The Economics and Philosophy of Henry George 1839-1897:
Being Memorable Passages from his Writings and Addresses
FIFTH EDITION
Originally published in 1912 by A. C. Fifield, London, under the title Gems from Henry George.
Republished in 1930 by the Henry George Foundation of Great Britain;
reprinted 1931.
New edition and title, Henry George on Economic
Justice, produced by offset litho and published by Land & Liberty
Press Ltd, 1949.
This edition, The Economics and Philosophy of Henry
George, published 1980 by Land & Liberty Press Ltd.
Selected and Arranged by Arthur C. Auchmuty, with a Foreword by Fred Harrison.
LAND & LIBERTY PRESS LTD
177 VAUXHALL BRIDGE ROAD
WESTMINSTER, LONDON, S.W.1 1980
Fred Harrison's FOREWORD (1980)
THIS book contains the distilled wisdom of Henry George. The selection
of extracts from George's books was compiled and arranged by the Rev.
Arthur Compton Auchmuty, who until his death in 1917 was one of a
small group of British country clergymen preaching the cause of radical
land reform.
Why, a century after George's main writings were published — and,
to
judge by the wide sales, popularly received — should we still be
interested in them? Why, when the popularity acquired by many
philosophers is eclipsed by new fashions, are the works of this writer
still
published and carefully scrutinized?* The short answer is that the
philosophy Henry George sought to promote is close to the hearts of
most people: a philosophy which has at its heart the ideas of freedom,
justice and truth.
*The American Economic Association, the professional and scientific
organization of North American economists, devoted a session of its
annual meeting at Atlanta, Georgia, on Dec. 30, 1979, to celebrate the
centenary of the publication of Progress and Poverty, Henry George's
most influential book.
These concepts, of course, are used to defend a wide range of
ideologies, and the passages in this book will introduce the reader to
the merits of Henry George's philosophy and his practical proposals for
social and economic change.
Henry George did not enjoy a formal education above the rudimentary
level. But he acquired multi-disciplinary skills, which he deployed
ruthlessly to expose the deficiencies of industrial society. The single
crucial structural defect, he discovered, was the monopolization of
nature by a minority of citizens. He argued that social conflicts and
economic instability were nurtured by this crippling defect that was
present in a system which was technically capable of providing everybody with
a rising standard of living.
Combining the skills of the economist, the politician and the
journalist he documented the problems and defined the elements
necessary for a program of corrective reforms. No area of
knowledge was neglected. Using history and anthropology, he
compared the lot of working men in modern society with the generally
happier condition of people in pre-industrial societies.
- The "primitive" Amerindian and the European peasant, he noted, worked
shorter hours, were physically stronger and were of a happier demeanor:
why?
- Men were not genetically predisposed to crime, yet many of them were deviant
and pursued anti-social behavior: why?
- Men were rational beings, yet the majority were persuaded to adopt
opinions and institutions contrary to their individual and collective
interests: why?
- While a few men acquired riches without themselves adding one iota to
the wealth of nations, a growing number were condemned to eke out a
bare subsistence in the meanest of conditions: why?
His answers were based largely on theoretical reasoning. The vast
accumulation of empirical knowledge on which today's social scientists
can draw was not available to Henry George, yet he singlemindedly
explored those contradictions which did not disturb most of the
complacent thinkers of his time. Thus, his perceptions are rich
with analogies, sharpened by satire and meticulously recorded by paying
due respect to the meaning of words (a method of advancing knowledge
which is today associated with the Oxford school of linguistic
philosophy).
For the student, the books of Henry George provide a wide range of hypotheses
with which to grapple. Few of these insights into the working of
society and its economy would fail to stand up to empirical testing.
But this is not to say that his views are uncontroversial: one mark of
a successful commentator and reformer is that he is able to challenge
conventional wisdom. An example, which illuminates the contemporary
relevance of George's writings, concerns the population question.
Henry George adopted an optimistic and anti-Malthusian position. If he
were alive today he would seriously question the orthodox view that a
principal way to cure poverty in the Third World was to increase the
distribution of intrauterine devices and the pill. In his view, people
were hungry not for procreative reasons (he saw each pair of hands as
an exciting opportunity, not something to be feared for the burden
allegedly placed on the carrying capacity of earth). The real problem,
he argued, was that people were actively prevented from gaining access
to the natural resources with which to provide themselves with their
daily bread. Today, he would contend that, if we paid greater attention
to appropriate land reforms, the characteristics which are identified
as part of a demographic problem, such as malnutrition, would be
solved.
History is on George's side. Apart from those periods of famine caused
by drought, men in the past were able to order their cultural patterns
to conform neatly with their ecological environment. Today, however,
with all the developments of technology and science, poverty and hunger
not only remain, but are frequently aggravated by these very developments.
The problems of contemporary society are multiplying in number and
magnifying in scale to an extent which seems almost incomprehensible to
the human mind. Yet solutions have to be found if we are to avoid
ecological chaos and survive territorial conflicts. That is why the
critique offered by Henry George is crucial. The power of his logic and
his prose penetrate our complacency, compel us to confront
uncomfortable facts.
-
If we want to be free, we cannot justify sectional privileges which
circumscribe the rights of others.
-
If we want the economy to function smoothly, we cannot expect barriers
to be put up in order to protect our limited interests.
-
If we want society to live in harmony with the ecological environment,
we cannot claim the right to abuse nature for our private, short-term
interests.
But how do we re-synthesize culture to produce the results which we
all, in our rare moments of altruism, concede as desirable? How do we
protect natural rights, such as individual liberty and free speech,
while establishing a well-functioning political order? How do we
achieve a distribution of income which reflects both equal opportunity
and the individual contributions of men and women of varying talents
and industry?
This volume provokes these questions. The book's primary purpose is to
encourage readers to turn to the full texts. There, they will find the
answers with which we must, sooner or later, come to terms if we are to
begin the process of reconstructing society into a state which might be
accorded the status of "civilization."
Editor, FRED HARRISON
Land & Liberty March 1980
Progress and Poverty • The Savage and the Modern Workman • Poverty Unnatural • Nature Inexhaustible • More Men, More Yield
Social Study • "Wise" and "Babes" • Economic Terms: Land, Labor, Capital, Value, Wealth, Wages, Rent • How Society creates its Rent
Laws of Social Life • The "Greater Leviathan" • Civilization • Production • Distribution • Cooperation • Competition
Society an Organism • "Socialism" • Functions of Government • "Protection" • True Free Trade
Unemployed • The Natural Right to Self-Employment • The Earth for All • What is Property? • Ownership of Land, Ownership of Men
Robbery of Labor, and how to stop it • Collect the Rent-Taxation • "The Single Tax" • "Rich" and "Poor" • Compensation
Beneficent Effects of Single Tax • Liberation of Higher Qualities • The Law of Progress, the Moral Law • The Office of Religion • The Call of Liberty • The Liberators • The Glow of Dawn
These quotes are excerpted from the
following sources:
Progress and Poverty (1879)
The (Irish) Land Question (1881)
Social Problems (1883)
The Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to the Duke of Argyll), The
Nineteenth Century, July, 1884
Protection or Free Trade (1885)
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII (1891)
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
The Science of Political Economy, edited by Henry George, Jr.
(1898), after Henry George's death
Speeches and Addresses, at various dates
COULD a man of a century ago* — a Franklin or a Priestley — have
seen,
in a
vision of the future, the steamship taking the place of the sailing
vessel, the railroad train of the wagon, the reaping machine of the
scythe, the threshing machine of the flail; could he have heard the
throb of the engines that in obedience to human will, and for the
satisfaction of human desire, exert a power greater than that of all
the men and all the beasts of burden of the earth combined; could he
have seen the forest tree transformed into finished lumber into doors,
sashes, blinds, boxes or barrels, with hardly the touch of a human
hand; the great workshops where boots and shoes are turned out by the
case with less labor than the old-fashioned cobbler could have put on
a sole; the factories where, under the eye of a girl, cotton becomes
cloth faster than hundreds of stalwart weavers could have turned it out
with their hand-looms; could he have seen steam hammers shaping mammoth
shafts and mighty anchors, and delicate machinery making tiny watches;
the diamond drill cutting through the heart of the rocks, and coal oil
sparing the whale; could he have realized the enormous saving of labor
resulting from improved facilities of exchange and communication —
sheep killed in Australia eaten fresh in England, and the order given
by the London banker in the afternoon executed in San Francisco in the
morning of the same day; could he have conceived of the hundred
thousand improvements which these only suggest, what would he have
inferred as to the social condition of mankind?
* Written in 1877.
It would not have seemed like an inference; further than the vision
went, it would have seemed as though he saw, and his heart would have leaped
and his nerves would have thrilled, as one who from a height beholds just ahead
of the
thirst-stricken caravan the living gleam of rustling woods and the
glint of laughing waters. Plainly, in the sight of the imagination,
he would have beheld these new forces elevating society from its very
foundations, lifting the very poorest above the possibility of want,
exempting the very lowest from anxiety for the material needs of life;
he would have seen these slaves of the lamp of knowledge taking on
themselves the traditional curse, these muscles of iron and sinews of
steel making the poorest laborer's life a holiday, in which every high
quality and noble impulse could have scope to grow. And out of these
bounteous material conditions he would have seen arising, as necessary
sequences, moral conditions realizing the golden age of which mankind
have always dreamed. Youth no longer stunted and starved; age no longer
harried by avarice; the child at play with the tiger; the man with the
muck-rake drinking in the glory of the stars! Foul things fled, fierce
things tame; discord turned to harmony! For how could there be greed
where all had enough? How could the vice, the crime, the ignorance, the
brutality, that spring from poverty and the fear of poverty, exist
where poverty had vanished? Who should crouch where all were freemen,
who oppress where all were peers? — Progress
& Poverty — Introductory:
The Problem
THIS fact — the great fact that poverty and all its concomitants show
themselves in communities just as they develop into the conditions
toward which material progress tends — proves that the social
difficulties existing wherever a certain stage of progress has been
reached, do not arise from local circumstances, but are, in some way or
another, engendered by progress itself.
And, unpleasant as it may be to admit it, it is at last becoming
evident that the enormous increase in productive power which has
marked the present century1, and is still going on with accelerating ratio, has no tendency to
extirpate poverty or to lighten the burdens of those compelled to toil.
It simply widens the gulf between Dives and Lazarus, and makes the
struggle for existence more intense. The march of invention has clothed
mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination
could not have dreamed. But in factories where labor-saving machinery
has reached its most wonderful development, little children, are at
work; wherever the new forces are anything like fully utilized, large
classes are maintained by charity or live on the verge of recourse to
it; amid the greatest accumulations of wealth, men die of starvation,
and puny infants suckle dry breasts; while everywhere the greed of
gain, the worship of wealth, shows the force of the fear of want. The
promised land lies before us like the mirage. The fruits of the tree of
knowledge turn as we grasp them to apples of Sodom that crumble at the
touch.
1. Written in 1877.
It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average
of comfort, leisure, and refinement has. been raised; but these gains
are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. I do not mean
that the condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything
been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be
credited to increased productive power. I mean that the tendency of
what we call material progress is in nowise to improve the condition of
the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. Nay,
more, that it is to still further depress the condition of the lowest
class. The new forces, elevating in their nature though they be, do not
act upon the social fabric from underneath, as was for a long time
hoped and believed, but strike it at a point intermediate between top
and bottom. It is as though an immense wedge were being forced, not
underneath society, but through society. Those who are above the point
of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down. — Progress & Poverty — Introductory:
The Problem
THREE thousand years of advance, and still the moan goes up, "They have
made our lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in
all manner of service!" Three thousand years of advance! and the
piteous voices of little children are in the moan. We progress and we
progress; we girdle continents with iron roads and knit cities together
with the mesh of telegraph wires; each day brings some new invention;
each year marks a fresh advance — the power of production increased,
and
the avenues of exchange cleared and broadened. Yet the complaint of
"hard times" is louder and louder; everywhere are men harassed by care,
and haunted by the fear of want. With swift, steady strides and
prodigious leaps, the power of human hands to satisfy human wants
advances and advances, is multiplied and multiplied. Yet the struggle
for mere existence is more and more intense, and human labor is
becoming the cheapest of commodities. Beside glutted warehouses human
beings grow faint with hunger and shiver with cold; under the shadow of
churches festers the vice that is born of wants. — Speech: Moses
IF it were possible to express in figures the direct pecuniary loss
which society suffers from the social mal-adjustments which condemn
large classes to poverty and vice, the estimate would be appalling.
England maintains over a million paupers on official charity; the city
of New York alone spends over seven million dollars a year in a similar
way. But what is spent from public funds, what is spent by charitable
societies, and what is spent in individual charity, would, if
aggregated, be but the first and smallest item in the account. The
potential earnings of the labor thus going to waste, the cost of the
reckless, improvident and idle habits thus generated, the pecuniary
loss (to consider nothing more) suggested by the appalling statistics
of mortality, and especially infant mortality, among the poorer
classes; the waste indicated by the gin palaces or low groggeries which
increase as poverty deepens; the damage done by the vermin of society
that are bred of poverty and destitution — the thieves,
prostitutes, beggars, and tramps; the cost of guarding society against
them, are all items in the sum which the present unjust and unequal
distribution of wealth takes from the aggregate which, with present
means of production, society might enjoy. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 2: Effects of the Remedy, upon distribution and thence on production
FIVE centuries ago the wealth-producing power of England, man for man,
was small indeed compared with what it is now. Not merely were all the
great inventions and discoveries which since the Introduction of steam
have revolutionized mechanical industry then undreamed of, but even
agriculture was far ruder and less productive. Artificial grasses had
not been discovered. The potato, the carrot, the turnip, the beet,
and many other plants and vegetables which the farmer now finds most
prolific, had not been introduced. The advantages which ensue from
rotation of crops were unknown. Agricultural implements consisted of
the spade, the sickle, the flail, the rude plow and the harrow. Cattle
had not been bred to more than one-half the size they average now, and
sheep did not yield half the fleece. Roads, where there were roads,
were extremely bad, wheel vehicles scarce and rude, and places a
hundred miles from each other were, in difficulties of transportation,
practically as far apart as London and Hong Kong, or San Francisco and
New York, are now.
Yet patient students of those times tell us that the condition of the
English laborer was not only relatively, but absolutely better in
those rude times than it is in England today, after five centuries of
advance in the productive arts. They tell us that the workingman did
not work so hard as he does now, and lived better; that he was exempt
from the harassing dread of being forced by loss of employment to want
and beggary, or of leaving a family that must apply to charity to avoid
I starvation. Pauperism as it prevails in the rich England of the
nineteenth century was in the far poorer England of the fourteenth
century absolutely unknown. Medicine was empirical and superstitious, sanitary
regulations and precautions were all but unknown. There were frequently plague
and occasionally famine, for,
owing to the difficulties of transportation, the scarcity of one
district could not "be relieved by the plenty of another. But men did
not as they do now, starve in the midst of abundance; and what is
perhaps the most significant fact of all is that not only were women
and children not worked as they are today, but the eight-hour system,
which even the working classes of the United States, with all the
profusion of labor-saving machinery and appliances have not yet
attained, was then the common system! — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter
22: The Real Weakness of Free Trade. abridged • econlib
The Savage and
the Modern Workman
THE aggregate produce of the labor of a savage tribe is small, but each
member is capable of an independent life. He can build his own
habitation, hew out or stitch together his own canoe, make his own
clothing, manufacture his own weapons, snares, tools and ornaments. He
has all the knowledge of nature possessed by his tribe — knows what
vegetable productions are fit for food, and where they maybe found;
knows the habits and resorts of beasts, birds, fishes and insects;
can pilot himself by the sun or the stars, by the turning of blossoms
or the mosses on the trees; is, in short, capable of supplying all his
wants. He may be cut off from his fellows and still live; and thus
possesses an independent power which makes him a free contracting party
in his relations to the community of which he is a member.
Compare with this savage the laborer in the lowest ranks of civilized
society, whose life is spent in producing but one thing, or oftener but
the infinitesimal part of one thing, out of the multiplicity of
things that constitute the wealth of society and go to supply even the
most primitive wants; who not only cannot make even the tools required
for his work, but often works with tools that he does not own, and can
never hope to own. Compelled to even closer and more continuous labor
than the savage, and gaining by it no more than the savage gets — the
mere necessaries of life — he loses the independence of the savage. He
is not
only unable to apply his own powers to the direct satisfaction of his
own wants, but, without the concurrence of many others, he is unable to
apply them indirectly to the satisfaction of his wants. He is a mere
link in an enormous chain of producers and consumers, helpless to
separate himself, and helpless to move, except as they move. The worse
his position in society, the more dependent is he on society; the more
utterly unable does he become to do anything for himself. The very
power of exerting his labor for the satisfaction of his wants passes
from his own control, and may be taken away or restored by the actions
of others, or by general causes over which he has no more influence
than he has over the motions of the solar system. The primeval curse
comes to be looked upon as a boon, and men think, and talk, and
clamor, and legislate as though monotonous manual labor in itself
were a good and not an evil, an end and not a means. Under such
circumstances, the man loses the essential quality of manhood — the
godlike power of modifying and controlling conditions. He becomes a
slave, a machine, a commodity — a thing, in some respects, lower than
the
animal.
I am no sentimental admirer of the savage state. I do not get my ideas
of the untutored children of nature from Rousseau, or Chateaubriand, or
Cooper. I am conscious of its material and mental poverty, and its low
and narrow range. I believe that civilization is not only the natural
destiny of man, but the enfranchisement, elevation, and refinement of
all his powers, and think that it is only in such moods as may lead him
to envy the cud-chewing cattle, that a man who is free to the
advantages of civilization could look with regret upon the savage
state. But, nevertheless, I think no one who will open his eyes to
the facts, can resist the conclusion that there are in the heart of our
civilization large classes with whom the veriest savage could not
afford to exchange. It is my deliberate opinion that if, standing on
the threshold of being, one were given the choice of entering life as a Terra
del Fuegan, a black fellow of Australia, an Esquimaux in the Arctic Circle,
or among the lowest classes in such a highly civilized country as Great
Britain, he would make infinitely the better choice in selecting the
lot of the savage. For those classes who in the midst of wealth are
condemned to want, suffer all the privations of the savage, without his
sense of personal freedom; they are condemned to more than his
narrowness and littleness, without opportunity for the growth of his
rude virtues; if their horizon is wider, it is but to reveal blessings
that they cannot enjoy. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
V, Chapter 2: The Problem Solved: The Persistence of Poverty Amid Advancing
Wealth
Poverty Unnatural
OR let him go to Edinburgh, the "modern Athens," of which Scotsmen
speak with pride, and in buildings
from whose roofs a bowman might strike the spires of twenty
churches he will find human beings living as he would not keep his
meanest dog. Let him toil up the stairs of one of those monstrous
buildings, let him enter one of those "dark houses," let him close the
door, and in the blackness think what life must be in such a place.
Then let him try the reduction to iniquity. And if he go to that good
charity (but, alas! how futile is Charity without Justice!) where
little
children are kept while their mothers are at work, and children are fed
who would otherwise go hungry, he may see infants whose limbs are
shrunken from want of nourishment. Perhaps they may tell him, as they
told me, of that little girl, barefooted, ragged, and hungry, who, when
they gave her bread, raised her eyes and clasped her hands, and thanked
our Father in Heaven for His bounty to her. They who told me that never
dreamed, I think, of its terrible meaning. But I ask the Duke of
Argyll, did that little child, thankful for that poor dole, get what
our Father provided for her? Is He so niggard? If not, what is it,
who is it, that stands, between such children and our Father's bounty?
If it be an institution, is it not our duty to God and to our
neighbor to rest not till we destroy it? If it be a man, were it not
better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he
were cast into the depths of the sea? — The Reduction to Iniquity (a
reply to the Duke of Argyll), The Nineteenth Century, July, 1884
WE are so accustomed to poverty that even in the most advanced
countries we regard it as the natural lot of the great masses of the people;
that we take it as a matter of course that even in our highest civilization
large classes
should want the necessaries of healthful life, and the vast majority
should only get a poor and pinched living by the hardest toil.
There are
professors of political economy who teach that this condition of things
is the result of social laws of which it is idle to complain! There
are ministers of religion who preach that this is the condition which
an all-wise, all-powerful Creator intended for His children! If an
architect were to build a theater so that not more than one-tenth of
the audience could see and hear, we should call him a bungler and a
botcher. If a man were to give a feast and provide so little food that
nine-tenths of his guests must go away hungry, we should call him a
fool, or worse. Yet so accustomed are we to poverty, that even the
preachers of what passes for Christianity tell us that the great
Architect of the Universe, to whose infinite skill all nature
testifies, has made such a botch job of this world that the vast
majority of the human creatures whom He has called into it are
condemned by the conditions he has imposed to want, suffering, and
brutalizing toil that gives no opportunity for the development of
mental powers — must pass their lives in a hard struggle to merely
live! — Social
Problems — Chapter 8: That We All Might Be Rich
Nature Inexhaustible
THAT man cannot exhaust or lessen the powers of nature follows from the
indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force. Production and consumption
are only relative terms. Speaking absolutely, man neither produces nor
consumes. The whole human race, were they to labor to infinity, could
not make this rolling sphere one atom heavier or one atom lighter,
could not add to or diminish by one iota
the sum of the forces whose everlasting circling produces all motion
and sustains all life. As the water that we take from the ocean must
again return to the ocean, so the food we take from the reservoirs of
nature is, from the moment we take it, on its way back to those
reservoirs. What we draw from a limited extent of land may temporarily
reduce the productiveness of that land, because the return may be to
other land, or may be divided between that land and other land, or
perhaps, all land; but this possibility lessens with increasing area,
and ceases when the whole globe is considered. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 3: Population and Subsistence: Inferences from Analogy
LIFE does not use up the forces that maintain life. We come into the
material universe bringing nothing; we take nothing away when we depart. The
human being, physically considered, is but a transient form of matter, a changing
mode of motion. The matter remains and the force persists. Nothing is
lessened, nothing is weakened. And from this it follows that the limit
to the population of the globe can only be the limit of space. — Progress & Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 3: Population and Subsistence: Inferences from Analogy
More Men, More Yield
DOES not the fact that all of the things which furnish man's
subsistence have the power to multiply
many fold — some of them many thousand fold, and some of them
many million or even billion fold — while he is only doubling his
numbers, show that, let human beings increase to the full extent of
their reproductive power, the increase of population can never exceed
subsistence? This is clear when it is remembered that though in the
vegetable and animal kingdoms each species, by virtue of its
reproductive power, naturally and necessarily presses against the
conditions
which limit its further increase, yet these conditions are nowhere
fixed and final. No species reaches the ultimate limit of soil, water,
air, and sunshine; but the actual limit of each is in the existence of
other species, its rivals, its enemies, or its food. Thus the
conditions which limit the existence of such of these species as
afford him subsistence man can
extend (in some cases his mere appearance will extend them), and thus the reproductive
forces of the species which supply his
wants, instead of wasting themselves against their former limit,
start forward in his service at a pace which his powers of increase
cannot rival. If he but shoot hawks, food-birds will increase: if he
but trap foxes the wild rabbits will multiply; the bumble bee moves
with the pioneer, and on the organic matter with which man's presence
fills the rivers, fishes feed. — Progress & Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 3: Population and Subsistence: Inferences from Analogy
IF bears instead of men had been shipped from Europe to the North
American continent, there would now be no more bears than in the time
of Columbus, and possibly fewer, for bear food would not have been
increased nor the conditions of bear life extended, by the bear
immigration, but probably the reverse. But within the limits of the
United States alone, there are now forty-five millions of men where
then there were only a few hundred thousand, and yet there is now
within that territory much more food per capita for the forty-five
millions than there was then for the few hundred thousand. It is not
the increase of food that has caused this increase of men; but the
increase of men that has brought about the increase of food. There is
more food, simply because there are more Man. — Progress & Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 3: Population and Subsistence: Inferences from Analogy
TWENTY men working together will, where nature is niggardly, produce
more than twenty times the wealth that one man can produce where nature is
most bountiful. The denser the population the more minute becomes the subdivision
of
labor, the greater the economies of production and distribution, and,
hence, the very reverse of the Malthusian doctrine is true; and, within
the limits in which we have any reason to suppose increase would
still go on, in any given state of civilization a greater number of
people can produce a larger proportionate amount of wealth and more
fully supply their wants, than can a smaller number. — Progress & Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 4: Population and Subsistence: Disproof of the Malthusian Theory
Social Study
I BELIEVE that in a really Christian community, in a society that
honored, 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. — The Crime of Poverty
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. — The
Crime of Poverty
SOCIAL progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business
of each; it binds all closer and closer together in bonds from which
none can escape. He who observes the law and the proprieties, and
cares for his family, yet takes no interest in the general weal, and
gives no thought to those who are trodden underfoot, save now and then
to bestow alms, is not a true Christian. Nor is he a good citizen. — Social
Problems — Chapter 1, the Increasing Importance of Social
Questions
WE cannot safely leave politics to politicians, or political economy to
college professors. The people themselves must think, because the
people alone can act. — Social
Problems — Chapter
1, the Increasing Importance of Social Questions
"Wise" and "Babes"
IT is as bad for a man to think that he can know nothing as to think
he knows all. There are things which it is given to all possessing
reason to know, if they will but use that reason. And some things it
may be there are, that — as was said by one whom the learning of the
time sneered at, and the high priests persecuted, and polite society,
speaking through the voice of those who knew not what they did,
crucified — are hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto
babes. — A Perplexed Philosopher (Conclusion)
THAT thought on social questions is so confused and perplexed, that the
aspirations of great bodies of men, deeply though vaguely conscious of
injustice, are in all civilized countries being diverted to futile and
dangerous remedies, is largely due to the fact that those who assume
and are credited with superior knowledge of social and economic laws
have devoted their powers, not to showing where the injustice lies
but to hiding it; not to clearing common thought but to confusing
it. — A Perplexed Philosopher (Conclusion)
POLITICAL economy is the simplest of the sciences. It is but the
intellectual recognition, as related to social life, of laws which in
their moral aspect men instinctively recognize, and which are embodied
in the simple teachings of him whom the common people heard gladly. But,
like Christianity, political economy has been warped by institutions
which, denying the equality and brotherhood of man, have enlisted
authority, silenced objection, and ingrained themselves in custom and
habit of thought. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 1 econlib
Power of Thought
THE power of a special interest, though inimical to the general
interest, so to influence common thought as to make fallacies pass as truths,
is a great fact, without which neither the political history of our own time
and people, nor
that of other times and peoples, can be understood. A comparatively
small number of individuals brought into virtual though not necessarily
formal agreement of thought and action by something that makes them individually
wealthy without adding to the general wealth, may exert an influence out
of all proportion to their
numbers. A special interest of this kind is, to the general interests
of society, as a standing army is to an unorganized mob. It gains
intensity and energy in its specialization, and in the wealth it
takes from the general stock finds power to mold opinion. Leisure and
culture and the circumstances and conditions that command respect
accompany wealth, and intellectual ability is attracted by it. On the
other hand, those who suffer from the injustice that takes from the
many to enrich the few, are in that very thing deprived of the leisure
to think, and the opportunities, education, and graces necessary to
give their thought acceptable expression. They are necessarily the "unlettered," the "ignorant," the "vulgar," prone
in their consciousness of weakness to look up for leadership and guidance
to those who have the advantages that the possession of wealth can
give. — The Science of Political Economy — Book II,
Chapter 2, The Nature of Wealth: Causes of Confusion as to the Meaning of
Wealth unabridged • abridged
WE may be wise to distrust our knowledge; and, unless we have
tested
them, to distrust what we may call our reasonings; but never to
distrust reason itself. . . . That the powers with which the human
reason must work are limited and are subject to faults and failures,
our reason itself teaches us as soon as it begins to examine what we
find around us and to endeavor to look in upon our own consciousness.
But human reason is the only reason that men can have, and to
assume that in so far as it can see clearly it does not see truly, is
in the man who does it not only to assume the possession of a superior
to human reason, but it is to deny the validity of all thought and to
reduce the mental world to chaos. — The
Science of Political Economy — Book
III, Chapter 5, The Production of Wealth: Of Space and Time (unabridged)
SOCIAL reform is not to be
secured by noise and shouting; by complaints
and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of
revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas.
Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action;
and when there is correct thought, right action will follow. Power is
always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is
their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness. — Social
Problems — Chapter
22: Conclusion
LET no one imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and
wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. — Social
Problems — Chapter
22: Conclusion
— of Women as of Men
I AM convinced that we make a great mistake in depriving one sex
of voice in public matters, and that we could in no way so increase the
attention, the intelligence and the devotion which may be brought to
the solution of social problems as by enfranchising our women. Even if
in a ruder state of society the intelligence of one sex suffices for
the management of common interests, the vastly more intricate, more
delicate and more important questions which the progress of
civilization makes of public moment, require the intelligence of women
as of men, and that we never can obtain until we interest them in
public affairs. And I have come to believe that very much of the
inattention, the flippancy, the want of conscience, which we see
manifested in regard to public matters of the greatest moment, arises
from the fact that we debar our women from taking their proper part in
these matters. Nothing will fully interest men unless it also interests
women. There are those who say that women are less intelligent than
men; but who will say that they are less influential? — Social
Problems — Chapter
22: Conclusion
THE power to reason correctly on general subjects is not to be learned
in schools, nor does it come with special knowledge. It results from
care in separating, from caution in combining, from the habit of asking
ourselves the meaning of the words we use and making sure of one step
before building another on it — and above all, from loyalty to truth. — A Perplexed Philosopher (Introduction:
The Reason for this Examination)
Economic Terms: Land
THE term Land in political economy means the natural or passive element
in production, and includes the whole external world accessible to man,
with all its powers, qualities, and products, except perhaps those
portions of it which are for the time included in man's body or in his
products, and which therefore temporarily belong to the categories, man
and wealth, passing again in their reabsorption by nature into the
category, land. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 14: The Production of Wealth, Order of the Three Factors
of Production • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
THAT land is only a passive factor in production must be carefully kept
in mind. . . . Land cannot act, it can only be acted upon. . . . Nor is
this principle changed or avoided when we use the word land as
expressive of the people who own land. . . .
That the persons whom we call landowners may contribute their labor
or
their capital to production is of course true, but that they should
contribute to production as landowners, and by virtue of that
ownership, is as ridiculously impossible as that the belief of a
lunatic in
his ownership of the moon should be the cause of her brilliancy. — The
Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 15, The Production of Wealth: The First Factor of Production — Land • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
I AM writing these pages on the shore of Long Island, where the Bay of
New York contracts to what is called the Narrows, nearly opposite the
point where our legalized robbers, the Custom-House officers, board
incoming steamers to ask strangers to take their first American swear,
and where, if false oaths really colored the atmosphere the air would
be bluer than is the sky on this gracious day. I turn from my
writing-machine to the window, and drink in, with a pleasure that never
seems to pall, the glorious panorama.
"What do you see?" If in ordinary talk I were asked this, I should of
course say, "I see land and water and sky, ships and houses, and light
clouds, and the sun drawing to its setting over the low green hills of
Staten Island and illuminating all."
But if the question refer to the terms of political economy, I should
say, "I see land and wealth." Land, which is the natural factor of production; and wealth, which is the
natural factor so changed by the exertion of the human factor, labor,
as to fit it for the satisfaction of human desires. For water and
clouds, sky and sun, and the stars that will appear when the sun is
sunk, are, in the terminology of political economy, as much land as is
the dry surface of the earth to which we narrow the meaning of the
word in ordinary talk. And the window through which I look; the
flowers in the garden; the planted trees of the orchard; the cow that
is browsing beneath them; the Shore Road under the window; the
vessels that lie at anchor near the bank, and the little pier that juts
out from it; the trans-Atlantic liner steaming through the channel; the
crowded pleasure-steamers passing by; the puffing tug with its line of
mud-scows; the fort and dwellings on the opposite side of the
Narrows; the lighthouse that will soon begin to cast its far-gleaming
eye from Sandy Hook; the big wooden elephant of Coney Island; and the
graceful sweep of the Brooklyn Bridge, that may be discovered from a
little higher up; all alike fall into the economic term wealth — land
modified by labor so as to afford satisfaction to human desires. All
in this panorama that was before man came here, and would remain were
he to go, belongs to the economic category land; while all that has
been produced by labor belongs to the economic category wealth, so
long as it retains its quality of ministering to human desire.
But on the hither shore, in view from the window, is a little
rectangular piece of dry surface, evidently reclaimed from the line of
water by filling in with rocks and earth. What is that? In ordinary
speech it is land, as distinguished from water, and I should
intelligibly indicate its origin by speaking of it as "made land." But
in the categories of political economy there is no place for such a
term as "made land." For the term land refers only and exclusively to
productive powers derived wholly from nature and not at all from
industry, and whatever is, and in so far as it is, derived from land by
the exertion of labor, is wealth. This bit of dry surface raised
above the level of the water by filling in stones and soil, is, in the economic
category,
not land but wealth. It has land below it and around it, and the
material of which it is composed has been drawn from land; but in
itself it is, in the proper speech of political economy, wealth; just
as truly as the ships I behold are not land but wealth, though they too
have land below them and around them and are composed of material drawn
from land. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book IV, Chapter 6, The Distribution of Wealth: Cause of Confusion as to
Property • abridged
Labor
THE term Labor includes all human exertion in the production of
wealth, whatever its mode. In common parlance we often speak of brain labor
and hand labor as though they were entirely distinct kinds of exertion,
and labor is
often spoken of as though it involved only muscular exertion. But in
reality any form of labor, that is to say, any form of human exertion in
the production of wealth above that which cattle may be applied to
doing, requires the human brain as truly as the human hand, and would be
impossible without the exercise of mental faculties on the part of the
laborer. Labor in fact is only physical in external form. In its
origin it is mental or on strict analysis spiritual. — The Science
of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 16: The Production of Wealth, The Second Factor of Production
— Labor • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
IT seems to us that your Holiness misses its real significance in
intimating that Christ in becoming the son of a carpenter and Himself working
as a carpenter showed merely that "there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking one's bread by
labor." To say that is almost like saying that by not robbing people
He showed that there is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty. If you
will consider how true in any large view is the classification of all
men into working-men, beggar-men and thieves, you will see that it was
morally impossible that Christ during His stay on earth should have
been anything else than a working-man, since He who came to fulfill
the law must by deed as well as word obey God's law of labor.
See how fully and how beautifully Christ's life on earth
illustrated this law. Entering our earthly life in the weakness
of infancy, as it is appointed that all should enter it, He lovingly
took what in the natural order is lovingly rendered, the sustenance,
secured by labor, that one generation owes to its immediate
successors. Arrived at maturity, He earned His own subsistence by that
common labor in which the majority of men must and do earn it. Then
passing to a higher — to the very highest-sphere of labor. He earned
His
subsistence by the teaching of moral and spiritual truths, receiving
its material wages in the love offerings of grateful hearers, and not
refusing the costly spikenard with which Mary anointed his feet. So,
when He chose His disciples, He did not go to land-owners or other
monopolists who live on the labor of others but to common laboring
men. And when He called them to a higher sphere of labor and sent them
out to teach moral and spiritual truths He told them to take,
without condescension on the one hand, or sense of degradation on
the other, the loving return for such labor, saying to them that the "laborer
is worthy of his hire," thus
showing, what we hold, that all labor does not consist in what is called
manual labor, but that
whoever helps to add to the material, intellectual, moral, or spiritual
fulness of life is also a laborer. - The
Condition of Labor
NOR should it be forgotten that the investigator, the philosopher, the
teacher, the artist, the poet, the priest, though not engaged in the production
of wealth, are not only engaged in the production of utilities and satisfactions
to which
the production of wealth is only a means, but by acquiring and
diffusing knowledge, stimulating mental powers and elevating the moral
sense, may greatly increase the ability to produce wealth. For man
does not live by bread alone. He is not an engine, in which so much
fuel gives so much power. On a capstan bar or a topsail halyard a good
song tells like muscle, and a "Marseillaise" or a "Battle Hymn of the
Republic" counts for bayonets. A hearty laugh, a noble thought, a
perception of harmony, may add to the power of dealing even with
material things.
He who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the aggregate of
enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human knowledge or gives to
human life higher elevation or greater fulness — he is, in the large
meaning of the words, a "producer," a "working-man," a "laborer," and is honestly
earning honest wages. But he who without doing aught to make mankind richer,
wiser, better, happier, lives on the toil of
others — he, no matter by what name of honor he may be I called, or
how lustily the priests of Mammon may swing their censers before him, is
in the last analysis but a beggarman or a thief. — Protection or
Free Trade, Chapter 7 econlib
"Capital"
CAPITAL, which is not in itself a distinguishable element, but
which it must always be kept in mind consists of wealth applied to the
aid of labor in further production, is not a primary factor. There can
be production without it, and there must have been production without
it, or it could not in the first place have appeared. It is a secondary
and compound factor, coming after and resulting from the union of
labor and land in the production of wealth. It is in essence labor
raised by a second union with land to a third or higher power. But it
is to civilized life so necessary and important as to be rightfully
accorded in political economy the place of a third factor in
production. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 17, The Production of Wealth: The Third Factor of Production — Capital • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
IT is to be observed that capital of itself can do nothing. It is
always a subsidiary, never an initiatory, factor. The initiatory
factor is always labor. That is to say, in the production of wealth
labor always uses capital, is never used by capital. This is not
merely literally true, when by the term capital we mean the thing
capital. It is also true when we personify the term and mean by it not
the thing capital, but the men who are possessed of capital. The
capitalist pure and simple, the man who merely controls capital, has in
his hands the power of assisting labor to produce. But purely as capitalist
he cannot exercise that power. It can be exercised only by labor. To utilize
it
he must himself exercise at least some of the functions of labor, or
he must put his capital, on some terms, at the use of those who do. — The
Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 17, The Production of Wealth: The Third Factor of Production — Capital • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
THUS we must exclude from the category of capital everything that may
be included either as land or labor. Doing so, there remain only
things which are neither land nor labor, but which have resulted from
the union of these two original factors of production. Nothing can be
properly capital that does not consist of these — that is to say, nothing
can be capital that is not wealth. — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 2: Wages and Capital: The Meaning of the Terms
THUS, a government bond is not capital, nor yet is it the
representative of capital. The capital that was once received for it by
the government has been consumed unproductively — blown away from the
mouths of cannon, used up in war ships, expended in keeping men
marching and drilling, killing and destroying. The bond cannot
represent capital that has been destroyed. It does not represent
capital at all. It is simply a solemn declaration that the government
will, some time or other, take by taxation from the then existing stock
of the people, so much wealth, which it will turn over to the holder of
the bond; and that, in the meanwhile, it will, from time to time, take,
in the same way, enough to make up to the holder the increase which
so much capital as it some day promises to give him would yield him
were it actually in his possession. The immense sums which are thus
taken from the produce of every modern country to pay interest on
public debts are not the earnings or increase of capital — are not
really interest in the strict sense of the term, but are taxes
levied on the produce of labor and capital, leaving so much less for
wages and so much less for real
interest. — Progress & Poverty — Book
III, Chapter 4: The Laws of Distribution: Of Spurious Capital and of Profits
Often Mistaken
For
Interest
CAPITAL, as we have seen, consists
of wealth used for the procurement of more wealth, as distinguished from
wealth used for the direct satisfaction of desire; or,
as I think it may be defined, of wealth in the course of exchange.
Capital, therefore, increases the power of labor to produce wealth:
(1) By enabling labor to apply itself in more effective ways, as
by digging up clams with a spade instead of the hand, or moving a
vessel by shoveling coal into a furnace, instead of tugging at an oar.
(2) By enabling labor to avail itself of the reproductive forces of
nature, as to obtain corn by sowing it, or animals by breeding them.
(3) By permitting the division of labor, and thus, on the one hand,
increasing the efficiency of the human factor of wealth, by the
utilization of special capabilities, the acquisition of skill, and the
reduction of waste; and, on the other, calling in the powers of the
natural factor at their highest, by taking advantage of the diversities
of soil, climate and situation, so as to obtain each particular species
of wealth where nature is most favorable to its production.
Capital does not supply the materials which labor works up into
wealth, as is erroneously taught; the materials of wealth are supplied
by nature. But such materials partially worked up and in the course
of exchange are capital. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 5: Wages and Capital: The Real Functions of Capital
"Value"
THE phenomena of value are at bottom illustrations of one principle.
The value of everything produced by labor, from a pound of chalk or
a paper of pins to the elaborate structure and appurtenances of a first-class
ocean
steamer,
is resolvable on analysis into an equivalent of the labor required
to reproduce such a thing in form and place; while the value of things
not
produced by labor, but nevertheless susceptible of ownership, is, in
the same way, resolvable into an equivalent of the labor which the
ownership of such a thing enables the owner to obtain or save. — A
Perplexed
Philosopher (Mr.
Spencer's Confusion As To Value)
"Wealth"
WHEN we speak of a community increasing in wealth we do not mean to
say that there is more land, or that the natural powers of the land
are
greater, or that there are more people (for when we wish to express
that idea we speak of increase of population) or that the debts or
dues owing by some of these people to others of their number have increased;
but we mean that there is an increase of certain tangible
things, having an actual and not merely a relative value — such
as buildings, cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and mineral products,
manufactured goods, ships, wagons, furniture and the like. . . . The
common character of these things is that they consist of natural
substances or products which have been adapted by human labor to human
use or gratification, their value depending on the amount of labor
which upon the average would be required to produce things of like
kind.— Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 2: Wages and Capital: The Meaning of the Terms
WEALTH is not the sole object of labor, for labor is also expended
in ministering directly to desire; but it is the object and result
of what
we call productive labor — that is, labor which gives value to
material things. Nothing which nature supplies to man without his labor
is
wealth, nor yet does the expenditure of labor result in wealth unless
there is a tangible product which has and retains the power of ministering
to desire. — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 2: Wages and Capital: The Meaning of the Terms
IT will be well for a moment to consider this idea of accumulated
wealth. The truth is, that wealth can be accumulated but to a slight
degree, and that communities really live, as the vast majority of
individuals live, from hand to mouth. Wealth will not bear much
accumulation; except in a few unimportant forms it will not keep. The
matter of the universe, which, when worked up by labor into desirable
forms, constitutes wealth, is constantly tending back to its original
state. Some forms of wealth will last for a few hours, some for a few
days, some for a few months, some for a few years; and there are very
few forms of wealth that can be passed from one
generation to another. Take wealth in some of its most useful and
permanent forms — ships, houses,
railways, machinery. Unless labor is constantly exerted in preserving
and renewing them, they will almost immediately become useless. Stop
labor in any community, and wealth would vanish almost as the jet of
a fountain vanishes when the flow of water is shut off. Let labor again
exert itself, and wealth will almost as immediately reappear.
Accumulated wealth seems to play just about such a part in relation
to
the
social organism as accumulated nutriment does to the physical organism.
Some accumulated wealth is necessary, and to a certain extent it may
be drawn upon in exigencies; but the wealth produced by past generations
can no more account for the consumption of the present than the dinners
he ate last year can supply a man with present strength. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 4: Population and Subsistence: Disproof of the Malthusian Theory
"Wages"
THE term labor includes all human exertion in the production of
wealth, and wages, being that part of the produce which goes to labor,
includes all reward for such exertion. There is, therefore, in the
politico-economic sense of the
term wages no distinction as to the kind of labor, or as to whether
its reward is received through an employer or not, but wages means
the return received for the exertion of labor, as distinguished from
the
return received for the use of capital, and the return received by
the landholder for the use of land. — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 2: Wages and Capital: The Meaning of the Terms
I AM aware that the theorem that wages are drawn from capital is one
of the most fundamental and apparently best settled of current political
economy,
and that it has been accepted as axiomatic by all the great thinkers
who have devoted
their powers to the elucidation of the science. Nevertheless, I think
it can be demonstrated to be a fundamental error — the fruitful
parent of a long series of errors, which vitiate most important practical
conclusions. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 3: Wages and Capital: Wages not drawn from capital, but produced
by the labor
THE fundamental truth, that in all economic reasoning must be firmly
grasped and never let go, is that society in its most highly developed
form is but an elaboration of society in its rudest beginnings, and
that principles obvious in the simpler relations of men are merely
disguised and not abrogated or reversed by the more intricate relations
that result from the division of labor and the use of complex tools
and methods. . . . And so, if we reduce to their lowest terms all the
complex operations of modern production, we see that each individual
who takes part in this infinitely subdivided and intricate network
of production and exchange is really doing what the primeval man did
when
he climbed the trees for fruit or followed the receding tide for
shellfish — endeavoring to obtain from nature by the exertion of
his powers the satisfaction of his desires. If we keep this firmly in mind,
if we look upon production as a whole — as the co-operation of
all embraced in any of its great groups to satisfy the various desires
of
each, we plainly see that the reward each obtains for his exertions
comes as truly and as directly from nature as the result of that
exertion, as did that of the first man.
To illustrate: In the simplest state of which we can conceive, each
man digs his own bait and catches his own fish. The advantage of the
division of labor soon becomes apparent, and one digs bait while the
others fish. Yet evidently the one who digs bait is in reality doing
as
much toward the catching of fish as any of those who actually take
the fish. So when the advantages of canoes are discovered, and instead
of
all going a-fishing, one stays behind and makes and repairs canoes,
the canoe-maker is in reality devoting his labor to the taking of fish
as
much as the actual fishermen, and the fish which he eats at night when
the fishermen come home, are as truly the product of his labor as of
theirs. And thus when the division of labor is fairly inaugurated,
and instead of each attempting to satisfy all of his wants by direct
resort to nature, one fishes, another hunts, a third picks berries,
a fourth gathers fruit, a fifth makes tools, a sixth builds huts, and
a seventh
prepares clothing — each one is, to the extent he exchanges the direct
product of his own labor for
the direct product of the labor of others, really applying his own
labor to the production of the things he uses — is in effect
satisfying his particular desires by the exertion of his particular
powers; that
is to say, what he receives he in reality produces. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 1: Wages and Capital: The Current Doctrine of Wages — Its
Insufficiency
How the Worker Creates His Wages
THE laborer who receives his wages in money (coined or printed, it
may be, before his labor commenced) really receives in return for the
addition his labor has made to the general stock of wealth, a draft
upon that general
stock,
which he may utilize in any particular form of wealth that will best
satisfy his desires; and neither the money, which is but the draft,
nor the particular form of wealth which he uses it to call for, represents
advances of capital for his maintenance, but on the contrary represents
the wealth, or a portion of the wealth, his labor has already added
to the general stock. — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 1: Wages and Capital: The Current Doctrine of Wages — Its
Insufficiency
THE miner who, two thousand feet underground in the heart of the
Comstock, is digging out silver ore, is in effect; by virtue of a thousand
exchanges, harvesting crops in valleys five thousand feet nearer the
earth's center; chasing the whale through Arctic icefields; plucking
tobacco leaves
in Virginia; picking
coffee berries in Honduras; cutting sugar cane on the Hawaiian Islands;
gathering cotton in Georgia or weaving it in Manchester or Lowell;
making quaint wooden
toys for his
children in the Hartz Mountains; or plucking amid the green and gold
of Los Angeles orchards the oranges which, when his shift is relieved,
he will take home to his sick wife. The wages which he receives on
Saturday night at the mouth of the shaft, what are they but the
certificate to all the world that he has done these things — the
primary exchange in the long series which transmutes his labor into
the things
he has really been laboring for? — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 1: Wages and Capital: The Current Doctrine of Wages — Its
Insufficiency
LABOR always precedes wages. This is as universally true of wages
received by the laborer from an employer as it is of wages taken directly
by the laborer who is his own employee. In the one class of cases as
in the other, reward
is conditioned upon exertion. Paid sometimes by the day, oftener by
the week or month, occasionally by the year, and in many branches of
production by the piece, the payment of wages by an employer to an
employee always implies the previous rendering of labor by the
employee for the benefit of the employer, for the few cases in which
advance payments are made for personal services are evidently referable
either to charity or to guarantee and purchase. — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 3: Wages and Capital: Wages not drawn from capital, but produced
by the labor
THE payment of wages always implies the previous rendering of labor.
Now, what does the rendering of labor in production imply? Evidently
the production of wealth,
which, if it is to be exchanged or used in production, is capital.
Therefore, the payment of capital in wages pre-supposes a production
of capital by the labor for which the wages are paid. And as the
employer generally makes a profit, the payment of wages is, so far
as he is concerned, but the return to the laborer of a portion of the
capital he has received from the labor. So far as the employee is
concerned, it is but the receipt of a portion of the capital his labor
has previously produced. As the value paid in the wages is thus
exchanged for a value brought into being by the labor, how can it be
said that wages are drawn from capital or advanced by capital? As in
the exchange of labor for wages the employer always gets the capital
created by the labor before he pays out capital in the wages, at what
point is his capital lessened even temporarily? — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 3: Wages and Capital: Wages not drawn from capital, but produced
by the labor
To recapitulate: The man who works for himself gets his wages in the
things he produces, as he produces them, and exchanges this value into
another form whenever he sells the produce. The man who works for another
for stipulated
wages in money, works under a contract
of exchange. He also creates his wages as he renders his labor, but
he does not get them except at stated times, in stated amounts and
in a
different form. In performing the labor he is advancing in exchange;
when he gets his wages the exchange is completed. During the time he
is earning the wages he is advancing capital to his employer, but at
no
time, unless wages are paid before work is done, is the employer
advancing capital to him. Whether the employer who receives this
produce in exchange for the wages, immediately re-exchanges it, or
keeps it for awhile, no more alters the character of the transaction
than does the final disposition of the product made by the ultimate
receiver, who may, perhaps, be in another quarter of the globe and
at the end of a series of exchanges numbering hundreds. — Progress & Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 3: Wages and Capital: Wages not drawn from capital, but produced
by the labor
Rate of Wages — How
Determined
THE
fundamental principle of human action — the law that is to political
economy what the law of gravitation is to physics — is that men
seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion. . . . Now, under
this
principle, what, in conditions of freedom, will be
the terms at which one man can hire others to work for him?
Evidently, they will be fixed by what the men could make if laboring
for themselves. The principle which will prevent him from having to
give anything above this except what is necessary to induce the change,
will also prevent them from taking less. Did they demand more, the
competition of others would prevent them from getting employment. Did
he offer less, none would accept the terms, as they could obtain
greater results by working for themselves. Thus, although the employer
wishes to pay as little as possible, and the employee to receive as
much as possible, wages will be fixed by the value or produce of such
labor to the laborers themselves. If wages are temporarily carried
either above or below this line, a tendency to carry them back at once
arises. — Progress &
Poverty Book
III, Chapter 6 — The Laws of Distribution: Wages and the Law of Wages
THE effect of all the circumstances
which give rise to the differences between wages in different occupations
may be included as supply and demand, and it is perfectly
correct to say that the wages in different occupations will vary
relatively according to differences in the supply and demand of labor — meaning
by demand the call which the community as a whole makes for services
of the particular kind, and by supply the relative amount of
labor which, under the existing conditions, can be determined to the
performance of those particular services. But though this is true as
to the relative differences of wages, when it is said, as is commonly
said, that the general rate of wages is determined by supply and
demand, the words are meaningless. For supply and demand are but
relative terms. The supply of labor can only mean labor offered in
exchange for labor, or the produce of labor, and the demand for
labor can only mean labor or the produce of labor offered in
exchange for labor. Supply is thus demand, and demand supply, and in
the whole community, one must be coextensive with the other. — Progress & Poverty Book
III, Chapter 6 — The Laws of Distribution: Wages and the Law of Wages
THUS, although they may from time to time alter in relation to each
other, as the circumstances which determine relative levels change,
yet it is evident that wages in all strata must ultimately depend upon
wages
in
the lowest and widest
stratum — the general rate of wages rising or falling as these
rise or fall.
Now, the primary and fundamental occupations, upon which, so to
speak, all others are built up, are evidently those which procure
wealth directly from nature; hence the law of wages in them must be
the general law of wages. And, as wages in such occupations clearly
depend upon what labor can produce at the lowest point of natural
productiveness to which it is habitually applied; therefore, wages
generally depend upon the margin of cultivation, or, to put it more
exactly, upon the highest point of natural productiveness to which
labor
is free to apply itself without the payment of rent. — Progress & Poverty Book
III, Chapter 6 — The Laws of Distribution: Wages and the Law of Wages
"Rent"
WHEREVER land has an exchange value there is rent in
the economic meaning of the term. Wherever land having
a value is used,
either by owner or hirer, there is rent actual; wherever it is
not used, but still
has a value, there
is rent potential. It is this capacity of yielding rent which gives
value to land. . . . No matter what are its capabilities, land can
yield no rent and have no value until some one is willing to give
labor or the results of labor for the privilege of using it; and what
anyone will thus give, depends not upon the capacity of the land, but
upon its capacity as compared with that of land that can be had for
nothing. — Progress
&
Poverty Book
III, Chapter 2 — The Laws of Distribution: Rent and the Law of Rent
STATED reversely, the law of rent is necessarily the law of wages and
interest taken together, for it is the assertion, that no matter what
be the production which results from the application of labor and capital,
these two factors
will only receive in wages and interest such part of the produce as
they could have produced on land free to them without the payment of
rent — that is the least productive land or point in use. — Progress & Poverty Book
III, Chapter 2 — The Laws of Distribution: Rent and the Law of Rent
Origin of Rent ... How
Society Creates Its Rent
HERE, let us imagine, is an unbounded savannah, stretching off in
unbroken sameness of grass and
flower, tree and rill, till the traveler tires of the monotony.
Along comes the wagon of the first immigrant. Where to settle he
cannot tell — every acre seems as good as every other acre. As to
wood,
as to water, as to fertility, as to situation, there is absolutely no
choice, and he is perplexed by the embarrassment of richness. Tired out
with the search for one place that is better than another, he stops — somewhere,
anywhere — and starts to make himself a home. The soil is virgin
and rich, game
is abundant, the streams flash with the finest
trout. Nature is at her very best. He has what, were he in a populous
district, would make him rich; but he is very poor. To say nothing of
the mental craving, which would lead him to welcome the sorriest
stranger, he labors under all the material disadvantages of solitude.
He can get no temporary assistance for any work that requires a greater
union of strength than that afforded by his own family, or by such help
as he can permanently keep. Though he has cattle, he cannot often have
fresh meat, for to get a beefsteak he must kill a bullock. He must be
his own blacksmith, wagonmaker, carpenter, and cobbler — in short
a
"jack of all trades and master of none." He cannot have his children
schooled, for, to do so, he must himself pay and maintain a teacher.
Such things as he cannot produce himself, he must buy in quantities
and keep on hand, or else go without, for he cannot be constantly leaving
his work and making a long journey to the verge of civilization; and
when forced to do so, the getting of a vial of medicine or the
replacement of a broken auger may cost him the labor of himself and
horses for days. Under such circumstances, though nature is prolific,
the man is poor. It is an easy matter for him to get enough to eat;
but beyond this, his labor will only suffice to satisfy the simplest wants
in the rudest way.
Soon there comes another immigrant. Although every quarter section
of
the boundless plain is as good as every other quarter section, he is
not beset by any embarrassment as to where to settle. Though the land
is the same, there is one place that is clearly better for him than any
other place, and that is where there is already a settler and he may
have a neighbor. He settles by the side of the first comer, whose
condition is at once greatly improved, and to whom many things are now
possible that were before impossible, for two men may help each other
to do things that one man could never do.
Another immigrant comes, and, guided by the same attraction,
settles
where there are already two. Another and another, until around our
first comer there are a score of neighbors. Labor has now an
effectiveness which,
in the solitary state, it could not approach. If heavy work is to be
done, the settlers have a log-rolling, and together accomplish in a
day what singly would require years. When one kills a bullock the others
take part of it, returning when they kill, and thus they have fresh
meat all the time. Together they hire a schoolmaster, and the children
of each are taught for a fractional part of what similar teaching would
have cost the first settler. It becomes a comparatively easy matter
to
send to the nearest town, for some one is always going. But there is
less need for such journeys. A blacksmith and a wheelwright soon set
up shops, and our settler can have his tools repaired for a small part
of
the labor they formerly cost him. A store is opened and he can get
what he wants as he wants it; a post-office, soon added, gives him
regular communication with the rest of the world. Then comes a cobbler,
a carpenter, a harnessmaker, a doctor; and a little church soon arises.
Satisfactions become possible that in the solitary state were
impossible. There are gratifications for the social and the
intellectual nature — for that part of the man that rises above the
animal. The power of sympathy, the sense of companionship, the
emulation of comparison and contrast, open a wider and fuller and more
varied life. In rejoicing, there are others to rejoice; in sorrow,
the mourners do not mourn alone. There are husking bees, and apple
parings, and quilting parties. Though the ballroom be unplastered and
the orchestra but a fiddle, the notes of the magician are yet in the
strain, and Cupid dances with the dancers. At the wedding, there are
others to admire and enjoy; in the house of death, there are watchers;
by the open grave, stands human sympathy to sustain the mourners.
Occasionally, comes a straggling lecturer to open up glimpses of the
world of science, of literature, or of art; in election times, come
stump speakers, and the citizen rises to a sense of dignity and power,
as the cause of empires is tried before him in the struggle of John Doe
and Richard Roe for his support and vote. And, by and by, comes the
circus, talked
of months before, and opening to children, whose horizon has been the
prairie, all the realms of the imagination — princes and princesses
of fairy tale, mail-clad crusaders and turbaned Moors, Cinderella's
fairy coach, and the giants of nursery lore; lions such as
crouched before Daniel, or in circling Roman amphitheater tore the
saints of God; ostriches who recall the sandy deserts; camels such
as stood around
when the wicked brethren raised Joseph from the well and sold him into
bondage; elephants such as crossed the Alps with Hannibal, or felt
the sword of
the Maccabees; and glorious music that thrills and builds in the
chambers of the mind as rose the sunny dome of Kubla Khan.
Go to our settler now, and say to him: "You have so many fruit trees
which you planted; so much fencing, such a well, a barn, a house — in
short, you have by your labor added so much value to this farm. Your
land itself is not quite so good. You have been cropping it, and by and
by it will need manure. I will give you the full value of all your
improvements if you will give it to me, and go again with your family
beyond the verge of settlement." He would laugh at you. His land yields
no more wheat or potatoes than before, but it does yield far more of
all the necessaries and comforts of life. His labor upon it will bring
no heavier crops, and, we will suppose, no more valuable crops, but it
will bring far more of all the other things for which men work. The
presence of other settlers — the increase of population — has
added to the productiveness, in these things, of labor bestowed upon
it, and this
added productiveness gives it a superiority over land of equal natural
quality where there are yet no settlers. If no land remains to be
taken up, except such as is as far removed from population as was our
settler's land when he first went upon it, the value or rent of this
land will be measured by the whole of this added capability. If,
however, as we have supposed, there is a continuous stretch of equal
land, over which population is now spreading, it will not be necessary
for the new settler to go into the wilderness, as did the first. He
will settle
just
beyond the other
settlers, and will get the advantage of proximity to them. The value
or rent of our settler's land will thus depend on the advantage which
it
has, from being at the center of population, over that on the verge.
In the one case, the margin of production will remain as before; in
the
other, the margin of production will be raised.
Population still continues to increase, and as it increases so do the
economies which its increase permits, and which in effect add to the
productiveness of the land. Our first settler's land, being the center
of population, the store, the blacksmith's forge, the wheelwright's
shop, are set up on it, or on its margin, where soon arises a village,
which rapidly grows into a town, the center of exchanges for the people
of the whole district. With no greater agricultural productiveness
than it had at first, this land now begins to develop a productiveness
of a higher kind. To labor expended in raising corn, or wheat, or
potatoes, it. will yield no more of those things than at first; but
to labor expended in the subdivided branches of production which require
proximity to other producers, and, especially, to labor expended in
that final part of production, which consists in distribution, it will
yield much larger returns. The wheat-grower may go further on, and
find
land on which his labor will produce as much wheat, and nearly as much
wealth; but the artisan, the manufacturer, the storekeeper, the
professional man, find that their labor expended here, at the center
of exchanges, will yield them much more than if expended even at a
little distance away from it; and this excess of productiveness for
such purposes the landowner can claim, just as he could an excess in
its wheat-producing power. And so our settler is able to sell in
building lots a few of his acres for prices which it would not bring
for wheat growing if its fertility had been multiplied many times.
With the proceeds he builds himself a fine house, and furnishes it
handsomely. That is to say, to reduce the transaction to its lowest
terms, the people
who wish to use the land, build and furnish
the house for him, on condition that he will let them avail themselves
of the superior productiveness which the increase of population has
given the land.
Population still keeps on increasing, giving greater and greater
utility to the land, and more and more wealth to its owner. The town
has grown into a city — a St. Louis, a Chicago, or a San Francisco — and
still it grows. Production is here carried on upon a great scale, with
the best machinery and the most favorable facilities; the division
of labor becomes extremely minute, wonderfully multiplying efficiency;
exchanges are of such volume and rapidity that they are made with the
minimum of friction and loss. Here is the heart, the brain, of the
vast
social organism that has grown up from the germ of the first
settlement; here has developed one of the great ganglions of the human
world. Hither run all roads, hither set all currents, through all the
vast regions round about. Here, if you have anything to sell, is the
market; here, if you have anything to buy, is the largest and the
choicest stock. Here intellectual activity is gathered into a focus,
and here springs that stimulus which is born of the collision of mind
with mind. Here are the great libraries, the storehouses and granaries
of knowledge, the learned professors, the famous specialists. Here
are museums and art galleries, collections of philosophical apparatus,
and
all things rare and valuable, the best of their kind. Here come great
actors, and orators, and singers, from all over the world. Here, in
short, is a center of human life, in all its varied manifestations.
So enormous are the advantages which this land now offers for the
application of labor, that, instead of one man with a span of horses
scratching over acres, you may count in places thousands of workers
to the acre, working tier on tier, on floors raised one above the other,
five, six, seven, and eight stories from the ground, while underneath
the surface of the earth engines are
throbbing with pulsations that exert the force of thousands of horses.
All these advantages adhere to the land; it is on this land, and no
other, that they can be utilized, for here is the center of
population — the focus of exchanges, the market-place and workshop
of the
highest forms of industry. The productive powers which density of
population has attached to this land are equivalent to the
multiplication of its original fertility by the hundredfold and the
thousandfold. And rent, which measures the difference between this
added productiveness and that of the least productive land in use, has
increased accordingly. Our settler, or whoever has succeeded to his
right to the land, is now a millionaire. Like another Rip Van Winkle,
he may have lain down and slept; still he is rich — not from anything
he
has done, but from the increase of population. There are lots from
which for every foot of frontage the owner may draw more than an
average mechanic can earn; there are lots that will sell for more than
would suffice to pave them with gold coin. In the principal streets are
towering buildings, of granite, marble, iron, and plate-glass, finished
in the most expensive style, replete with every convenience. Yet they
are not worth as much as the land upon which they rest — the
same land,
in nothing changed, which, when our first settler came upon it, had
no value at all. That this is the way in which the increase of population
powerfully acts in increasing rent, whoever, in a progressive
country, will look around him, may see for himself. The process is
going on under his eyes. The increasing difference in the
productiveness of the land in use, which causes an increasing rise
in
rent, results not so much from the necessities of increased population
compelling the resort to inferior land, as from the increased
productiveness which increased population gives to the lands already
in use. The most valuable lands on the globe, the lands which yield
the
highest rent, are not lands of surpassing natural fertility, but lands
to which a
surpassing utility has been given by the increase of population. — Progress
&
Poverty — Book
IV, Chapter 2: Effect of Material Progress on the Distribution of Wealth:
The Effect of Increase of Population upon the
Distribution
of Wealth
"Sic Nos non Nobis" ["Thus we
labour, but not for ourselves" or "thus do we, but not for ourselves"]
"Interest"
WITH profits this inquiry has manifestly nothing to do. We want to
find what it is that determines the division of their joint produce
between
land, labor, and capital, and profits is not a term that refers
exclusively to anyone of these three divisions. Of the three parts
into which profits are divided by political economists — namely,
compensation for risk, wages of superintendence, and return for the use
of
capital — the latter falls under the term interest, which includes
all the returns for the use of capital, and excludes everything else; wages
of superintendence falls under the term wages, which includes all
returns for human exertion, and excludes everything else; and
compensation for risk has no place whatever, as risk is eliminated when
all the transactions of a community are taken together. — Progress
&
Poverty — Book
III, Chapter 1: The Laws of Distribution: The Inquiry Narrowed to the Laws
of Distribution — The Necessary
Relation of these Laws
INTEREST, as an abstract term in the distribution of wealth, differs in
meaning from the word as commonly used, in this: That it includes all
returns for the use of capital, and not merely those that pass from
borrower to lender; and that it excludes compensation for risk, which
forms so great a part of what is commonly called interest. Compensation
for risk is evidently only an equalization of return between different
employments of capital. — Progress &
Poverty — Book
III, Chapter 3: The Laws of Distribution: Of Interest and the Cause of
Interest
The Laws of Social Life
TAKE now some hard-headed businessman, who has no theories, but
knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years
it will be a great city — in ten years the railroad will have taken
the place of the stagecoach, the electric light of the candle; it
will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously
multiply the effective power of labor. Will, in ten years, interest be
any higher?"
He will tell you, "No!"
"Will the wages of common labor be any higher; will it be easier for a
man who has nothing but his labor to make an independent living?"
He will tell you, "No; the wages of common labor will not be any
higher; on the contrary, all the chances are that they will be lower;
it will not be easier for the mere laborer to make an independent
living; the chances are that it will be harder."
"What, then, will be higher?" " Rent; the value of land. Go; get
yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession."
And if, under such circumstances, you take his advice, you need do
nothing more. You may sit down and smoke your pipe; you may lie around
like the lazzaroni of Naples or the leperos of Mexico: you may go up
in a
balloon, or down a hole in the ground; and without doing one stroke of
work, without adding one iota to the wealth of the community, in ten
years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious
mansion; but among its public buildings will be an almshouse. — Progress
&
Poverty — Book
V, Chapter 2: The Problem Solved: The Persistence of Poverty amid Advancing
Wealth
THERE may be disputes as to whether there is yet a science of political
economy, that is to say, whether our knowledge of the natural economic
laws is as yet so large and well digested as to merit the title of
science. But
among those who
recognize that the world we live in is in all its spheres governed
by law, there can be no dispute as to the possibility of such a
science. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book I, Chapter 14, The Meaning of Political Economy: Political Economy
as Science and as Art • abridged:
Part 1, Chapter 12: Political Economy as Science and Art
THE domain of law is not confined to physical nature. It just as
certainly embraces the mental and moral universe, and social growth
and social life have their laws as fixed as those of matter and of
motion.
Would we
make social
life healthy and happy, we must discover those laws, and seek our ends
in accordance with them. — Social
Problems — Chapter
22: Conclusion
The Fundamental Law
POLITICAL economy is not a set of dogmas. It is the explanation of
a certain set of facts. It is the science which, in the sequence of
certain phenomena, seeks to trace mutual relations and to identify
cause and effect, just as the physical sciences seek to do in other
sets of phenomena. It lays its foundations upon firm ground. The
premises from which it makes its deductions are truths which have the
highest sanction; axioms which we all recognize; upon which we safely
base the reasoning and actions of every-day life, and which may be
reduced to the metaphysical expression of the physical law that motion
seeks the line of least resistance — viz. that men seek to gratify
their desires with the least exertion. Proceeding from a basis thus
assured, its processes, which consist simply in identification, and
separation,
have the same certainty. In this sense it is as exact a science as
geometry, which, from similar truths relative to space, obtains its
conclusions by similar means, and its conclusions when valid should
be as self-apparent. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
I, Chapter 1, Wages and Capital: The Current Doctrine of Wages — Its
Insufficiency
WHETHER it proceed from experience of the irksomeness of labor and
the desire to avoid it, or, further back than that, have its source
in some innate principle of the human constitution, this disposition
of
men to seek the satisfaction of their desires with the minimum of
exertion is so universal and unfailing, that it constitutes one of
those invariable sequences that we denominate laws of nature, and from
which we may safely reason. It is this law of nature that is the
fundamental law of political economy — the central law from which
its deductions and explanations may with certainty be drawn, and, indeed,
by which alone they become possible. It holds the same place in the
sphere of political economy that the law of gravitation does in
physics. Without it there could be no recognition of order, and all
would be chaos. . . . It is no more affected by the selfishness or
unselfishness of our desires than is the law of gravitation. It is
simply a fact. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book I, Chapter 12, The Meaning of Political Economy: Fundamental Low
of Political Economy • abridged:
Chapter 10: The Fundamental Law of Political Economy
The "Greater Leviathan"
THE famous treatise in which the English philosopher Hobbes, during
the revolt against the tyranny of the Stuarts in the seventeenth century,
sought to give the sanction of reason to the doctrine of the absolute
authority of
kings,
is entitled Leviathan. It thus begins: "Nature, the art whereby God
hath made and governs the world, is by the art of man, as in many other
things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial
animal. . . For by art is created that great Leviathan called a commonwealth
or state, in Latin civitas,
which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength
than the
natural, for whose protection and
defense it was intended. . ."
Without stopping now to comment further on Hobbes's suggestive analogy,
there is, it seems to me, in the system or arrangement into which men
are brought in social life by the effort to satisfy their material
desires — an integration which goes on as civilization advances — something
which even more strongly and more clearly suggests the idea of a
gigantic man, formed by the union of individual men, than any merely
political integration. This Greater Leviathan is to the political
structure or conscious commonwealth what the unconscious functions
of the body are to the conscious activities. It is not made by pact
or
covenant, it grows; as the tree grows, as the man himself grows, by
virtue of natural laws inherent in human nature and in the
constitution of things. . . . It is this natural system or arrangement,
this adjustment of means to ends, of the parts to the whole and the
whole to the parts, in the satisfaction of the material desires of
men living in society, which, in the same sense as that in which we
speak
of the economy of the solar system, is the economy of human society,
or what in English we call political economy. It is as human units,
individuals or families, take their place as integers of this higher
man, this Greater Leviathan, that what we call civilization begins
and advances. . . . The appearance and development of the body politic,
the
organized state, the Leviathan of
Hobbes, is the mark of civilization already in existence. — The
Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book I, Chapter 3, The Meaning of Political Economy: How Man's Powers
Are Extended • abridged:
Chapter 2: The Greater Leviathan
Civilization, through Trade
LET us try to trace the genesis of civilization. Gifted alone
with the power of relating cause and effect, man is among all animals
the only
producer in the true sense of the term. . . . But the same quality
of reason which makes him the producer, also, wherever exchange becomes
possible, makes him the exchanger. And it is along this line of
exchanging that the body economic is evolved and develops, and that
all
the advances of civilization are primarily made. . . . With the
beginning of exchange or trade among men this body economic begins
to form, and in its beginning civilization begins. . . . To find an
utterly uncivilized people, we must find a people among whom there
is
no exchange or trade. Such a people does not exist, and, as far as
our knowledge goes, never did. To find a fully civilized people, we
must
find a people among whom exchange or trade is absolutely free, and
has reached the fullest development to which human desires can carry
it.
There is, as yet, unfortunately, no such people. — The Science
of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book I, Chapter 5, The Meaning of Political Economy: The Origin and
Genesis of Civilization • abridged:
Chapter 4, The Origin and Genesis of Civilization
WHEN we, come to analyze production, we find it to fall into three
modes, viz::
ADAPTING, or changing natural products either in form or in place so
as to fit them for the satisfaction of human desire.
GROWING, or utilizing the vital forces of nature, as by raising
vegetables or animals.
EXCHANGING, or utilizing, so as to add to the general sum of wealth,
the higher powers of those natural forces which vary with locality,
or of those human forces which vary with situation, occupation, or
character. — Progress
&
Poverty — Book
III, Chapter 3, The Laws of Distribution: of Interest and the Cause
of Interest
THESE modes seem to appear and to assume importance, in the
development of human society, much in the order here given. They
originate from the increase of the desires of men with the increase
of the means of satisfying them, under pressure of the fundamental
law of
political economy, that men seek to satisfy their desires with the
least exertion. In the primitive stage of human life the readiest way
of satisfying desires is by adapting to human use what is found in
existence. In a later and more settled stage it is discovered that
certain desires can be more easily and more fully satisfied by
utilizing the principle of growth and reproduction, as by cultivating
vegetables and breeding animals. And in a still later period of
development, it becomes obvious that certain desires can be better
and more easily satisfied by exchange, which brings out the principle
of
co-operation more fully and powerfully than could obtain among
unexchanging economic units. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 2, The Production of Wealth: The Three Modes of Production • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 2, The Production of Wealth: The Three Modes of Production
"Production"
and "Distribution"
IN the economic meaning of the term production, the transporter or
exchanger, or anyone engaged in
any subdivision of those functions, is as truly engaged in
production as is the primary extractor or maker. A newspaper-carrier
or the keeper of a news-stand would, for instance, in common speech
be styled a distributor. But in economic terminology he is not a
distributor of wealth, but a producer of wealth. Although his part
in the process of producing the newspaper to the final receiver comes
last, not first, he is as much a producer as the paper-maker or
type-founder, the editor, or compositor, or press-man. For the object
of
production is the satisfaction of human desires, that is to say, it
is
consumption; and this object is not made capable of attainment, that
is
to say, production is not really complete, until wealth is brought
to the place where it is to be consumed and put at the disposal of
him
whose desire it is to satisfy. — The Science of Political
Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 1, The Production of Wealth: The Meaning of Production • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 1, The Production of Wealth: The Meaning of Production
PRODUCTION and distribution are not separate things, but two mentally
distinguishable parts of one thing — the exertion of human labor
in the satisfaction of human desire. Though materially distinguishable,
they
are as closely related as the two arms of the syphon. And as it is
the outflow of water at the longer end of the syphon that is the cause
of
the inflow
of
water at the shorter
end, so it is that distribution is really the cause of production,
not production the cause of distribution. In the ordinary course,
things are not distributed because they have been produced, but are
produced in order that they may be distributed. Thus interference with
the distribution of wealth is interference with the production of
wealth, and shows its effect in lessened production. — The
Science of Political Economy — unabridged
Book IV, Chapter 2, The Distribution of Wealth: The Nature of Distribution • abridged
Part IV, Chapter 2, The Distribution of Wealth: The Nature of Distribution
OUR inquiry into the laws of the distribution of wealth is not an
inquiry into the municipal laws or human enactments which either here
and now, or in any other time and place, prescribe or have prescribed
how wealth shall be divided among men. With them we have no concern,
unless it may be for purposes of illustration. What we have to seek
are those laws of the distribution of wealth which belong to the natural
order — laws which are a part of that system or arrangement which
constitutes the social organism or body economic, as distinguished
from the body politic or state, the Greater Leviathan which makes its
appearance with civilization and develops with its advance. These
natural laws are in all times and places the same, and though they
may
be crossed by human enactment, can never be annulled or swerved by
it. It is more needful to call this to mind, because, in what have
passed
for systematic treatises on political economy, the fact that it is
with natural laws, not human laws, that the science of political economy
is
concerned, has, in treating of the distribution of wealth, been
utterly ignored, and even flatly denied. — The Science of
Political Economy — unabridged:
Part IV, Chapter 1, The Distribution of Wealth: The Meaning of Distribution • abridged:
Part IV, Chapter 1, The Distribution of Wealth: The Meaning of Distribution
THE distinction between the laws of production and the laws of
distribution is not, as is erroneously taught in the scholastic
political economy, that the one set of laws are natural laws and the
other human laws. Both sets of laws are laws of nature. The real
distinction is that the natural laws of production
are physical laws and the natural laws of distribution are moral laws.
. . . The moment we turn from a consideration of the laws
of the production of wealth to a consideration of the laws of
the distribution of wealth, the idea of ought or duty becomes primary.
All consideration of distribution involves the ethical principle, is
necessarily a consideration of ought or duty — a consideration
in which the idea of right or justice is from the very first involved. — The
Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book IV, Chapter 4, The Distribution of Wealth: The Real Difference
Between Laws of
Production and of Distribution • abridged:
Part IV, Chapter 3: The Distribution of Wealth: Physical and Moral
Laws
Co-operation — its
Two Modes
ALL increase in the productive power of man over that with which
nature endows the individual comes from the co-operation of
individuals. But there are two ways in
which this co-operation may take place. 1. By the combination of
effort. In this way individuals may accomplish what exceeds the full
power of the individual. 2. By the separation of effort. In this way
the individual may accomplish for more than one what does not require
the full power of the individual. . . . To illustrate: The first way
of co-operation, the combination of labor, enables a number of men
to remove a rock or to raise a log that would be too heavy for them
separately. In this way men conjoin themselves, as it were, into one
stronger man. Or, to take an example so common in the early days of
American settlement that "log-rolling" has become a term for
legislative combination: Tom, Dick, Harry and Jim are building near
each other their rude houses in the clearings. Each hews his own trees,
but the logs are too heavy for one man to get into place. So the four
unite their efforts, first rolling one man's logs into place and then
another's, until, the logs of all four having been placed, the result
is the same as if each had been enabled to concentrate into one time
the force he could exert in four different times. . . . But, while
great advantages result from the ability of individuals, by the
combination of labor to concentrate themselves, as it were, into
one larger man, there are other times and other things in which an
individual could accomplish more if he could divide himself, as it
were, into a number of smaller men. . . . What the division of labor
does,
is to permit men, as it were, so to divide themselves, thus enormously
increasing their total effectiveness. To illustrate from the example
used before: While at times Tom, Dick, Harry and Jim might each wish
to move logs, at other times they might each need to get something
from a village distant two days' journey. To satisfy this need
individually would thus require two days' effort on the part of each.
But if Tom alone goes, performing the errands for all, and the others
each do half a days' work for him, the result is that all get at the
expense of half a day's effort on the part of each what otherwise would
have required two days' effort. — The Science of Political
Economy — unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 9, The Production of Wealth: Cooperation — Its
Two Ways • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 7, The Production of Wealth: Co-operation: Its Two
Ways
Co-operation — its Two Kinds
WE have seen that there are two ways or modes in which co-operation
increases productive power. If we ask how co-operation is itself
brought about, we see that there is in this also a distinction, and
that co-operation is of two essentially different kinds. . .. There
is one kind of co-operation, proceeding, as it were, from without,
which
results from the conscious direction of a controlling will to a
definite end. This we may call directed or conscious co-operation.
There is another kind of co-operation, proceeding, as it were, from
within, which results from a correlation in the actions of independent
wills, each seeking but its own immediate purpose, and careless, if
not indeed ignorant, of the general result. This we may call
spontaneous or unconscious co-operation. The movement of a great
army is a good type of co-operation of the one kind. Here the actions
of many individuals are subordinated to, and directed by, one conscious
will, they becoming, as it were, its body and executing its thought.
The providing of a great city with all the manifold things which are
constantly needed by its inhabitants is a good type of co-operation
of the other kind. This kind of co-operation is far wider, far finer,
far
more strongly and delicately organized, than the kind of co-operation
involved in the movements of an army, yet it is
brought about not by subordination to the direction of one conscious
will, which knows the general result at which it aims, but by the
correlation of actions originating in many independent wills, each
aiming at its own small purpose without care for, or thought of; the
general result. The one kind of co-operation seems to have its analogue
in those related movements of our body which we are able consciously
to direct. The other kind of co-operation seems to have its analogue in
the correlation of the innumerable movement, of which we are unconscious,
that maintain the bodily frame — motions which in
their complexity, delicacy and precision far transcend our powers of
conscious direction, yet by whose perfect adjustment to each other
and to the purpose of the whole, that co-operation of part and function,
that makes up the human body and keeps it in life and vigor, is
brought about and supported. — The Science of Political Economy —
unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 10, The Production of Wealth: Cooperation — Its
Two Kinds • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 8, Cooperation: Its Two Kinds
To attempt to apply that kind of co-operation which requires direction
from without to the work proper for that kind of co-operation which
requires direction from within, is like asking the carpenter who can
build a chicken-house to build a chicken also. — The Science
of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 10, The Production of Wealth: Cooperation — Its
Two Kinds • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 8, Cooperation: Its Two Kinds
Co-operation and Commerce
ALL living things that we know of co-operate in some kind and to some
degree. So far as we can
see, nothing that lives can live in and for itself alone. But man
is the only one who co-operates by exchanging, and he may be
distinguished from all the numberless tribes that with him tenant the
earth as the exchanging animal. . . . Exchange is the great agency
by which what I have called the spontaneous or unconscious
co-operation of men in the production of wealth is brought about, and
economic units are welded into that social organism which is the
Greater Leviathan. To this economic body, this Greater Leviathan, into
which it builds the economic units, it is what the nerves or perhaps
the ganglions are to the individual body. Or, to make use of another
illustration, it is to our material desires and powers of satisfying
them what the switchboard of a telegraph or telephone, or other
electric system, is to that system, a means by which exertion of one
kind in one place may be transmitted into satisfaction of another
kind in another place, and thus the efforts of individual units be
conjoined and correlated so as to yield satisfactions in most useful
place and form, and to an amount enormously exceeding what otherwise
would be possible. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 11, The Production of Wealth: The Office of Exchange
in Production • unabridged
Chapter 9, The Office of Exchange in Production
Co-operation and Competition
MANY if not most of the writers on political economy have treated
exchange as a part of distribution. On the contrary, it belongs to
production. It is by exchange, and through exchange, that man
obtains, and is able to exert, the power of co-operation which, with
the advance of civilization, so enormously increases his ability to
produce wealth. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 11, The Production of Wealth: The Office of Exchange
in Production • unabridged
Chapter 9, The Office of Exchange in Production
THEY who, seeing how men are forced by competition to the extreme of
human wretchedness, jump to the conclusion that competition should be
abolished, are like those who, seeing a house burn down, would prohibit
the use of fire.
The air we breathe exerts upon every square inch of our bodies a
pressure of fifteen pounds. Were this pressure exerted only on one
side, it would pin us to the ground and crush us to a jelly. But being
exerted on all sides, we move under it with perfect freedom. It not
only does not inconvenience us, but it serves such indispensable
purposes that, relieved of its pressure, we should die.
So it is with competition. Where there exists a class denied all right
to the element necessary to life arid labor, competition is one-sided,
and as population increases must press the lowest class into virtual
slavery, and even starvation. But where the natural rights of all are
secured, then competition, acting on every hand — between employers as
between employed, between buyers as between sellers — can injure
no one.
On the contrary it becomes the most simple, most extensive, most
elastic, and most refined system of co-operation that, in the present
stage of social development, and in the domain where it will freely
act, we can rely on for the co-ordination of industry and the
economizing of social forces.
In short, competition plays just such a part in the social organism
as those vital impulses which are beneath consciousness do in the bodily
organism. With it, as with them, it is only necessary that it should
be free. The line at which the state should come in is that where free
competition becomes impossible — a line analogous to that which
in the individual organism separates the conscious from the unconscious
functions. There is such a line, though extreme socialists and extreme
individualists both ignore it. The extreme individualist is like the
man who would have his hunger provide him food; the extreme socialist
is like the man who would have his conscious will direct his stomach
how to digest it. — Protection or Free Trade, chapter
28 econlib
Society, an Organism
IMAGINE an aggregation of men which it was attempted to secure
by the external direction involved in socialistic theories that division
of labor which grows, up naturally in society where men are left free.
For the intelligent direction thus required an individual man or
individual men must be selected, for even if there be angels and
archangels in the world that is invisible to us, they are not at our
command. Taking no note of the difficulties which universal experience
shows always to attend the choice of the depositories of power, and
ignoring the inevitable tendency to tyranny and oppression, of command
over the actions of others, simply consider, even if the very wisest
and best of men were selected for such purposes, the task that would
be put upon them in the ordering of the when, where, how and by whom,
that
would be involved in the intelligent direction and supervision of the
almost infinitely complex and constantly changing relations and
adjustments involved in such division of labor as goes on in a civilized
community. It is evidently as much beyond the ability of conscious
direction as the correlation
of the
processes that maintain the human body in health and vigor is beyond
it. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 10, The Production of Wealth: Cooperation — Its
Two Kinds • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 8, Cooperation: Its Two Kinds
THE ideal of socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I am convinced,
possible of realization, but such a state of society cannot be
manufactured — it must grow. Society is an organism, not a machine.
It can only live by the individual life of its parts. And in the free
and natural development of all the parts will be secured the harmony
of the
whole. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VI, Chapter 1, The
Remedy: The Insufficiency of Remedies Currently Advocated; V.—From
Governmental Direction and Interference
SOCIALISM in all its phases looks on the evils of our civilization
as springing from the inadequacy or in harmony of natural relations,
which must be artificially organized or improved. In its idea there
devolves on the State the necessity of intelligently organizing the
industrial
relations of men, the construction as it were of a great machine,
whose complicated parts shall properly work together under the direction
of human intelligence. — The Condition
of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
Not a Machine
ON the other hand, we, who call ourselves single-tax men
(a name which
expresses merely our practical propositions), see in the social and
industrial relations of men not a machine which requires construction,
but an organism which needs only to be suffered to grow. We
see in the natural, social and industrial laws such harmony as we
see in the adjustments of the human body, and that as far transcends
the
power of man's intelligence to order and direct as it is beyond man's
intelligence to order and direct the vital movements of his frame.
We see in these social and industrial laws so close a relation to
the moral law as must spring from the same Authorship, and that
proves
the
moral law to be the sure guide of man where his intelligence would
wander and go astray. . . . Looking on the bodily organism as the
analogue of the social organism, and on the proper functions of the
State as akin to those which in the human organism are
discharged by the conscious intelligence while the play of individual
impulse and interest performs functions akin to those discharged
in the bodily organisms by the unconscious instincts and involuntary
motions, the Anarchists seem to us like men who would try to get
along
without heads, and the Socialists like men who would try to rule
the wonderfully complex and delicate internal relations of their
frames
by conscious will. — The Condition
of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
"Socialism" Not Radical Enough
BUT it seems to us the vice of Socialism in all its degrees is its
want of radicalism, of going to the root. . .. It assumes that the
tendency
of wages to a minimum is the natural law, and seeks to abolish wages;
it assumes
that
the natural
result of competition is to grind down workers, and seeks to abolish
competition by restrictions, prohibitions, and extensions of
governing power. Thus mistaking effects for causes, and childishly
blaming the stone for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving
for remedies that when not worse are futile. Associated though it
is in
many places with democratic aspiration, yet its essence is the same
delusion to which the Children of Israel yielded when, against the
protest of their prophet, they insisted on a king; the delusion that
has everywhere corrupted democracies and enthroned monarchs — that
power over the people can be used for the benefit of the people; that
there may be devised machinery that through human agencies will secure
for the management of individual affairs more wisdom and more virtue
than the people themselves possess. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
JUMPING to conclusions without effort to discover causes, it fails
to see that oppression does not come from the nature of capital,
but from
the wrong that robs labor of capital by divorcing it from land, and
that creates a fictitious capital that is really capitalized monopoly.
It fails to see that it would be impossible for capital to oppress
labor were labor free to the natural material of production; that
the wage system in itself springs from mutual convenience, being
a form
of co-operation
in
which one of the parties prefers a certain to a contingent result;
and that what it calls the "iron law of wages," is not the natural law of
wages, but only the law of wages in that unnatural condition in which
men are made helpless by being deprived of the materials for life and
work. It fails to see that what it mistakes for the evils of
competition are really the evils of restricted competition — are
due to a one-sided competition to which men are forced when deprived
of land.
While its methods, the organization of men into industrial armies,
the direction and control of all production and exchange by governmental
or semi-governmental bureaus, would, if carried to full expression,
mean
Egyptian despotism. —The Condition of Labor,
an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
IN socialism as distinguished from individualism there is an
unquestionable truth — and that a truth to which (especially
by those most identified with free-trade principles) too little attention
has
been paid. Man is primarily an individual — a separate entity,
differing
from his fellows in desires and powers, and requiring for the exercise
of those powers and the gratification of those desires individual
play and freedom. But he is also a social being, having desires that
harmonize with those of his fellows, and powers that can only be
brought out in concerted action. There is thus a domain of individual
action and a domain of social action — some things which can
best be done
when each acts for himself, and some things which can best be done
when society acts for all its members. And the natural tendency of
advancing
civilization is to make social conditions relatively more
important, and more and more to enlarge the domain of social action.
This has not been sufficiently regarded, and at the present time,
evil unquestionably results from leaving to individual action functions
that by reason of the growth of society and the developments of the
arts have passed into the domain of social
action; just as, on the other hand, evil unquestionably results from
social interference with what properly belongs to the
individual. Society ought not to leave the telegraph and the railway
to the management and control of individuals; nor yet ought society
to step in and collect individual debts or attempt to direct individual
industry. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 28 econlib
Functions of Government
THE primary purpose and end of government being to secure
the
natural rights and equal liberty of each, all businesses that involve
monopoly are within the necessary province of governmental regulation,
and businesses that are in their nature complete monopolies
become properly functions of the State. As society develops, the
State must assume these functions, in their nature co-operative,
in order
to secure the equal rights and liberty of all. That is to say, as,
in the
process of integration, the individual becomes more and more dependent
upon and subordinate to the all, it becomes necessary for government,
which is properly that social organ by which alone the whole body
of individuals can act, to take upon itself, in the interest of all,
certain functions which cannot safely be left to individuals. — Social
Problems — Chapter
17, The Functions of Government
IT is not the business of government to make men virtuous or
religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own
folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary
to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from
aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental
prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating
the very ends they are intended to serve.— Social
Problems — Chapter
17, The Functions of Government
ALL schemes for securing equality in the conditions of men by placing
the distribution of wealth in the hands of government have the fatal
defect of beginning at the wrong end. They pre-suppose pure government;
but it is not government that makes society; it is society that makes
government; and until there is something like substantial equality
in the distribution
of wealth, we
cannot expect pure government. — Protection or Free Trade,
Chapter 28 econlib
"Protection"
WE should keep our own market for our own producers, seems by
many to be regarded as the same kind of a proposition as, We should keep our
own pasture for our own cows; whereas, in truth, it is such a
proposition as, We should keep our own appetites for our own cookery,
or, We should keep our own transportation for our own legs.— Protection
or Free Trade, Chapter 11: The Home Market and Home Trade - econlib
THE protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of
tyranny — the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every
kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves. British
misrule in Ireland
is upheld on the ground that it is for the protection of the Irish.
But, whether under a monarchy or under a republic, is there an instance
in the history of the world in which the "protection" of the
laboring masses has not meant their oppression? The protection that
those who have got the law-making power into their hands have given
labor, has at best always been the protection that man gives to
cattle — he protects them that he may use and eat them. — Protection
or Free Trade — Chapter 2, Clearing Ground econlib
IT is never intimated that the land-owner or the capitalist needs
protection. They, it is always assumed, can take care of themselves.
It is only the poor workingman who must be protected. What is labor
that it should so need protection? Is not labor the creator of capital,
the
producer of all wealth? Is it not the men who labor that feed and
clothe all others? Is it not true, as has been said, that the three
great orders of society are "workingmen, beggarmen, and
thieves?" How, then, does it come that workingmen alone need
protection? — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter 2, Clearing Ground econlib -|- abridged
WHAT should we think of human laws framed for the government of a
country which should compel each family to keep constantly on their
guard against every other family, to expend a large part of their
time and labor in preventing exchanges with their neighbors, and
to seek
their own prosperity by opposing the natural efforts of other families
to become prosperous? Yet the protective theory implies that laws
such as these have been imposed by the Creator upon the families
of men
who tenant this earth. It implies that by virtue of social laws,
as immutable as the physical laws, each nation must stand jealously
on
guard against every other nation and erect artificial obstacles to
national intercourse.— Protection or Free Trade, Chapter
4: Protection as a Universal Need econlib
TO attempt to make a nation prosperous by preventing it from buying
from other nations is as absurd as it would be to attempt to make
a man prosperous by preventing him from buying from other men. How
this
operates in the case of the individual we can see from that practice
which, since its application in the Irish land agitation, has come
to
be called "boycotting." Captain Boycott, upon whom has been thrust the
unenviable fame of having his name turned into a verb, was in fact
"protected." He had a protective tariff of the most efficient kind
built around him by a neighborhood decree more effective than act
of Parliament. No one would sell him labor, no one would sell him milk
or bread or meat or any service or commodity whatever. But instead of
growing prosperous, this much-protected man had to fly from a place
where his own market was thus reserved for his own productions. What
protectionists ask us to do to ourselves in reserving our home market
for home producers, is in kind what the Land Leaguers did to Captain
Boycott. They ask us to boycott ourselves. — Protection or Free Trade,
Chapter 11: The Home Market and Home Trade - econlib
WHEN not caused by artificial obstacles, any tendency in trade to
take a certain course is proof that it ought to take that course,
and
restrictions are harmful because they restrict, and in proportion
as they restrict. To assert that the way for men to become healthy
and
strong is
for them
to force into their stomachs what nature tries to reject, to regulate
the play of their lungs by bandages, or to control the circulation
of their blood by ligatures, would be not a whit more absurd than
to assert that the way for nations to become rich is for them to
restrict
the natural tendency to trade. — Protection or Free Trade,
Chapter 6: Trade - econlib
Trade Natural to Man
MEN of different nations trade with each other for the same reason
that men of the same nation do — because they find it profitable;
because they thus obtain what they want with less labor than they
otherwise could. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter
6: Trade - econlib -|- abridged
TRADE is not invasion. It does not involve aggression on one side
and resistance on the other, but mutual consent and gratification.
There
cannot be a trade unless the parties to it agree, any more than there
can be a quarrel unless the parties to it differ. England, we say,
forced trade with the outside world upon China and the United States
upon Japan. But, in both cases, what was done was not to force the
people to trade, but to force their governments to let them. If the
people had not wanted to trade, the opening of the ports would have
been useless. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 6: Trade
- econlib
TRADE does not require force. Free trade consists simply in letting
people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell.. It is protection
that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing
what they want to do. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter
6: Trade - econlib -|- abridged
IF all the material things needed by man could be produced equally
well at all points on the earth's surface, it might seem more convenient
for
man the animal, but how would he have risen above the animal level?
As we see
in the
history of
social development, commerce has been and is the great civilizer
and educator. The
seemingly infinite diversities in the capacity of different parts
of the earth's surface lead to that exchange of productions which
is the
most powerful agent in preventing isolation, in breaking down
prejudice, in increasing knowledge and widening thought. These
diversities of nature, which seemingly increase with our knowledge
of nature's powers, like the diversities in the aptitudes of individuals
and communities, which similarly increase with social development,
call forth powers and give rise to pleasures which could never arise
had man been placed like an ox in a boundless field of clover. The "international
law of God" which we fight with our tariffs — so
shortsighted are the selfish prejudices of men — is the law
which stimulates mental and moral progress; the law to which civilization
is due. — Social
Problems — Chapter 19: The First Great Reform.
Trade not yet Free
"COME with me," said Richard Cobden, as John Bright turned
heart-stricken from a new-made grave. "There are in England women and children
dying with hunger — with
hunger made by the laws. Come with me, and we will not rest until
we repeal those laws."
In this spirit the free trade movement waxed and grew, arousing an
enthusiasm that no mere fiscal reform could have aroused. And
intrenched though it was by restricted suffrage and rotten boroughs and
aristocratic privilege, protection was overthrown in Great Britain.
And — there is hunger in Great Britain still, and women and
children yet die of it.
But this is not the failure of free trade. When protection had been
abolished and a revenue tariff substituted for a protective tariff,
free trade had only won an outpost. That women and children still
die of hunger in Great Britain arises from the failure of the reformers
to go on. Free trade has not yet been tried in Great Britain. Free
trade
in its fulness and entirety would indeed abolish hunger. — Protection
or Free Trade — Chapter 26: True Free Trade - econlib -|- abridged
True Free Trade
THE mere abolition of protection — the mere substitution of a revenue
tariff for a protective tariff — is such a lame and timorous
application of the free-trade principle that it is a misnomer to
speak of it as free
trade. A revenue tariff is
only a somewhat milder restriction on trade than a protective tariff.
Free trade, in its true meaning, requires not merely the abolition of
protection but the sweeping away of all tariffs — the abolition
of all restrictions (save those imposed in the interests of public
health or morals) on the bringing of things into a country or the
carrying of
things out of a country.
But free trade cannot logically stop with the abolition of
custom-houses. It applies as well to domestic as to foreign trade, and
in its true sense requires the abolition of all internal taxes that
fall on buying, selling, transporting or exchanging, on the making of
any transaction or the carrying on of any business, save of course
where the motive of the tax is public safety, health or morals. Thus
the adoption of true free trade involves the abolition of all
indirect taxation of whatever kind, and the resort to direct taxation
for all public revenues.
But this is not all. Trade, as we have seen, is a mode of production,
and the freeing of trade is beneficial because it is a freeing of
production. For the same reason, therefore, that we ought not to
tax anyone for
adding to the wealth
of a country by bringing valuable things into it, we ought not to
tax anyone for adding to the wealth of a country by producing within
that
country valuable things. Thus the principle of free trade requires
that we should not merely abolish all indirect taxes, but that we
should abolish as well all direct taxes on things that are the produce
of
labor; that we should, in short, give full play to the natural
stimulus to production — the possession and enjoyment of the things
produced — by imposing no tax whatever upon the production,
accumulation or possession of wealth (the things produced by labor),
leaving
everyone free to make exchange, give, spend or bequeath. — Protection
or Free
Trade — Chapter 26: True Free Trade - econlib -|- abridged
"Laissez faire,
laissez aller!"
DWARFED into mere revenue reform the harmony and beauty
of free trade are hidden; its moral force is lost; its power to
remedy
social
evils cannot be shown, and the injustice and meanness of protection
cannot be
arraigned. The "international law of God" becomes a mere fiscal
question which appeals only to the intellect and not to the heart,
to the pocket and not to the conscience, and on which it is impossible
to
arouse the enthusiasm that is alone capable of contending with powerful
interests. — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter
29: Practical Politics - econlib
THEY [the Physiocrats) were — what the so-called "English free-traders"
who have followed Adam Smith never yet have been — free traders in the
full sense of the term. In their practical proposition, the single tax,
they proposed the only means by which the free trade principle can ever
be carried to its logical conclusion — the freedom not merely of trade
but of all other forms and modes of production, with full freedom of
access to the natural element which is essential to all production.
They were the authors of the motto that in the English use of the
phrase "Laissez faire!" "Let things alone," has been so emasculated
and perverted, but which on their lips was "Laissez faire, laissez
aller!" "Clear the ways and let things alone." This is said to come
from the cry that in medieval tournaments gave the signal for combat,
The English motto which I take to come closest to the spirit of the
French phrase is, "A fair field and no favor!" — The Science of Political
Economy
HERE is a traveler who, beset by robbers, has been left bound,
blindfolded, and gagged. Shall we stand in a knot about him and discuss
whether to put a piece of court-plaster on his cheek or a new patch on
his coat, or shall we dispute with each other as to what road he ought
to take, and whether a bicycle, a tricycle, a horse and wagon, or a
railway, would best help him on? Should we not rather postpone such
discussion until we have cut the man's bonds? Then he can see for himself,
speak for himself, and help himself. Though with a scratched cheek and
a torn coat, he may get on
his feet, and if he cannot find a conveyance to suit him, he will at
least be free to walk.
Very much like such a discussion is a good deal of that now going
on over "the social problem" — a discussion in which all sorts
of inadequate and impossible schemes are advocated to the neglect
of the
simple plan of removing restrictions and giving Labor the use of
its powers. — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter
28: Free Trade and Socialism
- econlib -|- abridged
Unemployed
WE talk about the supply of labor, and the demand for labor,
but, evidently, these are only relative terms. The supply of labor
is everywhere the same — two hands always come into the world with one
mouth, twenty-one boys to every twenty girls; and the demand for labor
must always exist as long as men want things which labor alone can
procure. We talk about the "want of work," but, evidently it is not
work that is short while want continues; evidently, the supply of
labor cannot be too great, nor the demand for labor too small, when
people suffer for the lack of things that labor produces. The real
trouble must be that the supply is somehow prevented from satisfying
demand, that somewhere there is an obstacle which prevents labor
from producing the things that laborers want.
Take the case of anyone of these vast masses of unemployed men, to
whom, though he never heard of Malthus, it today seems that there
are too many people in the world. In his own wants, in the needs
of his
anxious wife, in the demands for his half cared for, perhaps even
hungry and shivering, children, there is demand enough for labor,
Heaven knows! In his own willing hands is the supply. Put him on
a solitary island, and though cut off from all the enormous advantages
which the co-operation, combination, and machinery of a civilized
community give to the productive powers of man, yet his two hands
can
fill the mouths and keep warm the backs that depend upon them. Yet
where productive power is at its highest development, he cannot.
Why? Is it not because in the one case he has access to the material
and
forces of nature, and in the other this access is denied? — Progress
& Poverty Book V, Chapter 1, The Problem Solved: The
primary cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial depression
The Natural Right
to Self-Employment
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? If men cannot find an employer, why can they
not employ themselves? Simply because they are shut out from the
element on which human labor 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 privilege. — The
Crime
of Poverty
WE laud as public benefactors those who, as we say, "furnish
employment." We are constantly talking as though this "furnishing
of employment," this "giving
of
work" were the greatest boon that could be conferred upon society.
To listen to much that is talked and much that is written, one would
think
that the cause of poverty is that there is not work enough for so
many people, and that if the Creator had made the rock harder, the
soil
less fertile, iron as scarce as gold, and gold as diamonds; or if
ships would sink and cities burn down oftener, there would be less
poverty,
because there would be more work to do. — Social Problems, Chapter
8 — That We All Might Be Rich
YOU assert the right of laborers to employment and their right to
receive from their employers a certain indefinite wage. No such rights
exist. No one has a right to demand employment of another, or to
demand higher wages than the other is willing to give, or in any
way to put
pressure on another to make him raise such wages against his will.
There can be no better moral justification for such demands on
employers by working-men than there would be for employers demanding
that working-men shall be compelled to work for them when they do
not want to, and to accept wages lower than they are willing to take. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
THE natural right which each man has, is not that of demanding
employment or wages from another man, but that of employing
himself — that of applying by his own labor to the inexhaustible
storehouse which the Creator has in the land provided for all men.
Were that storehouse open, as by the single tax we would open it,
the natural demand for labor would keep pace with the supply, the
man who
sold labor and the man who bought it would become free exchangers
for mutual advantage, and all cause for dispute between workman and
employer would be gone. For then, all being free to employ themselves,
the mere opportunity to labor would cease to seem a boon; and since
no
one would work for another for less, all things considered, than
he
could earn by working for himself, wages would necessarily rise to
their full value, and the relations of workman and employer be regulated
by
mutual interest and convenience. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
The Earth for All
IF we are all here by the equal permission of the Creator,
we are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment of His bounty — with
an equal right to the use of all that nature so impartially offers.
This is a
right which is natural and inalienable; it is a right which vests
in every human being as he enters the world, and which, during his
continuance
in the world, can be limited only by the equal rights of others.
There is in nature
no such thing as
a fee simple in land. There is on earth no power which can rightfully
make a grant of exclusive ownership in land. If all existing men
were to unite to grant away their equal rights, they could not grant
away
the right of those who follow them. For what are we but tenants for
a day? Have we made the earth that we should determine the rights
of
those who after us shall tenant it in their turn? The Almighty, who
created the earth for man and man for the earth, has entailed it
upon all the generations 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 parchments be ever
so many,
or
possession ever so long, natural justice can recognize no right in
one man to the possession and enjoyment of land that is not equally
the
right of all his fellows. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private
property in land
HAS the first comer at a banquet the right to turn back all the chairs
and claim that none of the other guests shall partake of the food
provided, except as they make terms with him? Does the first man
who presents a
ticket at the door of
a theater and passes in, acquire by his priority the right to shut
the doors and have the performance go on for him alone? Does the
first
passenger who enters a railroad car obtain the right to scatter his
baggage over all the seats and compel the passengers who come in
after him to stand up?
The cases are perfectly analogous. We arrive and we depart, guests
at a
banquet continually spread, spectators and participants in an
entertainment where there is room for all who come; passengers from
station to station, on an orb that whirls through space — our
rights to
take and possess cannot be exclusive; they must be bounded
everywhere by the equal rights of others. Just as the passenger in
a railroad car may spread himself and his baggage over as many seats
as
he pleases, until other passengers come in, so may a settler
take and use as much land as he chooses, until it is needed by others
— a
fact which is shown by the land acquiring a value — when his
right must
be curtailed by the equal rights of the others, and no priority of
appropriation can give a right which will bar these equal rights
of others. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property
in land
What is Property?
WHAT constitutes the rightful basis of property? What is it that
enables a man to justly say of a thing, "It is mine"? From what
springs the sentiment which acknowledges his exclusive right as against
all the world? Is it not, primarily, the right of a man to himself,
to the use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of the fruits of his
own exertions? . . . As a man belongs to himself, so his labor when
put in concrete form belongs to him. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property
in land
THERE can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which
is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon
the
natural right of the man to himself. There can be no other rightful
title, because (1st) there is no other natural right from which any
other title can be derived, and (2nd) because the recognition of
any other title is inconsistent with and destructive of this. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property
in land
HERE are two simple principles, both of which are self-evident:
I.- That all men have equal rights to the use and enjoyment of the
elements provided by nature.
II.- That each man has an exclusive right to the use and enjoyment
of what is produced by his own labor.
There is no conflict between these principles. On the contrary they
are correlative. To fully secure the individual right of property
in the
produce of labor we must treat the elements of nature as common
property. — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter
26: True Free Trade - econlib -|- abridged
Moral, and Immoral, Private Property
NATURE acknowledges no ownership or control in man save as the result
of exertion. In no other way can her treasures be drawn forth, her
powers directed, or her forces utilized or controlled. She makes
no discriminations
among men,
but is to all absolutely impartial. She knows no distinction between
master and slave, king and subject, saint and sinner. All men to
her stand upon an equal footing and have equal rights. She recognizes
no
claim but that of labor, and recognizes that without respect to the
claimant. If a pirate spread his sails, the wind will fill them as
well as it will fill those of a peaceful merchantman or missionary
bark; if
a king and a common man be thrown overboard, neither can keep his
head above the water except by swimming; birds will not come to be
shot
by the proprietor of the soil any quicker than they will come to
be shot by the poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook in
utter
disregard as to whether it is offered them by a good little boy who
goes to Sunday school, or a bad little boy who plays truant; grain
will grow only as the ground is prepared and the seed is sown; it
is only
at the call of labor that ore can be raised from the mine; the sun
shines and the rain falls alike upon just and unjust. The laws of
nature are
the decrees of the Creator. There is written in them no recognition
of any right save that of labor; and in them is written broadly and
clearly the equal right of all men to the use and enjoyment of nature;
to apply to her by their exertions, and to receive and possess her
reward. Hence, as nature gives only to labor, the exertion of labor
in production is the only title to exclusive possession. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property
in land
PRIVATE property is not of one species, and moral sanction
can no more
be asserted universally of it than of marriage. That proper marriage
conforms to the law of God
does not justify the polygamic or polyandric or incestuous marriages
that are in some countries permitted by the civil law. And as there may
be immoral marriage, so may there be immoral private property. — The
Condition
of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
THAT any species of property is permitted by the State, does not of
itself give it moral sanction. The State has often made things property
that are not justly property but involve violence and robbery. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
TO attach to things created by God the same right of private ownership
that justly attaches to things produced by labor, is to impair and deny the
true rights of property. For a man, who out of the proceeds of his labor is
obliged
to pay another man for the use of ocean or air or sunshine or soil, all
of which are to men involved in the single term land, is in this
deprived of his rightful property, and thus robbed. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
HOW then is it that we are called deniers of the right of property? It
is for the same reason that caused
nine-tenths of the good people in the United States, north as well as
south, to regard abolitionists as deniers of the right of
property; the same reason that made even John Wesley look on a smuggler
as a kind of robber, and on a custom-house seizer of other men's goods
as a defender of law and order. Where violations of the right of
property
have been long
sanctioned by custom and law, it is inevitable that those who really
assert the right of property will at first be thought to deny it. For
under such circumstances the idea of property becomes confused, and that is
thought to be property which is in reality a violation of
property. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (The
Right Of Property And The Right Of Taxation)
LANDLORDS must elect to try their case either by human law or by
moral law. If they say that land is rightly property because made
so by human law, they cannot charge those who would change that law
with advocating robbery. But if they charge that such change in
human law would be robbery, then they must
show that land is rightfully property irrespective of human law. — The
Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to the Duke of Argyll), The Nineteenth Century, July,
1884
Private Property in Land, Immoral
PRIVATE property in land, no less than private property in slaves, is
the violation of the true rights of property. They are different forms
of the same robbery — twin devices, by which the perverted ingenuity
of man has sought to enable the strong and the cunning to escape God's
requirement of labor by forcing it on others. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
ROBINSON CRUSOE, as we all know, took Friday as his slave. Suppose,
however, that instead of taking Friday as his slave, Robinson Crusoe
had welcomed him as a man and a brother; had read him a Declaration of
Independence, an Emancipation Proclamation and a Fifteenth Amendment,
and informed him that he was a free and independent citizen, entitled
to vote and hold office; but had at the same time also informed him
that that particular island was his (Robinson Crusoe's) private and
exclusive property. What would have been the difference? Since Friday
could not fly up into the air nor swim off through the sea, since if he
lived at all he must live on the island, he would have been in one case
as much a slave as in the other. Crusoe's ownership of the island would
be equivalent of his ownership of Friday. — Social Problems — Chapter
15, Slavery and Slavery
THEY no longer have to drive their slaves to work; want and the fear of
want do that more effectually than the lash. They no longer have the
trouble of looking out for their employment or hiring out their labor,
or the expense of keeping them when they cannot work. That is thrown
upon the slaves. The tribute that they still wring from labor seems
like voluntary payment. In fact, they take it as their honest share of
the rewards of production — since they furnish the land! And they find
so-called political economists, to say nothing of so-called preachers
of Christianity, to tell them so. — Social
Problems — Chapter
15, Slavery and Slavery
IF the two young Englishmen I have spoken of had come over here and
bought so many American citizens, they could not have got from them so
much of the produce of labor as they now get by having bought land
which American citizens are glad to be allowed to till for half the
crop. And so, even if our laws permitted, it would be foolish for an
English duke or marquis to come over here and contract for ten thousand
American babies, born or to be born, in the expectation that when able
to work he could get out of them a large return. For by purchasing or
fencing in a million acres of land that cannot run away and do not need
to be fed, clothed or educated, he can, in twenty or thirty years, have
ten thousand full-grown Americans, ready to give him half of all that
their labor can produce on his land for the privilege of supporting
themselves and their families out of the other half. This gives him
more of the produce of labor than he could exact from so many chattel
slaves. — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter 25: The Robber
That Takes All
That Is Left - econlib
OF the two systems of slavery, I think there can be no doubt that upon
the same moral level, that which makes property of persons is more
humane than that which results from making private property of land.
The cruelties which are perpetrated under the system of chattel slavery
are more striking and arouse more indignation because they are the
conscious acts of individuals. But for the suffering of the poor under
the more refined system no one in particular seems responsible. . . .
But this very fact permits cruelties that would not be tolerated under
the one system to pass almost unnoticed under the other. Human beings
are overworked, are starved, are robbed of all the light and sweetness
of life, are condemned to ignorance and brutishness, and to the
infection of physical and moral disease; are driven to crime and
suicide, not by other individuals, but by iron necessities for which
it seems that no one in particular is responsible.
To match from the annals of chattel slavery the horrors that day after day
transpire unnoticed in the heart of Christian civilization, it would be necessary
to go back to ancient
slavery, to the chronicles of Spanish conquest in the New World, or to
stories of the Middle passage. — Social
Problems — Chapter
15, Slavery and Slavery
Ownership of Land — Ownership of
Men
THE general subjection of the many to the few, which we meet with
wherever society has reached a certain development, has resulted from
the appropriation of land as individual property. It is the ownership
of the soil that everywhere gives the ownership of the men that live
upon it. It is slavery of this kind to which the enduring pyramids and
the colossal monuments of Egypt yet bear witness, and of the
institution of which we have, perhaps, a vague tradition in the
biblical story of the famine during which the Pharaoh purchased up the
lands of the people. It was slavery of this kind to which, in the
twilight of history, the conquerors of Greece reduced the original
inhabitants of that peninsula, transforming them into helots by making
them pay rent for their lands. It was the growth of the latifundia,
or great landed estates, which transmuted the population of ancient Italy
from a race of hardy husbandmen, whose robust virtues conquered the
world, into a race of cringing bondsmen; it was the appropriation of
the land as the absolute property of their chieftains which gradually
turned the descendants of free and equal Gallic, Teutonic and Hunnish
warriors into colonii and villains, and which changed the independent
burghers of Sclavonic village communities into the boors of Russia and
the serfs of Poland; which instituted the feudalism of China and Japan,
as well as that of Europe, and which made the High Chiefs of Polynesia
the all but absolute masters of their fellows. How it came to pass that
the Aryan shepherds and warriors who, as comparative philology tells
us, descended from the common birth-place of the Indo-Germanic race
into the lowlands of India, were turned into the suppliant and cringing
Hindoo, the Sanscrit verse which I have before quoted gives us a hint. The
white parasols and the elephants mad with pride of the Indian Rajah are the
flowers
of grants
of land. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property in land
TRACE to their root the causes that are thus producing want in the
midst of plenty, ignorance in the midst of intelligence, aristocracy in
democracy, weakness in strength — that are giving to our civilization a
one-sided and unstable development, and you will find it something
which this Hebrew statesman three thousand years ago perceived and
guarded against. Moses saw that the real cause of the enslavement of
the masses of Egypt was, what has everywhere produced enslavement, the
possession by a class of the land upon which, and from which, the
whole people must live. He saw that to permit in land the same
unqualified private ownership that by natural right attaches to the
things produced by labor, would be inevitably to separate the people
into the very rich and the very poor, inevitably to enslave labor — to
make the few the masters of. the many, no matter what the political
forms, to bring vice and degradation, no matter what the religion.
And with the foresight of the philosophic statesman who legislates
not for the need of a day, but for all the future, he sought, in ways
suited to his times and conditions, to guard against this error. — Moses
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
wretchedness, under-clothed, under-fed, under-educated, even in this
city without any place to play — growing up under conditions in which
only a miracle can keep them pure — under conditions which condemn them
in advance to the penitentiary or the brothel — 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 estate 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 struggle to
put bread in the mouths of their little children; no such misery and
squalor as we may see here in the greatest of American cities; misery
and squalor that are deepest in the largest and richest centers of our
civilization today. — Thou Shalt Not
Steal
Land-Ownership the Cause
of Poverty and Degradation
THE poverty to which in advancing civilization great masses of men are
condemned, is not the freedom from distraction and temptation which
sages have sought and philosophers have praised: it is a degrading and
embruting slavery, that cramps the higher nature, dulls the finer
feelings, and drives men by its pain to acts which the brutes would
refuse. It is into this helpless, hopeless poverty, that crushes
manhood and destroys womanhood, that robs even childhood of its
innocence and joy, that the working classes are being driven by a force
which acts upon them like a resistless and unpitying machine. The
Boston collar manufacturer who pays his girls two cents an hour may
commiserate their condition, but he, as they, is governed by the law of
competition, and cannot pay more and carry on his business, for exchange
is not governed by sentiment. And so, through all intermediate
gradations, up to those who receive the earnings of labor without
return, in the rent of land, it is the inexorable laws of supply and
demand, a power with which the individual can no more quarrel or
dispute than with the winds and the tides, that seem to press down the
lower classes into the slavery of want.
But, in reality, the cause is that which always has, and always must
result in slavery — the monopolization by some of what nature has designed
for all. . . . Private ownership of land is the nether millstone. Material
progress is the upper millstone.
Between them; with an increasing pressure, the working classes are
being ground. — Progress
& Poverty — Book VII, Chapter
2, Justice
of the Remedy: Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property
in land
IT is not in the relations of capital and labor; it is not in the
pressure of population against subsistence that an explanation of the
unequal development of our civilization is to be found. The great cause
of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the
ownership of land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact
which ultimately determines the social, the political and,
consequently, the intellectual and moral condition of a people. And
it must be so. For land is the habitation of man, the storehouse upon
which he must draw for all his needs, the material to which his labor
must be applied for the supply of all his desires; for even the
products of the sea cannot be taken, the light of the sun enjoyed, or
any of the forces of nature utilized, without the use 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. — Progress & Poverty — Book
V, Chapter 2: The Problem Solved: The persistence of poverty amid advancing
wealth
THERE is nothing strange or inexplicable in the phenomena that are now
perplexing the world. It is not that material progress is not in itself
a good, it is not that nature has called into being children for whom
she has failed to provide; it is not that the Creator has left on
natural laws a taint of injustice at which even the human mind revolts,
that material progress brings such bitter fruits. That amid our highest
civilization men faint and die with want is not due to the
niggardliness of nature, but to the injustice of man. Vice and misery,
poverty and pauperism, are not the legitimate results of increase of
population and industrial development; they only follow increase of
population and industrial development because land is treated as
private property — they are the direct and necessary results of the
violation of the supreme law of justice, involved in giving to some men the
exclusive
possession of that which
nature provides for all men. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private
property in land
The Robbery of Labor
IN the Old Testament we are told that, when the Israelites journeyed
through the desert, they were hungered, and that God sent down out of
the heavens — manna. 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. Supposing 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 the others,
perhaps, to gather it up in heaps for them, and would have sold it to
the hungry brethren. Consider it: this purchase and sale of manna might
have gone on until the majority of the Israelites had given up all they
had, even to the clothes off their backs. What then? Well, then they
would not have had anything left with which to buy manna, and the
consequence would have been that while they went hungry the manna would
be lying in great heaps, and the landowners would be complaining about
the over-production of manna. There would have been a great harvest of
manna and hungry people, just precisely the Phenomenon that we see
today. — The Crime of Poverty
PROPERTY in land, like property in slaves, is essentially different
from property in things that are the result of labor. Rob a man or a
people of money, or goods, or cattle, and the robbery is finished there
and then. The lapse of time does not, indeed, change wrong into
right, but it obliterates the effects of the deed. That is done; it is
over; and, unless it be very soon righted, it glides away into the
past, with the men who were parties to it, so swiftly that nothing save
omniscience can trace its effects; and in attempting to right it we
would be in danger of doing fresh wrong. The past is forever beyond us.
We can neither punish nor recompense the dead. But rob a people of the
land on which they must live, and the robbery is continuous. It is a
fresh robbery of every succeeding generation — a new robbery every
year
and every day; it is like the robbery which condemns to slavery the
children of the slave. To apply to it the statute of limitations,
to
acknowledge for it the title of prescription, is not to condone the
past; it is to legalese robbery in the present, to justify it in the
future. — The (Irish) Land Question
How to Stop it
LABOR may be likened to a man who as he carries home his earnings
is waylaid by a series of robbers. One demands this much, and another that
much, but last of all stands one who demands all that is left, save
just enough to enable the victim to maintain life and come forth next
day to work. So long as this last robber remains, what will it benefit
such a man to drive off any or all of the other robbers?
Such is the situation of labor today throughout the civilized world.
And the robber that takes all that is left, is private property in
land. Improvement, no matter how great, and reform, no matter how
beneficial in itself, cannot help that class who, deprived of all
right to the use of the material elements, have only the power to
labor — a power as useless in itself as a sail without wind, a pump
without water, or a saddle without a horse. — Protection or Free
Trade — Chapter 25: The Robber That Takes All That Is Left - econlib | abridged
THERE is but one way to remove an evil — and that is, to remove its
cause. Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while
productive power grows, because land, which is the source of all wealth and
the field of all labor, is monopolized. To extirpate
poverty, to make wages what justice commands they should be, the full
earnings of the laborer, we must therefore substitute for the
individual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing else will go
to the cause of the evil — in nothing else is there the slightest
hope. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
VI, Chapter 2, The Remedy: The True Remedy
Collect the Rent
IF two men find a diamond they do not march to a lapidary to have it
cut in two. If three sons inherit a ship they do not proceed to saw her
into three pieces; nor do they agree that if this cannot be
done equal division is impossible. Nor yet is there no other way to
secure the rights of the owners of a railway than by breaking up rail,
engines, rolling stock and stations into as many separate bits as there
are shareholders. And so it is not necessary in order to secure equal
rights to land to make an equal division of land. All that it is
necessary to do is to collect rent for the common benefit. — Social
Problems — Chapter
19, The First Great Reform
WE would simply take for the community what belongs to the community,
the value that attaches to land by the growth of the community; leave
sacredly to the individual all that belongs to the individual; and,
treating necessary monopolies as functions of the State, abolish all
restrictions and prohibitions save those required for public health,
safety, morals and convenience. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
MAN is driven by his instincts and needs to form society.
Society, thus
formed, has certain needs and functions for which revenue is required.
These needs and functions increase with social development, requiring
a larger and larger revenue. Now, experience and analogy, if not the
instinctive perceptions of the human mind, teach us that there is a
natural way of satisfying every natural want. And if human society is
included in nature, as it surely is, this must apply to social wants
as well as to the wants of the individual, and there must be a natural
or right method of
taxation, as there is a natural or right method of walking. —Social
Problems — Chapter
19, The First Great Reform
Taxation of Private Property
THE mode of taxation is quite as important as the amount. As a small
burden badly placed may distress a horse that could carry with ease a
much larger one properly adjusted, so a people may be impoverished
and their power of producing wealth destroyed by taxation, which, if
levied in another way, could be borne with ease. — Progress &
Poverty — Book
VIII, Chapter 3, Application of the Remedy: The Proposition Tried by the
Canons of Taxation
IF we impose a tax upon buildings, the users of buildings must finally
pay it, for the erection of buildings will cease until building rents
become high enough to pay the regular profit and the tax besides. If
we impose a tax upon manufactures or imported goods, the manufacturer or
importer will charge it in a higher price to the jobber, the jobber to
the retailer, and the retailer to the consumer. Now, the consumer, on
whom the tax thus ultimately falls, must not only pay the amount of the
tax, but also a profit on this amount to everyone who has thus advanced
it — for profit on the capital he has advanced in paying taxes
is as much required by each dealer as profit on the capital he has advanced
in
paying for goods. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VIII, Chapter 3, Application of the Remedy: The Proposition Tried by
the Canons of Taxation
THE way taxes raise prices is by increasing the cost of production, and
checking supply. But land is not a thing of human production, and taxes
upon rent cannot check supply. Therefore though a tax on rent compels
the landowners to pay more, it gives them no power to obtain more for
the use of their land, as it in no way tends to reduce the supply of
land. On the contrary, by compelling those who hold land on speculation
to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on land values tends to
increase the competition between owners, and thus to reduce the price
of land. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VIII, Chapter 3, Application of the Remedy: The Proposition Tried by
the Canons of Taxation
"Taxation" — of Rent, the Common
Property
THE tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It
falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and
valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they
receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the
community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is
the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent
is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the
equality ordained by nature be attained. No citizen will have an
advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry,
skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns.
Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital
its natural return. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VIII, Chapter 3, Application of the Remedy: The Proposition Tried by
the Canons of Taxation
HERE is a provision made by natural law for the increasing needs of
social growth; here is an adaptation of nature by virtue of which the
natural progress of society is a progress toward equality not toward
inequality; a centripetal force tending to unity growing out of and
ever balancing a centrifugal force tending to diversity. Here is a fund
belonging to society as a whole, from which without the degradation
of alms, private or public, provision can be made for the weak, the
helpless, the aged; from which provision can be made for the common
wants of all as a matter of common right to each. — Social
Problems — Chapter
19, The First Great Reform
NOT only do all economic considerations point to a tax on land
values
as the proper source of public revenues; but so do all British
traditions. A land tax of four shillings in the pound of rental value
is still nominally enforced in England, but being levied on a valuation
made in the reign of William III, it amounts in reality to not much
over a penny in the pound. With the abolition of indirect taxation this
is the tax to which men would naturally turn. The resistance of
landholders would bring up the question of title, and thus any movement
which went so far as to propose the substitution of direct for indirect
taxation must inevitably end in a demand for the restoration
to the British people of their birthright. — Protection or Free Trade— Chapter
27: The Lion in the Way - econlib
THE feudal system, which is not peculiar to Europe but seems to be the
natural result of the conquest of a settled country by a race among
whom equality and individuality are yet strong, clearly recognized,
in theory at least, that the land belongs to society at large, not to
the individual. Rude outcome of an age in which might stood for right
as nearly as it ever can (for the idea of right is ineradicable from
the human mind, and must in some shape show itself even in the
association of pirates and robbers), the feudal system yet admitted in
no one the uncontrolled and exclusive right to land. A fief was
essentially a a trust, and to enjoyment was annexed obligation. The
sovereign, theoretically the representative of the collective power and
rights of the whole people, was in feudal view the only absolute owner
of land. And though land was granted to individual possession, yet in
its possession were involved duties, by which the enjoyer of its
revenues was supposed to render back to the commonwealth an equivalent
for the benefits which from the delegation of the common right he
received. — Progress &Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 4, Justice
of the Remedy: Private Property in Land Historically Considered
THE abolition of the military tenures in England by the Long
Parliament, ratified after the accession of Charles II, though simply
an appropriation of public revenues by the feudal landowners, who
thus got rid of the consideration on which they held the common
property of the nation, and saddled it on the people at large in the
taxation of all consumers, has been long characterized, and is still
held up in the law books, as a triumph of the spirit of freedom. Yet
here is the source of the immense debt and heavy taxation of England.
Had the form of these feudal dues been simply changed into one better
adapted to the changed times, English wars need never have occasioned
the incurring of debt to the amount of a single pound, and the labor
and capital of England need not have been taxed a single farthing for
the maintenance
of
a military
establishment. All this would have come from rent, which the
landholders since that time have appropriated to themselves — from
the tax which land ownership levies on the earnings of labor and capital.
The landholders of England got their land on terms which required them
even in the sparse population of Norman days to put in the field, upon
call, sixty thousand perfectly equipped horsemen, and on the further
condition of various fines and incidents which amounted to a
considerable part of the rent. It would probably be a low estimate
to put the pecuniary value of these various services and dues at one-half
the rental value of the land. Had the landholders been kept to this
contract and no land been permitted to be inclosed except upon
similar terms, the income accruing to the nation from English land
would today be greater by many millions than the entire public
revenues of the United Kingdom. England today might have enjoyed
absolute free trade. There need not have been a customs duty, an
excise, license or income tax, yet all the present expenditures could
be met, and a large surplus remain to be devoted to any purpose which
would conduce to the comfort or well-being of the whole people. — Progress &Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 4, Justice of the Remedy: Private Property in Land Historically
Considered
"The Single Tax"
WHAT the people of England are entitled to by natural right, and what
we propose by the single tax to take for their use, is the value of
land as it is, exclusive of
the value or improvements as they
are in
or on the land privately owned. What would thus be left to the
landowners would be their personal or moveable property, the value
of all existing improvements in or on their land, and their equal share
with all other citizens in the land value resumed. This is perfectly
clear, and if not perfectly fair, is only so because it would leave
to
the landowners in their personal property and the value of their
improvements much not due to any exertion of labor by themselves or
their ancestors, but which has come to them through the unjust
appropriation of the proceeds of others' labor. — A Perplexed
Philosopher (Justice On The Right To Land)
Loss and Gain
AND while in the nature of things any change from wrong-doing
to right-doing must entail loss upon those who profit by the wrong-doing,
and this can no more be prevented than can parallel lines be made to
meet; yet it must also be remembered that in the nature of things the
loss is merely relative, the gain absolute. Whoever will examine the
subject will see that in the abandonment of the present unnatural and
unjust method of raising public revenues and the adoption of the
natural and just method even those who relatively lose will be enormous
gainers. — A Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
MANY landholders are laborers of one sort or another. And it would
be
hard to find a landowner not a laborer, who is not also a capitalist — while
the general rule is, that the larger the landowner the greater the
capitalist. So true is this that in common thought the characters
are confounded. Thus, to put all taxes on the value of land, while
it would be to largely reduce all great fortunes, would in no case
leave
the rich man penniless. The Duke of Westminster, who owns a
considerable part of the site of London, is probably the richest
landowner in the world. To take all his ground rents by taxation would
largely reduce his enormous income, but would still leave him his
buildings and all the income from them, and doubtless much personal
property in various other shapes. He would still have all he could
by any possibility enjoy, and a much better state of society in which
to
enjoy it. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 3, Effects
of the Remedy: Of the Effect Upon Individuals and Classes
THE existence of private property in land is a great social wrong
from which society at large suffers and of which the very rich and
the very poor are alike victims, though at the opposite extremes.
Seeing this, it seems to us like a violation of Christian charity
to speak of the rich as though they individually were responsible
for
the sufferings of the poor. Yet, while you do this, you insist that
the
cause of monstrous wealth and degrading poverty shall not be touched.
Here is a man with a disfiguring and dangerous excrescence. One
physician would kindly, gently, but firmly remove it. Another insists
that it shall not be removed, but at the same time holds up the poor
victim to hatred and ridicule. Which is right- ? — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
Rich and Poor Alike Gainers
THE evil is not in wealth in itself — in its
command over material things; it is in the possession of wealth
while others
are steeped
in
poverty; in being raised above touch with the life of humanity, from
its work and its struggles, its hopes and its fears, and above all,
from the love that sweetens life, and the kindly sympathies and
generous acts that strengthen faith in man and trust in God. Consider
how the rich see the meaner side of human nature; how they are
surrounded by flatterers and sycophants; how they find ready
instruments not only to gratify vicious impulses, but to prompt and
stimulate them; how they must constantly be on guard lest they be
swindled; how often they must suspect an ulterior motive behind kindly
deed or friendly word; how, if they try to be generous, they are
beset by shameless beggars and scheming impostors; how often
the family
affections are chilled for them, and their deaths anticipated with
the ill-concealed joy of expectant possession. The worst evil of
poverty is not in the want of material things, but in the stunting
and distortion
of the higher qualities. So, though in another way, the possession
of
unearned wealth likewise stunts and distorts what is noblest in man.
God's commands cannot be evaded with impunity. If it be God's command
that men shall earn their bread by labor, the idle rich must suffer.
And they do. — The Condition
of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
IT seems to me that in a condition of society in which no one need
fear poverty, no one would desire great wealth — at least no
one would take the trouble to strive and to strain for it as men
do now. For,
certainly, the spectacle of men who have only a few years to live,
slaving away their time for the sake of dying rich, is in itself
so unnatural and absurd, that in a state of society where the abolition
of the fear of want had dissipated the envious admiration with which
the
masses of men now regard the possession of great riches, whoever
would
toil to acquire more than he cared to use would be looked upon as
we would now look on a man who would thatch his head with half a
dozen
hats, or walk around in the hot sun with an overcoat on. When everyone
is sure of being able to get enough, no one will care to make a
packhorse of himself. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 2: Effects of the Remedy, upon distribution and thence
on production
MEN instinctively admire virtue and truth, but the sting of want
and the fear of want make them even more strongly admire the rich
and
sympathize with the fortunate. It is well to be honest and just,
and men will commend it; but he who by fraud and injustice gets him
a
million dollars will have more respect and admiration and influence,
more eye service and lip service, if not heart service, than he who
refuses it. The one may have his reward in the future; he may know
that his name is writ in the Book of Life, and that for him is the
white
robe and the palm branch of the victor against temptation; but the
other has his reward in the present. His name is writ in the list
of "our substantial
citizens;" he
has the courtship of men and the flattery of women; the best pew
in the church and the personal regard
of the eloquent clergyman, who in the name of Christ preaches the
Gospel of Dives, and tones down into a meaningless flower of. eastern
speech the stern metaphor of the camel and the needle's eye. He may
be a patron of arts, a Maecenas to men of letters; may profit by
the converse of the intelligent, and be polished by the attrition
of the
refined. His alms may feed the poor, and help the struggling, and
bring sunshine into desolate places; and noble public institutions
commemorate,
after he is
gone, his name and his
fame. It is not in the guise of a hideous monster, with horns and
tail, that Satan tempts the children of men, but as an angel of light.
His
promises are not alone of the kingdoms of the world, but of mental
and
moral principalities and powers. He appeals not only to the animal
appetites, but to the cravings that stir in man because he is more
than an animal. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 4, Effects of the Remedy: Of the Changes that
would be Wrought in Social Organization and Social Life
The Poor and the Kingdom
"THE poor ye have always with you." If ever a scripture has been
wrested to the devil's service, this is that scripture. How often have
these words been distorted from their obvious meaning to soothe
conscience into acquiescence in human misery and degradation — to
bolster
that blasphemy, the very negation and denial of Christ's teachings,
that the All Wise and Most Merciful, the Infinite Father, has decreed
that so many of His creatures must be poor in order that others
of His creatures to whom He wills the good things of life should enjoy
the please and virtue of doling out alms! "The poor ye have
always with you," said Christ; but all His teachings supply the
limitation, "until the coming of the Kingdom." In that kingdom
of God on earth, that kingdom
of justice and love for which He taught His followers to strive and
pray, there will
be no poor. — Social
Problems — Chapter 8: That We All Might Be Rich.
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 had the power to 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
that
this is; that is just precisely, the kind of a world that the Creator
has made. Nature gives to labor, and to labor alone; there must be
human work before any article of wealth can be produced; and, in
a 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
a working-man as a poor man. — The
Crime of Poverty
"Rich" and "Poor" Defined
BUT is there not some line the recognition of which will enable us
to say with something like scientific precision that this man is
rich and that man is poor; some line of possession which will enable
us
truly to distinguish between rich and poor in all places and conditions
of society; a line of the natural mean or normal possession, below
which in varying degrees is poverty, and above which in varying degrees
is wealthiness? It seems to me that there must be. And if we stop
to think of it, we may see that there is. If we set aside for the
moment
the narrower economic meaning of service, by which direct service
is conveniently distinguished from the indirect service embodied
in
wealth, we may resolve all the things which directly or indirectly
satisfy human desire into one term service, just as we resolve
fractions into a common denominator. Now is there not a natural or
normal line of the possession or enjoyment of service? Clearly there
is. It is that of equality between giving and receiving. This is
the equilibrium which Confucius expressed in the golden word of his
teaching that in English we translate into "reciprocity."
Naturally
the services which a member of a human society is entitled to receive
from other members are the equivalents of those he renders to others.
Here is the normal line from which what we call wealthiness and what
we call poverty take their start. He who can command more service than
he
need render, is rich. He is poor, who can command less service than
he does render or is willing to render: for in our civilization of
today we must take note of the monstrous fact that men willing to
work cannot always find opportunity to work. The one has more than he
ought
to have; the other has less. Rich and poor are thus correlatives
of each other; the existence of a class of rich involves
the existence of a class of poor, and the reverse; and abnormal luxury
on the one side and abnormal want on the other have a relation of
necessary sequence. To
put this relation into terms of morals, the rich are the robbers,
since they are at least sharers in the proceeds of robbery; and the poor
are
the robbed. This is the reason, I take it, why Christ, Who was not
really a man of such reckless speech as some Christians deem Him
to have been, always expressed sympathy with the poor and repugnance
of
the rich. In His philosophy it was better even to be robbed than
to rob. In the kingdom of right doing which He preached, rich and poor
would be impossible, because rich and poor in the true sense are
the
results of wrong-doing. And when He said, "It is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
the
kingdom of heaven," He simply put in the emphatic form of Eastern
metaphor a statement of fact as coldly true as the statement that
two parallel lines can never meet. Injustice cannot live where justice
rules, and even if the man himself might get through, his riches — his
power of compelling service without rendering service — must
of necessity
be left behind. If there can be no poor in the kingdom of heaven,
clearly there can be no rich. And so it is utterly impossible in
this, or in any other conceivable world, to abolish unjust poverty,
without
at the same time abolishing unjust possessions. This is a hard word
to the softly amiable philanthropists, who, to speak metaphorically,
would
like to get on the good side of God without angering the devil. But
it is a true word nevertheless. — The Science of Political
Economy unabridged:
Book II, Chapter 19, The Nature of Wealth: Moral Confusions as to
Wealth • abridged:
Part II, Chapter 15, The Nature of Wealth: Moral Confusions as to
Wealth
John Stuart Mill
GREAT as John Stuart Mill was and pure as he was — warm heart and noble
mind — he yet never saw the true harmony of economic laws, nor realized
how from this one great fundamental wrong flow want and misery, and vice and
shame.
Else
he could never have written this sentence: "The land of Ireland,
the land of every country, belongs to the
people of that country. The individuals called landowners have no
right in morality and justice to anything but the rent, or compensation
for its salable value."
In the name of the Prophet — figs! If the land of any country
belong to the people of that country, what right, in morality and
justice, have
the individuals called landowners to the rent? If the land belong
to the people, why in the name of morality and justice should the
people
pay its salable value for their own?
Herbert Spencer says: "Had we to deal with the parties who originally
robbed the human race of its heritage, we might make short work of
the matter?" Why not make short work of the matter anyhow? For this robbery
is not like the robbery of a horse or a sum of money, that ceases
with the act. It is a fresh and continuous robbery, that goes on
every day
and every hour. It is not from the produce of the past that rent
is drawn; it is from the produce of the present. It is a toll levied
upon
labor constantly and continuously. Every blow of the hammer, every
stroke of the pick, every thrust of the shuttle, every throb of the
steam engine pay it tribute. It levies upon the earnings of the men
who, deep underground, risk their lives, and of those who over white
surges hang to reeling masts; it claims the just reward of the
capitalist and the fruits of the inventor's patient effort; it takes
little children from play and from school, and compels them to work
before their bones are hard or their muscles are firm; it robs the
shivering of warmth; the hungry, of food; the sick, of medicine;
the anxious, of peace. It debases, and embrutes, and embitters. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 3, Justice of the Remedy: Claim of Landowners to Compensation
Compensation
THE common law we are told is the perfection of reason,
and certainly the landowners cannot complain of its decision,
for it has
been built up by and for landowners. Now what does the law allow
to the innocent possessor when the land for which he paid his
money is
adjudged to rightfully belong to another?
Nothing at all. That he purchased in good faith gives him no right
or claim whatever. The law does not concern itself with the "intricate question of compensation" to
the innocent purchaser. The law does not say, as John Stuart Mill says: "The
land belongs to A, therefore B who has thought himself the owner has no right
to anything
but the rent, or compensation for its salable value." For that would
be indeed like a famous fugitive slave case decision in which the Court
was said to have given the law to the North and the nigger to the
South. The law simply says: "The land belongs to A, let the Sheriff
put him in possession! " — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 3, Justice of the Remedy: Claim of Landowners to Compensation
COMPENSATED for what? For giving up what has been unjustly taken?
The demand of land-owners for compensation is not that. We do not
seek
to spoil the Egyptians. We do not ask that what has been unjustly
taken from laborers shall be restored. We are willing that bygones
should
be
bygones, and to leave dead wrongs to bury their dead. We propose
to let those who, by the past appropriation of land-value, have taken
the
fruits of labor, retain what they have thus got. We merely propose
that for the future such robbery of labor shall cease. — NOW,
is the State called on to compensate men for the failure of their expectations
as
to its action,
even where no moral element is involved? If
it make peace, must it compensate those who have invested on the
expectation of war. If it
open a shorter highway, is it morally bound to compensate those who
may lose by the diversion of travel from the old one? If it promote
the discovery of a cheap means of producing electricity directly from
heat,
is it morally bound to compensate the owners of all the steam engines
thereby thrown out of use and all who are engaged in making them?
If
it develop the air-ship, must it compensate those whose business
would be injured? Such a contention would be absurd. — The Condition of Labor
Yet the contention we are considering is worse. It is that the State
must compensate for disappointing the expectations of those who have
counted on its continuing to do wrong. — A Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
COMPENSATION implies equivalence. To compensate for the
discontinuance of a wrong is to give those who profit by the wrong
the pecuniary equivalent of its continuance. Now the State has nothing
that does not belong to the individuals who compose it. What it gives
to some it must take from others. Abolition with compensation is
therefore not really abolition, but continuance under a different
form — on one side of unjust deprivation, and on the other side of unjust
appropriation. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
The Innocent Purchaser
INNOCENT purchasers of what involves wrong to others!
Is not the phrase absurd? If, in our legal tribunals, "ignorance of the law excuseth no
man," how much less can it do so in the tribunal of morals — and
it is this to which compensationists appeal.
And innocence can only shield from the punishment due to conscious
wrong; it cannot give right. If you innocently stand on my toes,
you may fairly ask me not to be angry; but you gain no right to continue
to stand on them. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
WHEN a man exchanges property of one kind for property of another
kind he gives up the one with all its incidents and takes in its
stead the
other with its incidents. He cannot sell bricks and buy hay, and
then complain because the hay burned when the bricks would not. The
greater
liability of the hay to burn is one of the incidents he accepted
in buying it. Nor can he exchange property having moral sanction
for
property having only legal sanction, and claim that the moral sanction
of the thing he sold attaches now to the thing he bought. That has
gone with the thing to the other party in the exchange. Exchange
transfers, it cannot create. Each party gives up
what right he had and takes what right the other party had. The last
holder obtains no moral right that the first holder did not have. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
Compensation
"CAVEAT emptor" is the maxim of the law — "Let
the buyer beware!" If
a man buys a structure in which the law of gravity is disregarded
or mechanical laws
ignored, he takes the risk of those laws asserting their sway. And
so he takes the risk in buying property which contravenes the moral
law.
When he ignores the moral sense, when he gambles on the continuance
of a wrong, and when at last the general conscience rises to the
point of
refusing to continue that wrong, can he then claim that those who
have refrained from taking part in it, those who have suffered from
it,
those who have borne the burden and heat and contumely of first moving
against it, shall share in his losses on the ground that as members
of the same state they are equally responsible for it? And must not
the
acceptance of this impudent plea tend to prevent that gradual weakening
and dying out of the wrong, which would otherwise occur as the rise
of the moral sense against it lessened the prospect of its continuance;
and by promise of insurance to investors tend to maintain it in
strength and energy till the last minute? — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
ALL pleas for compensation on the abolition of unequal rights to
land are excuses for avoiding right and continuing wrong; they all,
as fully
as the original wrong, deny that equalness which is the essential
of justice. Where they have seemed plausible to any honestly-minded
man,
he will, if he really examines his thought, see that this has been
so because he has, though perhaps unconsciously, entertained a sympathy
for those who seem to profit by injustice which he has refused to
those who have been injured by it. He has been thinking of the few
whose
incomes would be cut off by the restoration of equal right. He has
forgotten the many, who are being impoverished, degraded, and driven
out of life by its denial. If he once breaks through the tyranny
of accustomed
ideas and
truly realizes that all men are equally entitled to the use of the
natural opportunities for the living of their lives and the development
of their powers, he will see the injustice, the wickedness, of
demanding compensation for the abolition of the monopoly of land.
He will see that if anyone is to be compensated on the abolition
of a
wrong, it is those who have suffered by the wrong, not those who
have profited by it. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
Justice
JUSTICE in men's mouths is cringingly humble when she first
begins a protest against a time-honored wrong, and we of the
English-speaking
nations still wear the collar of the Saxon thrall, and have been
educated to look upon the "vested rights" of landowners with all
the superstitious reverence that ancient Egyptians looked upon the
crocodile. But when the times are ripe for them, ideas grow, even
though insignificant in their first appearance. One day, the Third
Estate covered their heads when the king put on his hat. A little
while
thereafter, and the head of a son of St. Louis rolled from the scaffold.
The anti-slavery movement in the United States commenced with talk
of compensating owners, but when four millions of slaves were emancipated,
the owners got no compensation, nor did they clamor for any. And
by the time the people of any such country as England or the United
States
are sufficiently aroused to the injustice and disadvantages of
individual ownership of land to induce them to attempt its
nationalization, they will be sufficiently aroused to nationalize
it in a much more direct and easy way than by purchase. They will
not
trouble
themselves about compensating the proprietors of land. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 3, Justice of the Remedy: Claim of Landowners to Compensation
IT requires reflection to see that manifold effects result from a
single cause, and that the remedy for a multitude of evils may
lie in one simple reform. As in the infancy of medicine, men were disposed
to
think each distinct symptom called for a distinct remedy, so when
thought begins to turn to social subjects there is a disposition
to seek a special cure for every ill, or else (another form of
the same
short-sightedness) to imagine the only adequate remedy to be something
which presupposes the absence of those ills; as, for instance,
that all men should be good, as the cure for vice and crime; or that all
men
should be provided for by the State, as the cure for poverty. —
Protection or Free Trade — Chapter 28: Free Trade
and Socialism - econlib
The Single Tax
TO abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting, now hampers every
wheel of exchange and presses upon every form of industry, would
be like removing an immense weight from a powerful spring. Imbued
with fresh energy, production would start into new life, and trade
would
receive a stimulus which would be felt to the remotest arteries.
The
present method of taxation operates upon exchange like artificial
deserts and mountains; it costs more to get goods through a custom
house than it does to carry them around the world. It operates
upon energy, and industry, and skill, and thrift, like a fine upon
those
qualities. If I have worked harder and built myself a good house
while you have been contented to live in a hovel, the tax-gatherer
now comes
annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry, by
taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am mulct,
while
you are exempt. If a man build a ship we make him pay for his temerity,
as though he had done an injury to the state; if a railroad be
opened, down comes the tax collector upon it, as though it were
a public nuisance; if a manufactory be erected, we levy upon it an
annual sum which would go far towards making a handsome profit. We
say we
want capital, but if anyone accumulate it, or bring it among us,
we charge
him for it as though we were giving him a privilege. We punish
with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we
fine
him
who puts up machinery, and him who drains a swamp. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 1, Effects of the Remedy: Of the Effect upon the Production
of Wealth
Its Beneficent Effects
AND will not the community gain by thus refusing to kill the goose
that lays the golden eggs; by thus refraining from muzzling the ox
that
treadeth out the corn; by thus leaving to industry, and thrift, and
skill, their natural reward, full and unimpaired? For there is to
the community also a natural reward. The law of society is, each
for all,
as well as all for each. No one can keep to himself the good he may
do, any more than he can keep the bad. Every productive enterprise,
besides its return to those who undertake it, yields collateral
advantages to others. If a man plant a fruit tree, his gain is that
he gathers the fruit in its time and season. But in addition to his
gain,
there is a gain to the whole community. Others than the owner are
benefited by the increased supply of fruit; the birds which it shelters
fly far and wide; the rain which it helps to attract falls not alone
on his field; and, even to the eye which rests upon it from a distance,
it brings a sense of beauty. And so with everything else. The building
of a house, a factory, a ship, or a railroad, benefits others besides
those who get the direct profits. Nature laughs at a miser. He is
like the squirrel who buries his nuts and refrains from digging them
up
again. Lo! they sprout and grow into trees. In fine linen, steeped
in costly spices, the mummy is laid away. Thousands and thousands
of years
thereafter, the Bedouin cooks his food by a fire of its encasings,
it generates the steam by which the traveler is whirled on his way,
or it
passes into far-off lands to gratify the curiosity of another race.
The bee fills the hollow tree with honey, and along comes the bear
or the
man. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 1, Effects of the Remedy: Of the Effect upon the Production
of Wealth
CONSIDER the effect of such a change upon the labor market.
Competition would no longer be one-sided, as now. Instead of laborers
competing with each other for employment, and in their competition
cutting down wages to the point of bare subsistence, employers would
everywhere be competing for laborers, and wages would rise to the
fair earnings of labor. For into the labor market would have entered
the
greatest of all competitors for the employment of labor, a competitor
whose demand
cannot be satisfied until want is
satisfied — the demand of labor itself. The employers of labor
would not have merely to bid against other employers, all feeling
the stimulus of greater trade and increased profits, but against
the
ability of laborers to become their own employers upon the natural
opportunities freely opened to them by the tax which prevented
monopolization. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 1, Effects of the Remedy: Of the Effect upon the Production
of Wealth
Effect of Release from Fear of Want
THAT the masses now festering in the tenement houses of our cities,
under conditions which breed disease and death, and vice and crime,
should each family have its healthful home, set in its garden;
that the working farmer should be able to make a living with a daily
average
of
two or three hours' work, which more resembled healthy recreation
than toil; that his home should be replete with all the conveniences
yet esteemed luxuries; that it should be supplied with light and
heat,
and power if needed, and connected with those of his neighbors
by the telephone; that his family should be free to libraries, and
lectures,
and scientific apparatus and instruction; that they should be able
to visit the theater, or concert, or opera, as often as they cared
to do
so, and occasionally to make trips to other parts of the country
or
to Europe; that, in short, not merely the successful man, the one
in a
thousand, but the man of ordinary parts and ordinary foresight
and prudence, should enjoy all that advancing civilization can bring
to elevate and expand human life, seems, in the light of existing
facts,
as wild a dream as ever entered the brain of hasheesh eater. Yet
the
powers already within the grasp of man make it easily possible. — Social
Problems — Chapter 21: City and Country.
GIVE labor a free field and its full earnings; take for the benefit
of the whole community that fund which the growth of the community
creates, and want and the fear of want would be gone. The springs
of production would be set free, and the enormous increase of wealth
would
give the
poorest ample comfort. Men would no more worry about finding employment
than they worry about finding air to breathe; they need have no more
care about physical necessities than do the lilies of the field.
The progress of science, the march of invention, the diffusion of
knowledge, would bring their benefits to all.
With this abolition of want and the fear of want, the admiration of
riches would decay, and men would seek the respect and approbation
of their fellows in other modes than by the acquisition and display of
wealth. In this way there would be brought to the management of
public affairs and the administration of common funds the skill, the
attention, the fidelity and integrity, that can now only be secured
for private interests, and a railroad or gas works might be operated on
public account, not only more economically and efficiently than,
as at present, under joint stock management, but as economically and
efficiently as would be possible under a single ownership. The
prize of the Olympian games, that called forth the most strenuous exertions
of
all Greece, was but a wreath of wild olive; for a bit of ribbon
men have over and over again performed services no money could have
bought. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 4— Effects
of the Remedy: Of the Changes that Would be Wrought in Social
Organization and Social Life
Liberation of Higher Qualities
SHORT-SIGHTED is the philosophy which counts on selfishness as
the master motive of human action. It is blind to facts of which
the
world is full. It sees not the present, and reads not the past
aright. If
you would move men to action, to what shall you appeal? Not to
their pockets, but to their patriotism; not to selfishness but
to sympathy.
Self-interest is, as it were, a mechanical force — potent, it is true;
capable of large and wide results. But there is in human nature what
may be likened to a chemical force; which melts and fuses and overwhelms; to
which nothing seems impossible. "All
that a man hath will he give for his life" — that is self-interest.
But in loyalty to higher impulses men will give even life.
It is not selfishness that enriches the annals of every people
with heroes and saints. It is not selfishness that on every page
of the
world's history; bursts out in sudden splendor of noble deeds or
sheds the soft radiance of benignant lives. It was not selfishness
that
turned Gautama's back to his royal home or bade the Maid of Orleans
lift the sword from the altar; that held the Three Hundred in the
Pass of Thermopylae, or gathered into Winkelried's bosom the sheaf
of
spears; that chained Vincent de Paul to the bench of the galley,
or brought little starving children during the Indian famine tottering
to the relief stations with yet weaker starvelings in their arms!
Call
it
religion, patriotism, sympathy, the enthusiasm for humanity, or
the love of God — give it what name you will; there is yet a force which
overcomes and drives out selfishness; a force which is the electricity
of the moral universe; a force beside which all others are weak.
Everywhere that men have lived it has shown its power, and today, as
ever, the world is full of it. To be pitied is the man who has never
seen and never felt it. Look around! among common men and women, amid
the care and the struggle of daily life in the jar of the noisy street
and amid the squalor where want hides — everywhere, and there is the
darkness lighted with the tremulous play of its lambent flames. He who
has not seen it has walked with shut eyes. He who looks may see, as
says Plutarch, that "the soul has a principle of kindness in itself,
and is born to love, as well as to perceive, think, or remember."
And this force of forces — that now goes to waste or assumes perverted
forms — we may use for the strengthening and building up
and ennobling of
society, if we but will, just as we now use physical forces that
once seemed but powers of destruction. All we have to do is but
to give
it freedom and scope. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 4— Effects of the Remedy: Of the Changes that
Would be Wrought in Social Organization and Social Life
THE efficiency of labor always increases with the habitual wages
of labor — for high wages mean increased self-respect, intelligence,
hope and energy. Man is not a machine, that will do so much and no
more; he
is not an animal, whose powers may reach thus far and no further.
It is mind, not muscle, which is the great agent of production. The
physical
power evolved in the human frame is one of the weakest of forces,
but for the human intelligence the resistless currents of nature
flow, and
matter becomes plastic to the human will. To increase the comforts,
and leisure, and independence of the masses is to increase their
intelligence; it is to bring the brain to the aid of the hand; it
is to engage in the common work of life the faculty which measures
the
animalcule and traces the orbits of the stars! — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 2: Effects of the Remedy, upon distribution and thence
on production
OUT upon nature, in upon
him himself, back through the mists that shroud the past, forward
into
the darkness
that overhangs the future,
turns the restless desire that arises when the animal wants slumber
in satisfaction. Beneath things he seeks the law; he would know how
the
globe was forged, and the stars were hung, and trace to their sources
the springs of life. And then, as the man develops his nobler nature,
there arises the desire higher yet — the passion of passions, the hope
of
hopes — the desire that he, even he, may somehow aid in making
life better and brighter, in destroying want and sin, sorrow and
shame. He
masters and curbs the animal; he turns his back upon the feast and
renounces the place of power; he leaves it to others to accumulate
wealth, to gratify pleasant tastes, to bask themselves in the warm
sunshine of the brief day. He works for those he never saw and never
can see; for a fame, or it may be but for a scant justice, that can
only come long after the clods have rattled upon his coffin lid.
He toils in the advance, where it is cold, and there is little cheer
from
men, and the stones are sharp and the brambles thick.
Amid the scoffs of the present and the sneers that stab like knives,
he builds for the future; he cuts the trail that progressive humanity
may
hereafter broaden into a highroad. Into higher, grander spheres desire
mounts and beckons, and a star that rises in the east leads him on.
Lo! the pulses of the man throb with the yearnings of the god — he
would aid in the process of the suns! — Progress & Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 3, Population and Subsistence: Inferences from
Analogy
The Law of Progress
MENTAL power is the motor of progress, and men tend
to advance in proportion to the mental power expended in progression — the
mental power which is devoted to the extension of knowledge, the
improvement of
methods, and the betterment of social conditions. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 3, The Law of Human Progress
To compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water
will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion
devoted
to
propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force
required for baling, or any expenditure of force in fighting among
themselves or in pulling in different directions.
Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man are required
to maintain existence, and mental power is only set free for higher
uses
by the association of men in communities, which permits the division
of labor and all the economies which come with the co-operation of
increased numbers, association is the first essential of progress.
Improvement becomes possible as men come together in peaceful
association, and the wider and closer the association, the greater
the possibilities of improvement. And as the wasteful expenditure
of mental
power in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which
accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is recognized,
equality (or justice) is the second essential of progress.
Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association
frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality (or
justice,
or freedom — for the terms here signify the same thing, the
recognition of the moral law) prevents the dissipation of this power
in fruitless
struggles. — Progress & Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 3, The Law of Human Progress
The Moral Law
THE law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social
adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality
of right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect
liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other,
must
civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing
civilization come to a halt and recede. Political economy and social
science cannot teach any lessons that are not embraced in the simple
truths that were taught to poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by
One who eighteen hundred years ago was crucified — the simple
truths which, beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions
of
superstition, seem to underlie every religion that has ever striven
to formulate the spiritual yearnings of man. — Progress & Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 3, The Law of Human Progress
THE poverty which in the midst of abundance pinches and embrutes
men, and all the manifold evils which flow from it, spring from a
denial
of justice. In permitting the monopolization of the opportunities
which nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental
law of
justice — for, so far as we can see, when we view things upon
a large scale, justice seems to be the supreme law of the universe.
But by
sweeping away this injustice and asserting the rights of all men
to natural opportunities, we shall conform ourselves to the law — we
shall remove the great cause of unnatural inequality in the distribution
of
wealth and power; we shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions
of greed; dry up the springs of vice and misery; light in dark places
the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to invention and a fresh impulse
to discovery; substitute political strength for political weakness;
and make tyranny and anarchy impossible. — Progress
& Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 5, The Law of Human Progress: The Central Truth
Justice, the Foundation
THAT justice is the highest quality in the moral hierarchy
I do not say; but that it is the first. That which is above justice
must
be
based on justice, and include justice, and be reached through justice.
It is not by accident that, in the Hebraic religious development
which through Christianity we have inherited, the declaration, "The
Lord thy God is a just God," precedes the sweeter revelation
of a God of Love. Until the eternal justice is perceived, the
eternal love must be
hidden. As the individual must be just before he can be truly generous,
so must human society be based upon justice before it can be based
on benevolence. — Social Problems — Chapter
9, First Principles
It is, something grander than Benevolence, something more august
than Charity — it is Justice herself that demands of us to right this wrong.
Justice that will not be denied; that cannot be put off — Justice
that with the scales carries the sword. Shall we ward the stroke
with liturgies and prayers? Shall we avert the decrees of immutable
law
by raising churches when hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep?
Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that
attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering
and brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the
All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and crime
of our great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander the Just
One. —
Progress & Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 5, The Law of Human Progress: The Central Truth
WE see that God in His dealings with men has not been a bungler or
a
niggard; that He has not brought too many men into the world; that
He has not neglected abundantly to supply them; that He has not intended
that bitter competition of the masses for a mere animal existence,
and
that monstrous aggregation of wealth which characterizes our
civilization; but that these evils, which lead so many to say there
is no God,
or yet more impiously to say that they are of God's ordering, are
due to our denial of His moral law. We see that the law of justice,
the
law of the Golden
Rule, is not a mere counsel of perfection, but indeed the law of
social life. We see that, if we were only to observe it, there would
be work
for all, leisure for all, abundance for all; and that civilization
would tend to give to the poorest not only necessaries, but all
comforts and reasonable luxuries as well. We see that Christ was
not a mere dreamer when He told men that, if they would seek the kingdom
of
God and its right doing, they might no more worry about material
things
than do the lilies of the field about their raiment; but that He
was only declaring what political economy, in the light of modern
discovery, shows to be a sober truth. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
"The Man of the People"
NEAR nineteen hundred years ago, when another civilization was
developing monstrous inequalities, when the masses everywhere were
being ground into hopeless slavery, there arose in a Jewish village
an unlearned carpenter, who, scorning the orthodoxies and ritualisms
of
the time, preached to laborers and fishermen the gospel of the
Fatherhood of God, of the equality and brotherhood of men, who taught
His disciples to pray for the coming of the kingdom of heaven on
earth. The college professors sneered at Him, the orthodox preachers
denounced
Him. He was reviled as a dreamer, as a disturber, as a "communist," and,
finally, organized society took the alarm, and He was crucified between
two thieves.
But the word went forth, and, spread by fugitives
and slaves, made its way against power and against persecution till
it revolutionized the world, and out of the rotting old civilization
brought the germ of the new. Then the privileged classes rallied
again, carved the effigy of the man of the people in the courts and
on the
tombs of kings, in His name consecrated inequality, and wrested His
gospel to the defense of social injustice. But again the same great
ideas of a common fatherhood, of a common brotherhood, of a social
state in which none shall be overworked and none shall want, begin
to
quicken in common thought. — Social Problems — Chapter
4, Two Opposing Tendencies
The Office of Religion
WHAT is the office of religion if not to point out the principles
that ought to govern the conduct of men towards each other; to furnish
a
clear, decisive rule of right which shall guide men in all the
relations of life — in the workshop, in the mart, in the forum and in the
senate, as well as in the church; to supply, as it were, a compass by
which, amid the blasts of passion, the aberrations of greed and the
delusions of a short-sighted expediency men may safely steer? What is
the use of a religion that stands palsied and paltering in the face of
the most momentous problems? What is the use of a religion that
whatever it may promise for the next world can do nothing to prevent
injustice in this? Early Christianity was not such a religion, else it
would never have encountered the Roman persecutions; else it would
never have swept the Roman world. The skeptical masters of Rome,
tolerant of all gods, careless of what they deemed vulgar
superstitions, were keenly sensitive to a doctrine based on equal
rights; they feared instinctively a religion that inspired slave and
proletarian with a new hope; that took for its central figure a
crucified carpenter; that taught the equal fatherhood of God and the
equal brotherhood of men; that looked for the speedy reign of justice,
and that prayed, "Thy Kingdom come on Earth! " — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
The Call of Liberty — "Shall
we not Trust her?"
WE honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her
statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted
her. And with
our growth
so
grow her demands. She will have no half service!
Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty
boastings. For liberty means justice, and justice is the natural
law — the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and
co-operation. 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 further relations to the everyday 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, supply 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. Only
in broken
gleems and partial light has the sun of Liberty yet beamed among
men, but all progress hath she called forth. Liberty came to a race
of
slaves crouching under Egyptian 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 Phoenician coast, and
ships passed the Pillars of Hercules to plough the unknown sea. She
shed a 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. They glinted from shields of German
warriors, and Augustus wept for his legions. Out of the night that
followed her eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities,
and
a lost learning revived, modem civilization 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
mightiest power of the world, only to fall to the lowest depth of
weakness when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in France, all
intellectual vigor dying under the tyranny of the Seventeenth Century
to revive in splendor as Liberty awoke in the Eighteenth, and on
the enfranchisement of French peasants in the Great Revolution basing
the
wonderful strength that has in our time defied defeat.
Shall we not trust her? In our time, as in times before, creep on
the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty.
On the
horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We
must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either we must
wholly
accept her or she will not stay. It is not enough that men should
vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before
the
law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities
and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference
to the bounty of nature. Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light!
Either
this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has
evolved turn to powers that work destruction. This is the universal
law. This is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its foundations
be
laid in justice, the social structure cannot stand. — Progress & Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 5, The Law of Human Progress: The Central Truth
BUT if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice
and obey her, if we
trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten must
disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to agencies of
elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields
of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which
the
wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint. With want
destroyed; with greed changed to
noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking
the place of the jealousy and fear that now array men against each
other;
with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest
comfort and leisure; and who shall measure the heights to which our
civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age
of which poets have sung and high-raised seers have told in metaphor!
It
is the glorious vision which has always haunted man with gleams of
fitful splendor. It is what he saw whose eyes at Patmos were closed
in a trance. It is the culmination of Christianity — the City
of God on
earth, with its walls of jasper and its gates of pearl! It is
the reign of the Prince of Peace! — Progress & Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 5, The Law of Human Progress: The Central Truth
"Words Fail the
Thought"
TO begin and maintain great popular movements, it is the moral
sense rather than the Intellect that must be appealed to, sympathy
rather
than self-interest. For however it may be with any individual, the
sense of justice is with the masses of men keener and truer than
intellectual perception, and unless a question can assume the form
of right and wrong it cannot provoke general discussion and excite
the
many to action. And while material gain or loss impresses us less
vividly the greater the number of those we share it with, the power
of sympathy increases as it spreads from man to man — becomes
cumulative and contagious. — Protection or Free Trade,
Chapter 29: Practical Politics econlib
The Liberators
I DO not wish to call upon those my voice may reach to demand
their own rights, so much as to call upon them to secure the rights
of others
more helpless. I believe that the idea of duty is more potent for
social improvement than the idea of interest; that in sympathy is
a stronger social force than in selfishness. I believe that any great
social improvement must spring from, and be animated by, that spirit
which seeks to make life better, nobler, happier for others, rather
than by that spirit which only seeks more enjoyment for itself. For
the Mammon of Injustice can always buy the selfish whenever it may
think
it worth while
to pay
enough; but unselfishness it cannot buy. — Social
Problems — Chapter 9: First Principles
IN the idea of the Incarnation — of the God voluntarily descending
to the help of men, which is embodied not merely in Christianity, but
in
other great religions — lies, I sometimes think, a deeper truth
than perhaps even the Churches teach. This is certain, that the deliverers,
the liberators, the advancers of humanity, have always been those
who were moved by the sight of injustice and misery rather than those
spurred by their own suffering. As it was a Moses, learned in all
the
lore of the Egyptians, and free to the Court of Pharaoh, and not
a tasked slave, forced to make bricks without straw, who led the
Children
of Israel from the House of Bondage: as it was the Gracchi, of
patrician blood and fortune, who struggled to the death against the
land-grabbing system which finally destroyed Rome, so has it always
been that the oppressed, the degraded, the down-trodden have been
freed and elevated rather by the efforts and the sacrifices of those
to
whom fortune had been more kind than by their own strength. For the
more fully men have been deprived of their natural rights, the less
their power to regain them. The more men need help, the less can
they help themselves. — Social
Problems — Chapter 9: First Principles
BUT it is in example as in deed that such lives are helpful. It is
thus that they dignify human nature and glorify human effort, and
bring to
those who struggle hope and trust. The life of Moses, like the
institutions of Moses, is a protest against that blasphemous doctrine,
current now as it was three thousand years ago; that blasphemous
doctrine preached ofttimes even from Christian pulpits; that the
want and suffering of the masses of mankind flow from a mysterious
dispensation of providence, which we may lament, but can neither
quarrel with nor alter. Let him who hugs that doctrine to himself,
him to whom it seems
that the squalor and brutishness with which the very centers of our
civilization abound are not his affair, turn to the example of that
life. For to him who will look, yet burns the bush; and to him who
will hear, again comes the voice, "The people suffer: who will lead them
forth?" — Moses
The Clarions of Battle
TODAY a wider, deeper, more beneficent revolution is brooding, not
over one country, but over the world. God's truth impels it, and
forces mightier than He has ever before given to man urge it on.
It is no more in the power of vested wrongs to stay it than it is in man's
power to stay the sun. The stars in. their courses fight against
Sisera, and in the ferment of today, to him who hath ears to hear,
the doom of industrial slavery is sealed.
Where shall the dignitaries of the Church be in the struggle that is
coming, nay, that is already here? On the side of justice and liberty,
or on the side of wrong and slavery? with the delivered when the
timbrels shall sound again, or with the chariots and the horsemen
that again shall be engulfed in the sea? — The Condition of Labor
The Muster Roll
LOOK around today. Lo! here, now, in our civilized society,
the old allegories yet have a meaning, the old myths are still true.
Into
the Valley of the Shadow of Death yet often leads the path of duty,
through the streets of Vanity Fair walk Christian and Faithful, and
on
Greatheart's armor ring the clanging blows. Ormuzd still fights with
Ahriman — the Prince of Light with the Powers of Darkness.
He who will hear, to him the clarions of battle call. How they call,
and call, and
call till the heart swells that hears them! Strong soul and high
endeavor, the world needs them now. Beauty still lies imprisoned,
and iron wheels go over the good and true and beautiful that might
spring
from human lives. And they who fight with Ormuzd, though they may
not know each other — somewhere, sometime, will the muster
roll be called. — Progress & Poverty,
Conclusion: The Problem of Individual Life
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
warning against injustice, by the enlightenment of public 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. Possibly, 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
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 kingdom of God, to make the conditions
of life for those who come afterward, those which we trust will prevail
in heaven. — Thou Shalt Not Steal
WHAT, when our time comes, does it matter whether we have fared
daintily or not, whether we have worn soft raiment or not, whether
we leave a great fortune or nothing at all, whether we shall have
reaped honors or been despised, have been counted learned or ignorant — as
compared with how we may have used that talent which has been entrusted
to us for the Master's service? What shall it matter; when
eyeballs glaze and ears grow dull, if out of the darkness may stretch
a hand, and into the silence may come a voice: —
The Glow of Dawn
ONLY a little while ago nations were bought and sold, traded off by
treaty and bequeathed by will. Where now is the right divine of kings?
Only a little while ago, and human flesh and blood were legal property.
Where are now the vested rights of chattel slavery? And shall this
wrong, that involves monarchy, and involves slavery — this injustice from
which both spring — long continue? Shall the ploughers for ever plough
the backs of a class condemned to toil? Shall the millstones of
greed for ever grind the faces of the poor? Ladies and gentlemen, it
is not in the order of the universe! As one who for years has watched
and waited, I tell you the glow of dawn is in the sky. Whether it come
with the carol of larks or the roll of the war-drums, it is coming — it
will come. The standard that I have tried to raise tonight may be tom
by prejudice and blackened by calumny; it may now move forward, and
again be forced back. But once loosed, it can never again be furled! To
beat down and cover up the truth that I have tried tonight to make
clear to you, selfishness will call on ignorance. But it has in it the
germinative force of truth, and the times are ripe for it. If the flint
oppose it, the flint must split or crumble! Paul planteth, and Apollos
watereth, but God giveth the increase. The ground is ploughed; the seed
is set; the good tree will grow.
So little now, only the eye of faith can see it. So little now; so
tender and so weak. But sometime, the birds of heaven shall sing in its
branches; sometime, the weary shall find rest beneath its shade! — Speech: Why Work is Scarce, Wages Low and Labour Restless (1877, San Francisco)
HENRY GEORGE
Henry George, American economist (1839-1897) was born in Philadelphia
on the eastern seaboard of the United States of America amid a built-up
economy. His family had been American for several generations but was
of English, Scottish and Welsh descent.
When a youth, Henry George made a voyage as a deckhand during which
the ship circumnavigated the earth, visiting Melbourne and Calcutta. At
the age of 19, he voyaged from the eastern seaboard to the western
seaboard of the American continent, via the Strait of Magellan, and
undoubtedly it was the change from an established to a growing economy
which gave him the insight into political economy not shown by other
economists of the nineteenth century.
In California, he became a printer, editor and journalist, and after
writing Progress and Poverty, Henry George took an editorship in New
York and by this time he was world-renowned as an author and orator. He
lectured in England, Scotland and Ireland, Paris and South and Western
Australia during his later life.
Henry George divided government into two parts (a) political and (b)
social. Political government would today consist of the defense of the
realm and the sea and airways; maintenance of a civil police force and
the courts of justice, and suchlike matters, and would be kept at the
minimum necessary to maintain the common right of the public and the
right of the individual to the enjoyment of the Sovereign's peace
under the law of the land.
Social government would concern itself with doing on a collective basis
only the things which it is not practicable for the individual to do,
such as irrigation, drainage, trunk roads, etc.
Henry George recognized that the ability of an economic unit such as
the United Kingdom to raise taxation is not something dependent only
upon national economic growth but upon its exchanges with the rest of
the world. Thus traders in London by their exchanges are increasing
taxation potential (the wealth producing capacities of land) in New
Zealand and traders in New Zealand are increasing taxation potential in
the United Kingdom.
Back Cover:
As, when we find that a machine will not work, we infer that in its
construction some law of physics has been ignored or defied, so, when
we find social disease and political evils, may we infer that in the
organization of society moral law has been defied and the natural
rights of men have been ignored.
THAT we should do unto others as we would have them do to us — that we
should respect the rights of others as scrupulously as we would have
our own rights respected, is not a mere counsel of perfection to
individuals, but it is the law to which we must conform social
institutions and national policy if we would secure the blessings of
abundance and peace. — Social Problems, Chapter 10
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