A
friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this question was talking a while
ago with another friend of mine who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid
much attention 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, suppose
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 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 always 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 supports the balloon is supported in turn by
land. So it is with everything else men can do. Whether a man is working
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.
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 question. 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 strangeness
of the fact that, all over the civilised world, the working 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. He won't take you to where
the fine houses are. He will take you, on the contrary, 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 London
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
despise poverty; and it is reasonable that we should. I do 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 one 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 Creator 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 workingman 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 individually, but by the community
of which you are a part. What is the reason that the land here, where we
stand tonight, 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 population, and where would the
value of the land be? Look at it in any way you please.
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 employment?
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
employ 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 paving some other human creature
for the privilege.
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 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 impossible. Reform government—get taxes down to the
minimum—build railroads; institute co-operative stores; divide profits, if
you choose, between employers and employed-and what will be the result? The
result will be that the land will increase in value—that will be the result—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 comes 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 civilised countries—who would get the benefit of it? Simply 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 benefit?
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 been held as private
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 majority? Not a
whit. Though God had sent down manna enough for all, that manna would have
been the property of the landholders; they would have employed some of she
others perhaps, to gather it up into heaps for them, and would have sold
it to their hungry brethren. Consider 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 would 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 private 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 passing
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, certainly,
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 great 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 Buccleugh, owning miles and miles
of land on which no common Scotsman had a right to put his foot, save by
the Duke of Buccleugh's permission. These landowners refused 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
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 landlords 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 displeasing 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 absurdity 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 fishermen who had been paying as rent for the
privilege of fishing there, a certain part of the catch. They paid it because
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 anything in the records to
show that James II had ever ordered 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?*
*)After a popular agitation, the
park authorities since decided to have the gates open later than six o'clock.
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
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 property? There is a sacred right to property—sacred because
ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by the laws of God, and necessary
to social order and civilisation. That is the right of property in things
produced by labour; it rests on the right of a man to himself. That which
a man produces, that is his against all the world, to give or to keep, to
lend, to sell or to bequeath; 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 Australia
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 ungentlemanly, 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 I« But that right of possession, which is good so far as
the chair is concerned, for the time, does not 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
does 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 communities. 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 disease
similar to that which from the same cause is ravaging 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.«
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
London. There is something worse than physical deprivation, something worse
than starvation; and that is the degradation 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 workmen 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 maintain their manly feelings,
dread more than death, go to the alms-houses. That is the reason, here as
in Great 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 somewhere 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 would
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 up offered
the hole owner $300. But the hole owner refused the offer and declared that
he would hold out until he could get $1000; and in the meanwhile that unsightly
and dangerous hole must remain. This is but an illustration 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 afflects 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 further along, people
are separated from each other further than they ought to be, to the increased
difficulty of production, 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 investigated 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.
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
improve, 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, nothing 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 country—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 and making it inalienable we might secure something like equality.
But in a complex civilisation that will not suffice. 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 equality;
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 he 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 Francisco, you could
do many things for mutual benefit and public improvement did you appropriate
to public purposes 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 magnificent 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. Everywhere 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 public 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 common 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 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 entitled
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 incidental. The great thing would be that the reform I propose 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 productive
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 intelligent;
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.