THIS WILL COME

And Labor bold in all its might shall rise
Its own to grasp and hold — high heaven emprise!
The earth to seize and make forever Free —
Thus strip from Greed its power to tyrannise!

TITLE

What mortal makes or adds an inch of land?
O'er earth let him alone stretch forth the hand
Of lustful ownership and sun and air
And liberty and even life command!



WHO WILL JOIN THE GREAT ADVENTURE?

Who then will join a movement to release America's land to its inhabitants upon Equal Terms? —
   Destroy Privilege at its Base
   Halt the hunger, prostitution, child labor, and "crime" so ridiculously Unnecessary in an undeveloped land of immeasurable richness! —
   Stop the Cosmic Hideous Joke of a million idle men on a billion Unused Acres!!

Who will join a movement to release Man from needless, deadening poverty and free him to himself — to his better, truer, kinder, wholesome Self that hungers for expression and experience, and is deterred first and mainly by the terrible economic pressure which brings but misery and grief even to the few who reap its harvest?

Who will join — Who will give themselves unreservedly —
Who will find their own keenest good —
Who will serve, and dare, with no hope of reward or preferment, for no honors, titles, emoluments, epaulettes, or iron crosses — the greatest cause the world has ever known?

Who will join the Great Adventure! — to free, not a class, not a race nor a color of men, but all men! —
    And make of America the world's Asylum where everyone may find a
         Home without a Landlord and reap all his labor sows?

Who will join with those who Care and Feel and will Resolve to Free the Earth
   Quickly! tomorrow, today, very soon! — in This generation! — Now —
   By the force of numbers!
   By the power of Human Sympathy quickened to life from its long sleep in the deeps of Man?
   For the manumission of All, regardless of class, creed, doctrine, tenet, ism —
   Heeding only the First Human Need, free access to the Land!

Who will help the effort to establish a tenure of use and occupance as sole title to earth, air, and sky —
  Thus to abolish Exploitation at its root —
  By an Immediate appeal to the Heart of the Human Crowd!
  Careful to eschew ephemeral sentimentality, or the lower emotions that lead to violence and play into the hands of Greed —
  Yet fearless of any contingency, deeming the Human Need of paramount importance —

A concentrated, united appeal, by the Entire Intelligent Minority of America —
  Of all the sociologic schools and doctrines —
  Combined in a mighty effort to arouse the whole human mass from its Apathy —
  Centering upon the One Demand, a Free Earth (intellectual differences of method to be considered afterward) —
  Invoking as its leverage the only power of human unanimity, the Heart Force latent in every being —

Who will join The Great Adventure?


ON AND AFTER —
On and after —
O, what shall the date be?
On and after which
No man shall rob another
By authority of the State.

On and after —
Men! Let's make it soon!
On and after which
No man's daughter need sell
Her sex for bread.

On and after —
Are we nearly ready to be Men?
On and after which
None shall kill and debauch
By power of the State.

On and after —
The world has waited long for the date
On and after which
Greed shall not fatten
On human sweat and blood.

On and after —
Men will blush to recall the day
On and after which
Five million jobless wanderers
Found homes and work on the Land!

On and after —
On and after which
No man shall hold of earth
More than he can use!




"I AM FOR MEN"
He stood for Men —
Not for parties, sections, classes;
Not for dogmas, doctrines, isms —
Nor all the minutiae of over-elaborated plans for the future,
Nor for craven caution, dissimulation, equivocation —
Patience that now outrages virtue —
Program'd ways and means which if not followed
The world may stay in hell.

He stood for Men —
For in his soul he knew the line of cleavage
Was not between the robber and the robbed —
Was not marked by external difference,
By rank or class or occupation or wealth or poverty.
He knew that poor men could be very cruel and rich men kind.
He knew the line of cleavage was in the heart — those who care and those who don't —
This Henry George who wrote "Progress and Poverty."

He stood for Men —
And was he wrong to yield no tithe to classes?
What has now become of all the appeals
To class interest, class consciousness, class solidarity?
The human heart will not respond to them — in every class are tyrants.
The human mass forgets its every interest,
Flings to the wind all self and class advantage
And goes out to die for a word.

He stood for Men —
And showed the world how to unshackle the chains that bind men.
He showed how poverty begins,
Where modern slavery has its roots,
And how to tear them up.
The earth is for all men, he said —
And his word has gone around the world —
And now it's time to act!

He stood for Men —
Not creeds and doctrines, nor all the lesser details of future contingencies.
He bared the earth to man.
It is for us to take it.
He tried to gain it, and was beaten back to his death.
Now we will gain it —
At whatever cost!



A MILLION JOBLESS MEN

A million jobless men —
   On twenty-three hundred million acres of idle earth
   Rich with unworked mines,
   Webbed with highways and railroads,
   Watered with rivers and brooks
   Under snow-capped peaks and mountain lakes.

A Million jobless men —
   In an idle, unused, vacant, fertile land
   Dotted here and there with villages and cities
   In which a hundred million mouths want food
   And a hundred million human needs
   And longings go half supplied.

A million jobless men —
   Idle, hungry, roofless, shabby men
   With ten million women and children dependent upon them,
   Wandering aimlessly over twenty-three hundred million acres
   Of land that is mostly fertile and mostly idle —
   Idle, vacant, unused land — and a starving people!

A million jobless men —
   In an idle, vacant, unused land broad enough
   To house without crowding every human being in the world —
   Rich enough to support
   All the earth's population,
   Its own few people but partly housed, fed and clothed!

A million jobless men —
   Clerks, bookkeepers, artisans, laborers, all the professions —
   Men with nothing to do, who can find no work,
   While two million stunted children labor in mine and mill
   And needy women must sell their sex for food —
   A million or maybe six million jobless men! —

A million jobless men —
   And ten million poorly paid men who get barely enough to sustain their families,
   And a million women on the streets, and a million hungry children,
   Plus a million mortgaged homes, and a million business bankrupts —
   On twenty-three hundred million acres of inexhaustible richness not a thousandth part of which has been touched!

A million jobless men —
   And twenty million human dolts content to live in hell —
   To lecture, write, legislate, investigate, resolve, and vote
   To "cure unemployment !" with a learned President
   And a cabinet and a congress of economic students
   Who institute Employment Bureaus!! to feed the hungry, jobless, idle men tramping over idle, vacant, undeveloped land!

A million jobless men —
   And ten million legislators, judges, detectives, soldiers, sheriffs, constables, and policemen
   With clubs, guns, bayonets, legal process, penal codes, prisons, handcuffs, dungeons, and gallows
   To keep these million jobless men from going on the idle, naked, fertile acres
   And feeding themselves, their women, and children!

A million jobless men —
   In 1914
   Now most all at work making death machinery to blow each other to hell!
   The land still idle — and a million wage slaves making murder machinery!



A WAR SONG FOR MEN
Hear the rumbling legions
Now the hour of war!
Not to slay the foeman
Nor to bleed a state.
War for human beings,
Love instead of hate.

Hear the tramp of millions;
Nor bombs nor cannon roar
Only men awakened,
Aliens by birth —
Overwhelming legions
To seize and free the earth!

Rising are the millions:
Nor fear nor hope can bar.
Not for gods or dogmas
Not for words their fight.
Singleness of purpose —
Might befriends their right.

Race nor creed divide them,
Gathering near and far;
Puissant come the millions,
Captained by their need.
Thought and care are leading
Earth to wrench from Greed!

War's for gain forever;
Then let the gain be ours.
Keep the braid and tinsel,
All the minted gold;
Earth alone we're taking —
Birthright of the bold!

Scorn your death devices,
Greed's infernal powers;
Life itself we're seeking!
This our first command,
Pealing now as thunder —
Open ye the land!

Rise the famished millions
Driven off the land;
Spurning peace or plunder,
Seeking lust nor loot.
Thralls to sloth no longer
The millions sluff the brute.
Upright humans hungry,
Fearlessly they' band,
Codes nor laws nor titles!
O, governments, beware —
Heed the need of millions —
Men who know and dare!



THE WHITE MAN'S TOTEM
Paper titles to idle acres
   Are the crime and shame
   Of christendom —
   Its prisons and brothels
   Paupers and billionaires!

Paper titles to idle oil lands
   Are gasoline at 20 cents
   Plus the wage slaveries
   Disemployment and slums
   Of civilization.

Paper titles to idle acres
   Are the white man's idol
   His totem and fetish
   His bloody sacrifice
   Of women and children!


THAT THE LAND BE OPENED TO MAN

That the land be opened to the people.
  That every adult stand in actu or potenitally on his own piece of earth
  From which only death can dislodge him.

That the whole people say to Greed:
  "The parent privilege is dead: the primal monopoly has ceased: the base of exploitation is destroyed.
  All have access to the earth without toll or price."

That the people say to Ignorance:
  "We have changed the system of land tenure, on which rested your power to enslave.
  Every man shall own himself, and by the privilege to withhold land shall no man have the power to own another.
  The unused earth is free."

And if Doubt and Envy linger to question:
  "Why one man will have better land than another — acres more fertile, lots nearer market, sites more pleasing for residence?"
  A child may answer: "Those who hold the better sites will gladly, freely equalize the difference to others — when exploitation's necessity no longer stifles the better impulses: 'tis a detail that free men will settle in a manly way."

And the people say:
  "But never again shall Greed or Ignorance gain power to rack-rent, distrain, wage-slave, pauperize, and disemploy the millions
  Thru the primal curse of land monopoly."

And if Doubt or Doctrine hesitate and ask:
  "How then with railroads, carriers, utilities, banks, trusts, and mines ?"
  Even the Child may answer: "How about them now? Free land will not increase their power."
  And the Student will interpose to say: "Free land will greatly or entirely destroy their power of exploitation. What is left we can then consider."

That the whole people say to Greed and Ignorance:
  "There shall be no mortgage on the bare land, nor any title thereto but use and occupance; land is to live on, cultivate, and develop — not for speculation.
  None shall own or hold of earth an inch more than he can use: every idle lot or acre shall be as free as air and sun to him who needs it for a home, a store, a workshop, a garden, or a farm."

And if the Disputer arise with, "But — If —"
  He shall be silenced by a child again:
  "These are not issues for slaves to settle. Free men each with a foothold on the soil will settle them in a bold, kind, free way — let us not doubt."
  And the Student will add: "Every social and industrial problem, nay most of the psychologic problems too, that men now rack their ingenuity to solve, will under free land assume entirely different aspects —
  Free land will change the surface and the heart of civilization."

That the Human Heart thunder to the world:
  "Poverty is dead. Disemployment is ended. The earth is open.
  The poor, the weak, the ignorant, the blind shall never be trampled and vampirized again by the withholding of the unused land —
  For I have bared the bosom of earth to man and  in her breasts is sustenance inexhaustible."



OMITTED FROM THE SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

I was the leading singletaxer in Spoon River
I organized its first singletax club
I once saw Henry George himself
And I knew Louis F. Post
And Daniel Kiefer.

I wrote articles for the press
About taxation problems,
Was a fluent talker
And could prove the falsities of Karl Marx to anybody
But a socialist.
I was called the John Z. White
Of Spoon River.
We had a flourishing club,
With after dinner lectures and discussions
One a month — regular.
And weekly luncheons at which we discussed the shipping bill or the currency question
And entertained any noted person
Who came to Spoon River.

Singletax became favorably known
To the Better Elements of Society.
The congregational minister
Preached a sermon on it.
We had a debate at the high school,
"Resolved that singletax is scientific."

We had an exclusive membership
Of cultured persons
Tirelessly devoted to the cause of
Rational taxation.

If I had lived another year
I would have gone to the legislature
Where I could have scrutinized
Every measure
In its relation to the Philosophy
Of singletax.

But there arose in our midst
A band of irresponsible agitators
Who stirred up the people
To open the land!
They were emotionalists
And would not discuss calmly a compromise with those who do not care for the immediate Practise of their preaching.

They ranted about the army of disemployed,
About women driven to prostitution,
Men toiling for a pittance,
Children as wage slaves,
Babes starving.
They joined with socialists,
Anarchists, syndicalists, I. W. W's —
People like that!

With anybody who would struggle
To change the land tenure
To use and occupancy
Right away!

I opposed them eloquently
And with stratagem
For their radical demands
Would alienate from our Cause
The growing tolerance of the corporations and business men,

The interest of the politicians
And the curiosity of club women.
Bankers, leading citizens, the daily press
Would view us with distrust.

Could anything be worse
For the success of a Forward Movement?
I tried to rally the old war horses
To stand by their colors
And preserve the sacred
And respectable
Singletax philosophy
In unsullied purity
From these anarchists
And disturbers.

But the agitators
Had the voting strength,
So Mrs. Jonesburg and I resigned
And started a Singletax Philomathic Society
For the discussion of proper methods
To alleviate poverty
Three-quarters of an inch a year
Without causing any annoyance
To Existing Conditions.

If I had lived
We might have rehabilitated
Singletax in respectable circles.
But the idea
Of unscientific people
Led by agitators
Demanding the whole earth
Immediately!
Was too great a shock.

They said I died
Of heart failure.
But I don't understand that
For the autopsy surgeons
Couldn't find such an organ
And said it had probably
Been absorbed
In my brain development.




WHAT'S IT TO YOU?

What is it to you
That children starve in a land of plenty
That girls are driven to the street for food and shelter
And idle men tramp unused acres
And broken human lives strew every pathway —
What is it to You?

Not only the rich are guilty
Of the pauperism that degrades humanity
But You, and all, who assent,
Who do less than the most you can do
To stay it. Your hands are red
With the blood of discouraged, starved,
Women, children, and men — your own kin.

The guilt is Yours especially who Knowing
The cause of pauperism
Do less than you might do to stay it.
What is it to you that children starve
Women whore, men steal or beg or tramp
Merely for bread — in a land of Wondrous Plenty —
What is it to You?



CALIFORNIA