain 
by the quickened growth and increased activity of the 
community. 

And if taxes were removed from everything but land 
(with the exceptions and exemptions I have before indi 
cated) the gain would be largely greater. Let the farmer, 
the mechanic, the manufacturer, or the business man, who 
is also a landowner, calculate how much he pays of the 
taxes which enter into the cost of everything he buys, or 
in any way uses, and how much he loses by the restrictive 
effect which those taxes have upon all industry and busi 
ness. Then let him set against this amount, which he 
now pays and loses, the additional amount which he would 
pay as taxes on land, or which he would lose by the re 
duction of its value, were all taxes placed upon land. 
Did they make this calculation, three out of every four 
of those who own land would see they would be gainers. 
For as yet the class whose other interests are subordinate 
to their interest in the high value of land is really small. 
And it must be remembered that were our whole revenue 
raised by a direct land tax, the amount taken from the peo 
ple in order to give the same amount to the Government 
would be very much smaller than now, and that there would 
be a positive increase in wealth, a large share of which 
would go to the landowners who would have additional 
taxes to pay. 

WHAT CAN BE DONE AT ONCE. 

THE more the matter is considered, the more, I think, it 
will appear that all our taxation, or at least the largest part 
of it, should be placed upon land values. By doing so 

 116 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

we would substitute the best possible revenue system for 
our present cumbrous, unjust, wasteful and oppressive 
modes of taxation; we would, without resort to special 
and arbitrary laws, prevent and break up land monopolisa 
tion, and we would, at the same time, and in the same 
simple, just way, do a great deal to counteract the alarm 
ing tendency to the concentration of wealth in a few 
hands, which is now so apparent. 

Nevertheless, the application of this remedy is not yet 
practicable. We are so used to look upon land as upon 
other property, so accustomed to consider its enhancement 
in value as a public gain, that it will take some time to 
educate public opinion up to the proper point to permit 
this; and even then there will be constitutional difficulties 
to be removed. 

But in the meantime, we can do something to check the 
progress of land monopolisation, and even to break it up. 
So far as the General Government is concerned, we can 
insist that no more land grants be made on any pretext 
or for any purpose; but that all of the public domain still 
left to us shall be reserved for the small farms of actual 
settlers. We can go further, and demand that something 
be done to open to settlers the great belts which have 
been already handed over to railroad corporations. These 
grants, in the first place, outraged natural justice, and 
Congress had no more right to make them than Catherine 
of Eussia had to give away her subjects to her para 
mours and courtiers, or than the Pope had to divide the 
Southern Hemisphere between the Spanish and the Portu 
guese. We should be perfectly justified in taking this 
land back, throwing it open to settlers upon Government 
terms, and paying the companies the Government price. 
Such an operation would largely increase our debt, but 
the money would be well expended. If this cannot be 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 117 

done, the land can at least be immediately surveyed, so 
that settlers can find the Government sections, and the 
right of the Companies to land reserved for them be de 
clared subject to State taxation. 

In this monopoly-cursed State of ours, we may at once 
do a great deal to free our land. By restricting posses 
sory rights to the maximum amount allowed by the Gen 
eral Government to pre-emptors, and by demanding pay 
ment for the large tracts now held by speculators under 
five-dollar certificates, or the payment of twenty per cent, 
of the purchase money, the Legislature could, in the first 
week of its session, throw open to settlers some millions 
of acres now monopolised.1 And millions of acres more 
would be forced into market if its holders were only com 
pelled to pay upon their land the same rate of taxation 
levied upon other property. The Board of Equalisation 
created by the last Legislature is endeavouring to secure 
the proper assessment of these large tracts; but the law 
under which it works is defective, and the Constitutional 
requirement of the election of County Assessors is very 
much in the way of a thorough reform, perhaps makes 
it impossible. But as under our Constitution, as inter 
preted by the Supreme Court, all property must be taxed 
equally, we can do no more than this to break up large 
estates until the Constitution is amended. 

THE NECESSITY OF A RADICAL REMEDY. 

THERE are many who will think that if we do these things, 
or even if we merely do something to check the grosser 

1 Under the decisions of the Department, land within the exterior limits 
of Spanish grants, and included in railroad reservations, does not go to 
the Railroad Company when the grant is confined to its real limits, or is 
rejected, but becomes open to settlement. 

 118 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

abuses in the disposition of our new land, we shall have 
done all that is necessary. 1 wish to call the attention of 
those who thus think to a certain class of facts: 

There is a problem which must present itself to every 
mind which dwells upon the industrial history of the pres 
ent century; a problem into which all our great social, 
industrial, and even political questions run—which already 
perplexes us in the United States; which presses with still 
greater force in the older countries of Europe; which, in 
fact, menaces the whole civilised world, and seems like a 
very riddle of the Sphinx, which fate demands of modern 
civilisation, and which not to answer is to be destroyed— 
the problem of the proper distribution of wealth. 

How is it that the increase of productive power and 
the accumulation of wealth seem to bring no benefit, no 
relief to the working classes; that the condition of the 
labourer is better in the new and poor country than in 
the old and rich country; that in a country like Great 
Britain, whose productive power has been so enormously 
increased, whose surplus wealth is lent to all the world, 
and whose surplus productions are sent to every market, 
pauperism is increasing in England, while one third of 
the families of Scotland live in a single room each, and 
one third more in two rooms each ?1 How is it, though 
within the century steam machinery has added to the 
productive force of Great Britain a power greater than 
that of the manual labour of the whole human race, that 
the toil of mere infants is cruelly extorted—that cultiva 
tion in the richest districts is largely carried on by gangs 
of women and children, in which mere babies are worked 
under the lash; that little girls are to be found wielding 
sledge hammers, and little boys toiling night and day in 

» Census of 1861. See Journal of Statistical Society, vol. 32. 

 TBUE LAND POLICY 119 

the fearful heat of glass furnaces, or working to the ex 
treme limit of human endurance in fetid garrets and damp 
cellars, at the most monotonous employments—children 
who work so early and work so hard that they know noth 
ing of God, have never heard of the Bible, call a violet a 
pretty bird, and when shown a cow in a picture, think it 
must be a lion;1 children whose natural protectors have 
been changed by brutalising poverty and the want that 
knows no law, into the most cruel of taskmasters? 

Why is it that in the older parts of the United States 
we are rapidly approximating to the same state of things? 
Why is it that, with all our labour-saving machinery, all 
the new methods of increasing production which our fer 
tile genius is constantly discovering—with all our rail- 
reads, and steamships, and power looms, and sewing ma 
chines, our mechanics cannot secure a reduction of two 
hours in their daily toil; that the general condition of the 
working classes is becoming worse instead of better; and 
the employment of women and children at hard labour 
is extending; that though wealth is accumulating, and lux 
ury increasing, it is becoming harder and harder for the 
poor man to live? 

A very Sodom's apple seems this "progress" of ours to 
the classes that have the most need to progress. We have 
been "developing the country" fast enough. We have 
been building railroads, and peopling the wilderness, and 
extending our cities. But what is the gain? We count 
np more millions of people, and more hundreds of millions 
of taxable property; our great cities are larger, our mil 
lionaires are more numerous, and their wealth is more 
enormous; but are the masses of the people any better 
off? Is it not so notoriously true that we accept the state- 

1 Report Children's Employment Commission. 

 120 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

ment without question, that just as population increases 
and wealth augments—just in proportion as we near the 
goal for which we strive so hard, poverty extends and 
deepens, and it becomes harder and harder for a poor man 
to make a living? 

That the startling change for the worse that has come 
over the condition of the masses of the United States in 
the last ten years is attributable in some part to the 
destruction caused by the war, and in much greater part 
to stupid, reckless, wicked legislation, there can be no 
doubt. The whole economic policy of the General Gov 
ernment—the management of the debt and of the cur 
rency, the imposition of a tariff which is oppressing all 
our industry, and actually killing many branches of it, the 
immense donations to corporations—has tended with irre 
sistible force, as though devised for the purpose, to make 
a few the richer and the many the poorer; to swell the 
gains of a few rich capitalists, and make hundreds of 
thousands of willing workmen stand with idle hands. 

But beneath and beyond these special causes, we may 
see, as could be seen before the war had given the money 
power an opportunity and excuse for wresting the ma 
chinery of Government to its own selfish ends, the work 
ing of some general tendency, observable all over the world, 
and most obvious in the countries which have made the 
greatest advances in productive power and in wealth. 

What is the cause or the causes of this tendency? If 
we say, as many of the economists say, that it is over 
population in England—that the working classes get mar 
ried too early and have too many children—what is it in 
the United States ? If we say that in the United States it 
is solely due to special conditions, what is it in Australia 
and other countries of widely differing circumstances ? 

Now, although there are undoubtedly other general 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 121 

causes, such as the tendency of modern processes to require 
greater capital and rarer administrative ability, to offer 
greater facilities for combination, and give more and 
more advantage to him who can work on a. large scale; 
yet if the principles previously stated are correct, are we 
not led irresistibly to the conclusion that the main cause 
of this general tendency to the unequal division of wealth 
lies in the pursuance of a wrong policy in regard to land 
—in permitting a few to take and to keep that which 
belongs to all; in treating the power of appropriating 
labour as though it were in itself labour-produced wealth? 
Is not this mistake sufficient of itself to explain most of 
the perplexing phenomena to which I have alluded ? 

When land becomes fully monopolised as it is in Eng 
land and Ireland—when the competition between land- 
users becomes greater than the competition between land 
owners, whatever increase of wealth there is must go to 
the landowner or to the capitalist; the labourer gets noth 
ing but a subsistence. Amid lowing herds he never tastes 
meat; raising bounteous crops of the finest wheat, he lives 
on rye or potatoes; and where steam has multiplied by 
hundreds and by thousands manufacturing power, he is 
clad in rags, and sends his children to work while they 
are yet infants. No matter what be the increase in the 
fertility of the soil, no matter what the increase in pro 
duct which beneficent inventions cause, no matter even 
if good laws succeed bad laws, as when free trade suc 
ceeds protection, as has been the case in Great Britain, all 
the advantage goes to the landowner; none to the landless 
labourer, for the ownership of the land gives the power 
of taking all that labour upon it will produce, except 
enough to keep the labourer in condition to work, and 
anything more that is given is charity. And so increase 
in productive power is greater wealth to the landowner— 

 122 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

more splendour in his drawing rooms, more horses in his 
stables and hounds in his kennels, finer yachts, and pic 
tures and books—more command of everything that makes 
life desirable; but to the labourer it is not an additional 
crust. 

And where land monopolisation has not gone so far, 
steadily with the increase of wealth goes on the increase 
of land values. Every successive increase represents so 
much which those who do not produce may take from the 
results of production, measures a new tax upon the whole 
community for the benefit of a portion. Every succes 
sive increase indicates no addition to wealth, but a 
greater difference in the division of wealth, making one 
class the richer, the other the poorer, and tending still 
further to increase the inequality in the distribution of 
wealth—on the one side, by making the aggregations of 
capital larger and its power thus greater, and on the other, 
by increasing the number of those who cannot buy land 
for themselves, but must labour for or pay rent to others, 
and while thus swelling the number of those who must 
make terms with capital for permission to work, at the 
same time reducing their ability to make fair terms in 
the bargain. 

Need we go any further to find the root of the difficulty ? 
to discover the point at which we must commence the 
reform which will make other reforms possible? And 
while, on the one hand, the recognition of the main cause 
of the inequality in the distribution of wealth, which is 
becoming a disease of our civilisation, condemns the wild 
dreams of impracticable socialisms, and the impossible 
theories of governmental interference to restrict accumu 
lation and competition and to limit the productive power 
of capital, by discovering a just and an easy remedy; on 
the other hand, the spread of such theories should ad- 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 123 

monish those who consider the remedy of a common-sense 
policy in regard to land as too radical, of the necessity 
of making some attempt at reform. This great problem 
of the more equal distribution of wealth must in some way 
be solved, if our civilisation, like those that went before 
it, is not to breed seeds of its own destruction. In one 
way or another the attempt must be made—if not in 
one way, then in another. The spread of education, the 
growth of democratic sentiment, the weakening of the in 
fluences which lead men to accept the existing condition 
of things as divinely appointed, insure that, and the gen 
eral uneasiness of labour, the growth of trade-unionism, 
the spread of such societies as the International prove it! 
The terrible struggle of the Paris commune was but such 
an attempt1 And in the light of burning Paris we may 
see how it may be that this very civilisation of ours, this 
second Tower of Babel, which some deem reaches so far 
towards heaven that we can plainly see there is no God 
there, may yet crumble and perish. How prophetic, in 
view of those recent events, seem the words of Macaulay, 
when, alluding to Gibbon's argument that modern civili 
sation could not be overturned as was the ancient, he 

1 And this French struggle also shows the conservative influence of the 
diffusion of landed property. The Radicals of Paris were beaten by the 
small proprietors of the provinces. Had the lands of Prance been in the 
hands of a few, as the. first revolution found it, the raising of the rod flag 
on the HStel de Ville would have been the signal for a Jacquerie in every 
part of the country. So conscious are the extreme reds of the conservative 
influence of property in land that they have for a long time condemned as 
a fatal mistake the law of the first Republic which provided for the equal 
distribution of land among heirs, not because it has not improved the 
condition of the peasantry, but because the improvement in their con 
dition and the interest which their possession of land gives them in the 
maintenance of order dispose them to oppose the violent remedies which 
the workmen of the cities think necessary. 

 124 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY 

declared that in the very heart of our great cities, in the 
shadow of palaces, libraries and colleges, poverty and igno 
rance might produce a race of Huns fiercer than any who 
followed Attila, and of Vandals more destructive than 
those led by Genseric. 

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF THE NATION. 

FIVE years must yet pass before we can celebrate the hun 
dredth anniversary of the Kepublic. A century ago, as 
the result of nearly two hundred years of colonisation, 
the scarce three million people of the thirteen colonies 
but fringed the Atlantic seaboard with their settlements. 
Pittsburg was to them the Far West, and the Mississippi 
as little known as is now the great river that through a 
thousand miles of Arctic solitudes rolls sluggishly to its 
mouth in our newly acquired Northern possessions. 

Looking back over the history of the great nations from 
whom we derive our blood, our language and our institu 
tions, and a hundred years seems but a small span. A 
hundred years after the foundation of the city, and Eome 
had scarce begun her conquering mission; a hundred years 
after the Norman Invasion, and the England of the first 
Plantagenet differed but little from the England of the 
Bastard. 

How wondrous seems our growth when compared with 
the past! So wondrous, so unprecedented, that when the 
slow lapse of years shall have shortened the perspective, and 
when, in obedience to altered conditions, the rate of in 
crease shall have slackened, it will seem as though in our 
time the very soil of America must have bred men. 

We have subdued a continent in a shorter time than 
many a palace and cathedral of the Old World was a-build- 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 125 

ing; in less than a century we have sprung to a first rank 
among the nations; our population is increasing in a 
steady ratio; and we are carrying westward the centre of 
power and wealth, of luxury, learning and refinement, 
with more rapidity than it ever moved before. 

We look with wonder upon the past. When we turn 
to the future, imagination fails, for sober reason with her 
cold deductions goes far beyond the highest nights that 
fancy can dare, and we turn dazzled and almost awe 
struck from the picture that is mirrored. Judging from 
the past, in all human probability there will be on this 
continent, a century from now, four or five, perhaps five 
or six, hundred million English-speaking people, stretch 
ing from the isothermal line which marks the northern 
limit of the culture of wheat, to the southern limit of the 
semi-tropical clime—four or five hundred million people, 
with the railroad, the telegraph, and all the arts and ap 
pliances that we now have, and with all the undreamed-of 
inventions which another century such as the past will 
develop. Beside the great cities of such a people, the 
Paris of to-day will be a village, the London, a provin 
cial town, and to the political power which will grow up, 
if these people remain under one government, the great 
nations of Europe will occupy such relative positions as 
the South American States now hold to the great Republic 
of the North. 

Yet we should never forget that we have no exemption 
from the difficulties and dangers which have beset other 
peoples, though they may come to us in somwhat differ 
ent guise. The very rapidity of our growth should ad 
monish us that though we are still in our youth, our 
conditions are fast changing; the very possibilities of our 
future warn us that this is the appointed theatre upon 
which the questions that perplex the world must be worked 

 126 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

out, or fought out. What good, or what evil, we of this 
generation do, will appear in the next on an enormously 
magnified scale. The blunders that we are carelessly 
making, saying "these things will right themselves in 
time," will indeed right themselves; but how? How was 
the wrong of slavery righted in the United States? The 
whole history of mankind, with its story of fire and sword, 
of suffering and destruction, is but one continued example 
of how national blunders and crimes work themselves out. 
On the smaller scale of individual life and actions, the 
workings of Divine justice are sometimes never seen; but 
sure, though not always swift, is the Nemesis that with 
tireless feet follows every wrong-doing of a people. 

The American people have had a better chance and a 
fairer field than any nation that has gone before. Com 
ing to a new world with all the experiences of the old; 
possessed of all the knowledge and the arts of the most 
advanced of the families of men, the temperate zone of 
an immense continent lay before them, where, unembar 
rassed by previous mistakes, they might work out the 
problem of human happiness by the light of the history 
of two thousand years. Yet nobly and well as our fathers 
reared the edifice of civil and religious liberty, true ideas 
as to the treatment of land, the very foundation of all 
other institutions, seem never to have entered their minds. 
In a new country where nothing was so abundant as 
land, and where there was nothing to suggest its monopo 
lisation, the men who gave direction to our thought and 
shaped our polity shook off the idea of the divine right of 
kings without shaking off that of the divine right of 
landowners. They promulgated the grand truth that all 
men are born with equal rights to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness, without promulgating the doctrines 
in respect to land which alone could maintain those rights 

 TEUE LAND POLICY 127 

as a living reality; they instituted a form of government 
based on the theory of the independence and virtue of 
the masses of the people without imposing those restric 
tions upon land monopolisation which alone can keep the 
masses virtuous and independent. They laid the founda 
tions for a glorious house; but they laid them in the sand. 

Already we can see that the rains will come, the winds 
will blow. We see it in the increase of the renting sys 
tem in agriculture; in the massing of men in the employ 
of great manufacturers; in the necessity under which 
thousands of our citizens lie of voting, and even of speak 
ing on political matters, as their employers dictate; * in 
the marked differentiation of our people in older sections 
into the rich and the poor; in the evolution of "dangerous 
classes" in our large cities; in the growth of enormous 
individual fortunes; in the springing up of corporations 
which dwarf the States, and fairly grapple the General 
Government; in the increase of political corruption; in 
the ease with which a few great rings wrest the whole 
power of the nation to their aggrandisement. 

Go to New York, the greatest of our American cities, 
the type of what many of them must soon be, the best 
example of the condition to which the whole country is 
tending—New York, where men build marble stables for 
their horses, and an army of women crowd the streets at 
night to sell their souls for the necessities which unre 
mitting toil, such as no human being ought to endure, will 
not give them—where a hundred thousand men who ought 
to be at work are looking for employment, and a hundred 
thousand children who ought to be at school are at work. 
Notice the great blocks of warehouses, the gorgeousness 
of Broadway, the costly palaces which line the avenues. 

1 See Reports Massachusetts Bureau Labour Statistics. 

 128 CUE LAND AND LAND POLICY. 

Notice, too, the miles of brothels which flank them, the 
tenement houses, where poverty festers and vice breeds, 
and the man from the free open West turns sick at heart; 
notice in the depth of winter the barefooted, ragged chil 
dren in the press of the liveried equipages, and you will 
understand how it is that republican government has 
broken down in New York; how it is that republican gov 
ernment is impossible there; and how it is that the cru 
cial test of our institutions is yet to come. If you say 
that New York is a great seaport, with different condi 
tions from the rest of the country, go to the manufactur 
ing towns, to the other cities, and see the same character 
istics developing just in proportion to their population 
and wealth. 

And while we may see all this, we are doing our utmost 
to make land dear, giving away the public domain in 
tracts of millions of acres, drawing great belts across it 
upon which the settler cannot enter; offering a premium 
by our taxation for the concentration of landownership, 
and pressing with the whole weight of our revenue system 
in favour of the concentration of wealth. 

HOW A GEEAT PEOPLE PEEISHED. 

IN all the history of the past there is but one nation with' 
which the great nation now growing up on this continent 
can be compared; but one people which has occupied the 
position and exerted the influence which, for good or 
evil, the American people must occupy and exert—a na 
tion which has left a deeper impress upon the life of the 
race than any other nation that ever existed; whose sway 
was co-extensive with the known world; whose heroes and 
poets, and gages and orators, are still familiar names to 

 TRUE LAND POLICY 129 

us; whose literature and art still furnish us models; whose 
language has enriched every modern tongue, and though 
long dead, is still the language of science and of religion, 
and whose jurisprudence is the great mine from which 
our modern systems are wrought. That a nation so pow 
erful in arms, so advanced in the arts, should perish as 
Eome perished; that a civilisation so widely diffused should 
be buried as was the Eoman civilisation, is the greatest 
marvel which history presents. To the Koman citizen of 
the time of Augustus or the Antonines, it would have ap 
peared as incredible, as utterly impossible that Eome could 
be overwhelmed by barbarians, as to the American citizen 
of to-day it would appear impossible that the great Ameri 
can Eepublic could be conquered by the Apaches, or the 
Chinooks, our arts forgotten, and our civilisation lost. 

How did this once incredible thing happen? What 
were the hidden causes that sapped the strength and ate 
out the heart of this world-conquering power, so that it 
crumbled to pieces before the shock of barbarian hordes? 
A Eoman historian himself has told us. "Great estates 
ruined Italy!" In the land policy of Eome may be traced 
the secret of her rise, the cause of her fall. 

"To every citizen as much land as he himself may use; 
he is an enemy of the State who desires any more," was 
the spirit of the land policy which enabled Eome to as 
similate so quickly the peoples that she conquered; that 
gave her a body of citizens whose arms were a bulwark 
against every assault, and who carried her standards in 
triumph in every direction. At first a single acre consti 
tuted the patrimony of a Eoman; afterwards the amount 
was increased to three acres and a half. These were the 
heroic days of the Eepublic, when every citizen seemed 
animated by a public spirit and a public virtue which made 
the Eoman name as famous as it made the Eoman arms 

 130 OUR LAND AND LAND POLICY 

invincible; when Cincinnatus left his two-acre farm to 
hecome Dictator, and after the danger was over and the 
State was safe, returned to his plough; when Eegulus, at 
the head of a conquering army in Africa, asked to be re 
lieved, because his single slave had died, and there was 
no one to cultivate his little farm for his family. 

But, as wealth poured in from foreign conquests, and 
the lust for riches grew, the old policy was set aside. The 
Senate granted away the public domain in large tracts, 
just as our Senate is doing now; and the fusion of the little 
farms into large estates by purchase, by force and by 
fraud went on, until whole provinces were owned by two 
or three proprietors, and chained slaves had taken the 
place of the sturdy peasantry of Italy. The small farmers 
who had given her strength to Rome were driven to the 
cities, to swell the ranks of the proletarians, and become 
clients of the great families, or abroad to perish in the 
wars. There came to be but two classes—the enormously 
rich and their dependents and slaves; society thus con 
stituted bred its destroying monsters; the old virtues van 
ished, population declined, art sank, the old conquering 
race actually died out, and Rome perished, as a modern 
historian puts it, from the very failure of the crop of men. 

Centuries ago this happened, but the laws of the uni 
verse are to-day what they were then. 

I have endeavoured in this paper to group together some 
facts which show with what rapidity, and by what methods, 
the monopolisation of our land is going on; to answer 
some arguments which are advanced in its excuse; to state 
some principles which prove the matter to be of the deep 
est interest to all of us, whether we live directly by the 
Boil or not; and to suggest some remedies. 

 TKUE LAKD POLICY 131 

That land monopolisation when it reaches the point to 
which it has been carried in England and Ireland is pro 
ductive of great evils we shall probably all agree. But 
popular opinion, even in so far as any attention has been 
paid to the subject, seems to regard the danger with us 
as remote. There are few who understand how rapidly 
our land is becoming monopolised; there are fewer still 
who seem to appreciate the evils which land monopolisa 
tion is already inflicting upon us, or the nearness of the 
greater evils which it threatens. 

And so as to the remedy. There are many who will 
concede that the reckless grants of public land should 
cease, and even that the public domain should be reserved 
for actual settlers, but who will be startled by the propo 
sition to put the bulk of taxation on land exclusively. 
But the matter will bear thinking of. It is impossible to 
overestimate the importance of this land question. The 
longer it is considered, the broader does it seem to be and 
the deeper does it seem to go. It imperatively demands 
far more attention than it has received; it is worthy of 
all the attention that can be given to it. 

To properly treat so large a subject in so brief a space 
is a most difficult matter. I have merely outlined it; 
but if I have done something towards calling attention to 
the recklessness of our present land policy, and towards 
suggesting earnest thought as to what that policy should 
be, I have accomplished all I proposed. 

HENRY GEORGE. 
SAN FBANCISCO, July 27,1871. 

 THE STUDY OF 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 

J 

 THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

[A lecture delivered before the students of the University of Cali 
fornia, March 9,1877, and published in "The Popular Science Monthly," 
March, 1880.] 

I TAKE it that these lectures are intended to be more 
suggestive than didactic, and in what I shall have to 
say to you my object will be merely to induce you to think 
for yourselves. I shall not attempt to outline the laws of 
political economy, nor even, where my own views are 
strong and definite, to touch upon unsettled questions. 
But I want to show you, if I can, the simplicity and cer 
tainty of a science too generally regarded as complex and 
indeterminate, to point out the ease with which it may 
be studied, and to suggest reasons which make that study 
worthy of your attention. 

Of the importance of the questions with which political 
economy deals it is hardly necessary to speak. The sci 
ence which investigates the laws of the production and 
distribution of wealth concerns itself with matters which 
among us occupy more than nine tenths of human effort, 
and perhaps nine tenths of human thought. In its prov 
ince are included all that relates to the wages of labour 
and the earnings of capital; all regulations of trade; all 
questions of currency and finance; all taxes and public dis 
bursements—in short, everything that can in any way 
affect the amount of wealth which a community can secure, 

135 

 136 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 

or the proportion in which that wealth will be distributed 
between individuals. Though not the science of govern 
ment, it is essential to the science of government. Though 
it takes direct cognisance only of what are termed the 
selfish instincts, yet in doing so it includes the basis of all 
higher qualities. The laws which it aims to discover are 
the laws by virtue of which states wax rich and populous, 
or grow weak and decay; the laws upon which depend the 
comfort, happiness, and opportunities of our individual 
lives. And as the development of the nobler part of hu 
man nature is powerfully modified by material conditions, 
if it does not absolutely depend upon them, the laws 
sought for by political economy are the laws which at last 
control the mental and moral as well as the physical states 
of humanity. 

Clearly, this is the science which of all sciences is of 
the first importance to us. Useful and sublime as are the 
sciences which open to us the vistas of Nature—which read 
for us the story of the deep past, or search out the laws 
of our physical or mental organisation—what is their 
practical importance as compared with the science which 
deals with the conditions that alone make the cultivation 
of the others possible? Compare on this ground of prac 
tical utility the science of political economy with all others, 
and its pre-eminence almost suggests the reply of the 
Greek: "No, I cannot play the fiddle; but I can tell you 
how to make of a little village a great and glorious city!" 

How is it, then, it will naturally be asked, that a sci 
ence so important is so little regarded? Our laws per 
sistently violate its first and plainest principles, and that 
the ignorance thus exemplified is not confined to what are 
called the uneducated classes is shown by the debates in 
our legislative bodies, the decisions of our courts, the 
speeches of our party leaders, and the editorials of our 

 UNIVERSITY LECTURE 137 

newspapers. A century has elapsed since Adam Smith 
published his "Wealth of Nations," and sixty years since 
Ricardo enunciated his theory of rent. Yet not only has 
political economy received no substantial improvement 
since Ricardo, but, while thousands of new discoveries 
in other branches of human knowledge have been eagerly 
seized and generally utilised, and the most revolutionary 
conclusions of other sciences become part of the accepted 
data of thought, the truths taught by political economy 
seem to have made little real impression, and it is even 
now a matter of debate whether there is, or can be, such 
a science at all. 

This cannot be on account of the paucity of politico- 
economic literature. Enough books have been written on 
the subject within the last hundred years to fill a large 
library, while all of our great institutions of learning 
have some sort of a chair of political economy, and mat 
ters of intense public interest in which the principles of 
the science are directly involved are constantly being dis 
cussed. 

It seems to me that the reasons why political economy is 
so little regarded are referable partly to the nature of 
the science itself and partly to the manner in which it 
has been cultivated. 

In the first place, the very importance of the subjects 
with which political economy deals raises obstacles in its 
way. The discoveries of other sciences may challenge per 
nicious ideas, but the conclusions of political economy in 
volve pecuniary interests, and thus thrill directly the sen 
sitive pocket-nerve. For, as no social adjustment can exist 
without interesting a larger or smaller class in its main 
tenance, political economy at every point is apt to come 
in contact with some interest or other which regards it 
as the silversmiths of Ephesus did those who taught the 

 138 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 

uselessness of presenting shrines to Diana. Macaulay has 
well said that, if any large pecuniary interest were con 
cerned in denying the attraction of gravitation, that most 
obvious of physical facts would not lack disputers. This 
is just the difficulty that has beset and still besets the 
progress of political economy. The man who is, or who 
imagines that he is, interested in the maintenance of a 
protective tariff, may accept all your professors choose to 
tell him about the composition of the sun or the evolution 
of species, but, no matter how clearly you demonstrate the 
wasteful inutility of hampering commerce, he will not be 
convinced. And so, to the man who expects to make 
money out of a railroad-subsidy, you will in vain try to 
prove that such devices to change the natural direction of 
labour and capital must cause more loss than gain. What, 
then, must be the opposition which inevitably meets a sci 
ence that deals with tariffs and subsidies, with banking 
interests and bonded debts, with trades-unions and com 
binations of capital, with taxes and licenses and land- 
tenures ! It is not ignorance alone that offers opposition, 
but ignorance backed by interest, and made fierce by 
passions. 

Now, while the interests thus aroused furnish the in 
centive, the complexity of the phenomena with which polit 
ical economy deals makes it comparatively easy to palm off 
on the unreasoning all sorts of absurdities as political 
economy. And, when all kinds of diverse opinions are 
thus promulgated under that name, it is but natural that 
the great number of people who depend on others to save 
themselves the trouble of thinking should look upon polit 
ical economy as a field wherein any one may find what 
he pleases. But what is far worse than any amount of 
pretentious quackery is that the science even as taught 
by the masters is in large measure disjointed and indeter- 

 UNIVERSITY LECTURE 139 

minate. As laid down in the best text-books, political 
economy is like a shapely statue but half hewn from the 
rock—like a landscape, part of which stands out clear and 
distinct, but over the rest of which the mists still roll. 
This is a subject into which, in a lecture like this, I can 
not enter; but, that it is so, you may see for yourselves 
in the failure of political economy to give any clear and 
consistent answer to most important practical questions— 
such as the industrial depressions which are so marked a 
feature of modern times, and in confusions of thought 
which will be obvious to you if you carefully examine even 
the best treatises. Strength and subtilty have been 
wasted in intellectual hair-splitting and super-refinements, 
in verbal discussions and disputes, while the great high 
roads have remained unexplored. And thus has been 
given to a simple and attractive science an air of repellent 
abstruseness and uncertainty. 

And springing, as it seems to me, from the same funda 
mental cause, there has arisen an idea of political economy 
which has arrayed against it the feelings and prejudices 
of those who have most to gain by its cultivation. The 
name of political economy has been constantly invoked 
against every effort of the working classes to increase their 
wages or decrease their hours of labour. The impious 
doctrine always preached by oppressors to oppressed—the 
blasphemous dogma that the Creator has condemned one 
portion of his creatures to lives of toil and want, while 
he has intended another portion to enjoy "all the fruits 
of the earth and the fullness thereof"—has been preached 
to the working classes in the name of political economy, 
just as the "cursed-be-Ham" clergymen used to preach 
the divine sanction of slavery in the name of Christianity. 
In so far as the real turning questions of the day are 
concerned, political economy seems to be considered by 

 140 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 

most of its professors as a scientific justification of all 
that is, and by the convenient formula of supply and de 
mand they seem to mean some method which Providence 
has of fixing the rate of wages so that it can never by any 
action of the employed be increased. Nor is it merely 
ignorant pretenders who thus degrade the name and terms 
of political economy. This character has been so firmly 
stamped upon the science itself as currently held and 
taught that not even men like John Stuart Mill have been 
able to emancipate themselves. Even the intellectually 
courageous have shrunk from laying stress upon principles 
which might threaten great vested interests; while others, 
less scrupulous, have exercised their ingenuity in elimi 
nating from the science everything which could offend 
those interests. Take the best and most extensively circu 
lated text-books. While they insist upon freedom for 
capital, while they justify on the ground of utility the sel 
fish greed that seeks to pile fortune on fortune, and the 
niggard spirit that steels the heart to the wail of distress, 
what sign of substantial promise do they hold out to the 
workingman save that he should refrain from rearing 
children? 

What can we expect when hands that should offer bread 
thus hold out a stone? Is it in human nature that the 
masses of men, vaguely but keenly conscious of the injus 
tice of existing social conditions, feeling that they are 
somehow cramped and hurt, without knowing what cramps 
and hurts them, should welcome truth in this partial form; 
that they should take to a science which, as it is presented 
to them, seems but to justify injustice, to canonise selfish 
ness by throwing around it the halo of utility, and to pre 
sent Herod rather than Vincent de Paul as the typical 
benefactor of humanity? Is it to be wondered at that 
they should turn in their ignorance to the absurdities of 

 UNIVERSITY LECTUEE 141 

protection and the crazy theories generally designated by 
the name of socialism? 

I have lingered to inquire why political economy has in 
popular apprehension acquired the character of indefinite- 
ness, abstruseness, and selfishness, merely that I may be 
the better able to convince you that none of these quali 
ties properly belong to it. I want to draw you to its 
study by showing you how clear and simple and beneficent 
a science it is, or rather should be. 

Although political economy deals with various and com 
plicated phenomena, yet they are phenomena which may 
be resolved into simple elements, and which are but the 
manifestations of familiar principles. The premises from 
which it makes its deductions are truths of which we are 
all conscious and upon which in every-day life we con 
stantly base our reasoning and our actions. Its processes, 
which consist chiefly in analysis, have a like certainty, al 
though, as with all the causes of which it takes cognisance 
are at all times acting other causes, it can never predict 
exact results but only tendencies. 

And, although in the study of political economy we can 
not use that potent method of experiment by artificially 
produced conditions which is so valuable in the physical 
sciences, yet, not only may we find, in the diversity of 
human society, experiments already worked out for us, but 
there is at our command a method analogous to that of the 
chemist, in what may be called mental experiment. You 
may separate, combine, or eliminate conditions in your own 
imagination, and test in this way the working of known 
principles. This, it seems to me, is the great tool of politi 
cal economy. It is a method with which you must be fa 
miliar and doubtless use every day, though you may never 
have analysed the process. Let me illustrate what I mean 
by something which has no reference to political economy. 

 142 STUDY OP POLITICAL ECONOMY 

When I was a hoy I went down to the wharf with an 
other boy to see the first iron steamship which had ever 
crossed the ocean to our port. Now, hearing of an iron 
steamship seemed to us then a good deal like hearing of a 
leaden kite or a wooden cooking-stove. But, we had not 
been long aboard of her, before my comrade said in a tone 
of contemptuous disgust: "Pooh! I see how it is. She's 
all lined with wood; that's the reason she floats." I could 
not controvert him for the moment, but I was not satis 
fied, and, sitting down on the wharf when he left me, I set 
to work trying mental experiments. If it was the wood 
inside of her that made her float, then the more wood the 
higher she would float; and, mentally, I loaded her up 
with wood. But, as I was familiar with the process of 
making boats out of blocks of wood, I at once saw that, 
instead of floating higher, she would sink deeper. Then, 
I mentally took all the wood out of her, as we dug out our 
wooden boats, and saw that thus lightened she would float 
higher still. Then, in imagination, I jammed a hole in her, 
and saw that the water would run in and she would sink, 
as did our wooden boats when ballasted with leaden keels. 
And, thus I saw, as clearly as though I could have actually 
made these experiments with the steamer, that it was not 
the wooden lining that made her float, but her hollowness, 
or, as I would now phrase it, her displacement of water. 

Now, just such mental operations as these you doubt 
less perform every day, and in doing so you employ the 
method of imaginative experiment, which is so useful in 
the investigations of political economy. You can, in this 
way, turn around in your mind a proposition or phenome 
non and look on all sides of it, can isolate, analyse, recom- 
bine, or subject it to the action of a mental magnifying 
glass which will reveal incongruities as a reductio ad dbsur- 
dum. Let me again illustrate: 

 UNIVERSITY LECTURE 143 

Before I had ever read a line of political economy, I 
happened once to hear a long and well-put argument in 
favour of a protective tariff. Up to that time I had sup 
posed that "protection to domestic industry" was a good 
thing; not that I had ever thought out the matter, but 
that I had accepted this conclusion because I had heard 
many men whom I believed wiser than I say so. But 
this particular speaker had, so far as one of his audience 
was concerned, overshot his mark. His arguments set me 
thinking, just as when a boy my companion's solution of 
the iron-ship mystery had set me thinking. I said to 
myself: The effect of a tariff is to increase the cost of 
bringing goods from abroad. Now, if this benefits a coun 
try,- then all difficulties, dangers, and impediments which 
increase the cost of bringing goods from abroad are like 
wise beneficial. If this theory be correct, then the city 
which is the hardest to get at has the most advantageous 
situation: pirates and shipwrecks contribute to national 
prosperity by raising the price of freight and the cost of 
insurance; and improvements in navigation, in railroads 
and steamships, are injurious. Manifestly this is absurd. 
And then I looked further. The speaker had dwelt on 
the folly of a great country like the United States export 
ing raw material and importing manufactured goods which 
might as well be made at home, and I asked myself, What 
is the motive which causes a people to export raw material 
and import manufactured goods ? I found that it could be 
attributed to nothing else than the fact that they could in 
this way get the goods cheaper, that is, with less labour. 
I looked to transactions between individuals for parallels 
to this trade between nations, and found them in plenty— 
the farmer selling his wheat and buying flour; the grazier 
sending his wool to a market and bringing back cloth and 
blankets; the tanner buying back leather in shoes, instead 

 144 STUDY OP POLITICAL ECONOMY 

of making them himself. I saw, when I came to analyse 
them, that these exchanges between nations were precisely 
the same thing as exchanges between individuals; that 
they were, in fact, nothing but exchanges between indi 
viduals of different nations; that they were all prompted 
by the desire and led to the result of getting the greatest 
return for the least expenditure of labour; that the social 
condition in which such exchanges did not take place was 
the naked barbarism of the Terra del Fuegians; that just 
in proportion to the division of labour and the increase 
of trade were the increase of wealth and the progress of 
civilisation. And so, following up, turning, analysing, 
and testing all the protectionist arguments, I came to con 
clusions which I have ever since retained. 

Now, just such mental operations as this are all that is 
required in the study of political economy. Nothing more 
is needed (but this is needed) than the habit of careful 
thought—the making sure of every step without jumping 
to conclusions. This habit of jumping to conclusions— 
of considering essentially different things as the same be 
cause of some superficial resemblance—is the source of the 
manifold and mischievous errors which political economy 
has to combat. 

But I can probably, by a few examples, show you what I 
mean more easily than in any other way. Were I to put 
to you the child's question, "Which is heavier, a pound of 
lead or a pound of feathers?" you would doubtless be 
offended; and were I seriously to ask you, Which is the 
most valuable, a dollar's worth of gold or a dollar's worth 
of anything else? you might also feel that I had insulted 
your intelligence. Yet the belief that a dollar's worth of 
gold is more valuable than a dollar's worth of anything 
else is widespread and persistent. It has molded the 
policy of great nations, dictated treaties, marched armies, 

 UNIVERSITY LECTURE 145 

launched fleets, fought battles, constructed and enforced 
elaborate and vexatious systems of taxation, and sent men 
by thousands to jail and to the gallows. Certainly a large 
portion, probably a large majority, of the people of the 
United States—including many college graduates, mem 
bers of what are styled the learned professions, senators, 
representatives, authors, and editors—seem to-day utterly 
unable to get it fully through their heads that a dollar's 
worth of anything else is as valuable as a dollar's worth 
of the precious metals, and are constantly reasoning, argu 
ing, and legislating on the assumption that the community 
which exchanges gold for goods is suffering a loss, and 
that it is the part of wisdom, by preventing such exchange, 
to "keep money in the country." On this absurd assump 
tion the revenue system of the United States is based to 
day, and, if you will notice, you will find it cropping out 
of current discussions in all sorts of forms. Even here, 
where the precious metals form one of our staples, and for 
a long time constituted our only staple, you may see the 
power of the same notion. The anti-cooly clubs complain 
of the "drain of money to China," but never think of com 
plaining of the drain of flour, wheat, quicksilver, or 
shrimps. And the leading journals of San Francisco, who 
hold themselves on an immeasurably higher intellectual 
level than the anti-cooly clubs, never, I think, let a week 
pass without congratulating their readers that we have 
ceased to import this or that article, and are thereby keep 
ing so much money that we used to send abroad, or lament 
ing that we still send money away to pay for this or that 
which might be made here. Yet that we send away wine 
or wool, fruit or honey, is never thought of as a matter 
of lament, but quite the contrary. What is all this but 
the assumption that a dollar's worth of gold is worth more 
than a dollar's worth of anything else? 

 146 STUDY OP POLITICAL ECONOMY 

This fallacy is transparently absurd when we come to 
reduce it to a general proposition. But, nevertheless, the 
habit of jumping at conclusions, of which I have spoken, 
makes it seem very natural to people who do not stop to 
think. Money is our standard, or measure of values, in 
which we express all other values. When we speak of 
gaining wealth, we speak of "making money"; when we 
speak of losing wealth, we speak of "losing money"; when 
we speak of a rich man, we speak of him as possessed of 
much money, though as a matter of fact he may, and 
probably has, very little actual money. Then, again, as 
money is the common medium of exchange, in the process 
of getting things we want for things we are willing to 
dispose of, we generally first exchange the latter for money 
and then exchange the money for the things we want. 
And, as the number of people who want things of all sorts 
must manifestly be greater than the number of people 
who want the particular thing, whatever it may be that 
we have to exchange, any difficulty there may be in mak 
ing our exchange will generally attend the first part of it; 
for, in exchanging anything for money, I must find some 
one who wants my particular thing, while in exchanging 
money for a commodity, any one who wants any commodity 
or service will be willing to take my money. Now, this 
habit of estimating wealth in money, and of speaking of 
gain or loss of wealth as gain or loss of money, and this 
habit of associating difficulties of exchange in individual 
cases with the difficulty of obtaining money, constantly 
lead people who do not think clearly to jump at the con 
clusion that money is more valuable than anything else. 
Yet the slightest consideration would show them that 
wealth never consists, but in very small part, of money; 
that the difficulty in individual exchanges has no refer 
ence to the relative value of money, and is eliminated 

 UNIVERSITY LECTUKE 147 

when the exchanges of large numbers of individuals are 
concentrated or considered, and, in short, a dollar in 
money is worth no more than a dollar's worth of wheat 
or cloth; and that, instead of the exchange of money for 
other commodities being proof of a disadvantageous bar 
gain, it is proof of an advantageous bargain, for, if we did 
not want the goods more than the money, we would not 
make the exchange. 

Or, to take another example: In connection with the 
discussion of Chinese immigration, you have, doubtless, 
over and over again heard it contended that cheap labour, 
which would reduce the cost of production, is precisely 
equivalent to labour-saving machinery, and, as machinery 
operates to increase wealth, so would cheap labour. This 
conclusion is jumped at from the fact that cheap labour 
and labour-saving machinery similarly reduce the cost of 
production to the manufacturer. But, if, instead of jump 
ing at this conclusion, we analyse the manner in which 
the reduction of cost is produced in each case, we shall 
see the fallacy. Labour-saving machinery reduces cost by 
increasing the productive power of labour; a reduction of 
wages reduces cost by reducing the share of the product 
which falls to the labourer. To the employer the effect 
may be the same; but, to the community, which includes 
both employers and employed, the effect is very different. 
In the one case there is increase in the general wealth; 
in the other there is merely a change in distribution— 
whatever one class gains another class necessarily losing. 
Hence the effect of cheap labour is necessarily very differ 
ent from that of improved machinery. 

And precisely similar to this fallacy is that which seems 
so natural to men of another class—that because the in 
troduction of cheaper labour in any community does, in 
the present organisation of society, tend to reduce the 

 148 STUDY OP POLITICAL ECONOMY 

general level of wages, so does the importation of cheap 
goods. This, also—but I must leave you to analyse it for 
yourselves—springs from a confusion of thought which 
does not distinguish between the whole and the parts, 
between the distribution of wealth and the production of 
wealth. 

Did time permit, I might go on, showing you by in 
stance after instance how transparently fallacious are 
many current opinions—some, even, more widely held than 
any of which I have spoken—when tried by the simple 
tests which it is the province of political economy to apply. 
But my object is not to lead you to conclusions. All I 
wish to impress upon you is the real simplicity of what is 
generally deemed an abstruse science, and the exceeding 
ease with which it may be pursued. For the study of 
political economy you need no special knowledge, no ex 
tensive library, no costly laboratory. You do not even 
need text-books nor teachers, if you will but think for 
yourselves. All that you need is care in reducing complex 
phenomena to their elements, in distinguishing the essen 
tial from the accidental, and in applying the simple laws 
of human action with which you are familiar. Take no 
body's opinion for granted; "try all things: hold fast that 
which is good." In this way, the opinions of others will 
help you by their suggestions, elucidations, and correc 
tions; otherwise they will be to you but as words to a 
parrot. 

If there were nothing more to be urged in favour of 
the study of political economy than the mental exercise 
it will give, it would still be worth your profoundest atten 
tion. The study which will teach men to think for them 
selves is the study of all studies most needed. Education 
is not the learning of facts; it is the development and 
training of mental powers. All this array of professors, 

 UNIVEBSITY LECTURE 149 

all this paraphernalia of learning, cannot educate a man. 
They can but help him to educate himself. Here you may 
obtain the tools; but they will be useful only to him who 
can use them. A monkey with a microscope, a mule pack 
ing a library, are fit emblems of the men—and, unfortu 
nately, they are plenty—who pass through the whole edu 
cational machinery, and come out but learned fools, 
crammed with knowledge which they cannot use—all the 
more pitiable, all the more contemptible, all the more in 
the way of real progress, because they pass, with them 
selves and others, as educated men. 

But, while it seems to me that nothing can be more 
conducive to vigorous mental habits and intellectual self- 
reliance than the study which trains us to apply the analy 
sis of thought to the every-day affairs of life, and to see in 
constantly changing phenomena the evidence of unchang 
ing law; which leads us to distinguish the real from the 
apparent, and to mark, beneath the seething eddies of in 
terest, passion, and prejudice, the great currents of our 
times—it is not on such incentives that I wish to dwell. 
There are motives as much higher than the thirst for 
knowledge, as that noble passion is higher than the lust 
for power or the greed of gold. 

In its calculations the science of wealth takes little note 
of, nay, it often carefully excludes, the potent force of 
sympathy, and of those passions which lead men to toil, 
to struggle, even to die for the good of others. And yet 
it is these higher passions, these nobler impulses, that 
urge most strenuously to its study. The promise of po 
litical economy is not so much what it may do for you, as 
what it may enable you to do for others. 

I trust you have felt the promptings of that highest 
of ambitions—the desire to he useful in your day and gen 
eration; the hope that in something, even though little, 

 150 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 

those who come after may be wiser, better, and happier 
that you have lived. Or, if you have never felt this, I 
trust the feeling is only latent, ready to spring forth when 
you see the need. 

Gentlemen, if you but look, you will see the need! You 
are of the favoured few, for the fact that you are here, 
students in a university of this character, bespeaks for 
you the happy accidents that fall only to the lot of the 
few, and you cannot yet realise, as you may by-and-by 
realise, how the hard struggle which is the lot of so many 
may cramp and bind and distort—how it may dull the 
noblest faculties and chill the wannest impulses, and grind 
out of men the joy and poetry of life; how it may turn 
into the lepers of society those who should be its adorn 
ment, and transmute into vermin to prey upon it and 
into wild beasts to fly at its throat, the brain and muscle 
that should go to its enrichment! These things may never 
yet have forced themselves on your attention; but still, if 
you will think of it, you cannot fail to see enough want 
and wretchedness, even in our own country to-day, to move 
you to sadness and pity, to nerve you to high resolve; to 
arouse in you the sympathy that dares, and the indigna 
tion that burns to overthrow a wrong. 

And seeing these things, would you fain do something 
to relieve distress, to eradicate ignorance, to extirpate vice ? 
You must turn to political economy to know their causes, 
that you may lay the axe to the root of the evil tree. Else 
all your efforts will he in vain. Philanthropy, unguided 
by an intelligent apprehension of causes, may palliate or 
it may intensify, but it cannot cure. If charity could 
eradicate want, if preaching could make men moral, if 
printing hooks and building schools could destroy igno 
rance, none of these things would be known to-day. 

And there is the greater need that you make yourselves 

 UNIVERSITY LECTURE 151 

acquainted with the principles of political economy from 
the fact that, in the immediate future, questions which 
come within its province must assume a greater and greater 
importance. To act intelligently in the struggle in which 
you must take part—for positively or negatively each of 
you must carry his weight—you must know something of 
this science. And this, I think, is clear to whoever con 
siders the forces that are mustering—that the struggle to 
come will be fiercer and more momentous than the strug 
gles that are past. 

There is a comfortable belief prevalent among us that 
we have at last struck the trade-winds of time, and that 
by virtue of what we call progress all these evils will cure 
themselves. Do not accept this doctrine without exami 
nation. The history of the past does not countenance it, 
the signs of the present do not warrant it. Gentlemen, 
look at the tendencies of our time, and see if the earnest 
work of intelligent men be not needed. 

Look even here. Can the thoughtful man view the de 
velopment of our State with unmixed satisfaction? Do 
we not know that, under present conditions, just as that 
city over the bay grows in wealth and population, so will 
poverty deepen and vice increase; that just as the liveried 
carriages become more plentiful, so do the beggars; that 
just as the pleasant villas of wealth dot these slopes, so 
will rise up the noisome tenement house in the city slums. 
I have watched the growth of San Francisco with joy and 
pride, and my imagination still dwells with delight upon 
the image of the great city of the future, the queen of all 
the vast Pacific—perhaps the greatest city of the world. 
Yet what is the gain? San Francisco of to-day, with her 
three hundred thousand people, is, for the classes who de 
pend upon their labour, not so good a place as the San 
Francisco of sixty thousand; and when her three hundred 

 152 STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 

thousand rises to a million, San Francisco, if present ten 
dencies are unchanged, must present the same sickening 
sights which in the streets of New York shock the man 
from the open West. 

This is the dark side of our boasted progress, the Neme 
sis that seems to follow with untiring tread. Where 
wealth most abounds, there poverty is deepest; where lux 
ury is most profuse, the gauntest want jostles it. In 
cities which are the storehouses of nations, starvation an 
nually claims its victims. Where the costliest churches 
rear the tallest spires towards heaven, there is needed a 
standing army of policemen; as we build new schools, we 
build new prisons; where the heaviest contributions are 
raised to send missionaries to the ends of the earth to 
preach the glad tidings of peace and good-will, there may 
be seen squalor and vice that would affright a heathen. 
In mills where the giant power of steam drives machinery 
that multiplies by hundreds and thousands the productive 
forces of man, there are working little children who ought 
to be at play or at school; where the mechanism of ex 
change has been perfected to the utmost, there thousands 
of men are vainly trying to exchange their labour for the 
necessaries of life! 

Whence this dark shadow that thus attends that which 
we are used to call "material progress," that which our 
current philosophy teaches us to hope for and to work for ? 
Here is the question of all questions for us. We must 
answer it or be destroyed, as preceding civilisations have 
been destroyed. For no chain is stronger than its weakest 
link, and our glorious statue with its head of gold and its 
shoulders of brass has as yet but feet of clay! 

Political economy alone can give the answer. And, if 
you trace out, in the way I have tried to outline, the laws 
of the production and exchange of wealth, you will see the 

 UNIVERSITY LECTURE 153 

causes of social weakness and disease in enactments which 
selfishness has imposed on ignorance, and in maladjust 
ments entirely within our own control. 

And you will see the remedies. Not in wild dreams of 
red destruction nor weak projects for putting men in lead 
ing-strings to a brainless abstraction called the state, but 
in simple measures sanctioned by justice. You will see 
in light the great remedy, in freedom the great solvent. 
You will see that the true law of social life is the law of 
love, the law of liberty, the law of each for all and all for 
each; that the golden rule of morals is also the golden 
rule of the science of wealth; that the highest expressions 
of religious truth include the widest generalisations of 
political economy. 

There will grow on you, as no moralising could teach, 
a deepening realisation of the brotherhood of man; there 
will come to you a firmer and firmer conviction of the 
fatherhood of God. If you have ever thoughtlessly ac 
cepted that worse than atheistic theory that want and 
wretchedness and brutalising toil are ordered by the Crea 
tor, or, revolting from this idea, if you have ever felt 
that the only thing apparent in the ordering of the world 
was a blind and merciless fate careless of man's aspira 
tions and heedless of his sufferings, these thoughts will 
pass from you as you see how much of all that is bad and 
all that is perplexing in our social conditions grows simply 
from our ignorance of law—as you come to realise how 
much better and happier men might make the life of man. 

 THE AMEKICAN EEPUBLIC: 
ITS DANGEKS AND POSSIBILITIES. 

 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC: ITS DANGEES 
AND POSSIBILITIES. 

[An oration delivered in the California Theatre, San Francisco, on the 
celebration of the 4th of July, 1877.] 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

IT is under circumstances that inspire gratitude and 
renew patriotism that we celebrate the completion by 
the American Republic of the first year of her second cen 
tury. How much that year has held of the possibilities 
of dire calamity it may be too soon to speak.1 But for 
the deliverance let us give thanks. Through the web 
woven by passion and prejudice has run the woof of a 
beneficent purpose. Through clash of plans and conflict 
of parties; through gateways hung with cloud and by 
paths we knew not of, have we come to this good estate! 
As, when the long struggle was over, the men of the 
Eevolution turned to pour forth their thanks to Him in 
whose hands are the nations, so let us turn to-day. Last 
year was the Centennial; but this year, if we read the 
times aright, marks the era, and with 1877 will the his 
torian, in future ages, close the grand division of our 
history that records the long, sad strife of which slavery 
was the cause. Most gracious of our national anniver 
saries is that we keep. Never before has the great Decla- 

1 Haycs-Tilden Presidential contest. 
157 

 158 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

ration rung through the land as to-day. For the first 
time have its words neither fallen on the ears of a slave 
nor been flung back by a bayonet-guarded State House! 

For year after year, while they who won our indepen 
dence faded away; for year after year, while their sons 
grew old, and in their turn taught us to light the altar 
fires of the Republic, at every recurring anniversary of 
the nation's birth, the unexpressed thought of an inherited 
curse that was sowing the land with dragon's teeth, 
checked the pride and gave to the rejoicings of the thought 
ful a sombre background, and between thunder of gun and 
voice of trumpet, the black shadow of a great wrong 
mocked in silence the burning words that protested to the 
world the inalienable rights of man. To this there came 
an end. In the deadly close of civil war, when all fierce 
and wicked passions were loosed, while the earth shook 
with the tread of fratricidal armies, and the heavens were 
red with the blaze of burning homes, amid the groans of 
dying men and the cry of stricken women, the great curse 
passed away. But still the shadow. Could we boast a 
Union in which State Governments were maintained by 
extra-State force, or glory in a republic whose forms were 
mocked in virtual provinces? 

But all this is of the past. The long strife is over. 
The cancer has been cut out. And may we not also say 
to-day that the wound of the knife has healed? To-day 
we celebrate the nation's birth, more truly one people than 
for years and years. Again in soul as in form, the many 
are one. Over palmetto as over pine floats the flag that 
typifies the glory of our common past, the promise of our 
common future—the flag that rose above the blood-stained 
snow at Valley Forge, that crossed with Washington the 
icy Delaware—the flag that Marion bore, that Paul Jones 
nailed to the mast, that Lafayette saluted! Over our un- 

 FOURTH OF JULY OEATION 159 

divided heritage of a continent it floats to-day, with the 
free will of a united people—under its folds no slave, and 
in its blue no star save that of a free and sovereign State. 
And, as in city and town and hamlet, to-day, has been read 
once more the declaration of a nation's birth, again, I be 
lieve me, in the hearts of their people, has Adams signed 
with Jefferson and Rutledge with Livingston, pledging 
to the Republic one and indivisible, life and fortune and 
sacred honour! 

Beside me on this platform, around me in this audience, 
sit men who have borne arms against each other in civil 
strife, again united under the folds of that flag. Men of 
the South and men of the North, do I not speak what is in 
your hearts, do I not give voice to your hope and your 
trust, when I say that the Union is again restored in spirit 
as in form—not a union of conquerors and conquered, but 
the union of a people—one in soul as one in blood; one in 
destiny as one in heritage! 

Let our dead strifes bury their dead, while we cherish 
the feeling that makes us one. Let us spare no myrrh nor 
frankincense nor costly spices as we feed the sacred fire. 
It is not a vain thing these flags, these decorations, these 
miles of marching men. Stronger than armies, more po 
tent than treasure is the sentiment of nationality they 
typify and inculcate! 

Yet to more than the sentiment of nationality is this 
day sacred. It marks more than the birth of a nation— 
it marks a step in the progress of the race. More than 
national independence, more than national union, speaks 
out in that grand document to which we have just lis 
tened; it is the declaration of the fundamental principle 
of liberty—of a truth that has in it power to renovate the 
world. 

It is meet that on this day the flags of all nations should 

 100 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

mingle above our processions and wreathe our halls. For 
this is the festival of her to whom under all skies eyes 
have turned and hands been lifted—of her who has had in 
all lands her lovers and her martyrs—of her who shall 
yet unite the nations and bid the war drums cease! It is 
the festival of Liberty! 

And in keeping this day to Liberty, we honour all her 
sacred days—those glorious days on which she has stepped 
forward, those sad days on which she has been stricken 
down by open foes, or fallen wounded in the house of her 
friends. Far back stretches the lineage of the Eepublic 
at whose birth Liberty was invoked—from every land have 
been gathered the gleams of light that unite in her beacon 
fire. It is kindled of the progress of mankind; it witnesses 
to heaven the aspirations of the ages; it shall light the 
nations to yet nobler heights! 

Let us keep this day as the day sacred to Union and to 
Liberty should be kept. Let us draw closer the corda of 
our common brotherhood and renew our fathers' vows. 
Let it be honoured as John Adams predicted it would be 
honoured—with clangour of bells and roar of guns, with 
music and processions and assemblages of the people, with 
every mark of respect and rejoicing—that its memories of 
glory may entwine themselves with the earliest recollec 
tions of our children, that even the thoughtless may catch 
something of its inspiration! 

Yet it is not enough that with all the marks of vener 
ation we keep these holidays. It is possible to cherish the 
form and lose the spirit. 

No matter how bright the lights behind, their usefulness 
is but to illumine the path before. Whatever be the causes 
of that enormous difference—almost a difference in kind— 
between the stationary and the progressive races, here is 

 FOURTH OP JULY ORATION 1B1 

its unfailing indication—the one look to the past, the other 
to the future. The moment we believe that all wisdom 
was concentrated in our ancestors, that moment the petri 
faction of China is upon us. For life is growth, and 
growth is change, and political progress consists in getting 
rid of institutions we have outgrown. Aristocracy, feu 
dality, monarchy, slavery—all the things against which 
human progress has been a slow and painful struggle— 
were, doubtless, in their times relatively if not absolutely 
beneficial, as have been in later times things we may 
have to cast away. The maxim commended to us by him 
who must ever remain the greatest citizen of the Republic 
—"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," embodies a 
truth which goes to the very core of philosophy, which 
must everywhere and at all times be true. Ever and ever 
we sail an unknown sea. Old shapes of menace fade but 
to give place to others. Even new rocks lurk; ever in new 
guise the syrens sing! 

As through the million-voiced plaudits of to-day we hear 
again the words that when first spoken were ominous of 
cord and gibbet, and amid a nation's rejoicing our pulses 
quicken as imagination pictures the bridge of Lexington, 
the slender earthworks of Bunker Hill, the charge of 
tattered Continentals, or the swift night-ride of Marion's 
men, let us not think that our own times are common 
place, and make no call for the patriotism that, as it wells 
up in our hearts, we feel would have been strong to dare 
and do had we lived then. 

How momentous our own times may be the future alone 
can tell. We are yet laying the foundations of empire, 
while stronger run the currents of change and mightier 
are the forces that marshal and meet. 

Let us turn to the past, not in the belief that the great 
men of the past conquered for us a heritage that we have 

 162 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

but to enjoy, but that we may catch their heroic spirit to 
guide and nerve us in the exigencies of the present; that 
we may pass it on to our children, to carry them through 
the dangers of the future. 

Now, as a hundred years ago, the Eepublic has need of 
that spirit—of the noble sensitiveness that is jealous for 
Freedom; of the generous indignation that weighs our 
consideration of expediency against the sacrifice of one 
iota of popular right; of the quick sympathy that made 
an attack on the liberties of one colony felt in all; of the 
patient patriotism that worked and waited, never flagging, 
never tiring, seeking not recognition nor applause, looking 
only to the ultimate end and to the common good; of the 
devotion to a high ideal which led men to risk for it all 
things sweet and all things dear! 

We shall best honour the men of the Kevolution by in 
voking the spirit that animated them; we shall best per 
petuate their memories by looking in the face whatever 
threatens the perpetuity of their work. Whether a cen 
tury hence they shall be regarded as visionaries or as men 
who gave a new life to mankind, depends upon us. 

For let us not disguise it—republican government is yet 
but an experiment. That it has worked well so far, de 
termines nothing. That republican institutions would 
work well under the social conditions of the youth of the 
Eepublic—cheap land, high wages and little distinction 
between rich and poor—there was never any doubt, for 
they were working well before. Our Eevolution was not 
a revolution in the full sense of the term, as was that 
great outburst of the spirit of freedom that followed it in 
France. The colonies but separated from Great Britain, 
and became an independent nation without essential 
change in the institutions under which they had grown up. 
The doubt about republican institutions is as to whether 

 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 163 

they will work when population becomes dense, wages low, 
and a great gulf separates rich and poor. 

Can we speak of it as a doubt? Nothing in political 
philosophy can be clearer than that under such conditions 
republican government must break down. 

This is not to say that these forms must be abandoned. 
We might and probably would go on holding our elections 
for years and years after our government had become es 
sentially despotic. It was centuries after Caesar ere the 
absolute master of the Eoman world pretended to rule 
other than by authority of a Senate that trembled before 
him. It was not till the thirteenth century that English 
kings dropped the formal claim of what was once the 
essence of their title—the choice of the people; and to 
this day the coronation ceremonies of European monarchs 
retain traces of the free election of their leader by equal 
warriors. 

But forms are nothing when substance has gone. And 
our forms are those from which the substance may most 
easily go. Extremes meet, and a republican government, 
based on universal suffrage and theoretical equality, is of 
all governments that which may most easily become a 
despotism of the worst kind. For there, despotism ad 
vances in the name of the people. The single source of 
power once secured, everything is secured. There is no 
unfranchised class to whom appeal may be made; no privi 
leged orders, who in defending their own rights may de 
fend those of all. No bulwark remains to stay the flood, 
no eminence to rise above it. 

And where there is universal suffrage, just as the dis 
parity of condition increases, so does it become easy to seize 
the source of power, for the greater is the proportion of 
power in the hands of those who feel no direct interest in 

 164 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

the conduct of the government, nay, who, made bitter by 
hardships, may even look upon profligate government with 
the sort of satisfaction we may imagine the proletarians 
and slaves of Rome to have felt as they saw a Caligula or 
Nero raging among the rich patricians. 

Given a community with republican institutions, in 
which one class is too rich to be shorn of their luxuries, no 
matter how public affairs are administered, and another 
so poor that any little share of the public plunder, even 
though it be but a few dollars on election day, will seem 
more than any abstract consideration, and power must pass 
into the hands of jobbers who will sell it, as the praetorian 
legions sold the Eoman purple, while the people will be 
forced to reimburse the purchase money with costs and 
profits. If to the pecuniary temptation involved in the 
ordinary conduct of government are added those that come 
from the granting of subsidies, the disposition of public 
lands and the regulation of prices by means of a protec 
tive tariff, the process will be the swifter. 

Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selec 
tion by lot (the plan of some of the ancient republics) 
may sometimes place the wise and just in power, but in a 
corrupt republic the tendency is always to give power to 
the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted and un- 
scrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate to 
the bottom, the worst float to the top; and the vile can 
only be ousted by the viler. And as a corrupt government 
always tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, 
the fundamental cause of corruption is steadily aggra 
vated, while as national character must gradually assimi 
late to the qualities that command power and consequently 
respect, that demoralisation of opinion goes on which in 
the long panorama of history we may see over and over 
again, transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves. 

 FOURTH OP JULY ORATION 166 

As in England, in the last century, where Parliament 
was but a close corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt 
oligarchy, where it is clearly fenced off from the masses, 
may exist without much effect on national character; be 
cause, in that case, power is associated in the popular 
mind with other things than corruption; but where there 
are no hereditary distinctions, and men are habitually seen 
to raise themselves by corrupt qualities from the lowest 
plaoes to wealth and power, tolerance of these qualities 
finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic govern 
ment must finally corrupt the people, and when a people 
become corrupt, there is no resurrection. The life has 
gone, only the carcass remains; and it is left but for the 
ploughshares of fate to bury it out of sight. 

Secure in her strength and position from external dan 
gers, with the cause gone that threatened her unity, the 
Republic begins to count the years of her second century 
with a future, to all outward seeming, secure. But may 
we not see already closing round her the insidious perils 
from which, since her birth, destruction has been predicted ? 
Clearly, to him who will look, are we passing from the 
conditions under which republican government is easy, 
into those under which it becomes endangered, if not dan 
gerous. While the possessor of a single million is ceasing 
to be noticeable in the throng of millionaires, and larger 
private fortunes are mounting towards hundreds of mil 
lions, we are all over the country becoming familiar with 
widespread poverty in its hardest aspects—not the pov 
erty that nourishes the rugged virtues, but poverty of the 
kind that dispirits and embrutes. 

And as we see the gulf widening between rich and poor, 
may we not as plainly see the symptoms of political deteri 
oration that in a republican government must always ac- 

 166 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

company it ? Social distinctions are sharpest in our great 
cities, and in our great cities is not republican government 
becoming a reproach ? May we not see in these cities that 
the worst social influences are become the most potent 
political factors; that corrupt rings notoriously rule; that 
offices are virtually purchased—and, most ominous of all, 
may we not plainly see the growth of a sentiment that 
looks on all this as natural, if not perfectly legitimate; 
that either doubts the existence of an honest man in pub 
lic place, or thinks of him as a fool too weak to seize his 
opportunity? Has not the primary system, which is sim 
ply republicanism applied to party management, already 
broken down in our great cities, and are not parties in 
their despair already calling for what in general govern 
ment would be oligarchies and dictatorships? 

We talk about the problem of municipal government! 
It is not the problem of municipal government that we 
have to solve, but the problem of republican government. 
These great cities are but the type of our development. 
They are growing not merely with the growth of the coun 
try, but faster than the growth of the country. There are 
children here to-day who in all human probability will see 
San Francisco a city as large as London, and will count 
through the country New Yorks by the score! 

Fellow-citizens, the wind does not blow north or south 
because the weather-cocks turn that way. The complaints 
of political demoralisation that come from every quarter 
are not because bad men have been elected to office or 
corrupt men have taken to engineering parties. If bad 
men are elected to office, if corrupt men rule parties, is 
it not because the conditions are such as to give them the 
advantage over good and pure men? Fellow-citizens, it 
is not the glamour of success that makes the men whose 
work we celebrate to-day loom up through the mists of a 

 FOURTH OP JULY OBATION 167 

century like giants. They were giants—some of them so 
great, that with all our eulogies we do not yet appreciate 
them, and their full fame must wait for yet another cen 
tury. But the reason why such intellectual greatness gath 
ered around the cradle of the Eepublic and guided her 
early steps, was not that men were greater in that day, 
but that the people chose their best. You will hardly find 
a man of that time, of high character and talent, who was 
not in some way in the public service. This certainly can 
not be said now. And it is because power is concentrating, 
as it must concentrate as our institutions deteriorate. If 
one of those men were to come back to-day and were 
spoken of for high position—say for the United States 
Senate—instead of Jefferson's three questions, the know 
ing ones would ask: "Has he money to make the fight?" 
"Are the corporations for him?" "Can he put up the 
primaries?" No less a man than Benjamin Franklin—a 
man whose fame as a statesman and philosopher is yet 
growing—a man whom the French Academy, the most 
splendid intellectual assemblage in Europe, applauded as 
the modern Solon—represented the city of Philadelphia in 
the provincial Assembly for ten years, until, as their best 
man, he was sent to defend the colony in London. Are 
there not to-day cities in the land which even a Benjamin 
Franklin could not represent in a State Assembly unless 
he put around his neck the collar of a corporation or took 
' his orders from a local ring? 

You will think of many things in this connection to 
which it is not necessary for me to allude. We all see 
them. Though we may not speak it openly, the general 
faith in republican institutions is narrowing and weak 
ening—it is no longer that defiant, jubilant, boastful belief 
in republicanism as the source of all national blessings and 
the cure for all human woes that it once was. We begin 

 168 THE AMEBICAN EEPUBLIC 

to realise that corruption may cost as much as a royal 
family, and that the vaunted ballot, under certain condi 
tions, may bring forth ruling classes of the worst kind, 
while we already see developing around us social evils that 
we once associated only with effete monarchies. Can we 
talk so proudly of welcoming the oppressed of all nations 
when thousands vainly seek for work at the lowest wages? 
Can we expect him, who must sup on charity, to rejoice 
that he cannot be taxed without being represented; or 
congratulate him who seeks shelter in a station-house that, 
as a citizen of the Eepublic, he is the peer of the monarchs 
of earth? 

Is there any tendency to improvement? 

Fellow-citizens, we have hitherto had an advantage over 
older nations which we can hardly overestimate. It has 
been our public domain, our background of unfenced 
land, that made our social conditions better than those of 
Europe; that relieved the labour market and maintained 
wages; that kept open a door of escape from the increasing 
pressure in older sections, and acting and reacting in many 
ways on our national character, gave it freedom and inde 
pendence, elasticity and hope. 

But with a folly for which coming generations may curse 
us, we have wasted it away. Worse than the Norman con 
queror, we have repeated the sin of the sin-swollen Henry 
VIII.; and already we hear in the "tramp" of the sturdy 
vagrant of the sixteenth century, the predecessor of the 
English pauper of this. We have done to the future the 
unutterable wrong that English rule and English law did 
to Ireland, and already we begin to hear of rack-rents and 
evictions. We have repeated the crime that filled Italy 
with a servile population in place of the hardy farmers 
who had carried her eagles to victory after victory—the 

 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 169 

crime that ate out the heart of the Mistress of the World, 
and buried the glories of ancient civilisation in the dark 
ness of mediaeval night. Instead of guarding the public 
domain as the most precious of our heritages; instead of 
preserving it for our poorer classes of to-day and for the 
uncounted millions who must follow us, we have made it 
the reward of corruption, greed, fraud and perjury. Go 
out in this fair land to-day and you may see great estates 
tilled by Chinamen, while citizens of the Republic carry 
their blankets through dusty roads begging for work; you 
may ride for miles and miles through fertile land and see 
no sign of human life save the ghastly chimney of an 
evicted settler or the miserable shanty of a poverty-stricken 
renter. Cross the bay, and you will see the loveliest piece 
of mountain scenery around this great city, though desti 
tute of habitation, walled in with a high board fence, that 
none but the owner of 20,000 acres of land may look upon 
its beauties. Pass over these broad acres which lie as they 
lay ere man was born on this earth, and under penalty of 
fine and imprisonment you must confine yourself to the 
road, purchased of him with poll taxes of four dollars a 
head wrung from men packing their blankets in search 
of work at a dollar a day. 

Fellow-citizens, the public domain fit for homes is al 
most gone, and at the rate we are parting with the rest, 
it is certain that by the time children now in our public 
schools come of age, the pre-emption law and the home 
stead law will remain on our statute books only to remind 
them of their squandered birthright. Then the influences 
that are at work to concentrate wealth in the hands of the 
few, and make dependence the lot of the many, will have 
free play. 

How potent are these influences! Though in form 
everything seems tending to republican equality, a new 

 170 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

power has entered the world that, under present social ad 
justments, is working with irresistible force to subject the 
many to the few. The tendency of all modern machinery 
is to give capital an overpowering advantage and make 
labour helpless. Our boys cannot learn trades, because 
there are few to learn. The journeyman who, with his 
kit of tools, could make a living anywhere, is being re 
placed by the operative who performs but one part of a 
process, and must work with tools he can never hope to own, 
and who consequently must take but a bare living, while 
all the enormous increase of wealth which results from 
the economy of production must go to increase great for 
tunes. The undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us 
back again to the old conditions from which we dreamed 
we had escaped. The development of the artisan and com 
mercial classes gradually broke down feudalism after it 
had become so complete that men thought of heaven as 
organised on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and sec 
ond persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and Tenant-in- 
Chief. But now the development of manufacture and ex 
change has reached a point which threatens to compel every 
worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which followed 
the final break up of the Eoman Empire compelled every 
freeman to seek a lord. Nothing seems exempt from this 
tendency. Even errands are run by a corporation, and 
one company carries carpet-sacks, while another drives the 
hack. It is the old guilds of the middle ages over again, 
only that instead of all being equal, one is master and the 
others serve. And where one is master and the others 
serve, the one will control the others, even in such matters 
as votes. 

In our constitution is a clause prohibiting the granting 
of titles of nobility. In the light of the present it seems 
a good deal like the device of the man who, leaving a big 

 FOURTH OF JULY OKATION 171 

hole for the cat, sought to keep the kitten out by blocking 
up the little hole. Could titles add anything to the power 
of the aristocracy that is here growing up ? Six hundred 
liveried retainers followed the great Earl of Warwick to 
Parliament; but in this young State there is already a 
simple citizen who could discharge any one of thousands 
of men from their employment, who controls 2200 miles of 
railroad and telegraph, and millions of acres of land, and 
has the power of levying toll on traffic and travel over an 
area twice that of the original thirteen States. Warwick 
was a king-maker. Would it add to the real power of our 
simple citizen were we to dub him an earl ? 

Look at the social conditions which are growing up here 
in California. Land monopolised; water monopolised; a 
race of cheap workers crowding in, whose effect upon our 
own labouring classes is precisely that of slavery; all the 
avenues of trade and travel under one control, all wealth 
and power tending more and more to concentrate in a few 
hands. What sort of a republic will this be in a few years 
longer if these things go on? The idea would be ridicu 
lous, were it not too sad. 

Fellow-citizens, I am talking of things not men. Most 
irrational would be any enmity towards individuals. How 
few are there of us who under similar circumstances would 
not do just what those we speak of as monopolists have 
done. To put a saddle on our back is to invite the booted 
and spurred to ride. It is not men who are to blame but 
the system. And who is to blame for the system, but the 
whole people ? If the lion will suffer his teeth to be pulled 
and his claws to be pared, he must expect every cur to 
tease him. 

But, fellow-citizens, while it is true that a republican 
government worth the name cannot exist under the social 

 172 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

conditions into which we are passing, it is also true that 
under a really republican government such conditions 
could not be. 

I do not mean to say we have not had enough govern 
ment; I mean to say that we have had too much. It is a 
truth that cannot be too clearly kept in mind that the 
best government is that which governs least, and that the 
more a republican government undertakes to do, the less 
republican it becomes. Unhealthy social conditions are 
but the result of interferences with natural rights. 

There is nothing in the condition of things (it were a 
libel on the Creator to say so) which condemns one class 
to toil and want while another lives in wasteful luxury. 
There is enough and to spare for us all. But if one is 
permitted to ignore the rights of others by taking more 
than his share, the others must get less; a difference is 
created which constantly tends to become greater, and a 
greedy scramble ensues in which more is wasted than 
is used. 

If you will trace out the laws of the production of 
wealth and see how enormous are the forces now wasted, if 
you will follow the laws of its distribution, and see how, 
by human laws, one set of men are enabled to appropriate 
a greater or less part of the earnings of the others; if 
you will think how this robbery of labour degrades the 
labourer and makes him unable to drive a fair bargain, 
and how it diminishes production, you will begin to see 
that there is no necessity for poverty, and that the grow 
ing disparity of social conditions proceeds from laws which 
deny the equal rights of men. 

Fellow-citizens, we have just listened again to the Dec 
laration, not merely of national independence, but of the 
rights of man. 

 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 173 

Great was Magna Charta—a beacon of light through 
centuries of darkness, a bulwark of the oppressed through 
ages of wrong, a firm rock for Liberty's feet, as she still 
strove onward! 

But all charters and bills of right, all muniments and 
titles of Liberty, are included in that simple statement of 
self-evident truth that is the heart and soul of the Decla 
ration: "That all men are created equal; that they are 
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; 
that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of hap 
piness." 

In these simple words breathes not only the spirit of 
Magna Charta, but the spirit which seeks its inspiration 
in the eternal facts of nature—through them speak not 
only Stephen Langton and John Hampton, but Wat Tyler 
and the Mad Priest of Kent. 

The assertion of the equal rights of all men to life, lib 
erty and the pursuit of happiness is the assertion of the 
right of each to the fullest, freest exercise of all his facul 
ties, limited only by the equal right of every other. It in 
cludes freedom of person and security of earnings, free 
dom of trade and capital, freedom of conscience and speech 
and the press. It is the declaration of the same equal 
rights of all human beings to the enjoyment of the bounty 
of the Creator—to light and to air, to water and to land. 
It asserts these rights as inalienable—as the direct grant 
of the Creator to each human being, of which he can be 
rightfully deprived neither by kings nor congresses, nei 
ther by parchments nor prescriptions—neither by the com 
pacts of past generations nor by majority votes. 

This simple yet all-embracing statement bears the stamp 
royal of primary truth—it includes all partial truths and 
co-ordinates with all other truths. This perfect liberty, 
which, by giving each his rights, secures the rights of all 

 174 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

—is order, for violence is the infringement of right; it is 
justice, for injustice is the denial of right; it is equality, 
for one cannot have more than his right, without another 
having less. It is reverence towards God, for irreverence 
is the denial of His order; it is love towards man, for it 
accords to others all that we ask for ourselves. It is the 
message that the angels sang over Bethlehem in Judea—it 
is the political expression of the Golden Rule! 

Like all men who build on truth, the men of the Eevo- 
lution builded better than they knew. The Declaration of 
Independence was ahead of their time; it is in advance of 
our time; it means more than perhaps even he saw whose 
pen traced it—man of the future that he was and still is! 
But it has in it the generative power of truth; it has 
grown and still must grow. 

They tore from the draft of the Declaration the page in 
which Jefferson branded the execrable crime of slavery. 
But in vain! In those all-embracing words that page was 
still there, and though it has taken a century, they are, in 
this respect, vindicated at last, and human flesh and blood 
can no longer be bought and sold. 

It is for us to vindicate them further. Slavery is not 
dead, though its grossest form be gone. What is the dif 
ference, whether my body is legally held by another, or 
whether he legally holds that by which alone I can live. 
Hunger is as cruel as the lash. The essence of slavery 
consists in taking from a man all the fruits of his labour 
except a bare living, and of how many thousands mis 
called free is this the lot? Where wealth most abounds 
there are classes with whom the average plantation negro 
would have lost in comfort by exchanging. English vil 
leins of the fourteenth century were better off than Eng 
lish agricultural labourers of the nineteenth. There ia 

 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 176 

slavery and slavery! "The widow," says Carlyle, "is gath 
ering nettles for her children's dinner; a perfumed seig 
neur, delicately lounging in the CEil de Bceuf, has an 
alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle, 
and call it rent!" 

Fellow-citizens, let us not be deluded by names. What 
is the use of a republic if labour must stand with its hat 
off begging for leave to work, if "tramps" must throng the 
highways and children grow up in squalid tenement 
houses ? Political institutions are but means to an end— 
the freedom and happiness of the individual; and just so 
far as they fail in that, call them what you will, they are 
condemned. 

Our conditions are changing. The laws which impel 
nations to seek a larger measure of liberty, or else take 
from them what they have, are working silently but with 
irresistible force. If we would perpetuate the Eepublic, 
we must come up to the spirit of the Declaration, and 
fully recognise the equal rights of all men. We must free 
labour from its burdens and trade from its fetters; we 
must cease to make government an excuse for enriching 
the few at the expense of the many, and confine it to neces 
sary functions. We must cease to permit the monopolisa 
tion of land and water by non-users, and apply the just 
rule, "No seat reserved unless occupied." We must cease 
the cruel wrong which, by first denying their natural 
rights, reduces labourers to the wages of competition, and 
then, under pretence of asserting the rights of another 
race, compels them to a competition that will not merely 
force them to a standard of comfort unworthy the citizen 
of a free republic, but ultimately deprives them of their 
equal right to live. 

Here is the test: whatever conduces to their equal and 
inalienable rights to men is good—let us preserve it. 

 176 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

Whatever denies or interferes with those equal rights is 
bad—let us sweep it away. If we thus make our institu 
tions consistent with their theory, all difficulties must van 
ish. We will not merely have a republic, but social con 
ditions consistent with a republic. If we will not do this, 
we surrender the Eepublic, either to be torn by the volcanic 
forces that already shake the ground beneath the standing 
armies of Europe, or to rot by slow degrees, and in its 
turn undergo the fate of all its predecessors. 

Liberty is not a new invention that, once secured, can 
never be lost. Freedom is the natural state of man. 
"Who is your lord?" shouted the envoys of Charles the 
Simple to the Northmen who had penetrated into the heart 
of France. "We have no lord; we are all free men!" was 
their answer; and so in their time of vigour would have 
answered every people that ever made a figure in the 
world. But at some point in the development of every 
people freedom has been lost, because as fresh gains were 
made, or new forces developed, they were turned to the 
advantage of a few. 

Wealth in itself is a good, not an evil; but wealth con 
centrated in the hands of a few, corrupts on one side, and 
degrades on the other. No chain is stronger than its 
weakest link, and the ultimate condition of any people 
must be the condition of its lowest class. If the low are 
not brought up, the high must be brought down. In the 
long run, no nation can be freer than its most oppressed, 
richer than its poorest, wiser than its most ignorant. This 
is the fiat of the eternal justice that rules the world. It 
stands forth on every page of history. It is what the 
Sphinx says to us as she sitteth in desert sand, while the 
winged bulls of Mneveh bear her witness! It is written in 
the undecipherable hieroglyphics of Yucatan; in the brick 
mounds of Babylon; in the prostrate columns of Persiopo- 

 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 177 

lis; in the salt-sown plain of Carthage. It speaks to us 
from the shattered relics of Grecian art; from the mighty 
ruins of the Coliseum! Down through the centuries comes 
a warning voice from the great Republic of the ancient 
world to the great Republic of the new. In three Latin 
words Pliny sums up the genesis of the causes that ate 
out the heart of the mightiest power that the world ever 
saw, and overwhelmed a widespread civilisation: "Great 
estates ruined Italy I" 

Let us heed the warning by laying the foundations of 
the Republic upon the work of the equal, inalienable rights 
of all. So shall dangers disappear, and forces that now 
threaten turn to work our bidding; so shall wealth in 
crease, and knowledge grow, and vice, and crime and mis 
ery vanish away. 

They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her 
mission, when she has abolished hereditary privileges and 
given men the ballot, who think of her as having no fur 
ther relations to the every-day affairs of life, have not 
seen her real grandeur—to them the poets who have sung 
of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As 
the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light; as his beams 
not merely pierce the clouds, but support all growth, sup 
ply all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise 
be a cold and inert mass, all the infinite diversities of 
being and beauty, so is liberty to mankind. It is not for 
an abstraction that men have toiled and died; that in every 
age the witnesses of liberty have stood forth, and the 
martyrs of liberty have suffered. It was for more than 
this that matrons handed the Queen Anne musket from its 
rest, and that maids bid their lovers go to death! 

We speak of liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, 
knowledge, invention, national strength and national inde- 

 178 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

pendence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty is 
the source, the mother, the necessary condition. She is to 
virtue what light is to colour, to wealth what sunshine is 
to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to the sight. She is 
the genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, 
the spirit of national independence! Where Liberty rises, 
there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, 
invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and 
spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbours as Saul 
amid his brethren—taller and fairer. Where Liberty 
sinks, there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is 
forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in 
arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians! 

Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of 
Liberty yet beamed among men, yet all progress hath she 
called forth. 

Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyp 
tian whips, and led them forth from the House of Bondage. 
She hardened them in the desert and made of them a race 
of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic law took 
their thinkers up to heights where they beheld the unity 
of God, and inspired their poets with strains that yet 
phrase the highest exaltations of thought. Liberty 
dawned on the Phenician coast, and ships passed the Pil 
lars of Hercules to plough the unknown sea. She broke 
in partial light on Greece, and marble grew to shapes of 
ideal beauty, words became the instruments of subtlest 
thought, and against the scanty militia of free cities the 
countless hosts of the Great King broke like surges against 
a rock. She cast her beams on the four-acre farms of 
Italian husbandmen, and born of her strength a power 
came forth that conquered the world! She glinted from 
shields of German warriors, and Augustus wept his legions. 
Out of the night that followed her eclipse, her slanting 

 FOURTH OP JULY ORATION 179 

rays fell again on free cities, and a lost learning revived, 
modern civilisation began, a new world was unveiled; and 
as Liberty grew so grew art, wealth, power, knowledge 
and refinement. In the history of every nation we may 
read the same truth. It was the strength born of Magna 
Charta that won Crecy and Agincourt. It was the revival 
of Liberty- from the despotism of the Tudors that glorified 
the Elizabethan age. It was the spirit that brought a 
crowned tyrant to the block that planted here the seed of 
a mighty tree. It was the energy of ancient freedom that, 
the moment it had gained unity, made Spain the might 
iest power of the world, only to fall to the lowest depth 
of weakness when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in 
France, all intellectual vigour dying under the tyranny of 
the seventeenth century to revive in splendour as Liberty 
awoke in the eighteenth, and on the enfranchisement of 
the French peasants in the great revolution, basing the 
wonderful strength that has in our time laughed at dis 
aster. 

What Liberty shall do for the nation that fully accepts 
and loyally cherishes her, the wondrous inventions, which 
are the marked features of this century, give us but a hint. 
Just as the condition of the working classes is improved, 
do we gain in productive power. Wherever labour is best 
paid and has most leisure, comfort, and refinement, there 
invention is most active and most generally utilised. 
Short-sighted are they who think the reduction of working 
hours would reduce the production of wealth. Human 
muscles are one of the tiniest of forces; but for the human 
mind the resistless powers of nature work. To enfran 
chise labour, to give it leisure and comfort and indepen 
dence, is to substitute in production mind for muscle. 
When this is fully done, the power that we now exert over 
matter will be as nothing to that we shall have. 

 180 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

It has been said that, from the very increase of our 
numbers, the American Union must in time necessarily 
break up. I do not believe it. Even now, while the 
memories of a civil war are fresh, I do not think any part 
of our people regret that this continent is not bisected by 
an imaginary line, separating two jealous nations, two 
great standing armies. If we respect the equal rights of 
all, if we reduce the operation of our national Government 
to the purposes for which it is alone fitted, the preserva 
tion of the common peace, the maintenance of the common 
security and the promotion of the common convenience, 
there can be no sectional interest adverse to unity, and 
the blessings of the bond that makes us a nation must be 
come more apparent as years roll on. 

So far from this Union necessarily falling to pieces from 
its own weight, it may, if we but hold fast to justice, not 
merely embrace a continent, but prove in the future capa 
ble of a wider extension than we have yet dreamed. 

The crazy king, the brutal ministers, the rotten Parlia 
ment, the combination of tyranny, folly, corruption and 
arrogance that sundered the Anglo-Saxon race, is gone, 
but stronger and stronger grows the influence of the death 
less minds that make our common language classic. The 
republic of Anglo-Saxon literature extends wherever the 
tongue of Shakespeare is spoken. The great actors who 
from time to time walk this stage, find their audiences 
over half the globe; it is to one people that our poets sing; 
it is one mind that responds to the thought of our think 
ers. The old bitternesses are passing away. With us the 
hatreds, born of two wars, are beginning to soften and die 
out, while Englishmen, who this year honour us in hon 
ouring the citizen whom we have twice deemed worthy of 
our foremost place, are beginning to look upon our Revo 
lution as the vindication of their own liberties. 

 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 181 

A hundred years have passed since the fast friend of 
American liberty—the great Earl Chatham—rose to make 
his last appeal for the preservation, on the basis of justice, 
of that English-speaking empire, in which he saw the 
grandest possibility of the future. Is it too soon to hope 
that the future may hold the realisation of his vision in a 
nobler form than even he imagined, and that it may be 
the mission of this Republic to unite all the nations of 
English speech, whether they grow beneath the Northern 
Star or Southern Cross, in a league which, by insuring 
justice, promoting peace, and liberating commerce, will be 
the forerunner of a world-wide federation that will make 
war the possibility of a past age, and turn to works of use 
fulness the enormous forces now dedicated to destruction. 

And she to whom on this day our hearts turn, our an 
cient ally, our generous friend—thank God we can say, our 
sister Republic of France! It was not alone the cold cal 
culations of kingcraft that when our need was direst, 
helped us with money and supplies, with armies and fleets. 
The grand idea of the equal rights of man was stirring in 
France, her pulses were throbbing with the new life that 
was soon to shake the thrones of Europe as with an earth 
quake, and French sympathy went out where Liberty made 
her stand. "They are a generous people," wrote Franklin, 
"they do not like to hear of advantages in return for their 
aid. They desire the glory of helping us." France has 
that glory, and more. Let her column Vendome fall, and 
the memory of the butchers of mankind fade away; the 
great things that France has done for freedom will make 
her honoured of the nations, while, with increasing and 
increasing meaning, rings through the ages the cry with 
which she turned to the thunder-burst of Valmy: "Live 
the people!" 

 182 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC 

Beset by difficulties from which we are happily exempt 
—on the one side those who dream of bringing back the 
middle ages, on the other the red spectre; compelled, or in 
fancy compelled, by the legacy of old hates to maintain 
that nightmare of prosperity and deadly foe of freedom, a 
large standing army—France has yet steadily made prog 
ress. Italy is one; the great Germanic race at last have 
unity; as out of a trance, life stirs in Spain; Russia moves 
as she marches. May it not be France's to again show 
Europe the way? 

Fellow-citizens: If I have sought rather to appeal to 
thought than to flatter vanity, it is not that I do not see 
the greatness and feel the love of my country. Drawing 
my first breath almost within the shadow of Independence 
Hall, the cherished traditions of the Republic entwine 
themselves with my earliest recollections, and her flag sym 
bolises to me all that I hold dear on earth. But for the 
very love I bear her, for the very memories I cherish, I 
would not dare come before you on this day and ignore the 
dangers I see in her path. 

If I have not dwelt on her material greatness or pic 
tured her future growth, it is because there rises before me 
a higher ideal of what this Republic may be than can be 
expressed in material symbols—an ideal so glorious that, 
beside it, all that we now pride ourselves on seems mean 
and pitiful. That ideal is not satisfied with a republic 
where, with all the enormous gains in productive power, 
labour is ground down to a bare living and must think the 
chance to work a favour; it is not satisfied with a republic 
where prisons are crowded and almshouses are built and 
families are housed in tiers. It is not satisfied with a 
republic where one tenant for a day can warn his co- 
tenants off more of the surface of this rolling sphere 

 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 183 

than he is using or can use, or compel them to pay him 
for the hounty of their common Creator; it is not satis 
fied with a republic where the fear of poverty on the one 
hand and the sight of great wealth on the other makes 
the lives of so many such a pitiful straining, keeps eyes 
to the ground that might be turned to the stars, and sub 
stitutes the worship of the Golden Calf for that of the 
Living God! 

It hopes for a republic where all shall have plenty, where 
each may sit under his vine and fig tree, with none to vex 
him or make him afraid; where with want shall gradually 
disappear vice and crime; where men shall cease to spend 
their lives in a struggle to live, or in heaping up things 
they cannot take away; where talent shall be greater than 
wealth and character greater than talent, and where each 
may find free scope to develop body, mind and soul. 

Is this the dream of dreamers? One brought to the 
world the message that it might be reality. But they cru 
cified him between two thieves. 

Not till it accepts that message can the world have 
peace. Look over the history of the past. What is it but 
a record of the woes inflicted by man on man, of wrong 
producing wrong, and crime fresh crime? It must be so 
till justice is acknowledged and liberty is law. 

Some things have we done, but not all. In the words 
with which an eminent Frenchman closes the history of 
that great revolution that followed ours: "Liberty is not 
yet here; but she will come!" 

Fellow-citizens, let us follow the star that rose above 
the cradle of the Eepublic; let us try our laws by the test 
of the Declaration. Let us show to the nations our faith 
in Liberty, nor fear she will lead us astray. 

.Who is Liberty that we should doubt her; that we 

 184 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

should set bounds to her, and say, "Thus far shall thou 
come and no further!" Is she not peace ? is she not pros 
perity? is she not progress? nay, is she not the goal to 
wards which all progress strives ? 

Not here; but yet she cometh! Saints have seen her in 
their visions; seers have seen her in their trance. To 
heroes has she spoken, and their hearts were strong; to 
martj'rs and the flames were cool! 

She is not here, but yet she cometh. Lo! her feet are 
on the mountains—the call of her clarions ring on every 
breeze; the banners of her dawning fret the sky! Who 
will hear her as she calleth; who will bid her come and 
welcome? Who will turn to her? who will speak for her? 
who will stand for her while she yet hath need ? 

 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

 THE CRIME OF POVEETY. 

[An address delivered in the Opera House, Burlington, Iowa, April 1, 
1885, under the auspices of Burlington Assembly, No. 3135, Knights of 
Labour, which afterwards distributed fifty thousand copies in tract form.] 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

IPEOPOSE to talk to you to-night of the Crime of 
Poverty. I cannot, in a short time, hope to convince 
you of much; but the thing of things I should like to 
show you is that poverty is a crime. I do not mean that 
it is a crime to be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is 
not a crime to be murdered; and a man who is in pov 
erty, I look upon, not as a criminal in himself, so much 
as the victim of a crime for which others, as well perhaps 
as himself, are responsible. That poverty is a curse, the 
bitterest of curses, we all know. Carlyle was right when 
he said that the hell of which Englishmen are most afraid 
is the hell of poverty; and this is true, not of Englishmen 
alone, but of people all over the civilised world, no matter 
what their nationality. It is to escape this hell that we 
strive and strain and struggle; and work on oftentimes in 
blind habit long after the necessity for work is gone. 

The curse born of poverty is not confined to the poor 
alone; it runs through all classes, even to the very rich. 
They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there cannot be 
suffering in a community from which any class can totally 
escape. The vice, the crime, the ignorance, the meanness 

187 

 188 THE CRIME OP POVERTY 

born of poverty, poison, so to speak, the very air which 
rich and poor alike must breathe. 

Poverty is the mother of ignorance, the breeder of crime. 
I walked down one of your streets this morning, and I 
saw three men going along with their hands chained to 
gether. I knew for certain that those men were not rich 
men; and,although I do not know the offence for which they 
were carried in chains through your streets, this I think 
I can safely say, that, if you trace it up you will find it in 
some way to spring from poverty. Nine tenths of human 
misery, I think you will find, if you look, to be due to 
poverty. If a man chooses to be poor, he commits no 
crime in being poor, provided his poverty hurts no one 
but himself. If a man has others dependent upon him; 
if there are a wife and children whom it is his duty to 
support, then, if he voluntarily chooses poverty, it is a 
crime—aye, and I think that, in most cases, the men who 
have no one to support but themselves are men that are 
shirking their duty. A woman comes into the world for 
every man; and for every man who lives a single life, car 
ing only for himself, there is some woman who is deprived 
of her natural supporter. But while a man who chooses 
to be poor cannot be charged with crime, it is certainly a 
crime to force poverty on others. And it seems to me 
clear that the great majority of those who suffer from 
poverty are poor not from their own particular faults, but 
because of conditions imposed by society at large. There 
fore I hold that poverty is a crime—not an individual 
crime, but a social crime, a crime for which we all, poor 
as well as rich, are responsible. 

Two or three weeks ago I went one Sunday evening to 
the church of a famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr. Sankey 
was singing and something like a revival was going on 
there. The clergyman told some anecdotes connected with 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 189 

the revival, and recounted some of the reasons why men 
failed to become Christians. One case he mentioned 
struck me. He said that he had noticed on the outskirts 
of the congregation, night after night, a man who lis 
tened intently and who gradually moved forward. One 
night, the clcrgymaa said, he went to him, saying: "My 
brother, are you not ready to become a Christian?" The 
man said, no, he was not. He said it, not in a defiant 
tone, but in a sorrowful tone; the clergyman asked him 
why, whether he did not believe in the truths he had been 
hearing ? Yes, he believed them all. Why, then, wouldn't 
he become a Christian ? "Well," he said, "I can't join the 
church without giving up my business; and it is necessary 
for the support of my wife and children. If I give that 
up, I don't know how in the world I can get along. I had 
a hard time before I found my present business, and I 
cannot afford to give it up. Yet I can't become a Chris 
tian without giving it up." The clergyman asked, "are 
you a rum-seller?" No, he was not a rum-seller. Well, 
the clergyman said, he didn't know what in the world the 
man could be; it seemed to him that a rum-seller was the 
only man who does a business that would prevent his be 
coming a Christian; and he finally said: "What is your 
business?" The man said, "I sell soap." "Soap!" ex 
claimed the clergyman, "you sell soap ? How in the world 
does that prevent your becoming a Christian?" "Well," 
the man said, "it is this way; the soap I sell is one of 
these patent soaps that are extensively advertised as en 
abling you to clean clothes very quickly, as containing no 
deleterious compound whatever. Every cake of the soap 
that I sell is wrapped in a paper on which is printed a 
statement that it contains no injurious chemicals, whereas 
the truth of the matter is that it does, and that though it 
will take the dirt out of clothes pretty quickly, it will, in a 

 190 THE CKIME OP POVERTY 

little while, rot them completely. I have to make my 
living in this way; and I cannot feel that I can become 
a Christian if I sell that soap." The minister went on, 
describing how he laboured unsuccessfully with that man, 
and finally wound up by saying: "He stuck to his soap and 
lost his soul." 

But, if that man lost his soul, was it his fault alone? 
Whose fault is it that social conditions are such that men 
have to make that terrible choice between what conscience 
tells them is right, and the necessity of earning a living? 
I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the fault 
of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who would 
bring cholera to this country, or the man who, having the 
power to prevent its coming here, would make no effort to 
do so, would be guilty of a crime. Poverty is worse than 
cholera; poverty kills more people than pestilence, even in 
the best of times. Look at the death statistics of our 
cities; see where the deaths come quickest; see where it 
is that the little children die like flies—it is in the poorer 
quarters. And the man who looks with careless eyes upon 
the ravages of this pestilence, the man who does not set 
himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is guilty of a 
crime. 

If poverty is appointed by the power which is above us 
all, then it is no crime; but if poverty is unnecessary, 
then it is a crime for which society is responsible and for 
which society must suffer. 

I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can 
fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is not 
by the decree of the Almighty, but it is because of our 
own injustice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance, that 
this scourge, worse than any pestilence, ravages our civili 
sation, bringing want and suffering and degradation, de 
stroying souls as well as bodies. Look over the world, in 

 KNIGHTS OP LABOUK SPEECH 191 

this heyday of nineteenth century civilisation. In every 
civilised country under the sun you will find men and 
women whose condition is worse than that of the savage: 
men and women and little children with whom the veriest 
savage could not afford to exchange. Even in this new 
city of yours with virgin soil around you, you have had 
this winter to institute a relief society. Your roads have 
been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am told, at one time 
taking shelter in a round-house here. As here, so every 
where; and poverty is deepest where wealth most abounds. 

What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in 
nature like this poverty which to-day curses us. We see 
rapine in nature; we see one species destroying another; 
but as a general thing animals do not feed on their own 
kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all 
creatures of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever 
saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the 
great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds, 
of which two or three were swimming in grease and the 
others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there any 
thing like the poverty that festers in our civilisation. 

In a rude state of society there are seasons of want, sea 
sons when people starve; but they are seasons when the 
earth has refused to yield her increase, when the rain has 
not fallen from the heavens, or when the land has been 
swept by some foe—not when there is plenty. And yet 
the peculiar characteristic of this modern poverty of ours 
is that it is deepest where wealth most abounds. 

Why, to-day, while over the civilised world there is so 
much distress, so much want, what is the cry that goes up ? 
What is the current explanation of the hard times? Over 
production ! There are so many clothes that men must go 
ragged, so much coal that in the bitter winters people 
have to shiver, such over-filled granaries that people actu- 

 192 THE CRIME OP POVERTY 

ally die by starvation! Want due to over-production! 
Was a greater absurdity ever uttered? How can there be 
over-production till all have enough? It is not over-pro 
duction; it is unjust distribution. 

Poverty necessary! Why, think of the enormous powers 
that are latent in the human brain! Think how invention 
enables us to do with the power of one man what not long 
ago could not be done by the power of a thousand. Think 
that in England alone the steam machinery in operation 
is said to exert a productive force greater than the physical 
force of the population of the world, were they all adults. 
And yet we have only begun to invent and discover. We 
have not yet utilised all that has already been invented 
and discovered. And look at the powers of the earth. 
They have hardly been touched. In every direction as we 
look new resources seem to open. Man's ability to pro 
duce wealth seems almost infinite—we can set no bounds 
to it. Look at the power that is flowing by your city in 
the current of the Mississippi that might be set at work 
for you. So in every direction energy that we might 
utilise goes to waste; resources that we might draw upon 
are untouched. Yet men are delving and straining to 
satisfy mere animal wants; women are working, working, 
working their lives away, and too frequently turning in 
despair from that hard struggle to cast away all that 
makes the charm of woman. 

If the animals can reason what must they think of us? 
Look at one of those great ocean steamers ploughing her 
way across the Atlantic, against wind, against wave, abso 
lutely setting at defiance the utmost power of the elements. 
If the gulls that hover over her were thinking beings could 
they imagine that the animal that could create such a 
structure as that could actually want for enough to eat? 
Yet, so it is. How many even of those of us who find life 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 193 

easiest are there who really live a rational life? Think of 
it, you who believe that there is only one life for man— 
what a fool at the very best is a man to pass his life in 
this struggle to merely live? And you who believe, as I 
believe, that this is not the last of man, that this is a life 
that opens but another life, think how nine tenths, aye, 
I do not know but ninety-nine-hundredths of all our vital 
powers are spent in a mere effort to get a living; or to 
heap together that which we cannot by any possibility take 
away. Take the life of the average workingman. Is that 
the life for which the human brain was intended and the 
human heart was made? Look at the factories scattered 
through our country. They are little better than peni 
tentiaries. 

I read in the New York papers a while ago that the girls 
at the Yonkers factories had struck. The papers said 
that the girls did not seem to know why they had struck, 
and intimated that it must be just for the fun of strik 
ing. Then came out the girls' side of the story and it 
appeared that they had struck against the rules in force. 
They were fined if they spoke to one another, and they 
were fined still more heavily if they laughed. There was 
a heavy fine for being a minute late. I visited a lady in 
Philadelphia who had been a forewoman in various fac 
tories, and I asked her, "Is it possible that such rules are 
enforced ?" She said it was so in Philadelphia. There is 
a fine for speaking to your next neighbour, a fine for 
laughing; and she told me that the girls in one place where 
she was employed were fined ten cents a minute for being 
late, though many of them had to come for miles in winter 
storms. She told me of one poor girl who really worked 
hard one week and made $3.50; but the fines against her 
were $5.25. That seems ridiculous; it is ridiculous, but 
it is pathetic and it is shameful. 

 194 THE CEIME OF POVERTY 

But take the cases of those even who are comparatively 
independent and well off. Here is a man working hour 
after hour, day after day, week after week, in doing one 
thing over and over again, and for what? Just to live. 
He is working ten hours a day in order that he may sleep 
eight and may have two or three hours for himself when 
he is tired out and all his faculties are exhausted. That 
is not a reasonable life; that is not a life for a being 
possessed of the powers that are in man, and I think every 
man must have felt it for himself. I know that when I 
first went to my trade I thought to myself that it was in 
credible that a man was created to work all day long just 
to live. I used to read the "Scientific American," and as 
invention after invention was heralded in that paper I 
used to think to myself that when I became a man it would 
not be necessary to work so hard. But on the contrary, 
the struggle for existence has become more and more in 
tense. People who want to prove the contrary get up 
masses of statistics to show that the condition of the work 
ing classes is improving. Improvement that you have to 
take a statistical microscope to discover does not amount 
to anything. But there is not improvement. 

Improvement! Why, according to the last report of 
the Michigan Bureau of Labour Statistics, as I read yester 
day in a Detroit paper, taking all the trades, including 
some of the very high priced ones, where the wages are 
from $6 to $7 a day, the average earnings amount to $1.77, 
and, taking out waste time, to $1.40. Now, when you 
consider how a man can live and bring up a family on 
$1.40 a day, even, in Michigan, I do not think you will 
conclude that the condition of the working classes can 
have very much improved. 

Here is a broad general fact that is asserted by all who 
have investigated the question, by such men as Hallam, 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR LSPEECH 195 

the historian, and Professor Thorold Eogers, who has made 
a study of the history of prices as they were five centuries 
ago. When all the productive arts were in the most primi 
tive state, when the most prolific of our modern vegetables 
had not been introduced, when the breeds of cattle were 
small and poor, when there were hardly any roads and 
transportation was exceedingly difficult, when all manu 
facturing was done by hand—in that rude time the condi 
tion of the labourers of England was far better than it is 
to-day. In those rude times no man need fear want save 
when actual famine came, and owing to the difficulties of 
transportation the plenty of one district could not relieve 
the scarcity of another. Save in such times, no man need 
fear want. Pauperism, such as exists in modern times, 
was absolutely unknown. Everyone, save the physically 
disabled, could make a living, and the poorest lived in 
rude plenty. But perhaps the most astonishing fact 
brought to light by this investigation is that at that time, 
under those conditions in those "dark ages," as we call 
them, the working day was only eight hours. While with 
all our modern inventions and improvements, our working 
classes have been agitating and struggling in vain to get 
the working day reduced to eight hours. 

Do these facts show improvement? WThy, in the rudest 
state of society in the most primitive state of the arts 
the labour of the natural bread-winner will suffice, to pro 
vide a living for himself and for those who are dependent 
upon him. Amid all our inventions there are large bodies 
of men who cannot do this. What is the most astonishing 
thing in our civilisation ? Why, the most astonishing thing 
to those Sioux chiefs who were recently brought from the 
Far West and taken through our manufacturing cities in 
the East, was not the marvelous inventions that enabled 
machinery to act almost as if it had intellect; it was not the 

 196 THE CRIME OP POVERTY 

growth of our cities; it was not the speed with which 
the railway car whirled along; it was not the telegraph or 
the telephone that most astonished them; but the fact that 
amid this marvelous development of productive power they 
found little children at work. And astonishing that ought 
to be to us; a most astounding thing! 

Talk about improvement in the condition of the work 
ing classes, when the facts are that a larger and larger 
proportion of women and children are forced to toil. Why, 
I am told that, even here in your own city, there are chil 
dren of thirteen and fourteen working in factories. In 
Detroit, according to the report of the Michigan Bureau of 
Labour Statistics, one half of the children of school age 
do not go to school. In New Jersey, the report made to 
the legislature discloses an amount of misery and igno 
rance that is appalling. Children are growing up there, 
compelled to monotonous toil when they ought to be at 
play, children who do not know how to play; children who 
have been so long accustomed to work that they have be 
come used to it; children growing up in such ignorance 
that they do not know what country New Jersey is in, 
that they never heard of George Washington, that some 
of them think Europe is in New York. Such facts are 
appalling; they mean that the very foundations of the 
Eepublic are being sapped. The dangerous man is not the 
man who tries to excite discontent; the dangerous man is 
the man who says that all is as it ought to be. Such a 
state of things cannot continue; such tendencies as we 
see at work here cannot go on without bringing at last an 
overwhelming crash. 

I say that all this poverty and the ignorance that flows 
from it is unnecessary; I say that there is no natural rea 
son why we should not all be rich, in the sense, not of 
having more than each other, but in the sense of all hav- 

 KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 197 

ing enough to completely satisfy all physical wants; of all 
having enough to get such an easy living that we could 
develop the better part of humanity. There is no reason 
why wealth should not be BO abundant, that no one should 
think of such a thing as little children at work, or a 
woman compelled to a toil that nature never intended her 
to perform; wealth so abundant that there would be no 
cause for that harassing fear that sometimes paralyses 
even those who are not considered "the poor," the fear that 
every man of us has probably felt, that if sickness should 
smite him, or if he should be taken away, those whom he 
loves better than his life would become charges upon char 
ity. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they 
toil not, neither do they spin." I believe that in a really 
Christian community, in a society that honoured not with 
the lips but with the act, the doctrines of Jesus, no one 
would have occasion to worry about physical needs any 
more than do the lilies of the field. There is enough and 
to spare. The trouble is that, in this mad struggle, we 
trample in the mire what has been provided in sufficiency 
for us all; trample it in the mire while we tear and rend 
each other. 

There is a cause for this poverty; and, if you trace it 
down, you will find its root in a primary injustice. Look 
over the world to-day—poverty everywhere. The cause 
must be a common one. You cannot attribute it to the 
tariff, or to the form of government, or to this thing or to 
that in which nations differ; because, as deep poverty is 
common to them all the cause that produces it must be a 
common cause. What is that common cause? There is 
one sufficient cause that is common to all nations; and 
that is the appropriation as the property of some of that 
natural element on which and from which all must live. 

Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact 

 198 THE CEIME OP POVEETY 

that, even now, it is harder to live than it was in the 
ages dark and rude five centuries ago—how do you ex 
plain it? There is no difficulty in finding the cause. 
Whoever reads the history of England, or the history of 
any other civilised nation (but I speak of the history of 
England because that is the history with which we are 
best acquainted) will see the reason. For century after 
century a parliament composed of aristocrats and em 
ployers passed laws endeavouring to reduce wages, but in 
vain. Men could not be crowded down to wages that gave 
a mere living because the bounty of nature was not wholly 
shut up from them; because some remains of the recogni 
tion of the truth that all men have equal rights on the 
earth still existed; because the land of that country, that 
which was held in private possession, was only held on a 
tenure derived from the nation, and for a rent payable 
back to the nation. The church lands supported the ex 
penses of public worship, of the maintenance of seminaries 
and the care of the poor; the crown lands defrayed the 
expenses of the civil list; and from a third portion of the 
lands, those held under the military tenures, the army 
was provided for. There was no national debt in Eng 
land at that time. They carried on wars for hundreds of 
years, but at the charge of the landowners. And more 
important still, there remained everywhere, and you can 
see in every old English town their traces to this day, the 
common lands to which any of the neighbourhood was 
free. It was as those lands were inclosed; it was as the 
commons were gradually monopolised, as the church lands 
were made the prey of greedy courtiers, as the crown lands 
were given away as absolute property to the favourites of 
the king, as the military tenants shirked their rents and 
laid the expenses they had agreed to defray, upon the na 
tion, in taxation that bore upon industry and upon thrift 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 199 

—it was then that poverty began to deepen, and the tramp 
appeared in England; just as to-day he is appearing in 
our new States. 

Now, think of it—is not land monopolisation a suffi 
cient reason for poverty? What is man? In the first 
place, he is an animal, a land animal who cannot live with 
out land. All that man produces comes from land; all 
productive labour, in the final analysis, consists in work 
ing up land; or materials drawn from land, into such 
forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human wants and 
desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the land. 
Children of the soil, we come from the land, and to the 
land we must return. Take away from man all that be 
longs to the land, and what have you but a disembodied 
spirit? Therefore he who holds the land on which and 
from which another man must live, is that man's master; 
and the man is his slave. The man who holds the land 
on which I must live can command me to life or to death 
just as absolutely as though I were his chattel. Talk 
about abolishing slavery—we have not abolished slavery; 
we have ouly abolished one rude form of it, chattel slavery. 
There is a deeper and a more insidious form, a more 
cursed form yet before us to abolish, in this industrial 
slavery that makes a man a virtual slave, while taunting 
him and mocking him with the name of freedom. Pov 
erty ! want! they will sting as much as the lash. Slavery 5 
God knows there are horrors enough in slavery; but there 
are deeper horrors in our civilised society to-day. Bad as 
chattel slavery was, it did not drive slave mothers to kill 
their children, yet you may read in official reports that the 
system of child insurance which has taken root so strongly 
in England, and which is now spreading over our Eastern 
States, has perceptibly and largely increased the rate of 
child mortality!—What does that mean? 

 200 THE CRIME OP POVERTY 

Eobinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued Friday 
from the cannibals, made him his slave. Friday had to 
serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe had said, "0 man 
and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I welcome 
you to this island, and you shall be a free and independent 
citizen, with just as much to say as I have—except that 
this island is mine, and of course, as I can do as I please 
with my own property, you must not use it save upon my 
terms." Friday would have been just as much Crusoe's 
slave as though he had called him one. Friday was not 
a fish, he could not swim off through the sea; he was not 
a bird, and could not fly off through the air; if he lived at 
all, he had to live on that island. And if that island was 
Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master through life to death. 

A friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this ques 
tion, was talking a while ago with another friend of mine 
who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid much atten 
tion to the land question. Our greenback friend said, 
"Yes, yes, the land question is an important question; oh, 
I admit the land question is a very important question; 
but then there are other important questions. There is 
this question and that question, and the other question; 
and there is the money question. The money question is a 
very important question; it is a more important question 
than the land question. You give me all the money, and 
you can take all the land." My friend said, "Well, sup 
pose you had all the money in the world and I had all 
the land in the world. What would you do if I were to 
give you notice to quit?" 

Do you know that I do not think that the average man 
realises what land is? I know a little girl who has been 
going to school for some time, studying geography, and 
all that sort of thing; and one day she said to me: "Here 
is something about the surface of the earth. I wonder 

 KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 201 

what the surface of the earth looks like?" "Well," I said, 
"look out into the yard there. That is the surface of the 
earth." She said, "That the surface of the earth? Our 
yard the surface of the earth? Why, I never thought of 
it!" That is very much the case not only with grown men, 
but with such wise beings as newspaper editors. They 
seem to think, when you talk of land, that you ahvays refer 
to farms; to think that the land question is a question 
that relates entirely to farmers, as though land had no 
other use than growing crops. Now, I should like to know 
how a man could even edit a newspaper without having 
the use of some land. He might swing himself by straps 
and go up in a balloon, but he could not even then get 
along without land. What supports the balloon in the 
air ? Land; the surface of the earth. Let the earth drop, 
and what would become of the balloon? The air that sup 
ports the balloon is supported in turn by land. So it is 
with everything else men can do. Whether a man is work 
ing away three thousand feet under the surface of the 
earth, or whether he is working up in the top of one of 
those immense buildings that they have in New York; 
whether he is ploughing the soil or sailing across the 
ocean, he is still using land. 

Land! Why, in owning a piece of ground, what do you 
own? The lawyers will tell you that you own from the 
centre of the earth right up to heaven; and, so far as all 
human purposes go, you do. In New York they are 
building houses thirteen and fourteen stories high. What 
are men, living in those upper stories, paying for? There 
is a friend of mine who has an office in one of them, and 
he estimates that he pays by the cubic foot for air. Well, 
the man who owns the surface of the land has the renting 
of the air up there, and would have if the buildings were 
carried up for miles. 

 202 THE CBIME OF POVERTY 

This land question is the bottom question. Man is a 
land animal. Suppose you want to build a house; can 
you build it without a place to put it? What is it built 
of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron—they all come 
from the earth. Think of any article of wealth you choose, 
any of those things which men struggle for, where do 
they come from ? From the land. It is the bottom ques 
tion. The land question is simply the labour question; 
and when some men own that element from which all 
wealth must be drawn, and upon which all must live, 
then they have the power of living without work, and, 
therefore, those who do work get less of the products of 
work. 

Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and strange 
ness of the fact that, all over the civilised world, the work 
ing classes are the poor classes? Go into any city in the 
world, and get into a cab and ask the man to drive you 
where the working people live. lie won't take you to 
where the fine houses are. He will take you, on the con 
trary, into the squalid quarters, the poorer quarters. Did 
you ever think how curious that is ? Think for a moment 
how it would strike a rational being who had never been 
on the earth before, if such an intelligence could come 
down, and you were to explain to him how we live on 
earth, how houses and food and clothing, and all the 
many things we need were all produced by work, would 
he not think that the working people would be the people 
who lived" in the finest houses and had most of everything 
that work produces? Yet, whether you took him to Lon 
don or Paris or New York, or even to Burlington, he 
would find that those called the working people were the 
people who live in the poorest houses. 

All this is strange—just think of it. We naturally de 
spise poverty; and it is reasonable that we should. I do 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUK SPEECH 203 

not say—I distinctly repudiate it—that the people who 
are poor are poor always from their own fault, or even in 
most cases; but it ought to be so. If any good man or 
woman could create a world, it would be a sort of a world 
in which no onr would be poor unless he was lazy or 
vicious. But that is just precisely the kind of a world 
this is; that is just precisely the kind of a world the Cre 
ator has made. Nature gives to labour, and to labour 
alone; there must be human work before any article of 
wealth can be produced; and in the natural state of things 
the man who toiled honestly and well would be the rich 
man, and he who did not work would be poor. We have 
so reversed the order of nature that we are accustomed 
to think of the workingmau as a poor man. 

And if you trace it out I believe you will see that the 
primary cause of this is that we compel those who work 
to pay others for permission to do so. You may buy a 
coat, a horse, a house; there you are paying the seller for 
labour exerted, for something that he has produced, or 
that he has got from the man who did produce it; but 
when you pay a man for land, what are you paying him 
for? You are paying for something that no man has 
produced; you pay him for something that was here before 
man was, or for a value that was created, not by him indi 
vidually, but by the community of which you are a part. 
What is the reason that the land here, where we stand to 
night, is worth more than it was twenty-five years ago? 
What is the reason that land in the centre of New York, 
that once could be bought by the mile for a jug of whiskey, 
is now worth so much that, though you were to cover it 
with gold, you would not have its value? Is it not because 
of the increase of population? Take away that popula 
tion, and where would the value of the land be ? Look at 
it in any way you please. 

 204 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

We talk about over-production. How can there be such 
a thing as over-production while people want? All these 
things that are said to be over-produced are desired by 
many people. Why do they not get them ? They do not get 
them because they have not the means to buy them; not 
that they do not want them. Why have not they the means 
to buy them? They earn too little. When the great 
masses of men have to work for an average of $1.40 a day, 
it is no wonder that great quantities of goods cannot 
be sold. 

Now why is it that men have to work for such low 
wages? Because if they were to demand higher wages 
there are plenty of unemployed men ready to step into 
their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who 
compel that fierce competition that drives wages down to 
the point of bare subsistence. Why is it that there are 
men who cannot get employment? Did you ever think 
what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employ 
ment? Adam had no difficulty in finding employment; 
neither had Robinson Crusoe; the finding of employment 
was the last thing that troubled them. 

If men cannot find an employer, why cannot they em 
ploy themselves? Simply because they are shut out from 
the element on which human labour can alone be exerted. 
Men are compelled to compete with each other for the 
wages of an employer, because they have been robbed of 
the natural opportunities of employing themselves; because 
they cannot find a piece of God's world on which to work 
without paying some other human creature for the privi 
lege. 

I do not mean to say that even after you had set right 
this fundamental injustice, there would not be many things 
to do; but this I do mean to say, that our treatment of 
land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This I do 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 205 

mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you may, 
you never can get rid of wide-spread poverty so long as the 
element on which and from which all men must live is 
made the private property of some men. It is utterly im 
possible. Eeform government—get taxes down to the 
minimum—build railroads; institute co-operative stores; 
divide profits, if you choose, between employers and em 
ployed—and what will be the result? The result will be 
that the land will increase in value—that will be the re 
sult—that and nothing else. Experience shows this. Do 
not all improvements simply increase the value of land— 
the price that some must pay others for the privilege of 
living? 

Consider the matter, I say it with all reverence, and I 
merely say it because I wish to impress a truth upon your 
minds—it is utterly impossible, so long as His laws are 
what they are, that God himself could relieve poverty— 
utterly impossible. Think of it and you will see. Men 
pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty 
conies not from God's laws—it is blasphemy of the worst 
kind to say that; it comes from man's injustice to his 
fellows. Supposing the Almighty were to hear the prayer, 
how could He carry out the request so long as His laws 
are what they are? Consider—the Almighty gives us 
nothing of the things that constitute wealth; He merely 
gives us the raw material, which must be utilised by man 
to produce wealth. Does He not give us enough of that 
now? How could He relieve poverty even if He were to 
give us more? Supposing in answer to these prayers He 
were to increase the power of the sun; or the virtue of the 
soil? Supposing He were to make plants more prolific, 
or animals to produce after their kind more abundantly? 
Who would get the benefit of it? Take a country where 
land is completely monopolised, as it is in most of the 

 206 THE CRIME OP POVERTY 

civilised countries—who would get the henefit of it ? Sim 
ply the landowners. And even if God in answer to prayer 
were to send down out of the heavens those things that men 
require, who would get the henefit ? 

In the Old Testament we are told that when the Israelites 
journeyed through the desert, they were hungered, and 
that God sent manna down out of the heavens. There 
was enough for all of them, and they all took it and were 
relieved. But supposing that desert had heen held as pri 
vate property, as the soil of Great Britain is held, as the 
soil even of our new States is being held; suppose that 
one of the Israelites had a square mile, and another one 
had twenty square miles, and another one had a hundred 
square miles, and the great majority of the Israelites did 
not have enough to set the soles of their feet upon, which 
they could call their own—what would become of the 
manna? What good would it have done to the major 
ity? Not a whit. Though God had sent down manna 
enough for all, that manna would have been the prop 
erty of the landholders; they would have employed some 
of the others perhaps, to gather it up into heaps for them, 
and would have sold it to their hungry brethren. Con 
sider it; this purchase and sale of manna might have gone 
on until the majority of Israelites had given all they had, 
even to the clothes off their backs. What then? Then 
they would not have had anything left to buy manna with, 
and the consequences would have been that while they 
went hungry the manna would have lain in great heaps, 
and the landowners would have been complaining of the 
over-production of manna. There woiild have been a great 
harvest of manna and hungry people, just precisely the 
phenomenon that we see to-day. 

I cannot go over all the points I would like to try, but 
I wish to call your attention to the utter absurdity of pri- 

 KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 207 

vate property in land! Why, consider it, the idea of a 
man's selling the earth—the earth, our common mother. 
A man selling that which no man produced—a man pass 
ing title from one generation to another. Why, it is the 
most absurd thing in the world. Why, did you ever think 
of it? What right has a dead man to land? For whom 
was this earth created ? It was created for the living, cer 
tainly, not for the dead. Well, now we treat it as though 
it was created for the dead. Where do our land titles 
come from ? They come from men who for the most part 
are past and gone. Here in this new country you get a 
little nearer the original source; but go to the Eastern 
States and go back over the Atlantic. There you may 
clearly see the power that comes from landownership. 

As I say, the man that owns the land is the master of 
those who must live on it. Here is a modern instance: 
you who are familiar with the history of the Scottish 
Church know that in the forties there was a disruption in 
the church. You who have read Hugh Miller's work on 
"The Cruise of the Betsey" know something about it; how 
a groat body, led by Dr. Chalmers, came out from the 
Established Church and said they would set up a Free 
Church. In the Established Church were a great many 
of the landowners. Some of them, like the Duke of Buc- 
eleugh, owning miles and miles of land on which no com 
mon Scotsman had a right to put his foot, save by the 
Duke of Buccleugh's permission. These landowners re 
fused not only to allow these Free Churchmen to have 
ground upon which to erect a church, but they would not 
let them stand on their land and worship God. You who 
have read "The Cruise of the Betsey" know that it is the 
story of a clergyman who was obliged to make his home 
in a boat on that wild sea because he was not allowed 
to have land enough to live on. In many places the people 

 208 THE CRIME OP POVERTY 

had to take the sacrament with the tide coming to their 
knees—many a man lost his life worshipping on the roads 
in rain and snow. They were not permitted to go on 
Mr. Landlord's land and worship God, and had to take 
to the roads. The Duke of Buccleugh stood out for seven 
years compelling people to worship in the roads, until 
finally relenting a little, he allowed them to worship God 
in a gravel pit; whereupon they passed a resolution of 
thanks to His Grace. 

But that is not what I wanted to tell you. The thing 
that struck me was this significant fact: As soon as the 
disruption occurred, the Free Church, composed of a great 
many able men, at once sent a delegation to the land 
lords to ask permission for Scotsmen to worship God in 
Scotland and in their own way. This delegation set out 
for London—they had to go to London, England, to get 
permission for Scotsmen to worship God in Scotland, and 
in their own native home! 

But that is not the most absurd thing. In one place where 
they were refused land upon which to stand and worship 
God, the late landowner had died and his estate was in the 
hands of the trustees, and the answer of the trustees was, 
that so far as they were concerned they would exceedingly 
like to allow them to have a place to put up a church to 
worship God, but they could not conscientiously do it 
because they knew that such a course would be very dis 
pleasing to the late Mr. Monaltie! Now this dead man 
had gone to heaven, let us hope; at any rate he had gone 
away from this world, but lest it might displease him men 
yet living could not worship God. Is it possible for ab 
surdity to go any further ? 

You may say that those Scotch people are very absurd 
people, but they are not a whit more so than we are. I 
read only a. little while ago of some Long Island fisher- 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 209 

men who had been paying as rent for the privilege of fish 
ing there, a certain part of the catch. They paid it be 
cause they believed that James II., a dead man centuries 
ago, a man who never put his foot in America, a king who 
was kicked off the English throne, had said they had to 
pay it, and they got up a committee, went to the county 
town and searched the records. They could not find any 
thing in the records to show that James II. had ever or 
dered that they should give any of their fish to anybody, 
and so they refused to pay any longer. But if they had 
found that James II. had really said they should they 
would have gone on paying. Can anything be more 
absurd ? 

There is a square in New York—Stuyvesant Square— 
that is locked up at six o'clock every evening, even on the 
long summer evenings. Why is it locked up? Why are 
the children not allowed to play there? Why because old 
Mr. Stuyvesant, dead and gone I don't know how many 
years ago, so willed it. Now can anything be more 
absurd?1 

Yet that is not any more absurd than our land titles. 
From whom do they come? Dead man after dead man. 
Suppose you get on the cars here going to Council Bluffs 
or Chicago. You find a passenger with his baggage strewn 
over the seats. You say: "Will you give me a seat, if you 
please, sir?" He replies: "No; I bought this seat." 
"Bought this seat? From whom did you buy it?" "I 
bought it from the man who got out at the last station." 
That is the way we manage this earth of ours. 

Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson said, 
that "the land belongs in usufruct to the living," and 

1 After a popular agitation, the park authorities since decided to leave 
the gates open later than six o'clock. 

 210 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

that they who have died have left it, and have no power to 
say how it shall be disposed of? Title to land! Where 
can a man get any title which makes the earth his prop 
erty? There is a sacred right to property—sacred be 
cause ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by 
the laws of God, and necessary to social order and civili 
sation. That is the right of property in things pro 
duced by labour; it rests on the right of a man to him 
self. That which a man produces, that is his against all 
the world, to give or to keep, to lend, to sell or to be 
queath; but how can he get such a right to land when 
it was here before he came? Individual claims to land 
rest only on appropriation. I read in a recent number 
of the "Nineteenth Century," possibly some of you may 
have read it, an article by an ex-prime minister of Aus 
tralia in which there was a little story that attracted my 
attention. It was of a man named Galahard, who in the 
early days got up to the top of a high hill in one of the 
finest parts of western Australia. He got up there, looked 
all around, and made this proclamation: "All the land 
that is in my sight from the top of this hill I claim for 
myself; and all the land that is out of sight I claim for 
my son John." 

That story is of universal application. Land titles 
everywhere come from just such appropriations. Now, 
under certain circumstances, appropriation can give a 
right. You invite a company of gentlemen to dinner and 
you say to them: "Be seated, gentlemen," and I get into 
this chair. Well, that seat for the time being is mine by 
the right of appropriation. It would be very ungentle- 
manly, it would be very wrong for any one of the other 
guests to come up and say: "Get out of that chair; I want 
to sit there!" But that right of possession, which is good 
so far as the chair is concerned, for the time, does not 

 KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 211 

give me a right to appropriate all there is on the table 
before me. Grant that a man has a right to appropriate 
such natural elements as he can use, has he any right to 
appropriate more than he can use? Has a guest in such 
a case as I have supposed a right to appropriate more 
than he needs and make other people stand up ? That is 
what is done. 

Why, look all over this country—look at this town or 
any other town. If men only took what they wanted to 
use we should all have enough; but they take what they 
do not want to use at all. Here are a lot of Englishmen 
coming over here and getting titles to our land in vast 
tracts; what do they want with our land? They do not 
want it at all; it is not the land they want; they have 
no use for American land. What they want is the income 
that they know they can in a little while get from it. 
Where docs that income come from? It comes from 
labour, from the labour of American citizens. What we 
are selling to these people is our children, not land. 

Poverty! Can there be any doubt of its cause? Go 
into the old countries—go into western Ireland, into the 
highlands of Scotland—these are purely primitive commu 
nities. There you will find people as poor as poor can 
be—living year after year on oatmeal or on potatoes, and 
often going hungry. I could tell you many a pathetic 
story. Speaking to a Scottish physician who was telling 
me how this diet was inducing among these people a dis 
ease similar to that which from the same cause is ravag 
ing Italy (the Pellagra), I said to him: "There is plenty 
of fish; why don't they catch fish? There is plenty of 
game; I know the laws are against it, but cannot they 
take it on the sly?" "That," he said, "never enters their 
heads. Why, if a man was even suspected of having a 
taste for trout or grouse he would have to leave at once." 

 212 THE CRIME OP POVERTY 

There is no difficulty in discovering what makes those 
people poor. They have no right to anything that nature 
gives them. All they can make above a living they must 
pay to the landlord. They not only have to pay for the 
land that they use, but they have to pay for the seaweed 
that comes ashore and for the turf they dig from the 
bogs. They dare not improve, for any improvements they 
make are made an excuse for putting up the rent. These 
people who work hard live in hovels, and the landlords, 
who do not work at all—oh! they live in luxury in London 
or Paris. If they have hunting boxes there, why they are 
magnificent castles as compared with the hovels in which 
the men live who do the work. Is there any question as 
to the cause of poverty there? 

Now go into the cities and what do you see! Why, you 
see even a lower depth of poverty; aye, if I would point 
out the worst of the evils of land monopoly I would not 
take you to Connemara; I would not take you to Skye or 
Kintire—I would take you to Dublin or Glasgow or Lon 
don. There is something worse than physical deprivation, 
something worse than starvation; and that is the degrada 
tion of the mind, the death of the soul. That is what you 
will find in those cities. 

Now, what is the cause of that? Why, it is plainly to 
be seen; the people driven off the land in the country are 
driven into the slums of the cities. For every man that 
is driven off the land the demand for the produce of the 
workmen of the cities is lessened; and the man himself 
with his wife and children, is forced among those work 
men to compete upon any terms for a bare living and force 
wages down. Get work he must or starve—get work he 
must or do that which those people, so long as they main 
tain their manly feelings, dread more than death, go .to 
the alms-houses. That is the reason, here as in Great 

 KNIGHTS OP LABOUR SPEECH 213 

Britain, that the cities are overcrowded. Open the land 
that is locked up, that is held by dogs in the manger, who 
will not use it themselves and will not allow anybody else 
to use it, and you would see no more of tramps and hear 
no more of over-production. 

The utter absurdity of this thing of private property in 
land! I defy any one to show me any good from it, look 
where you please. Go out in the new lands, where my 
attention was first called to it, or go to the heart of the 
capital of the world—London. Everywhere, when your 
eyes are once opened, you will see its inequality and you 
will see its absurdity. You do not have to go farther than 
Burlington. You have here a most beautiful site for a 
city, but the city itself as compared with what it might 
be is a miserable, straggling town. A gentleman showed 
me to-day a big hole alongside one of your streets. The 
place has been filled up all around it and this hole is left. 
It is neither pretty nor useful. Why does that hole stay 
there? Well, it stays there because somebody claims it as 
his private property. There is a man, this gentleman told 
me, who wished to grade another lot and wanted some 
where to put the dirt he took off it, and he offered to buy 
this hole so that he might fill it up. Now it would have 
been a good thing for Burlington to have it filled up, a 
good thing for you all—your town woidd look better, and 
you yourself would be in no danger of tumbling into it 
some dark night. Why, my friend pointed out to me 
another similar hole in which water had collected and told 
me that two children had been drowned there. And he 
likewise told me that a drunken man some years ago had 
fallen into such a hole and had brought suit against the 
city which cost you taxpayers some $11,000. Clearly it 
is to the interest of you all to have that particular hole I 
am talking of filled up. The man who wanted to fill it 

 214 THE CKIME OF POVERTY 

up offered the hole owner $300. But the hole owner re 
fused the offer and declared that lie would hold out until 
he could get $1000; and in the meanwhile that unsightly 
and dangerous hole must remain. This is but an illus 
tration of private property in land. 

You may see the same thing all over this country. See 
how injuriously in the agricultural districts this thing of 
private property in land affects the roads and the distances 
between the people. A man does not take what land he 
wants, what he can use, but he takes all he can get, and 
the consequence is that his next neighbour has to go fur 
ther along, people are separated from each other further 
than they ought to be, to the increased difficulty of pro 
duction, to the loss of neighbourhood and companionship. 
They have more roads to maintain than they can decently 
maintain; they must do more work to get the same result, 
and life is in every way harder and drearier. 

When you come to the cities it is just the other way. 
In the country the people are too much scattered; in the 
great cities they are too crowded. Go to a city like New 
York and there they are jammed together like sardines 
in a box, living family upon family, one above the other. 
It is an unnatural and unwholesome life. How can you 
have anything like a home in a tenement room, or two or 
three rooms? How can children be brought up healthily 
with no place to play ? Two or three weeks ago I read of 
a New York judge who fined two little boys five dollars 
for playing hop-scotch on the street—where else could 
they play? Private property in land had robbed them of 
all place to play. Even a temperance man, who had in 
vestigated the subject, said that in his opinion the gin 
palaces of London were a positive good in this, that they 
enabled the people whose abodes were dark and squalid 
rooms to see a little brightness and thus prevent them from 
going wholly mad. 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 215 

What is the reason for this overcrowding of cities? 
There is no natural reason. Take New York, one half its 
area is not built upon. Why, then, must people crowd 
together as they do there? Simply because of private 
ownership of land. There is plenty of room to build 
houses and plenty of people who want to build houses, but 
before anybody can build a house a blackmail price must 
be paid to some dog in the manger. It costs in many 
cases more to get vacant ground upon which to build a 
house than it does to build the house. And then what 
happens to the man who pays this blackmail and builds a 
house? Down comes the tax-gatherer and fines him for 
building the house. 

It is so all over the United States—the men who im 
prove, the men who turn the prairie into farms and the 
desert into gardens, the men who beautify your cities, are 
taxed and fined for having done these things. Now, noth 
ing is clearer than that the people of New York want 
more houses; and I think that even here in Burlington 
you could get along with more houses. Why, then, should 
you fine a man who builds one? Look all over this coun 
try—the bulk of the taxation rests upon the improver; the 
man who puts up a building, or establishes a factory, or 
cultivates a farm, he is taxed for it; and not merely taxed 
for it, but I think in nine cases out of ten the land which 
he uses, the bare land, is taxed more than the adjoining 
lot or the adjoining 160 acres that some speculator is 
holding as a mere dog in the manger, not using it himself 
and not allowing anybody else to use it. 

I am talking too long; but let me in a few words point 
out the way of getting rid of land monopoly, securing the 
right of all to the elements which are necessary for life. 
We could not divide the land. In a rude state of society, 
as among the ancient Hebrews, giving each family its lot 

 216 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

and making it inalienable we might secure something like 
equality. But in a complex civilisation that will not suf 
fice. It is not, however, necessary to divide up the land. 
All that is necessary is to divide up the income that comes 
from the land. In that way we can secure absolute equal 
ity; nor could the adoption of this principle involve any 
rude shock or violent change. It can be brought about 
gradually and easily by abolishing taxes that now rest 
upon capital, labour and improvements, and raising all our 
public revenues by the taxation of land values; and the 
longer you think of it the clearer you will see that in 
every possible way will it be a benefit. 

Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes direct 
and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon land values, 
what would be the effect? In the first place it would be 
to kill speculative values. It would be to remove from 
the newer parts of the country the bulk of the taxation 
and put it on the richer parts. It would be to exempt 
the pioneer from taxation and make the larger cities pay 
more of it. It would be to relieve energy and enterprise, 
capital and labour, from all those burdens that now bear 
upon them. What a start that would give to production! 
In the second place we could, from the value of the land, 
not merely pay all the present expenses of the government, 
but we could do infinitely more. In the city of San 
Francisco James Lick left, a few blocks of ground to be 
used for public purposes there, and the rent amounts to so 
much, that out of it will be built the largest telescope in 
the world, large public baths and other public buildings, 
and various costly works. If, instead of these few blocks, 
the whole value of the land upon which the city is built 
had accrued to San Francisco what could she not do? 

So in this little town, where land values are very low 
as compared with such cities as Chicago and San Fran- 

 KNIGHTS OF LABOUR SPEECH 217 

cisco, you could do many things for mutual benefit and 
public improvement did you appropriate to public pur 
poses the land values that now go to individuals. You 
could have a great free library; you could have an art 
gallery; you could get yourselves a public park, a mag 
nificent public park, too. You have here one of the finest 
natural sites for a beautiful town I know of, and I have 
travelled much. You might make on this site a city that 
it would be a pleasure to live in. You will not as you 
go now—oh, no! Why, the very fact that you have a 
magnificent view here will cause somebody to hold on all 
the more tightly to the land that commands this view 
and charge higher prices for it. The State of New York 
wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable the people to 
see Niagara, but what a price she must pay for it! Look 
at all the great cities; in Philadelphia, for instance, in 
order to build their great city hall they had to block up 
the only two wide streets they had in the city. Every 
where you go you may see how private property in land 
prevents public as well as private improvement. 

But I have not time to enter into further details. I 
can only ask you to think upon this thing, and the more 
you will see its desirability. As an English friend of 
mine puts it: "No taxes and a pension for everybody;" 
and why should it not be? To take land values for pub 
lic purposes is not really to impose a tax, but to take for 
public purposes a value created by the community. And 
out of the fund which would thus accrue from the com 
mon property, we might, without degradation to anybody, 
provide enough to actually secure from want all who were 
deprived of their natural protectors or met with accident, 
or any man who should grow so old that he could not work. 
All prating that is heard from some quarters about its 
hurting the common people to give them what they do not 

 218 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

work for is humbug. The truth is, that anything that 
injures self-respect, degrades, does harm; but if you give 
it as a right, as something to which every citizen is en 
titled to, it does not degrade. Charity schools do degrade 
children that are sent to them, but public schools do not. 
But all such benefits as these, while great, would be inci 
dental. The great thing would be that the reform I pro 
pose would tend to open opportunities to labour and enable 
men to provide employment for themselves. That is the 
great advantage. We should gain the enormous produc 
tive power that is going to waste all over the country, the 
power of idle hands that would gladly be at work. And 
that removed, then you would see wages begin to mount. 
It is not that everyone would turn farmer, or everyone 
would build himself a house if he had an opportunity for 
doing so, but so many could and would, as to relieve the 
pressure on the labour market and provide employment 
for all others. And as wages mounted to the higher levels, 
then you would see the productive power increased. The 
country where wages are high is the country of greatest 
productive powers. Where wages are highest, there will 
invention be most active; there will labour be most intelli 
gent; there will be the greatest yield for the expenditure 
of exertion. The more you think of it the more clearly 
you will see that what I say is true. I cannot hope to 
convince you in an hour or two, but I shall be content 
if I shall put you upon inquiry. Think for yourselves; 
ask yourselves whether this wide-spread fact of poverty is 
not a crime, and a crime for which every one of us, man 
and woman, who does not do what he or she can do to 
call attention to it and do away with it, is responsible. 

 LAND AND TAXATION: A CONVEE- 
SATION BETWEEN DAVID DUDLEY 
FIELD AND HENEY GKEOEGE 

 LAND AND TAXATION: A CONVERSATION 

BETWEEN DAVID DUDLEY FIELD 

AND HENRY GEORGE. 

[Published in the "North American Review," July, 1885, and circu 
lated in tract form in the United States, Canada and Great Britain.] 

ME. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. Will you explain to me how 
you expect to develop, in practice, your theory of the con 
fiscation of land to the use of the State? 

Mr. HENRY GEOEGE. By abolishing all other taxes and 
concentrating taxation upon land values. 

F. Then suppose A to be the proprietor of a thousand 
acres of land on the Hudson, chiefly farming land, but at 
the same time having on it houses, barns, cattle, horses, 
carriages, furniture; how is he to be dealt with under your 
theory ? 

G. He would be taxed upon the value of his land, and 
not upon the value of his improvements and stock. 

F. Whether the value of his land has been increased by 
his cultivation or not ? 

G. The value of land is not really increased by cultiva 
tion. The value that cultivation adds is a value of im 
provement, which I would exempt. I would tax the land 
at its present value, excluding improvements; so that such 
a proprietor would have no more taxes to pay than the 

221 

 222 LAND AND TAXATION 

proprietors of one thousand acres of land, equal in capa 
bilities, situation, etc., that remained in a state of nature. 

F. But suppose the proprietor of such land to have let 
it lie waste for many years while the farmer that I speak 
of has devoted his time and money to increasing the value 
of his thousand acres, would you tax them exactly alike? 

G. Exactly. 

P. Let us suppose B, an adjoining proprietor, has land 
that has never yielded a blade of grass, or any other 
product than weeds; and that A, a farmer, took his in 
the same condition when he purchased, and by his own 
thrift and expenditure has improved his land, so that now, 
without buildings, furniture, or stock, it is worth five 
times as much as B's thousand acres; B is taxed at the 
rate of a dime an acre; would you tax A at the rate of a 
dime an acre? 

G. I would certainly tax him no more than B, for by 
the additional value that A has created he has added that 
much to the common stock of wealth, and he ought to 
profit by it. The effect of our present system, which taxes 
a man for values created by his labour and capital, is to 
put a fine upon industry, and repress improvement. The 
more houses, the more crops, the more buildings in the 
country, the better for us all, and we are doing ourselves 
an injury by imposing taxes upon the production of such 
things. 

F. How are you to ascertain the value of land considered 
as waste land? 

G. By its selling price. The value of land is more 
easily and certainly ascertained than any other value. 
Land lies out of doors, everybody can see it, and in every 
neighbourhood a close idea of its value can be had. 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 223 

F. Take the case of the owner of a thousand acres in 
the Adirondack wilderness that have been denuded of 
trees, and an adjoining thousand acres that have a fine 
growth of timber. How would you value them? 

G. Natural timber is a part of the land; when it has 
value it adds to the value of the land. 

F. The land denuded of timber would then be taxed 
less than land that has timber? 

G. On general principles it would, where the value of 
the land was therefore lessened. But where, as in the 
Adirondacks, public policy forbids anything that would 
hasten the cutting of timber, natural timber might be con 
sidered an improvement, like planted timber, which should 
not add to taxable value. 

F. Then suppose a man to have a thousand acres of 
wild timber land, and to have cut off the timber, and 
planted the land, and set up buildings, and generally im 
proved it, would you tax him less than the man that has 
retained his land with the timber still on it? 

G. I would tax the value of his land irrespective of the 
improvements made by him, whether they consisted in 
clearing, in ploughing, or in building. In other words, I 
would tax that value which is created by the growth of 
the community, not that created by individual effort. 
Land has no value on account of improvements made upon 
it, or on account of its natural capabilities. It is as 
population increases, and society develops, that land values 
appear, and they rise in proportion to the growth of popu 
lation and social development. For instance, the value of 
the land upon which this building stands is now enor 
mously greater than it was years ago, not because of what 
its owner has done, but because of the growth of New York. 

 224 LAND AND TAXATION 

F. I am not speaking of New York City in particular; 
I am speaking of land generally. 

G. The same principle is generally true. Where a set 
tler takes up a quarter section on a western prairie, and 
improves it, his land has no value so long as other land 
of the same quality can be had for nothing. The value 
he creates is merely the value of improvement. But when 
population comes, then arises a value that attaches to the 
land itself. That is the value I would tax. 

P. Suppose the condition of the surrounding commu 
nity in the West remained the same; two men go together 
and purchase two pieces of land of a thousand acres each; 
one leaves his with a valuable growth of timber, the other 
cuts off the timber, cultivates the land, and makes a well 
ordered farm. Would you tax the man that has left the 
timber upon his land more than you would tax the other 
man, provided that the surrounding country remained the 
same? 

G. I would tax them both upon the value of the land 
at the time of taxation. At first, I take it, the clearing 
of the land would be a valuable improvement. On this, 
as on the value of his other improvements, I would not 
have the settler taxed. Thus taxation upon the two would 
be the same. In course of time the growth of population 
might give value to the uncut timber, which, being in 
cluded in the value of land, would make the taxation upon 
the man that had left his land in a state of nature heavier 
than upon the man that had converted his land into a 
farm. 

P. A man that goes into the western country and takes 
up land, paying the government price, and does nothing 
to the land; how is he to be taxed? 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 226 

G. As heavily as the man that has taken a like amount 
of land and improved it. Our present system is unjust 
and injurious in taxing the improver and letting the mere 
proprietor go. Settlers take up land, clear it, build houses, 
and cultivate crops, and for thus adding to the general 
wealth are immediately punished by taxation upon their 
improvements. This taxation is escaped by the man that 
lets his land lie idle, and, in addition to that, he is gen 
erally taxed less upon the value of his land than are those 
who have made their land valuable. All over the country, 
land in use is taxed more heavily than unused land. This 
is wrong. The man that holds land and neglects to im 
prove it keeps away somebody that would, and he ought 
to pay as much for the opportunity he wastes as the man 
that improves a like opportunity. 

F. Then you would tax the farmer whose farm is worth 
$1000 as heavily as you would tax the adjoining proprietor, 
who, with the same quantity of land, has added improve 
ments worth $100,000; is that your idea? 

G. It is. The improvements made by the capitalist 
would do no harm to the farmer, and would benefit the 
whole community, and I would do nothing to discourage 
them. 

F. In whom would you have the title to land vested—in 
the State, or in the individuals, as now? 

G. I would leave the land titles as at present. 

F. Your theory does not touch the title to land, nor the 
mode of transferring the title, nor the enjoyment of it; 
but it is a theory confined altogether to the taxing of it? 

G. In form. Its effect, however, if carried as far as I 
would like to carry it, would be to make the community 

 226 LAND AND TAXATION 

the real owner of land, and the various nominal owners 
virtually tenants, paying ground rent in the shape of taxes. 

P. Before we go to the method by which you would 
effect that result, let me ask you this question: A, a large 
landlord in New York, owns a hundred houses, each worth 
say $25,000 (scattered in different parts of the city); at 
what rate of valuation would you tax him ? 

G. On his houses, nothing. I would tax him on the 
value of the lots. 

P. As vacant lots? 

G. As if each particular lot were vacant, surrounding 
improvements remaining the same. 

P. If you would have titles as now, then A, who owns a 
ten thousand dollar house and lot in the city, would still 
continue to be the owner, as he is at present ? 

G. He would still continue to be the owner, but as taxes 
were increased upon land values he would, while still con 
tinuing to enjoy the full ownership of the house, derive 
less and less of the pecuniary benefits of the ownership of 
the lot, which would go in larger and larger proportions 
to the State, until, if the taxation of land values were 
carried to the point of appropriating them entirely the 
State would derive all those benefits, and, though nomi 
nally still the owner, he would become in reality a tenant 
with assured possession, so long as he continued to pay 
the tax, which might then become in form, as it would be 
in essence, a ground rent. 

P. Now, suppose A to he the owner of a city lot and 
building, valued at $500,000; who would give a deed to 
ittoB? 

G. A' would give the deed. 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 227 

F. Then supposing A to own twenty lots, with twenty 
buildings on them, the lots being, as vacant lots, worth 
each $1000, and the buildings being worth $49,000 each; 
and B to own twenty lots of the same value, as vacant lots, 
without any buildings; would you tax A and B alike ? . 

G. I would. 

F. Suppose that B, to buy the twenty lots, had borrowed 
the price and mortgaged them for it; would you have the 
tax in that case apportioned? 

G. I would hold the land for it. In cases in which it 
became necessary to consider the relations of nur.tgagee 
and mortgager, I would treat them as joint owners. 

F. If A, the owner of a city lot with a house upon it, 
should sell it to B, do you suppose that the price would be 
graduated by the value of the improvements alone? 

G. When the tax upon the land had reached the point 
of taking the full annual value, it would. 

F. To illustrate: Suppose A has a city lot, which, as a 
vacant lot, is worth annually $10,000, and there is a build 
ing upon it worth $100,000, and he sells them to B; you 
think the price would be graduated according to the value 
of the building; that is to say, $100,000, after the taxa 
tion had reached the annual value of $10,000? 

G. Precisely. 

F. To what purpose do you contemplate that the money 
raised by your scheme of taxation should be applied? 

G. To the ordinary expenses of government, and such 
purposes as the supplying of water, of light, of power, the 
running of railways, the maintenance of public parks, 
libraries, colleges, and kindred institutions, and such other 
beneficial objects as may from time to time suggest them- 

 228 LAND AND TAXATION 

selves; to the care of the sick and needy, the support of 
widows and orphans, and, I am inclined to think, to the 
payment of a fixed sum to every citizen when he came to 
a certain age. 

F. Do you contemplate that money raised by taxation 
should be expended for the support of the citizen? 

r G. I see no reason why it should not be. 

F. Would you have him fed and clothed at the public 
expense ? 

G. Not necessarily; but I think a payment might well 
be maox- to the citizen when he came to the age at which 
, active powers decline that would enable him to feed and 
clothe himself for the remainder of his life. 

F. Let us come to practical results. The rate of taxa 
tion now in the city of New York, we will suppose, is 2.30 
upon the assessed value. The assessed value is understood 
to be about sixty per cent, of the real value of property. 
Land assessed at $60,000 is really worth $100,000, and 
being assessed at 2.30 when valued at $60,000, should be 
assessed at about 1.40 on the real value; you would in 
crease that amount indefinitely, if I understand you, up 
to the annual rental value of the land? 

G. I would. 

F. Which we will suppose to be five per cent.; is that it? 

G. Let us suppose so. 

F. Then your scheme contemplates the raising of five 
per cent, on the true value of all real estate as vacant land, 
to be used for the purposes you have mentioned. Have 
you thought of the increase in the army of office-holders 
that would be required for the collection and disburse 
ment of this enormous sum of money? 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 229 

G. I have. 

F. What do you say to that ? 

G. That as to collection, it would greatly reduce the 
present army of office-holders. A tax upon land values can 
be levied and collected with a much smaller force than is 
now required for our multiplicity of taxes; and I am in 
clined to think, that, directly and indirectly, the plan I 
propose would permit the dismissal of three fifths of the 
officials needed for the present purposes of government. 
This simplification of government would do very much to 
purify our politics; and I rely largely upon the improve 
ment that the change I contemplate would make in social 
life, by lessening the intensity of the struggle for wealth, to 
permit the growth of such habits of thought and conduct as 
would enable us to get for the management of public af 
fairs as much intelligence and as strict integrity as can now 
be obtained for the management of great private affairs. 

F. Supposing it to be true that you would reduce the 
expense of collection, would you not, for the disbursement 
of these vast funds, require a much larger number of 
efficient men than are now required? 

G. Not necessarily. But, whether this be so or not, 
the full scheme I propose can only be attained gradually. 
Until, at least, the total amount needed for what are now 
considered purely governmental purposes were obtained by 
taxation on land values, there would be a large reduction 
of office-holders, and no increase. 

F. How do you propose to divide the taxation between 
the State and the municipalities? 

G. As taxes are now divided. As to questions that 
might arise, there will be time enough to determine them 
when the principle has been accepted. 

 230 LAND AND TAXATION 

F. Your theory contemplates the raising of nearly four 
times as much revenue in the State of New York as is now 
raised; how many office-holders would it require to disburse 
this enormous sum of money among the various objects 
that you have mentioned? 

G. My theory does not require that it should be dis 
bursed among the objects 1 have mentioned, but simply 
that it should be used for public benefit. 

F. Do you not think that the present rate of taxation is 
more than sufficient for all purposes of government ? 

G. Under the state of society that I believe would ensue, 
it would be much more than sufficient for present purposes 
of government. We should need far less for expenses of 
revenue collection, police, penitentiaries, courts, alms- 
houses, etc. 

F. Then, to bring the matter down to a point, you pro 
pose for the present no change whatever in anything, ex 
cept that the amount now raised by all methods of taxation 
should be imposed upon real estate considered as vacant? 

G. For a beginning, yes. 

F. Well, what do you contemplate as the ending of such 
/a, scheme? 

» G. The taking of the full annual value of land for the 
benefit of the whole people. I hold that land belongs 
equally to all, that land values arise from the presence of 
all, and should be shared among all. 

F. And this result you propose to bring about by a tax 
upon land values, leaving the title, the privilege of sale, 
of rent, of testament, the same as at present ? 

G. Yes. 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 231 

F. Your theory appears to be impracticable. I think 
that the raising of such an enormous sum of money; plac 
ing it in the coffers of the State, to be disbursed by the 
State in the manner you contemplate, would tend to the 
corruption of the government beyond all former precedent. 
The end you contemplate—of bettering the condition of 
the people—is a worthy one. I believe that we—you and 
I—who are well to do in the world, and others in our 
condition, do neglect and have neglected our duty to those 
in a less fortunate condition, and that it is our highest 
duty to endeavour to relieve, so far as we can, the burdens 
of those who are now suffering from poverty and want. 
Therefore, far from deriding or scouting your theory, I 
examine it with respect and attention, desirous of getting 
from it whatever I can that may be good, while rejecting 
what I conceive to be erroneous. Taken altogether, as 
you have explained it, I do not see that it is a practicable 
scheme. 

G. But your objections to it as impracticable only arise 
at the point, yet a long distance off, at which the revenues 
raised from land values would be greater than those now 
raised. Is there anything impracticable in substituting 
for the present corrupt, demoralising, and repressive 
methods of taxation a single tax upon land values? 

F. I think it possible to concentrate all taxation upon 
land, if that should be thought the best method. Many 
economists are of opinion that taxes should be raised from 
land alone, conceiving that rent is really paid by every 
consumer, but they include in land everything placed upon 
it out of which rent comes. 

G. Then we could go together for a long while; and 
when the point was reached at which we would differ, we 
might be able to see that a purer government than any we 

 232 LAND AND TAXATION 

have yet Had might he possible. Certainly here is the gist 
of the whole problem. If men are too selfish, too corrupt, 
to co-operate for mutual benefit, there must always be 
poverty and suffering. 

F. My theory of government is that its chief function 
is to keep the peace between individuals and allow each 
to develop his own nature for his own happiness. I would 
never raise a dollar from the people except for necessary 
purposes of government. I believe that the demoralisation 
of our politics comes from the notion that public offices are 
spoils for partisans. A large class of men has grown up 
among us whose living is obtained from the State—that is 
to say, out of the people. We must get rid of those men, 
and instead of creating offices we must lessen their number. 

G. I agree with you as to government in its repressive 
feature; and in no way could we so lessen the number of 
office-holders and take the temptation of private profit out 
of public affairs as by raising all public revenues by the 
tax upon land values, which, easily assessed and collected, 
does not offer opportunities for evasion or add to prices. 
Though in form a tax, this would be in reality a rent; 
not a taking from the people, but a collecting of their 
legitimate revenues. The first and most important func 
tion of government is to secure the full and equal liberty 
of individuals; but the growing complexity of civilised 
life and the growth of great corporations and combina 
tions, before which the individual is powerless, convince 
me that government must undertake more than to keep 
the peace between man and man—must carry on, when it 
cannot regulate, businesses that involve monopoly, and in 
larger and larger degree assume co-operative functions. 
If I could see any other means of doing away with the 
injustice involved in growing monopolies, of which the 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 233 

railroad is a type, than by extension of governmental func 
tions, I should not favour that; for all my earlier thought 
was in the direction you have indicated—the position occu 
pied by the democratic party of the last generation. But 
I see none. However, if it were to appear that further 
extension of the functions of government would involve 
demoralisation, then the surplus revenue might be divided 
per capita. But it seems to me that there must be in 
human nature the possibility of a reasonably pure govern 
ment, when the ends of that government are felt by all to 
be the promotion of the general good. 

F. I do not believe in spoliation, and I conceive that 
that would be spoliation which would take from one man 
his property and give it to another. The scheme of the 
communists, as I understand it, appears to me to be not 
only unsound, but destructive of society. I do not mean 
to intimate that you are one of the communists; on the / 
contrary, I do not believe you are. ^ 

G. As to the sacredness of property, I thoroughly agree 
with you. As you say in your recent article on industrial 
co-operation in the "North American Eeview," "To take 
from one against his will that which he owns and give it 
to another, would be a violation of that instinct of justice 
which God has implanted in the heart of every human 
being; a violation, in short, of the supreme law of the Most 
High"; and my objection to the present system is that it 
does this. I hold that that which a man produces is right 
fully his, and his alone; that it should not be taken from 
him for any purpose, even for public uses, so long as there 
is any public property that might be employed for that 
purpose; and therefore I would exempt from taxation 
everything in the nature of capital, personal property, or 
improvements—in short, that property which is the result 

 234 LAND AND TAXATION 

of man's exertion. But I hold that land is not the right 
ful property of any individual. As you say again, "No 
one can have private property in privilege," and if the 
land belongs, as I hold it does belong, to all the people, the 
holding of any part of it is a privilege for which the indi- 
vidual holder should compensate the general owner accord- 

ingto the pecuniary value of the privilggg.^ To exact this 
would not be to despoil any one of his rightful property, but 
to put an end to spoliation that now goes on. Your article 
in the "Review" shows that you see the same difficulties 
I see, and would seek the same end—the amelioration of 
the condition of labour, and the formation of society upon 
a basis of justice. Does it not seem to you that some 
thing more is required than any such scheme of co-opera 
tion as that which you propose, which at best could he only 
very limited in its application, and which is necessarily 
artificial in its nature? 

F. Undoubtedly. The hints that I have given in the 
article to which you refer, would affect a certain number of 
persons, not by any means the whole body politic. I con 
ceive that a great deal more is necessary. There should 
be more sympathy, more mutual help. I think, as I have 
said, that we are greatly wanting in our duty to all the 
people around us, and I would do everything in my power 
to aid them and their children. I do not think that we 
have arrived at the true conception of our duty—of the 
duty of every American citizen to all other American 
citizens. 

G. I think you are right in that; hut does it not seem 
as though it were out of the power of mere sympathy, mere 
charity, to accomplish any real good? Is it not evident 
that there is at the bottom of all social evils an injustice, 
and until that injustice is replaced by justice, charity and 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 235 

sympathy will do their best in vain? The fact that there 
are among us strong, willing men unable to find work by 
which to get an honest living for their families is a most 
portentous one. It speaks to us of an injustice that, if 
not remedied, must wreck society. It springs, I believe, 
from the fact that, while we secure to the citizen equal 
political rights, we do not secure to him that natural right 
more important still, the equal light to the land on which 
and from which he must live.QTo me it seems clear, as 
our Declaration of Independence asserts, that all men are 
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, 
and that the first of these rights—that which, in fact, in 
volves all the rest, that without which none of the others 
can be exercised—is the equal right to land. Here are 
children coming into life to-day in New York; are they 
not endowed with the right to more than struggle along 
as they best can in a country where they can neither eat, 
sleep, work, nor lie down without buying the privilege 
from some of certain human creatures like themselves, who 
claim to own, as their private property, this part of the 
physical universe, from the earth's centre to the zenith? 

F. I was not speaking of charity, but of sympathy lead 
ing to help—helping one to help himself—that is the help 
I mean, and not the charity that humbles him. 

G. Then I cordially agree with you, and I look upon 
such sympathy as the most powerful agency for social im 
provement. But sympathy is little better than mockery 
until it is willing to do justice, and justice requires that 
all men shall be placed upon an equality so far as natural 
opportunities are concerned. 

F. How would you secure that equality? Take the case 
of a child born to-day in a tenement house, in one of those 
rooms that are said to be occupied by several families, and 

 236 LAND AND TAXATION 

another child born at the same time in one of the most 
comfortable homes in our city. The parents of the first 
child are wasteful, intemperate, filthy: the parents of the 
second are thrifty, temperate, cleanly; how would you 
secure equality in opportunities of the first child with the 
second? 

G. Equality in all opportunities could not be secured; 
virtuous parents are always an advantage, vicious parents 
a disadvantage; but equality of natural opportunities could 
be secured in the way I have proposed. And in a civili 
sation where the equal rights of all to the bounty of their 
Creator were recognised, I do not believe there would be 
any tenement houses, and very few, if any, parents such as 
those of whom you speak. The vice and crime and degra 
dation that so fester in our great cities are the effects, 
rather than the causes, of poverty. 

F. The principle announced in the Declaration of Inde 
pendence to which you have referred, is one of the cardinal 
principles of the American government—the unalienable 
right of all men to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap 
piness." That, however, does not mean that all men are 
equal in opportunities or in positions. A child born to 
day is entitled to the labours of its parents, or rather to 
the products of their labour, just as much as they are en 
titled to it until he is able to take care of himself. One of 
the incentives to labour is to provide for the children of the 
labourer. The aim of our American civilisation ought to 
be to furnish, so far as can be done rightfully, to every 
child born into the world, an equal opportunity with every 
other child, to work out his own good. This, however, is 
the theoretical proposition. It is impossible in practice 
to give to every child the same opportunity; what we 
should aim at is, to approximate to that state of things: 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 237 

that is the work of the philanthropist and Christian. In 
short, my belief is that the truest statement of political 
ethics and political economy is to be found in the doc 
trines of the Christian religion. 

G. In that I thoroughly agree with you. But Chris 
tianity that does not assert the natural rights of man, that 
has no protest when the earth, which it declares was cre 
ated by the Almighty as a dwelling-place for all his chil 
dren, is made the exclusive property of some of them, 
while others are denied their birthright—seems to me a 
travesty. A Christian has something to do as a citizen 
and lawmaker. We must rest our social adjustments upon 
Christian principles if we would have a really Christian 
society. But to return to the Declaration of Indepen 
dence; the equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness, does it not necessarily involve the equal right to 
land, without which neither life, liberty, nor the freedom 
to pursue happiness is possible? 

F. You do not propose to give to every child a piece of 
land; you only propose to secure its right, if I understand 
you, by taxing land as vacant land in the mode you 
propose. 

G. That is all, but it is enough. In the complex civili 
sation we have now attained it would be impossible to se 
cure equality by giving to each a separate piece of land, 
or to maintain that equality, even if once secured; but by 
treating all land as the property of the whole people, we 
would make the whole people the landlords, and the indi 
vidual users the tenants of all, thus securing to each his 
equal right. 

F. In how long a time, if you were to have such legisla 
tion as you would wish, do you think we should arrive at 
the condition that you have mentioned? 

 238 LAND AND TAXATION 

G. I think immediately a substantial equality would be 
arrived at, such an equality as would do away with the 
spectacle of a man unable to find work, and would secure 
to all a good and easy living, with a mere modicum of the 
hard labour and worriment now undergone by most of us. 
The great benefit would not be in the appropriation to 
public use of the unearned revenues now going to indi 
viduals, but in the opening of opportunities to labour, and 
the stimulus that would be given to improvement and 
production by the throwing open of unused land and the 
removal of taxation that now weighs down productive 
powers. And with the land made the property of the whole 
people, all social progress would be a progress towards 
equality. While other values tend to decline as civilisa 
tion progresses, the value of land steadily advances. Such 
a great fact bespeaks some creative intent; and what that 
intent may be, it seems to me we can see when we reflect 
that if this value—a value created not by the individual, 
but by the whole community—were appropriated to the 
common benefit, the progress of society would constantly 
tend to make less important the difference between the 
strong and the weak, and thus, instead of those monstrous 
extremes towards which civilisation is now hastening, 
bring about conditions of greater and greater equality. 

F. As a conclusion of the whole matter, if I understand 
this explanation of your scheme, it is this, that the State 
should tax the soil, and the soil only; that in doing so it 
should consider the soil as it came from the hands of the 
Creator, without anything that man has put upon it; that 
all other property—in short, everything that man has 
made—is to be acquired, enjoyed, and transmitted as at 
present; that the rate of annual taxation should equal the 
rate of annual rental, and that the proceede of the tax 

 CONVERSATION WITH FIELD 239 

should be applied, not only to purposes of government, 
but to any other purpose that the legislature from time 
to time may think desirable, even to dividing them among 
the people at so much a head. 

G. That is substantially correct. 

F. I am glad to hear your explanation, though I do not 
agree with you, except as I have expressed myself. 

 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL." 

[An address at the second public meeting of the Anti-Poverty Society, 
in the Academy of Music, New York, Sunday evening, May 8, 1887.] 

DE. McGLYNN in Chickering Hall last Sunday night 
said it was an historic occasion. He was right. That 
a priest of Christ, standing on Sunday night on a public 
platform and addressing a great audience—an audience 
embracing men and women of all creeds and beliefs— 
should proclaim a crusade for the abolition of poverty, and 
call on men to join together and work together to 
bring the kingdom of God on earth, did mark a most im 
portant event. Great social transformations, said Maz- 
zini, never have been and never will be other than the 
application of great religious movements. The day on 
which democracy shall elevate itself to the position of a 
religious party, that day will its victory begin. And the 
deep significance of the meeting last Sunday night, the 
meaning of this Anti-Poverty Society that we have joined 
together to inaugurate, is the bringing into the struggle 
of democracy the religious sentiment, the sentiment alone 
of all sentiments powerful enough to regenerate the world. 
The comments made on that meeting and on the insti 
tution of this society are suggestive. We are told, in the 
first place by the newspapers, that you cannot abolish 
poverty because there is not wealth enough to go around. 
We are told that if all the wealth of the United States 

243 

 244 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

were divided up there would only be some eight hundred 
dollars apiece. Well, if that is the case, all the more mon 
strous then is the injustice which to-day gives single men 
millions and tens of millions, and even hundreds of mil 
lions. If there really is so little, then the more injustice 
in these great fortunes. But we do not propose to abolish 
poverty by dividing up what wealth there is, so much as 
by creating more wealth. We propose to abolish poverty 
by setting at work that vast army of men, estimated last 
year to amount in this country alone to one million, that 
vast army of men only anxious to create wealth, but who 
are now, by a system which permits dogs in the manger to 
monopolise God's bounty, deprived of the opportunity to 
toil. 

Then again, they tell us, you cannot abolish poverty 
because poverty always has existed. Well, if poverty al 
ways has existed, all the more need for our moving for its 
abolition. It has existed long enough. We ought to be 
tired of it; let us get rid of it. 

But I deny that poverty—such poverty as we see on 
earth to-day—always has existed. Never before in the 
history of the world was there such an abundance of 
wealth, such power of producing wealth. So marked is 
this that the very people who tell us that we cannot abol 
ish poverty, attribute it in almost the next breath to over 
production. They virtually tell us it is because mankind 
produces so much wealth that so many are poor; that it is 
because there is so much of the things that satisfy human 
desires already produced, that men cannot find work, and 
that women must stint and strain. Poverty attributed to 
over-production; poverty in the midst of wealth; poverty 
in the midst of enlightenment; poverty when steam and 
electricity and a thousand labour-saving inventions have 
been called to the aid of man, never existed in the world 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 245 

before. There is manifestly no good reason for its ex 
istence, and it is time that we should do something to 
abolish it. 

There are not charitable institutions enough to supply the 
demands for charity; that seems incapable of being sup 
plied. But there are enough, at least, to show every thinking 
woman and every thinking man that it is utterly impossible 
to eradicate poverty by charity, to show everyone who will 
trace to its root the cause of the disease that what is needed 
is not charity, but justice—the conforming of human insti 
tutions to the eternal laws of right. But when we propose 
this, when we say that poverty exists because of the viola 
tion of God's laws, we are taunted with pretending to 
know more than men ought to know about the designs of 
Omnipotence. They have set up for themselves a God who 
rather likes poverty, since it affords the rich a chance to 
show their goodness and benevolence; and they point to 
the existence of poverty as a proof that God wills it. Our 
reply is that poverty exists not because of God's will, but 
because of man's disobedience. We say that we do know 
that it is God's will that there should be no poverty on 
earth, and that we know it as we may know any other 
natural fact. The laws of this universe are the laws of 
God, the social laws as well as the physical laws, and He, 
the Creator of all, has given us room for all, work for all, 
plenty for all. If to-day people are in places so crowded 
that it seems as though there were too many people in the 
world; if to-day thousands of men who would gladly be at 
work do not find the opportunity to go to work; if to-day 
the competition for employment crowds wages down to 
starvation rates; if to-day, amid abounding wealth, there 
are in the centres of our civilisation human beings who 
are worse off than savages in any normal times, it is not 
because the Creator has been niggardly; it is simply be- 

 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

cause of our own injustice—simply because we hate not 
carried the idea of doing to others as we would have them 
do unto us into the making of our statutes. 

This Anti-Poverty Society has no patent remedy for 
poverty. We propose no new thing. What we propose 
is simply to do justice. The principle that we propose to 
carry into our laws is neither more nor less than the prin 
ciple of the golden rule. We propose to abolish poverty 
by the sovereign remedy of doing to others as we would 
have others do to us; by giving to all their just rights. 
And we propose to begin by assuring to every child of God 
who, in our country, comes into this world, his full and 
equal share of the common heritage. 

Crowded! Is it any wonder that men are crowded to 
gether as they are in this city, when we see men taking 
up far more land than they can by any possibility use, 
and holding it for enormous prices? Why, what would 
have happened if, when these doors were opened, the first 
people who came in had claimed all the seats around them, 
and demanded a price of others who afterward came in by 
the same equal right? Yet that is precisely the way we 
are treating this continent. That is the reason why people 
are huddled together in tenement houses; that is the rea 
son why work is difficult to get; the reason that there 
seems, even in good times, a surplus of labour, and that 
in those times that we call bad, the times of industrial de 
pression, there are all over the country thousands and hun 
dreds of thousands of men tramping from place to place, 
unable to find employment. 

Not work enough! Why, what is work? Productive 
work is simply the application of human labour to land; 
it is simply the transforming into shapes adapted to gratify 
human desires, the raw material that the Creator has 
placed here. Is there not opportunity enough for work in 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 247 

this country? Supposing that, when thousands of men 
are unemployed and there are hard times everywhere, we 
could send a committee up to the high court of heaven to 
represent the misery and the poverty of the people here, con 
sequent on their not being able to find employment. What 
answer would we get ? "Are your lands all in use ? Are 
your mines all worked out ? Are there no natural oppor 
tunities for the employment of labour?" What could we 
ask the Creator to furnish us with that is not already 
here in abundance? He has given us the globe, amply 
stocked with raw material for our needs. He has given 
us the power of working up this raw material. If there 
seems scarcity, if there is want, if there are men who can 
not find employment, if there are people starving in the 
midst of plenty, is it not simply because what the Creator 
intended for all has been made the property of the few? 
In moving against this giant wrong, which denies to 
labour access to the natural opportunities for the employ 
ment of labour, we move against the cause of poverty. We 
propose to abolish it, to tear it up by the roots, to open 
free and abundant employment for every man. We pro 
pose to disturb no just right of property. As Dr. McGlynn 
said last Sunday night, we are defenders and upholders of 
the sacred right of property—that right of property which 
justly attaches to everything that is produced by labour; 
that right which gives to everyone a just right of property 
in what he has produced—that makes it his to give, to sell, 
to bequeath, to do whatever he pleases with, so long as in 
using it he does not injure anyone else. That right of 
property we insist upon, that we would uphold against all 
the world. To a house, a coat, a book—anything pro 
duced by labour—there is a clear individual title, which 
goes back to the man who made it. That is the founda 
tion of the just, the sacred right of property. It rests 

 248 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

on the right of the individual to the use of his own 
powers, on his right to profit by the exertion of his own 
labour; but who can carry the right of property in land 
that far? Who can claim a title of absolute ownership 
in land coming from the man who made it? And until 
the man who claims the exclusive ownership of a piece of 
this planet can show a title originating with the Maker 
of this planet; until he can produce a decree from the 
Creator declaring that this city lot or that great tract of 
agricultural land, or that coal mine, or that gas-well, was 
made for him—until then we have a right to hold that 
land was intended for all of us. 

Natural religion and revealed religion alike tell us that 
God is no respecter of persons; that He did not make thia 
planet for a few individuals; that He did not give it to 
one generation in preference to other generations, but that 
He made it for the use during their lives of all the people 
that His providence brings into the world. If this be 
true, the child that is born to-night in the humblest tene 
ment in the most squalid quarter of New York, comes into 
life seized with as good a title to the land of this city as 
any Astor or Ehinelander. 

How do we know that the Almighty is against poverty? 
That it is not in accordance with His decree that poverty 
exists? We know it because we know this, that the Al 
mighty has declared, "Thou shalt not steal." And we 
know for a truth that the poverty that exists to-day in 
the midst of abounding wealth is the result of a system 
that legalises theft. 

The women who by the thousands are bending over their 
needles or sewing-machines, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen 
hours a day; these widows straining and striving to bring 
up the little ones deprived of their natural bread-winner; 
the children that are growing up in squalor and wretched- 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 249 

ness, underclothed, underfed, undereducated even, in this 
city without any place to play—growing up under condi 
tions in which only a miracle can keep them pure—under 
conditions which condemn them in advance to the peni 
tentiary or the hrothel—they suffer, they die, because we 
permit them to be robbed, robbed of their birthright, 
robbed by a system which disinherits the vast majority 
of the children that come into the world. There is enough 
and to spare for them. Had they the equal rights in the es 
tate which their Creator has given them, there would be 
no young girls forced to unwomanly toil to eke out a mere 
existence, no widows finding it such a bitter, bitter strug 
gle to put bread in the mouths of their little children; no 
such misery and squalor as we may see here in the great 
est of American cities, misery and squalor that are deepest 
in the largest and richest centres of our civilisation to-day. 

These things are the results of legalised theft, the fruits 
of a denial of that commandment that says, "Thou ghalt 
not steal." How is this great commandment interpreted 
to-day, even by the men who pretend to preach the gos 
pel ? "Thou shalt not steal." Well, according to them, it 
means: "Thou shalt not get into the penitentiary." Not 
much more than that with any of them. You may steal, 
provided you steal enough, and you do not get caught, and 
you may have a front seat in the churches. Do not steal 
a few dollars—that may be dangerous; but if you steal 
millions and get away with it, you become one of our first 
citizens. 

"Thou shalt not steal";'that is the law of God. What 
does it mean? Well, it does not merely mean that you 
shall not pick pockets! It does not merely mean that you 
shall not commit burglary or highway robbery! There are 
other forms of stealing which it prohibits as well. It cer 
tainly means (if it has any meaning) that we shall not 

 250 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

take that to which we are not entitled, to the detriment 
of others. 

Now, here is a desert. Here is a caravan going along 
over the desert. Here are a gang of robbers. They say, 
"Look! There is a rich caravan; let us go and rob it, 
kill the men if necessary, take their goods from them, their 
camels and horses, and walk off." But one of the robbers 
says, "Oh, no; that is dangerous; besides, that would be 
stealing! Let us, instead of doing that, go ahead to where 
there is a spring, the only spring at which this caravan 
can get water in this desert. Let us put a wall around 
it and call it ours, and when they come up we won't let 
them have any water until they have given us all the 
goods they have." That would be more gentlemanly, more 
polite and more respectable; but would it not be theft all 
the same? 

And is it not theft of the same kind when men go ahead 
in advance of population and get land they have no use 
whatever for, and then, as people come into the world and 
population increases, will not let this increasing popula 
tion use the land until they pay an exorbitant price ? That 
is the sort of theft on which our first families are founded. 
Do that under the false code of morality which exists here 
to-day and people will praise your forethought and your 
enterprise, and will say you have made money because you 
are a very superior man, and that anybody can make 
money if he will only work and be industrious! But is 
it not as clearly a violation of the command, "Thou shalt 
not steal," as taking the money out of a man's pocket ? 

"Thou shalt not steal." That means, of course, that 
we ourselves must not steal. But does it not also mean 
that we must not suffer anybody else to steal if we can 
help it? "Thou shalt not steal." Does it not also mean, 
"Thou shalt not suffer thyself or anybody else to be stolen 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 261 

rrom?" If it does, then we, all of us, rich and poor alike, 
are responsible for this social crime that produces pov 
erty. Not merely the men who monopolise land—they 
are not to blame above any one else, but we who permit 
them to monopolise land are also parties to the theft. 
The Christianity that ignores this social responsibility 
has really forgotten the teachings of Christ. Where He 
in the gospels speaks of the judgment, the question which 
is put to men is never, "Did you praise me?" "Did you 
pray to me?" "Did you believe this or did you believe 
that?" It is only this: "What did you do to relieve dis 
tress; to abolish poverty?" To those who are condemned, 
the judge is represented as saying: "I was ahungered and 
ye gave me not meat, I was athirst and ye gave me not 
drink, I was sick and in prison and ye visited me not." 
Then they say, "Lord, Lord, when did we fail to do these 
things to you?" The answer is, "Inasmuch as ye failed 
to do it to the least of these, so also did you fail to do it 
unto me; depart into the place prepared for the devil and 
his angels." On the other hand, what is said to the 
blessed is, "I was ahungered and ye gave me meat, I was 
thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was naked and ye clothed 
me, I was sick and in prison and ye visited me." And 
when they say, "Lord, Lord, when did we do these things 
to thee?" the answer is, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
the least of these ye have done it unto me." 

Here is the essential spirit of Christianity. The essence 
of its teaching is not, "Provide for your own body and 
save your own soul!" but, "Do what you can to make this 
a better world for all!" It was a protest against the doc 
trine of "each for himself and devil take the hindermost!" 
It was the proclamation of a common fatherhood of God 
and a common brotherhood of men. This was why the rich 
and the powerful, the high priests and the rulers, persecuted 

 252 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

Christianity with fire and sword. It was not what in so 
many of our churches to-day is called religion that pagan 
Eome sought to tear out—it was what in too many of the 
churches of to-day is called "socialism and communism," 
the doctrine of the equality of human rights! 

Now imagine when we men and women of to-day go 
before that awful bar that there we should behold the 
spirits of those who in our time under this accursed social 
system were driven into crime, of those who were starved 
in body and mind, of those little children that in this city 
of New York are being sent out of the world by thousands 
when they have scarcely entered it—because they did not 
get food enough, nor air enough, nor light enough, because 
they are crowded together in these tenement districts under 
conditions in which all diseases rage and destroy. Sup 
posing we are confronted with those souls, what will it 
avail us to say that we individually were not responsible 
for their earthly conditions? What, in the spirit of the 
parable of Matthew, would be the reply from the judg 
ment seat? Would it not be, "I provided for them all. 
The earth that I made was broad enough to give them 
room. The materials that are placed in it were abundant 
enough for all their needs. Did you or did you not lift 
up your voice against the wrong that robbed them of their 
fair share in what I provided for all?" 

"Thou shalt not steal!" It is theft, it is robbery that 
is producing poverty and disease and vice and crime among 
us. It is by virtue of laws that we uphold; and he who 
does not raise his voice against that crime, he is an ac 
cessory. The standard has now been raised, the cross of 
the new crusade at last is lifted. Some of us, aye, many 
of us, have sworn in our hearts that we will never rest so 
long as we have life and strength until we expose and 
abolish that wrong. We have declared war upon it. Those 

 ANTI-POVEBTY ADDRESS 253 

wEo are not with us, let us count them against us. For 
us there will be no faltering, no compromise, no turning 
back until the end. 

There is no need for poverty in this world, and in our 
civilisation. There is a provision made by the laws of 
the Creator which would secure to the helpless all that they 
require, which would give enough and more than enough 
for all social purposes. These little children that are 
dying in our crowded districts for want of room and fresh 
air, they are the disinherited heirs of a great estate. 

Did you ever consider the full meaning of the signifi 
cant fact that as progress goes on, as population increases 
and civilisation develops, the one thing that ever increases 
in value is land? Speculators all over the country appre 
ciate that. Wherever there is a chance for population com 
ing; wherever railroads meet or a great city seems des 
tined to grow; wherever some new evidence of the bounty 
of the Creator is discovered, in a rich coal or iron mine, 
or an oil well, or a gas deposit, there the speculator jumps 
in, land rises in value and a great boom takes place, and 
men find themselves enormously rich without ever having 
done a single thing to produce wealth. 

Now, it is by virtue of a natural law that land steadily 
increases in value, that population adds to it, that inven 
tion adds to it; that the discovery of every fresh evidence 
of the Creator's goodness in the stores that He has im 
planted in the earth for our use adds to the value of land, 
not to the value of anything else. This natural fact is by 
virtue of a natural law—a law that is as much a law of the 
Creator as the law of gravitation. What is the intent of 
this law? Is there not in it a provision for social needs? 
That land values grow greater and greater as the com 
munity grows and common needs increase, is there not a 
manifest provision for social needs—a fund belonging to 

 264 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

society as a whole, with which we may take care of the 
widow and the orphan and those who fall by the wayside— 
with which we may provide for public education, meet 
public expenses, and do all the things that an advancing 
civilisation makes more and more necessary for society to 
do on behalf of its members? 

To-day the value of the land in New York City is over 
a hundred millions annually. Who has created that value ? 
Is it because a few landowners are here that that land is 
worth a hundred millions a year? Is it not because the 
whole population of New York is here ? Is it not because 
this great city is the centre of exchanges for a large por 
tion of the continent? Does not every child that is born, 
everyone that comes to settle in New York, does he not 
add to the value of this land? Ought he not, therefore, 
to get some portion of the benefit ? And is he not wronged 
when, instead of being used for that purpose, certain fa 
voured individuals are allowed to appropriate it? 

We might take this vast fund for common needs, we 
might with it make a city here such as the world has never 
seen before—a city spacious, clean, wholesome, beautiful 
—a city that should be full of parks; a city without tene 
ment houses; a city that should own its own means of 
communication, railways that should carry people thirty or 
forty miles from the city hall in a half hour, and that 
could be run free, just as are the elevators in our large 
buildings; a city with great museums, and public libraries, 
and gymnasiums, and public halls, paid for out of this 
common fund, and not from the donations of rich citizens. 
We could out of this vast fund provide as a matter 
of right for the widow and the orphan, and assure to 
every citizen of this great city that if he happened to 
die his wife and his children should not come to want, 
should not be degraded with charity, but as a matter 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 255 

of right, as citizens of a rich community, as coheirs 
to a vast estate, should have enough to live on. And 
we could do all this, not merely without imposing any 
tax upon production; not merely without interfering 
with the just rights of property, but while at the same time 
securing far better than they are now the rights of prop 
erty and abolishing the taxes that now weigh on produc 
tion. We have but to throw off our taxes upon things of 
human production; to cease to fine a man that puts up a 
house or makes anything that adds to the wealth of the 
community; to cease collecting taxes from people who 
bring goods from abroad or make goods at home, and put 
all our taxes upon the value of land—to collect that enor 
mous revenue due to the growth of the community for the 
benefit of the community that produced it. 

Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath, has said in a letter ad 
dressed to the clergy and laity of his diocese that it is this 
provision of the Creator, the provision by which the value 
of land increases as the community grows, that seems to 
him the most beautiful of all the social adjustments; and 
it is to me that which most clearly shows the beneficence 
as well as the intelligence of the creative mind; for here 
is a provision by virtue of which the advance of civilisa 
tion would, under the law of equal justice, be an advance 
towards equality, instead, as it now is, an advance towards 
a more and more monstrous inequality. The same good 
Catholic bishop in the same letter says: "Now, therefore, 
the land of every country is the common property of the 
people of that country, because its real owner, the Cre 
ator, who made it, hath given it as a voluntary gift unto 
them. 'The earth has He given to the children of men.' 
And as every human being is a creature and a child of 
God, and as all His creatures are equal in His sight, any 
settlement of the land of this or any other country that 

 266 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

would exclude the humblest from his equal share in the 
common heritage is not only an injury and a wrong done 
to that man, but an impious violation of the benevolent 
intention of his Creator." And then Bishop Nulty goes 
on to show that the way to secure equal rights to land is 
not by cutting land up into equal pieces, but by taking for 
public use the values attaching to land. That is the 
method this society proposes. I wish we could get that 
through the heads of the editors of this city. We do not 
propose to divide up land. What we propose to do is to 
divide up the rent that comes from land; and that is a 
very easy thing. 

We need not disturb anybody in possession, we need not 
interfere with anybody's building or anybody's improve 
ment. We only need to remit taxes on all improvements, 
on all forms of wealth, and put the tax on the value of the 
land, exclusive of the improvements, so that the dog in 
the manger who is holding a piece of vacant land will 
have to pay the same for it as though there was a build 
ing upon it. In that way we would treat the whole land 
of such a community as this as the common estate of the 
whole people of the community. And as the Sailors' Snug 
Harbour, for instance, out of the revenues of comparatively 
a little piece of land in New York can maintain that fine 
establishment on Staten Island, keeping in comfort a num 
ber of old seamen, so we might make a greater Snug Har 
bour of the whole of New York. 

The people of New York could manage their estate just 
as well as any corporation, or any private family, for that 
matter. But for the people of New York to resume their 
estate and to treat it as their own, it is not necessary for 
them to go to any bother of management. It is not neces 
sary for them to say to any landholder, this particular 
piece of land is ours, and no longer yours. We can leave 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDEESS 267 

land titles just as they are. We can leave the owners of 
the land to call themselves its owners; all we want is the 
annual value of the land. Not, mark you, that value 
which the owner has created, that value which has been 
given to it by improvements, but simply that value which 
is given to the bare land by the fact that we are all here 
—that has attached to the land because of the growth of 
this great community. And, when we take that, then all 
inducement to monopolise the land will be gone; then 
these very worthy gentlemen who are holding one half of 
the area of this city idle and vacant will find the taxes upon 
them so high that they either will have to go to work 
and build houses or sell the land, or, if they cannot sell it, 
give it away to somebody who will build houses. 

And so all over the country. Go into Pennsylvania 
and there you will see great stretches of land, containing 
enormous deposits of the finest coal held by corporations 
and individuals who are working but little part of it. On 
these great estates the common American citizens, who 
mine the coal, are not allowed even to rent a piece of land, 
let alone buy it. They can only live in company houses; 
and they are permitted to stay in them only on condition 
(and they have to sign a paper to that effect) that they 
can be evicted at any time on five days' notice. The com 
panies combine, and make coal artificially dear here and 
make employment artificially scarce in Pennsylvania. 
Now, why should not those miners, who work on it half 
the time, why shouldn't they dig down in the earth and 
get up coal for themselves ? Who made that coal ? There 
is only one answer—God made that coal. Whom did he 
make it for? Any child or any fool would say that God 
made it for the people that would be one day called into 
being on this earth. But the laws of Pennsylvania, like 
the laws of New York, say God made it for this corpora- 

 268 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

tion and that individual; and thus a few men are per 
mitted to deprive miners of work and make coal artifi 
cially dear. 

A few weeks ago, when I was travelling in Illinois, a 
young fellow got in the car at one of the mining towns, 
and I entered into conversation with him. He said he was 
going to another place to try and get work. He told me 
of the condition of the miners, that they could scarcely 
make a living, getting very small wages and only working 
about half the time. I said to him, "There is plenty of 
coal in the ground; why don't you employ yourselves in 
digging coal." He replied, "We did get up a co-operative 
company, and we went to see the owner of the land to 
ask what he would let us sink a shaft and get out some 
coal for. He wanted $7500 a year. We could not raise 
that much." Tax land up to its full value and how long 
can such dogs-in-the-manger afford to hold that coal land 
away from these men? And when any man who wants 
work can go and employ himself, then there will be no 
million or no thousand unemployed men in all the United 
States. 

The relation of employer and employed is a relation of 
convenience. It is not one imposed by the natural order. 
Men are brought into the world with the power to employ 
themselves, and they can employ themselves wherever the 
natural opportunities for employment are not shut up 
from them. No man has a natural right to demand em 
ployment of another, but each man has a natural right, an 
inalienable right, a right given by his Creator, to demand 
opportunity to employ himself. And whenever that right 
is acknowledged, whenever the men who want to go to 
work can find natural opportunities to work upon, then 
there will be as much competition among employers who 
are anxious to get men to work for them as there will be 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 259 

among men who are anxious to get work. Wages will rise 
in every vocation to the true rate of wages, the full, honest 
earnings of labour. That done, with this ever-increasing 
social fund to draw upon, poverty will be abolished, and 
in a little while will come to be looked upon as we are now 
beginning to look upon slavery—as the relic of a darker 
and more ignorant age. 

I remember—this man here remembers (turning to Mr. 
James Eedpath) even better than I, for he was one of the 
men who brought the atrocities of human slavery home to 
the heart and conscience of the North—I well remember, 
as he well knows, and all the older men and women in 
this audience will remember, how property in human flesh 
and blood was defended just as private property in land 
is now defended; how the same charges were hurled upon 
the men who protested against human slavery as are now 
made against the men who are intending to abolish indus 
trial slavery. We remember how the dignitaries of the 
churches, and the opinion of the rich members of the 
churches branded as a disturber, almost as a reviler of 
religion, any priest or any minister who dared to get up 
and assert God's truth—that there never was and there 
never could be rightful property in human flesh and 
blood. 

So it is now said that men who protest against this sys 
tem, which is simply another form of slavery, are men who 
propose robbery. Thus the commandment, "Thou shalt 
not steal," they have made, "Thou shalt not object to 
stealing." When we propose to resume our own again, 
when we propose to secure its natural right to every child 
that comes into being, such people talk of us advocating 
confiscation—charge us with being deniers of the rights 
of property. The rea^ truth is that we wish to assert the 
just rights of property, that we wish to prevent theft. 

 260 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

Chattel slavery was incarnate theft of the worst kind. 
That system, which made property of human beings, which 
allowed one man to sell another, which allowed one man to 
take away the proceeds of another's toil, which permitted 
the tearing of the child from the mother, and which per 
mitted the so-called owner to hunt with blood-hounds the 
man who escaped from his tyranny—that form of slavery 
is abolished. 

So far as that goes the command, "Thou shalt not 
steal," has been vindicated. But there is another form 
of slavery. 

We are selling land now in large quantities to certain 
English lords and capitalists who are coming over here 
and buying greater estates than the greatest in Great 
Britain or Ireland; we are selling them land, they are 
buying land. Did it ever occur to you that they do not 
want that land? They have no use whatever for Ameri 
can land; they do not propose to come over here and live 
on it. They cannot carry it over there where they do 
live. It is not the land that they want. What they want 
is the income from it. They are buying it not that they 
themselves want to use it, but because by-and-by, as popu 
lation increases, numbers of American citizens will want 
to use it, and then they can say to these American citi 
zens, "You can use this land provided you pay us one half 
of all you make upon it." What we are selling those 
foreign lords and capitalists is not really land; we are sell 
ing them the labour of American citizens; we are sell 
ing them the privilege of taking, without giving any return 
for it, the proceeds of the toil of our children. 

So here in New York you will read in the papers every 
day that the price of land is going up. John Jones or 
Eobert Brown has made a hundred thousand dollars within 
a year in the increase in the value of land in New York. 

 ANTI-POVERTY ADDRESS 261 

What does that mean? It means he has the power of get 
ting so many more coats, so many more cigars, so much 
more wine, dry-goods, horses and carriages, houses or food. 
He has gained the power of taking for his own so much 
more of these products of human labour. But what has he 
done? He has not done anything. He may have been 
off in Europe or out West, or he may have been sitting 
at home taking it easy. If he has done nothing to get 
this increased income, where does it come from? The 
things I speak of are all products of human labour— 
some one has to work for them. When the man who 
does no work can get them, necessarily the men who do 
work to produce them must have less than they ought 
to have. 

This is the system that the Anti-Poverty Society has 
banded together to war against, and it invites you to come 
and swell its ranks. It is the noblest cause in which any 
human being can possibly engage. What, after all, is 
there in life as compared with a struggle like this? One 
thing and only one thing is absolutely certain for every 
man and woman in this hall, as it is to all else of human 
kind—that is death. What will it profit us in a few years. 
how much we have left? Is not the noblest and the best 
use we can make of life to do something to make better 
and happier the condition of those who come after us— 
by warring against injustice, by the enlightenment of pub 
lic opinion, by the doing all that we possibly can do to 
break up the accursed system that degrades and embitters 
the lot of so many ? 

We have a long fight and a hard fight before us. Pos 
sibly, probably, for many of us, we may never see it come 
to success. But what of that? It is a privilege to be 
engaged in such a struggle. This we may know, that it 
is but a part of that great, world-wide, long-continued 

 262 "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" 

struggle in which the just and the good of every age have 
been engaged; and that we, in taking part in it, are doing 
something in our humble way to bring on earth the king 
dom of God, to make the conditions of life for those who 
come afterward, those which we trust will prevail in 
heaven. 

 TO WOEKINGMEN 

 TO WORKINGMEN. 

[Article in "Belford's Magazine," New York, June, 1888, and repub- 
lished in "The Standard," New York, June 16, 1888.] 

I AM one of those who believe that it is possible for 
workingmen to raise wages by an intelligent use of their 
votes; that this is the only way in which wages can be gen 
erally and permanently raised—the only way labour can 
obtain that share of wealth which is justly its due. And 
I am one of those who believe that this is the supreme 
object that workingmen should seek in politics. In seek 
ing to raise wages, to improve the conditions of labour, 
we are seeking, not the good of a class, but the good of 
the whole. The number of those who can live on the 
labour of others is and can be but small as compared with 
the number who must labour to live. And where labour 
yields the largest results to the labourer, where the produc 
tion of wealth is greatest and its distribution most equi 
table, where the man who has nothing but his labour is 
surest of making the most comfortable living and best 
provide for those whom nature has made dependent upon 
him, there, I believe, will be the best conditions of life for 
all—there will the general standard of intelligence and 
virtue be highest, and there will all that makes a nation 
truly great and strong and glorious most abound. 

Believing this, I am glad that the presidential campaign 
this year is to turn, not upon sectional issues or matters 

265 

 266 TO WOKKINQMEN 

of party or personal character, but upon a great question 
of national policy—the question of protection or free 
trade; and that this is to be discussed, as it is most impor 
tant that it should be discussed, in its relation to wages. 
What is thus entering our politics is more than a question 
of higher or lower duties, or no duties at all—it is the 
most important of all questions, the great labour question. 
And what is really involved in the decision that will be 
asked of you as to whether protection or free trade is best 
for the interests of labour, is whether the emancipation of 
labour is to be sought by imposing restrictions or by se 
curing freedom. Until the men who would raise wages 
and emancipate labour settle that for themselves, they can 
not unite to carry out any large measure. 

In the coming campaign the most frantic appeals will 
be made to workingmen to vote for protection. You will 
be told that "protection" means "protection to American 
labour"; that that is what it was instituted for, and that 
is why it is maintained; that it is protection that makes 
this country so prosperous and your wages so high, and 
that if it is abolished, or even interfered with, mills must 
close, mines shut down, and poor labour stand idle and 
starve until American workmen are forced to work for the 
lowest wages that are paid in Europe. 

Don't aceept what any one tells you—least of all what 
is told you by and on behalf of those who have an enor 
mous pecuniary interest in maintaining what is styled 
"protection." Hear what they say, but make up your 
minds for yourselves. There is nothing in the tariff ques 
tion that cannot readily be mastered by any one of ordi 
nary intelligence, and the great qiiestion whether what is 
called "protection" does or does not benefit the labourer 
can be settled for himself by any one who will ask himself 
what protection really is, and how it benefits labour. 

 AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 267 

Now what is "protection"? It is a system of taxes 
levied on imports for the purpose of increasing the price 
of certain commodities in our own country so that the 
home producers of such commodities can get higher prices 
for what they sell to their own fellow-countrymen. 

This is all there is to "protection." Protection can't 
enable any American producer to get higher prices for 
what he sells to people of other countries, and no duty 
is protective unless it so increases prices as to enable some 
one to get more from his fellow-citizens than he could 
without protection. How "protection" may thus benefit 
some people is perfectly clear. But how can it benefit the 
whole people? That it may increase the profits of the 
manufacturer, or the income of the owner of timber or 
mineral land, is plain. But how can it increase wages? 
"Protection" raises the price of commodities. That may 
be to the advantage of those who buy labour and sell com 
modities. But how can it be to the advantage of those 
who sell labour and buy commodities? 

Never mind the confused and confusing claims that are 
put forth for protection until you can see how it can do 
what is claimed for it. 

Ask yourselves what protection is and how it operates, 
and you will see that the only way it can benefit any one, or 
by "encouraging" him give him power to encourage or 
benefit any one else, is by enabling him to get from his 
fellow-citizens more than he could otherwise get. This is 
the essence of protection; and if it has any stimulating or 
beneficial effect it must be through this. The protective 
effect of any protective duty is precisely that of a subsidy 
paid by the government to some people out of taxes levied 
on the whole people. The only difference is, that in what 
is called the subsidy system the government tax-gatherers 
would collect the tax from the whole people and pay it over 

 268 TO WOBKINGMEN 

to some people, while in what is called the protective sys 
tem the government tax-gatherers collect a tax on foreign 
goods so as to "protect" the favoured people, while they 
for themselves collect taxes on their fellow-citizens in in 
creased prices. 

Now if workmen get any benefit from what is thus 
called protection, it can only be through the protected em 
ployers and by their favour. The protective system gives 
nothing whatever to labour. It gives only to the employ 
ers of labour, and only to some of them. And these some 
are necessarily comparatively few. It is utterly impos 
sible that any protective tariff can "protect" the largest 
industries of any country, for a duty can only have a pro 
tective effect when levied upon goods some of which are 
produced in the country and some of which are imported 
or would be imported if it were not for the duty. Import 
duties cannot be levied upon things of which we produce 
enough for ourselves and consequently do not import, or 
of which we produce more than enough for ourselves and 
consequently export; and if levied upon things we do not 
produce and must import or go without, they can have no 
protective effect. In every country, therefore, the pro 
tected industries can only be those in which but a small 
part of the labour of that country is employed. In this 
country, out of over seventeen millions of labourers of 
one sort or another, those employed in the protected indus 
tries do not amount to more than 900,000, and these in 
dustries, it is to be observed, are those in which large 
capital is required and in which it is impossible for the 
mere labourer to employ himself. 

Now, would it be possible by levying a general tax (espe 
cially a tax which, like all protective taxes, bears on the 
poor far more heavily than on the rich, on the labourer 
far more heavily than on the capitalist), and paying out 

 AGAINST PEOTECTIONISM 269 

the proceeds directly to the labourers engaged in certain 
industries, to raise wages, or even to raise wages in those 
industries? Everyone who thinks a moment will say no! 
If we were to levy such a tax and pay out the proceeds 
directly to glass workers or iron-ore miners or the hands 
in cotton or woollen factories, in addition to what they 
get from their employers, the consequence would simply be 
that labour would be attracted from the unsubsidised to 
the subsidised employments, and wages would go down to 
a point that would give the subsidised labourers no more 
than they got without the subsidy! 

But if such a plan of raising wages is utterly hopeless, 
what should we say of a plan to raise wages by levying a 
tax upon all labourers and giving the proceeds, not to all 
labourers, or even to some labourers, but only to some em 
ployers? This is the plan of protection. If protection 
can increase or maintain wages, it must be in this way. 
What protective duties actually do is to increase the profits 
of certain employers—to allow them to collect a tax from 
their fellow-citizens without any stipulation as to how they 
shall spend it. To suppose that wages can be increased 
in this way is to suppose, in the first place, that these pro 
tected employers voluntarily give up their increased profits 
to their workmen, and to suppose, in the second place, that 
the increase of wages which the benevolence of the pro 
tected employers thus causes in industries which at the 
best employ not more than 1,500,000 people can raise 
wages in occupations that employ 20,000,000 people! 

Observe also that the first step in this precious scheme 
of plunder which is called protection to American labour 
is really to reduce wages. Wages do not really consist of 
money. Money is the mere flux and counter of exchanges. 
What the man who works for wages really works for a^-e 
commodities and services for which he pays with the money 

 270 TO WOEKINGMEN 

he receives in wages. Necessarily, therefore, to increase 
the price of the commodities he buys with his money- 
wages is to decrease his real wages. For instance, a good 
many of the highly protected American labourers in the 
state of Pennsylvania (as in some other States) are com 
pelled by their benevolent protectionist employers to make 
their purchases in what the highly protected American 
labourers call "pluck-me stores." In fact, it is through 
these pluck-me stores that these highly protected Ameri 
can workingmen get their wages, as the pluck-me bill is 
deducted before any money is turned over to them on pay 
days; and many of them being kept constantly in debt, 
hardly see a dollar from one year's end to another. Now, 
it is evident that if one of these employers adds a dollar 
to the prices his men have to pay for the goods they must 
buy in his "pluck-me," he just as effectually cuts down their 
real earnings as though he reduced their wages by a dollar. 
And so it is evident that the protective taxes which we 
impose for the purpose of increasing the prices of com 
modities must in the same way operate to reduce the real 
wages of labour. Therefore the protective scheme for 
raising wages fully stated is simply this: Wages generally 
are in the first place reduced by taxes which increase the 
price of certain commodities, in order (1) that a com 
paratively few employers who profit by this increase in 
the price of what they have to sell may voluntarily increase 
the wages of their employees, and (2) that this benevolent 
raising of wages in some occupations may cause the rais 
ing of wages in all occupations! 

Is it not time that American workingmen were done 
with such a preposterous scheme as this? There is one 
sense, and one sense alone, in which protection may raise 
wages. When real wages are low enough, it may to some 
extent raise nominal wages. If the protected Pennsyl- 

 AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 271 

vania employer were to keep on raising the prices in his 
workmen's "protected home market," the pluck-me store, 
he would come to a point where their nominal wages would 
not enable them to get enough food and clothing to sup 
port life, and where, consequently, he would be forced to 
increase their nominal wages in order to prevent their re 
moval or starvation. In this way protection, like a depre 
ciation of currency, may sometimes increase nominal 
wages. But it can never increase real wages. Whomso 
ever protection may benefit—and analysis will show that 
it cannot even benefit the employing capitalists whom it 
assumes to benefit, unless they are also protected from 
home competition by some sort of a monopoly—it cannot 
benefit the labourer. It is to the labourer a delusion and 
a fraud—a scheme of barefaced plunder that adds insult 
to injury; that first robs him, and then tells him to get 
down on his knees and thank his robber! 

The impudent pretence that what is called protection is 
protection to labour is peculiar to the United States, and is 
an afterthought here. When this utterly un-American 
system of robbing the many for the benefit of the few was 
introduced into this country, it was not pretended that it 
was to protect labour or to compensate for high wages. It 
was asked for the protection of capital—to give capitalists 
a bonus—so that here, where interest was high, they could 
engage in the same sort of manufacturing businesses as in 
Europe, where interest was low. It was asked for the 
"protection of infant industries"—to give them artificial 
support for a few years, when, it was then claimed, they 
could stand alone without any more protection. 

But men who once secure the enactment of laws to 
enable them to take the earnings of others never want an 
excuse for demanding the continuance of the privilege. 
Now that United States three per cent, bonds are at a, 

 272 TO WOEKINGMEN 

premium, it would be preposterous to talk of protecting 
American capital against the cheaper capital of Europe, 
and now that the great protected industries have become 
very industrial giants, it would be only ridiculous to talk 
of protecting "infant industries." So we are now told 
that protection is "protection for labour," and is made 
necessary by our higher wages. In fact, we are now told 
that it is because of protection that wages are so high and 
the country so prosperous. 

The pretence is as hollow and insulting as the pretence 
of the slave-owners that slavery was for the protection of 
the slave. Special privilege needs protection, and monop 
oly needs protection, and all legalised systems of robbery 
that enable men who do no labour to grow rich by appro 
priating the earnings of those who do labour, need pro 
tection. But what is labour, that it should need protec 
tion ? What is labour, that votes should have to be bought 
and coerced, and lobbyists maintained, and congressmen 
interested, and newspapers subsidised, and our coasts and 
borders lined with seizers and searchers and spies and 
informers and tax-gatherers, to keep it from falling to 
pauperism ? Is not labour the producer of all wealth ? Is 
it not labour that feeds all, clothes all, shelters all, and 
pays for all? Is not labour the one thing that can take 
care of itself; that requires but access to the raw materials 
of nature to bring forth all that man's needs require? 
What benevolent capitalist drew a tariff wall around Adam 
to enable him to get a living and bring up a family? 
Whatever else may need protection, labour needs no pro 
tection. What labour needs is freedom! Not the keeping 
up of restrictions and the perpetuation of monopolies, but 
the tearing of them down. 

Who are these benevolent individuals, so anxious to pro 
tect the poor, helpless workingman, so fearful lest Ameri- 

 AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 273 

can labour may fall to the level of "the pauper labour of 
Europe"? The coal barons and the factory lords, the 
iron and steel combinations, the lumber ring, and the thou 
sand trusts that, having secured the imposition of duties 
to keep out foreign productions, band themselves together 
to limit home production and to screw down the wages of 
their workmen. And are not these men who are so anx 
ious, as they say, to protect you from the competition of 
"foreign pauper labour" the very men who are most ready 
to avail themselves of foreign labour? 

Do you know of any protected employer, no matter how 
many millions he may have made out of the tariff, who 
pays any higher wages to labour than he has to ? Is it not 
true that in all the protected industries wages are, if any 
thing, lower than in the unprotected industries? Is it 
not true that in all the protected industries workmen have 
been compelled to band themselves together to protect 
themselves; and that these protected industries are the in 
dustries notable above all others for their strikes and 
lock-outs—the bitter and oft-times disastrous industrial 
wars that labour is compelled to wage to prevent being 
crowded to starvation rates? Are these the men whose 
protection you need? 

It is impossible for me in a brief article like this to go 
over all the claims and expose all the fallacies of protec 
tion. That I have already done, in anticipation of the 
coming before the people of this question, in a little book 
entitled "Protection or Free Trade?" in which I have 
shown the full relations of the tariff question to the labour 
question. All I want here to do is to urge every Ameri 
can workingman to think over the matter for himself, and 
to decide whether what is called ''protection" is or is not 
in the interests of the men who earn their daily bread by 
their daily labour. 

 274 TO WOKKINGMEN 

For if, as protectionists tell us, our country is so pros 
perous and wages are so high because of the protection 
we already have, then we certainly ought to bend all our 
efforts to get more protection. However prosperous this 
country may be when viewed through the rose-coloured 
spectacles of the millionaire, and however high wages may 
be from the standpoint of those who think that the natural 
wages of labour are only enough to keep soul and body 
together, there will be no dispute among workingmen that 
this country is not prosperous enough and wages not high 
enough. Whoever may be satisfied with things as they 
are, the great mass of American citizens who work for a 
living are not satisfied and ought not to be satisfied. Mon 
strous fortunes are rolling up here faster than they ever did 
in the world before; but the great body of the American 
people get but a poor hand-to-mouth living, and find year 
after year passing without a^'thing laid by for a rainy 
day. Our rich men astonish the rich men of Europe by 
their lavish expenditure, and the daughters of our million 
aires are sought in marriage by European aristocrats of 
the bluest blood; but the tramp is known from the At 
lantic to the Pacific; the proportion of our people who are 
maintained by charity, the proportion who are confined 
in prisons and lunatic asylums, the proportion of our 
women and children who must go to work, is steadily in 
creasing. And the proportion of men who, starting with 
nothing but their ability to labour, can become their own 
employers, or can hope out of the earnings of their labour 
to maintain a family and put by a competence for old age, 
is steadily diminishing. "Statisticians" may pile up fig 
ures to prove to the American workingman how much 
better off he is than he used to be, and the editors of 
protection papers may picture the poverty of European 
workingmen in the darkest colours to show him how proud 

 AGAINST PROTECTIONISM 276 

and happy and contented he ought to be. But the labour 
organisations, the strikes, the bitter unrest with which the 
whole industrial mass is seething, show that he is not con 
tented. If protection gives prosperity, if protection raises 
wages, then in heaven's name let us demand more protec 
tion, even though we utterly destroy all foreign commerce, 
put a line of custom-houses between every State, and shut 
in our rich men so that they cannot go to Europe and 
spend their money on foreign paupers, as Mr. Blaine is 
doing. But if it does not—then let us sweep away what 
protection we have. Let us raise the banner of equal 
rights, and try the way of freedom! 

It is not protection that has made wages higher here 
than in Europe. If protection could make wages high, 
why has it not made wages high in Germany and Italy and 
Spain and Mexico? Why did it not make wages high in 
England when it was in full force there? Wages were 
higher in the United States than in Europe before we had 
any protection; and if they have on the whole remained 
higher, it is in spite of protection. Our higher wages are 
because of our cheaper land—because labour can more 
readily obtaiu access to the natural materials and oppor 
tunities of labour. The secret of our prosperity, of our 
rapid growth, of our better conditions of labour, is simply 
that we have had the temperate zone of a vast and virgin 
continent to overrun, and that it has taken a long while 
for monopoly to fence it in. As it is gradually fenced 
in, as the tribute that labour must pay to monopoly for the 
use of land becomes higher and higher, so must our social 
conditions, tariff or no tariff, approximate to the social 
conditions of Europe. 

To give labour full freedom; to make wages what they 
ought to be, the full earnings of labour; to secure work 
for all, and leisure for all, and abundance for all; to 

 276 TO WOBKINGMEN 

enable all to enjoy the advantages and blessings of an ad 
vancing civilisation—we must break down all monopolies 
and destroy all special privileges. 

The rejection of protection and the abolition of the 
tariff will not of itself accomplish this, but it will be a 
long step towards it—a step that must necessarily be taken 
if labour is to be emancipated and industrial slavery abol 
ished. Until the workingmen of the United States get 
over the degrading superstition of protection they must 
be divided and helpless. But when they once realise the 
true dignity of labour, once see that the good of all can 
only be gained by securing the equal rights of each, then 
they can unite, and then they will be irresistible. 

And this is the question that you will be asked this year 
to answer by your votes. Are you for restriction or are 
you for freedom? Are you in favour of taxing the whole 
people for the benefit of a few capitalists, in the hope that 
they will give to their workmen some of the crumbs? or 
are you against all special privileges and in favour of 
equal rights to all ? 

To the man who thinks the matter over there can be 
no question as to what answer best accords with the in 
terests of workingmen. It is possible for the few to be 
come rich by taxing the many. But it is not possible for 
the many to become rich by taxing themselves to put the 
proceeds in the hands of the few. 

Labour cannot be hurt by freedom. The only thing 
that can be hurt by freedom is monopoly. And monopoly 
means the robbery of labour. What labour needs is free 
dom, not protection; justice, not charity; equal rights for 
all, not special privileges for some. 

 "THY KINGDOM COME." 

 "THY KINGDOM COME." 

[A sermon delivered in the City Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday, 
April 28, 1889, under the auspices of the Henry George Institute, and 
afterwards circulated extensively in tract fonn by the Scottish Land Res 
toration League.] 

WE have just joined in the most solemn, the most 
sacred, the most catholic of all prayers: "Our 
Father which art in Heaven!" To all of us who have 
learned it in our infancy, it oft calls up the sweetest and 
most tender emotions. Sometimes with feeling, sometimes 
as a matter of course, how often have we repeated it! For 
centuries, daily, hourly, has that prayer gone up. "Thy 
kingdom come!" Has it come? Let this Christian city 
of Glasgow answer—Glasgow, that was to "Flourish by the 
preaching of the Word." "Thy kingdom come!" Day 
after day, Sunday after Sunday, week after week, century 
after century, has that prayer gone up; and to-day, in this 
so-called Christian city of Glasgow, 125,000 human beings 
—so your medical officer says—125,000 children of God 
are living whole families in a single room. "Thy king 
dom come!" We have been praying for it and praying 
for it, yet it has not come. So long has it tarried that 
many think it never will come. Here is tlie vital point in 
which what we are accustomed to call the Christianity of 
the present day differs so much from that Christianity 
which overran the ancient world—that Christianity which, 

279 

 280 THY KINGDOM COME 

beneath a rotten old civilisation, planted the seeds of a 
newer and a higher. We have become accustomed to think 
that God's kingdom is not intended for this world; that, 
virtually, this is the devil's world, and that God's kingdom 
is in some other sphere, to which He is to take good 
people when they die—as good Americans are said when 
they die to go to Paris. If that be so, what is the use 
of praying for the coming of the kingdom ? Is God—the 
Christian's God, the Almighty, the loving Father of whom 
Christ told—is He such a monster as a god of that kind 
would be; a god who looks on this world, sees its sufferings 
and its miseries, sees high faculties aborted, lives stunted, 
innocence turned to vice and crime, and heart-strings 
strained and broken, yet, having it in his power, will not 
bring that kingdom of peace, and love, and plenty, and 
happiness? Is God, indeed, a self-willed despot, whom 
we must coax to do the good He might ? 

But, think of it. The Almighty—and I say it with rev 
erence—the Almighty could not bring that kingdom of 
Himself. For, what is the kingdom of God; the kingdom 
that Christ taught us to pray for? Is it not in the doing 
of God's will, not by automata, not by animals who are 
compelled, but by intelligent beings made in His image; 
intelligent beings clothed with free will, intelligent beings 
knowing good from evil. Swedeuborg never said a deeper 
nor a truer thing, nor a thing more compatible with the 
philosophy of Christianity, than when he said God had 
never put any one into hell; that the devils went to hell 
because they would rather go to hell than go to heaven. 
The spirits of evil would be unhappy in a place where 
the spirit of good reigned: wedded to injustice, and loving 
injustice, they would be miserable where justice was the 
law. And, correlatively, God could not put intelligent 
beings having free will into conditions where they must 

 SERMON IN GLASGOW 281 

do right without destroying that free will. Nay! Nay! 
"Thy kingdom come!"—when Christ taught that prayer 
He meant, not merely that men must idly phrase these 
words, but that for the coming of that kingdom they must 
work as well as pray! 

Prayer! Consider what prayer is. How true is the 
old fable! The wagoner, whose wagon was stuck in the 
rut, knelt down and prayed to Jove to get it out. He 
might have prayed till the crack of doom, and the wagon 
would have stood there. This world—God's world—is not 
that kind of a world in which the repeating of words will 
get wagons out of mire or poverty out of slums. He who 
would pray with effect must work! 

"Our Father which art in Heaven." Not a despot, 
ruling by his arbitrary fiats, but a father, a loving father, 
our father; a father for us all—that was Christ's mes 
sage. He is our Father and we are His children. But 
there are men, who, looking around on the suffering and 
injustice with which, even in so-called Christian countries, 
human life is full, say there is no Father in heaven, there 
can be no God, or He would not permit this. How super 
ficial is that thought! What would we as fathers do for 
our children ? Is there any man, who, having a knowledge 
of the world and the laws of human life, would so sur 
round his boy with safeguards that he could do no evil 
and could suffer no pain? What could he make by that 
course of education? A pampered animal, not a self- 
reliant man! We are, indeed, His children. Yet let one 
of God's children fall into the water, and if he has not 
learned to swim he will drown. And if he is a good dis 
tance from land and near no boat or anything on which 
he may get, he will drown anyhow, whether he can swim 
or not. God the Creator might have made men so that they 
could swim like the fishes, but how could He have made 

 3*2 THY KINGDOM COMB 

them so that they could swim like the fishes and yet Have 
adapted this wonderful frame of ours to all the purposes 
which the intelligence that is lodged within it requires to 
use it for? God can make a fish; He can make a bird; 
but could He, His laws being what they are, make an 
animal that might at once swim as well as a fish and fly 
as well as a bird? That the intelligence which we must 
recognise behind nature is almighty does not mean that it 
can contradict itself and stultify its own laws. No; we 
are the children of God. What God is, who shall say? 
But every man is conscious of this, that behind what he 
sees there must have been a Power to bring that forth; 
that behind what he knows there is an intelligence far 
greater than that which is lodged in the human mind, but 
which human intelligence does in some infinitely less de 
gree resemble. 

Yes; we are His children. We in some sort have that 
power of adapting things which we know must have been 
exerted to bring this universe into being. Consider those 
great ships for which this port of Glasgow is famous all 
over the world; consider one of those great ocean steamers, 
such as the Urribria, or the Etruria, or the City of New 
York, or the City of Paris. There, in the ocean which 
such ships cleave, are the porpoises, there are the whales, 
there are the dolphins, there are all manner of fish. They 
are to-day just as they were when Caesar crossed to this 
island, just as they were before the first ancient Briton 
launched his leather-covered boat. Man to-day can swim 
no better than man could swim then, but consider how 
by his intelligence he has advanced higher and higher, 
how his power of making things has developed, until now 
he crosses the great ocean quicker than any fish. Consider 
one of those great steamers forcing her way across the 
Atlantic Ocean, four hundred miles a day, against a living 

 SERMON IN GLASGOW 283 

gale. Is she not in some sort a product of a godlike 
power—a machine in some sort like the very fishes that 
swim underneath? Here is the distinguishing thing be 
tween man and the animals; here is the broad and im 
passable gulf. Man among all the animals is the only 
maker. Man among all the aninals is the only one that 
possesses that godlike power of adapting means to ends. 
And is it possible that man possesses the power of so 
adapting means to ends that he can cross the Atlantic in 
six days, and yet does not possess the power of abolishing 
the conditions that crowd thousands of families into one 
room? When we consider the achievements of man and 
then look upon the misery that exists to-day in the very 
centres of wealth, upon the ignorance, the weakness, the 
injustice, that characterise our highest civilisation, we may 
know of a surety that it is not the fault of God; it is the 
fault of man. May we not know that in that very power 
God has given to His children here, in that power of ris 
ing higher, there is involved—and necessarily involved— 
the power of falling lower? 

"Our Father!" "Our Father!" Whose? Not my Fa 
ther—that is not the prayer. "Our Father"—not the 
father of any sect, of any class, but the Father of all men. 
The All-Father, the equal Father, the loving Father. He 
it is we ask to bring the kingdom. Aye, we ask it with our 
lips! We call him "Our Father," the All, the Universal 
Father, when we kneel down to pray to Him. But that 
He is the All-Father—that He is all men's Father—we 
deny by our institutions. The All-Father who made the 
world, the All-Father who created man in His image, and 
put him upon the earth to draw his subsistence from its 
bosom; to find in the earth all the materials that satisfy 
his wants, waiting only to be worked up by his labour! 
If He is the All-Father, then are not all human beings, 

 284 THY KINGDOM COME 

all children of the Creator, equally entitled to lEe use of 
His bounty? And, yet, our laws say that this God's 
earth is not here for the use of all His children, but only 
for the use of a privileged few! There was a little dia 
logue published in the United States, in the West, some 
time ago. Possibly you may have seen it. It is between 
a boy and his father, when visiting a brick-yard. The 
boy looks at the men making bricks, and he asks who those 
dirty men are, why they are making up the clay, and what 
they are doing it for. He learns, and then he asks about 
the owner of the brick-yard. "He does not make any 
bricks; he gets his income from letting the other men 
make bricks." Then the boy asks about what title there 
is to the bricks, and is told that it comes from the men 
having made them. Then he wants to know how the man 
who owns the brick-yard gets his title to the brick-yard— 
whether he made it ? "No, he did not make it," the father 
replies, "God made it." The boy asks, "Did God make it 
for him?" Whereat his father tells him that he must 
not ask questions such as that, but that anyhow it is all 
right, and it is all in accordance with God's law. Then 
the boy, who of course was a Sunday-school boy, and had 
been to church, goes off mumbling to himself that God so 
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to 
die for all men; but that He so loved the owner of this 
brick-yard that he gave him not merely his only begotten 
Son but the brick-yard too. 

This has a blasphemous sound. But I do not refer to it 
lightly. I do not like to speak lightly of sacred subjects. 
Yet it is well sometimes that we should be fairly shocked 
into thinking. Think of what Christianity teaches us; 
think of the life and death of Him who came to die for 
men! Think of His teachings, that we are all the equal 
children of an Almighty Father, who is no respecter of 

 SERMON IN GLASGOW 285 

persons, and then think of this legalised injustice—this 
denial of the most important, most fundamental rights of 
the children of God, which so many of the very men who 
teach Christianity uphold; nay, which they blasphemously 
assert is the design and the intent of the Creator himself. 
Better to me, higher to me, is the atheist, who says there 
is no God, than the professed Christian, who, prating of 
the goodness and the Fatherhood of God, tells us in words 
as some do, or tells us indirectly as others do, that mil 
lions and millions of human creatures—[at this point a 
child was heard crying]—don't take the little thing out— 
that millions and millions of human beings, like that little 
baby, are being brought into the world daily by the crea 
tive fiat, and no place in this world provided for them. 
Aye! tells us that, by the laws of God, the poor are cre 
ated in order that the rich may have the unctuous satis 
faction of dealing out charity to them—tells us that a 
state of things like that which exists in this city of Glas 
gow, as in other great cities on both sides of the Atlantic, 
where little children are dying every day, dying by hun 
dreds of thousands, because, having come into this world 
—those children of God, with His fiat, by His decree— 
they find that there is not space on the earth sufficient for 
them to live; and are driven out of God's world because 
they cannot get room enough, cannot get air enough, can 
not get sustenance enough. I believe in no such god. 
If I did, though I might bend before him in fear, I would 
hate him in my heart. Not room enough for the little 
children here! Look around any country in the civilised 
world; is there not room enough and to spare? Not food 
enough? Look at the unemployed labour, look at the idle 
acres, look through every country and see natural oppor 
tunities going to waste. Aye! that Christianity that puts 
on the Creator the evil, the injustice, the suffering, the 

 286 THY KINGDOM COME 

degradation that are due to man's injustice, is worse, far 
worse, than atheism. That is the blasphemy, and if 
there be a sin against the Holy Ghost, that is the unpar 
donable sin! 

Why, consider—"Give us this day our daily bread." I 
stopped in a hotel last week—a hydropathic establishment. 
A hundred or more guests sat down to table together. 
Before they ate anything, a man stood up, and, thanking 
God, asked Him to make us all grateful for His bounty. 
So at every meal-time such an acknowledgment is made 
over well-filled boards. What do men mean by it ? Is it 
mockery, or what? 

If Adam, when he got out of Eden, had sat down and 
commenced to pray, he might have prayed till this time 
without getting anything to eat unless he went to work for 
it. Yet food is God's bounty. He does not bring meat 
all cooked, nor vegetables all prepared, nor lay the plates, 
nor spread the cloth. What He gives are the opportuni 
ties of producing these things—of bringing them forth 
by labour. His mandate is—it is written in the Holy 
Word, it is graven on every fact in nature—that by labour 
we shall bring forth these things. Nature gives to labour 
and to nothing else. What God gives are the natural ele 
ments that are indispensable to labour. He gives them, 
not to one, not to some, not to one generation, but to all. 
They are His gifts, His bounty to the whole human race. 
And yet in all our civilised countries what do we see? 
That a few men have appropriated these bounties, claim 
ing them as theirs alone, while the great majority have no 
legal right to apply their labour to the reservoirs of nature 
and draw from the Creator's bounty. And thus it comes 
that all over the civilised world that class that is called 
peculiarly the "labouring class" is the poor class, and 
that men who do no labour, who pride themselves on never 

 SERMON IN GLASGOW 287 

having done honest lahour and on heing descended from 
fathers and grandfathers who never did a stroke of honest 
lahour in their lives, revel in a superabundance of all the 
things that labour brings forth. 

Mr. Abner Thomas, of New York, a strict orthodox 
Presbyterian—and the son of that Dr. Thomas, famous in 
America if not here, the pastor of a Presbyterian church 
in Philadelphia, and the author of a commentary on the 
Bible that is still a standard work—wrote a little while 
ago an allegory, called "A Dream." Dozing off in his 
chair, he imagined that he was ferried over the River of 
Death, and, taking the straight and narrow way, came at 
last within sight of the Golden City. A fine-looking old- 
gentleman angel opened the wicket, inquired his name, 
and let him in; warning him, at the same time, that it 
would be better if he chose his company in heaven, and 
did not associate with disreputable angels. 

"What!" said the new-comer, "is not this heaven ?" 

"Yes," said the warden, "but there are a lot of tramp 
angels here now." 

"How can that be?" said Mr. Thomas, in his dream. 
"I thought everybody had plenty in heaven." 

"It used to be that way some time ago," said the war 
den ; "and if you wanted to get your harp polished or your 
wings combed, you had to do it yourself. But matters 
have changed since we adopted the same kind of property 
regulations in heaven as you have in civilised countries on 
earth, and we find it a great improvement, at least for 
the better class." 

Then the warden told the new-comer that he had better 
decide where he was going to board. 

"I don't want to board anywhere," said Thomas; "I. 
would much rather go over to that beautiful green knoll 
and lie down." 

 28* THY KINGDOM COME 

"I would not advise you to do so," said the warden; "the 
angel who owns that knoll does not like to encourage tres 
passing. Some centuries ago, as I told you, we intro 
duced the system of private property in the soil of heaven. 
So we divided the land up. It is all private property 
now." 

"I hope I was considered in that division ?" said Thomas. 

"No," said the warden, "you were not; but if you go to 
work, and are saving, you can easily earn enough in a 
couple of centuries to buy yourself a nice piece. You get 
a pair of wings free as you come in, and you will have 
no difficulty in hypothecating them for a few days' board 
until you find work. But I would advise you to be quick 
about it, as our population is constantly increasing, and 
there is a great surplus of labour. Tramp angels are, in 
fact, becoming quite a nuisance." 

"What shall I go to work at?" said Thomas. 

"Our principal industries," responded the warden, "are 
the making of harps and crowns and the growing of flow 
ers; but there are many opportunities for employment in 
personal service." 

"I love flowers," said Thomas, "and I will go to work 
growing them. There is a beautiful piece of land over 
there that nobody seems to be using. I will go to work 
on that." 

"You can't do that," said the warden. "That property 
belongs to one of our most far-sighted angels, who has got 
very rich by the advance of land values, and who is holding 
that piece for a rise. You will have to buy it or feu it 
before you can work on it, and you can't do that yet." 

And so the story goes on to describe how the roads of 
heaven, the streets of the New Jerusalem, were filled with 
disconsolate tramp angels, who had pawned their wings, 
and were outcasts in heaven itself. 

 SEKMON IN GLASGOW 289 

You laugh, and it is ridiculous: But there is a moral 
in it that is worth serious thought: Is not the ridiculous 
ness in our imagining the application to God's heaven of 
the same rules of division that we apply to God's earth, 
even while we pray that His will may be done on earth 
as it is done in heaven ? 

Really, if you come to think of it, it is impossible to 
imagine heaven treated as we treat this earth, without 
seeing that, no matter how salubrious were its air, no 
matter how bright the light that filled it, no matter how 
magnificent its vegetable growth, there would be poverty, 
and suffering, and a division of classes in heaven itself, 
if heaven were parcelled out as we have parcelled out the 
earth. And, conversely, if men in this life were to act 
towards each other as we must suppose the inhabitants of 
heaven to do, would not this earth be a very heaven ? "Thy 
kingdom come." No one can think of the kingdom for 
which the prayer asks without feeling that it must be a 
kingdom of justice and equality—not necessarily of equal 
ity in condition, but of equality in opportunity. And no 
one can think of it without seeing that a very kingdom 
of God might be brought on this earth if men would but 
seek to do justice—if men would but acknowledge the 
essential principle of Christianity, that of doing to others 
as we would have others do to us, and of recognising that 
we are all here equally the children of the one Father, 
equally entitled to share His bounty, equally entitled to 
live our lives and develop our faculties, and to apply our 
labour to the raw material that He has provided. Aye! 
and when a man sees that, then there arises that hope of 
the coming of the kingdom that carried the Gospel through 
the streets of Rome, that carried it into pagan lands, that 
made it, against the most ferocious persecution, the domi 
nant religion of the world. Early Christianity did not 

 290 THY KINGDOM COME 

mean, in its prayer for the coming of Christ's kingdom, 
a kingdom in heaven, but a kingdom on earth. If Christ 
had simply preached of the other world, the high priests 
and the Pharisees would not have persecuted Him, the 
Eoman soldiery would not have nailed His hands to the 
cross. Why was Christianity persecuted? Why were its 
first professors thrown to wild beasts, burned to light a 
tyrant's gardens, hounded, tortured, put to death, by all 
the cruel devices that a devilish ingenuity could suggest? 
Not that it was a new religion, referring only to the 
future. Borne was tolerant of all religions. It was the 
boast of Eome that all gods were sheltered in her Pan 
theon; it was the boast of Kome that she made no inter 
ference with the religions of peoples she conquered. What 
was persecuted was a great movement for social reform— 
the Gospel of Justice—heard by common fishermen with 
gladness, carried by labourers and slaves into the Imperial 
City. The Christian revelation was the doctrine of human 
equality, of the fatherhood of God, of the brotherhood of 
man. It struck at the very basis of that monstrous tyr 
anny that then oppressed the civilised world; it struck at 
the fetters of the captive, at the bonds of the slave, at 
that monstrous injustice which allowed a class to revel 
on the proceeds of labour, while those who did the labour 
fared scantily. That is the reason why early Christianity 
was persecuted. And when they could no longer hold it 
down, then the privileged classes adopted and perverted the 
new faith, and it became, in its very triumph, not the 
pure Christianity of the early days, but a Christianity that, 
to a very great extent, was the servitor of the privileged 
classes. And, instead of preaching the essential father 
hood of God, the essential brotherhood of man, its high 
priests engrafted on the pure truths of the Gospel the 
blasphemous doctrine that the All-Father is a respecter of 

 SERMON IN GLASGOW 291 

persons, and that hy His will and on His mandate is 
founded that monstrous injustice which condemns the 
great mass of humanity to unrequited hard toil. There 
has heen no failure of Christianity. The failure has heen 
in the sort of Christianity that has heen preached. 

Nothing is clearer than that if we are all children of the 
universal Father, we are all entitled to the use of His 
hounty. No one dare deny that proposition. But the 
men who set their faces against its carrying out say, virtu 
ally: "Oh, yes! that is true; hut it is impracticable to 
carry it into effect!" Just think of what this means: 
This is God's world, and yet such men say that it is a 
world in which God's justice, God's will, cannot he car 
ried into effect. What a monstrous absurdity, what a 
monstrous blasphemy! If the loving God does reign, if 
His laws are the laws not merely of the physical but of the 
moral universe, there must be a way of carrying His will 
into effect, there must be a way of doing equal justice to 
all His creatures. 

And so there is. The men who deny that there is any 
practical way of carrying into effect the perception that 
all human beings are equally children of the Creator, shut 
their eyes to the plain and obvious way. It is of course 
impossible in a civilisation like this of ours to divide land 
up into equal pieces. Such a system might have done in 
a primitive state of society, among a people such as that 
for whom the Mosaic code was framed. It would not do 
in this state of society. We have progressed in civilisation 
beyond such rude devices, but we have not, nor can we, pro 
gress beyond God's providence. There is a way of securing 
the equal rights of all, not by dividing land up into equal 
pieces, but by taking for the use of all that value which 
attaches to land, not as the result of individual labour 
upon it, but as the result of the increase of population, 

 292 THY KINGDOM COME 

and the improvement of society. In that way everyone 
would be equally interested in the land of his native coun 
try. If he used a more valuable piece than his neighbour 
he would pay a heavier tax. If he made no direct use 
of any land he would still be an equal sharer in the reve 
nue. Here is the simple way. Aye! and it is a way that 
impresses the man who really sees its beauty with a more 
vivid idea of the beneficence of the providence of the 
All-Father than it seems to me anything else. One can 
not look, it seems to me, through nature; whether he look 
at the stars through a telescope, or have the microscope 
reveal to him those worlds that we find in drops of water, 
whether he consider the human frame, the adjustments of 
the animal kingdom, or of any department of physical 
nature, he must see that there has been a contriver and 
adjuster, that there has been an intent. So strong is that 
feeling, so natural is it to our minds, that even men who 
deny the creative intelligence are forced, in spite of them 
selves, to talk of intent. The claws of one animal were 
intended, we say, to climb with; the fins of another to 
propel it through the water. Yet, while in looking through 
the laws of physical nature, we find intelligence, we do not 
so clearly find beneficence. But in the great social fact 
that as population increases, and improvements are made, 
and men progress in civilisation, the one thing that rises 
everywhere in value is land, we may see a proof of the 
beneficence of the Creator. 

Why, consider what it means! It means that the social 
laws are adapted to progressive man! In a rude state of 
society where there is no need for common expenditure, 
there is no value attaching to land. The only value which 
attaches there is to things produced by labour. But as 
civilisation goes on, as a division of labour takes place, as 
men come into centres, so do the common wants increase 

 SEEMON IN GLASGOW 293 

and so does the necessity for public revenue arise. And 
so in that value which attaches to land, not by reason of 
anything the individual does, but by reason of the growth 
of the community, is a provision, intended—we may safely 
say intended—to meet that social want. Just as society 
grows, so do the common needs grow, and so grows this 
value attaching to land—the provided fund from which 
they can be supplied. Here is a value that may be taken, 
without impairing the right of property, without taking 
anything from the producer, without lessening the natu 
ral rewards of industry and thrift. Nay, here is a value 
that must be taken if we would prevent the most mon 
strous of all monopolies. What does all this mean? It 
means that in the creative plan, the natural advance in 
civilisation is an advance to a greater and greater equality 
instead of to a more and more monstrous inequality. 

"Thy kingdom come!" It may be that we shall never 
see it. But to the man who realises that it may come, to 
the man who realises that it is given to him to work for 
the coming of God's kingdom on earth, there is for him, 
though he never see that kingdom here, an exceeding great 
reward—the reward of feeling that he, little and insig 
nificant though he may he, is doing something to help the 
coming of that kingdom, doing something on the side of 
that good power that shows all through the universe, doing 
something to tear this world from the devil's grasp, and 
make it the kingdom of righteousness. Aye, and though it 
should never come, yet those who struggle for it know in 
the depths of their hearts that it must exist somewhere— 
they know that somewhere, some time, those who strive 
their best for the coming of the kingdom, will be welcomed 
into the kingdom, and that to them, even to them, some 
time, somewhere, the King shall say: "Well done, thou good 
and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 

 JUSTICE THE OBJECT—TAXATION 

THE MEANS 

 JUSTICE THE OBJECT—TAXATION 
THE MEANS. 

[Address in Metropolitan Hall, San Francisco, February 4, 1890, on 
the way to the Australian lecture tour.] 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Fellow-Citizens: 

AS I rise on this stage the past comes back to me. 
XJL Twelve years ago—it seems so far and yet so near— 
twelve years ago, when I was halt of speech, when to face 
an audience, it seemed to me, required as much courage 
as it would to face a battery—I stood on this platform to 
speak my first word in the cause for which I stand now. 
I stood on this platform to see, instead of the audience 
that greets me to-night, a beggarly array of empty benches. 
It is a long time. Many times, in this country and in the 
dear old world, I have stood before far greater audiences 
than this; I have been greeted by thousands who never saw 
me before, as they would greet a friend long known and 
well loved; but I don't think it ever gave me such pleasure 
to stand before an audience as it does here to-night. 

For years and years I have been promising myself to 
come back to San Francisco. I have crossed the Atlantic 
five times before I could fulfil that desire. I am here 
now to go in a few days to the antipodes; perhaps I may 
never return—who knows? If I live I shall try to. But 
San Francisco, though I never again can be a citizen of 

297 

 298 JUSTICE THE OBJECT 

California—though my path in life seems away so far 
that California seems hut a ridge on the horizon—my heart 
has always turned, and always will turn, to the home of 
my youth, to the city in which I grew up, to the city 
in which I have found so many warm friends—to the 
country in which I married, and in which my children 
were born. Always it will seem to me home; and it is 
sweet to the man long absent to be welcomed home. 

Aye, and you men, old friends tried and true—you men 
who rallied in the early times to our movement, when we 
could count each other almost upon one's fingers—I come 
hack to you to say that at last our triumph is but a matter 
of time; to say that never in the history of thought has 
a movement come forward so fast and so well. 

Ten years ago, when I left, I was anything but hopeful; 
ten years ago I would not have dared to say that in any 
time to which I might live, we should see the beginning of 
this great struggle. Nor have I cared. My part (and I 
think I can speak for every man who is enlisted in this 
movement)—my part has never been to predict results. 
Our feeling is the feeling of the great stoic emperor, "that 
is the business of Jupiter; not ours." Ours to do the 
work as we may; ours to plant the seed which is to give 
the results. But now, so well forward is this cause, so 
many strong advocates has it in every land, so far has it 
won its way, that now it makes no difference who lives or 
who dies, who goes forward or who hangs back. Now the 
currents of the time are setting in our favour. At last— 
at last we can say with certainty that it will only be a little 
while before all over the English speaking world, and 
then, not long after, over the rest of the civilised world, 
the great truth will be acknowledged that no human child 
comes into this world without coming into his equal right 
to all. 

 TAXATION THE MEANS 299 

I am talking to-night to my friends; I am talking to 
night to those who are as earnest and well informed in 
this cause as I am; but I am also probably talking to 
many who have but vague ideas concerning it. Let me, 
since I am in San Francisco, speak of the genesis of my 
own thought. I came out here at an early age, and knew 
nothing whatever of political economy. I had never 
thought upon any social problem. The first time I ever 
recollect talking on such a subject was one day, when I 
was about eighteen, after I had first come to this country, 
sitting on the deck of a topsail schooner with a lot of 
miners on the way to the Frazer River; and we got talk 
ing about the Chinese, and I ventured to say—ventured 
to ask what harm the Chinese were doing here, if, as these 
miners said, they were only working the cheap diggings? 
And one old miner turned to me, and said, "No harm 
now; but it will not be always that wages are as high as 
they are to-day in California. As the country grows, as 
people come in, wages will go down, and some day or other 
white men will be glad to get these diggings that the 
Chinamen are now working." And I well remember how 
it impressed me, the idea that as the country grew in all 
that we are hoping that it might grow, the condition of 
those who had to work for their living must grow, not 
better, but worse. 

And I remember, after having come down from the 
country, sitting one Christmas eve in the gallery of the old 
American Theatre, among the gods, when a new drop cur 
tain fell, and we all sprang to our feet, for on that curtain 
was painted what was then a dream of the far future, the 
overland train coming into San Francisco; and after we 
had shouted ourselves hoarse, I began to think what good 
is it going to be to men like me? those who have nothing 
but their labour? I saw that thought grow and growj 

 300 JUSTICE THE OBJECT 

we were all—all of TIB, rich and poor—hoping for the 
development of California, proud of her future greatness, 
looking forward to the time when San Francisco was to 
be one of the great capitals of the world; looking forward 
to the time when this great empire of the West was to 
count her population by millions, and underneath it all 
came to me what that miner told. What about the masses 
of the people? 

When, after growing up here, I went across the conti 
nent, before the continental railway was completed, and in 
the streets of New York for the first time realised the 
contrasts of wealth and want that are to be found in a 
great city; saw those sights that, to the man who comes 
from the West, affright and appal, the problem grew upon 
me. I said to myself there must be some reason for this; 
there must be some remedy for this, and I will not rest 
until I have found the one and discovered the other. At 
last it came clear as the stars of a bright midnight. I saw 
what was the cause; I saw what was the cure. I saw noth 
ing that was new. Truth is never new. 

When I lectured for the first time in Oxford, a pro 
fessor of political economy in that great university met 
and opposed me, and he said, "I have read Mr. George's 
book from one end to the other; what I have to say is 
this: there is nothing in it both new and true; what is 
true is not new, and what is new is not true." I an 
swered him: "I accept your statement. It is a correct 
criticism; social truth never is, never can be new; and the 
truth for which we stand is an old truth; a truth seen by 
men everywhere, recognised by the first perceptions of all 
men; only overclouded, only obscured in our modern times 
by force and fraud." 

So it is.