Thus all artificial objects external to man — Wealth, are found to
have their ultimate source in the conjunction of man's activities — Labor,
with natural objects external to man — Land. ...
Wealth is produced solely by the application of Labor to Land.51
50. It may at first seem like a great waste of time and
space to have gone through this long analysis for no other purpose at
last than to demonstrate the self-evident fact that land and labor are
the sole original factors in the production of Wealth. But it will have
been no waste if it enables the reader to firmly grasp the fact. Nothing
is more obvious, to be sure. Nothing is more readily assented to. Yet
by layman and college professor and economic author alike, this simple
truth is cast adrift at the very threshold of argument or investigation,
with results akin to what might be expected in physics if after recognizing
the law of gravitation its effects should be completely ignored.
51. There is ample authority among economic writers for
this conclusion.
Professor Ely enumerates Nature, Labor, and Capital as
the factors of production, but he describes Capital as a combination
of Nature and Labor — Ely's Introduction, part ii, ch. iii.
Say describes industry as " nothing more or less
than human employment of natural agents." — Say's Trea., book
i, ch. ii.
And though John Stuart Mill and numerous others speak
of Land, Labor, and Capital as the three factors of production, as does
Professor Jevons, most of them, like Jevons, recognize the fact, though
in their reasoning they often fail to profit by it, that Capital is not
a primary but a secondary requisite. See Jevons's Pol. Ec., secs. 16,
19.
Henry George says: "Land, labor, and capital are
the factors of production. The term land includes all natural opportunities
or forces; the term labor, all human exertion; and the term capital,
all wealth used to produce more wealth. . . Capital is not a necessary
factor in production. Labor exerted upon land can produce wealth without
the aid of capital, and in the necessary genesis of things must so produce
wealth before capital can exist." — Progress and Poverty,
book iii, ch. i.
Also : "The complexities of production in the civilized
state, in which so great a part is borne by exchange, and so much labor
is bestowed upon materials after they have been separated from the land,
though they may to the unthinking disguise, do not alter the fact that
all production is still the union of the two factors, land and labor."— Id.,
ch. viii.
By intelligent observers no authority is needed. In all
the phenomena of human life, whether primitive or civilized, the lesson
of the chart stands out in bold relief. Nothing can be produced without
Labor and Land, and nothing can be named which under any circumstances
enters into productive processes that is not resolvable into either the
one or the other. To satisfy all human wants mankind requires nothing
but human labor and natural material, and each of them is indispensable.
This is the final analysis. In the union of Labor, which includes all human
effort,52 with Land, which includes the whole material universe outside of
man,53 we discover the ultimate source of Wealth, which includes all the
material things that satisfy want.54 And that is the first great truth upon
which the single tax philosophy is built.
52. The term labor includes all human exertion in the
production of wealth." — Progress and Poverty, book i, ch.
ii.
53. "The term land necessarily includes, not merely
the surface of the earth as distinguished from the water and the air,
but the whole material universe outside of man himself, for it is only
by having access to land, from which his very body is drawn, that man
can come in contact with or use nature." — Progress and Poverty,
book i, ch. ii.
54. "As commonly used the word 'wealth ' is applied
to anything having exchange value. But ... wealth, as alone the term
can be used in political economy, consists of natural products that have
been secured, moved, combined, separated, or in other ways modified by
human exertion, so as to fit them for the gratification of human desires." — Progress
and Poverty, book i, ch ii. ...
e. Effect of Retaining Rent for Common Use.
If society retained Rent for common purposes, all incentive to hold land
for any other object than immediate use would disappear. The effect may be
illustrated by a comparison of the last preceding chart with the following:
[chart]
There is but one difference between this chart and the chart immediately
preceding. In that Rent is confiscated to private use, whereas in this Rent
is retained for common use. All the labor force indicated with red in the
first of the two charts would not more than utilize the space to the left
and part of the adjoining one, which would elevate Wages to what, with the
given labor force, could be produced from the poorer of the two spaces. After
that, increase of Rent would not enrich land-owners at the expense of other
classes; it would enrich the whole community.108
108. The laborer would receive in Distribution all that
he earned and no more than he earned in Production; and that is the natural
law.
In social conditions, where industry is subdivided and trade is intricate,
it is impossible to say arbitrarily what is the equivalent of given labor.
Hence no statute fixing the compensation for labor can really be operative.
All that we can say is that labor is worth what men freely contract to give
and take for it. But it must be what they freely contract to take as well
as what they freely contract to give; and men are not free to contract for
the sale of their labor when labor generally is so divorced from land as
to abnormally glut the labor market and make men's sale of their labor for
almost anything the buyer offers, the alternative of starvation. Laborers
may be as truly enslaved by divorcing labor from land as by driving them
with a whip. ...
Q36. How is it possible to determine what part of a man's product is
due to land, and what part is due to labor?
A. All products are due wholly to the union of land and labor. Labor is the active
force, land is the passive material; and without both there can be no product
at all. But the part of a man's product that he individually earns, as distinguished
from the part that he obtains by virtue of advantageous location, is determined
by the law of rent — by what his location is worth.
Q57. If land and labor are equally indispensable factors of production,
why are they not equally entitled to the product?
A. The laborer justly owns his labor, but the land-owner cannot justly own his
land. The question is not one of the relative rights of men and land, but of
men and men. ... read the book