Progress and Poverty - Part 2

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Progress and Poverty - Part 2

    Part 1    Part 2

 The normal rent line and the 
speculative rent line are being brought together: (1) 
By the fall in speculative land values, which is very 
evident in the reduction of rents and shrinkage of real 
estate values in the principal cities. (2) By the in- 
creased efficiency of labor, arising from the growth oi 
population and the utilization of new inventions and 
discoveries, some of which almost as important as that 
of the use of steam we seem to be on the verge of grasp- 
ing. (3) By the lowering of the habitual standard of 
interest and wages, which, as to interest, is shown by the 
negotiation of a government loan at four per cent., and 
as to wages is too generally evident for any special cita- 
tion. When the equilibrium is thus re-established, a 
season of renewed activity, culminating in a speculative 
advance of land values, will set in.* But wages and in- 
terest will not recover their lost ground. The net result 
of all these perturbations or wave-like movements is the 
gradual forcing of wages and interest toward their mini- 
mum. These temporary and recurring depressions ex- 
hibit, in fact, as was noticed in the opening chapter, 
but intensifications of the general movement which 
accompanies material progress. 

* This was written a year ago. It is now (July, 1879) evident 
that a new period of activity has commenced, as above pre- 
dicted! and in New York and Chicago real estate prices have 
already begun to recover. 



CHAPTER II 


THE PERSISTENCE OP POVERTY AMID ADVANCING WEALTH 

The great problem, of which these recurring seasons 
of industrial depression are but peculiar manifestations, 
is now, I think, fully solved, and the social phenomena 
which all over the civilized world appall the philanthro- 
pist and perplex the statesman, which hang with clouds 
the future of the most advanced races, and suggest 
doubts of the reality and ultimate goal of what we 
have fondly called progress, are now explained. 

The reason why , in spite of the increase of productive 
power , wages constantly tend to a minimum which will 
give hut a bare living , is that, with increase in produc- 
tive power, rent tends to even greater increase, thus 
producing a constant tendency to the forcing down of 
wages . 

In every direction, the direct tendency of advancing 
civilization is to increase the power of human labor to 
satisfy human desires — to extirpate poverty, and to 
banish want and the fear of want. All the things in 
which progress consists, all the conditions which pro- 
gressive communities are striving for, have for their 
direct and natural result the improvement of the mate- 
rial (and consequently the intellectual and moral) con- 
dition of all within their influence. The growth of 
population, the increase and extension of exchanges, the 
discoveries of science, the march of invention, the spread 
of education, the improvement of government, and the 

282 



Chap. II. 


THE PERSISTENCE 07 POVERTY 


283 


amelioration of manners, considered as material forces, 
have all a direct tendency to increase the productive 
power of labor — not of some labor, but of all labor; not 
in some departments of industry, but in all departments 
of industry; for the law of the production of wealth in 
society is the law of “each for all, and all for each.” 

But labor cannot reap the benefits which advancing 
civilization thus brings, because they are intercepted. 
Land being necessary to labor, and being reduced to 
private ownership, every increase in the productive 
power of labor but increases rent — the price that labor 
must pay for the opportunity to utilize its powers; and 
thus all the advantages gained by the march of progress 
go to the owners of land, and wages do not increase. 
Wages cannot increase; for the greater the earnings of 
labor the greater the price that labor must pay out of 
its earnings for the opportunity to make any earnings at 
all. The mere laborer has thus no more interest in the 
general advance of productive power than the Cuban 
slave has in advance in the price of sugar. And just as 
an advance in the price of sugar may make the condi- 
tion of the slave worse, by inducing the master to drive 
him harder, so may the condition of the free laborer be 
positively, as well as relatively, changed for the worse 
by the increase in the productive power of his labor. 
For, begotten of the continuous advance of rents, arises 
a speculative tendency which discounts the effect of 
future improvements by a still further advance of rent, 
and thus tends, where this has not occurred from the 
normal advance of rent, to drive wages down to the 
slave point — the point at which the laborer can just 
live. 

And thus robbed of all the benefits of the increase in 
productive power, labor is exposed to certain effects of 
advancing civilization which', without the advantages 
that naturally accompany them, are positive evils, and 





THE PROBLEM SOLVED 


Book V. 


of themselves tend to reduce the free laborer to the 
helpless and degraded condition of the slave. 

For all improvements which add to productive power 
as civilization advances consist in, or necessitate, a still 
further subdivision of labor, and the efficiency of the 
whole body of laborers is increased at the expense of 
the independence of the constituents. The individual 
laborer acquires knowledge of and skill in but an 
infinitesimal part of the varied processes which are 
required to supply even the commonest wants. 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, manu- 
facture 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 may be 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 blos- 
soms of 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 produc- 
ing but one thing, or oftener but the infinitesimal part 
of one thing, out of the multiplicity of things that con- 
stitute 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 



Chap. II* 


THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY 


285 


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 him- 
self, 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 re- 
spects, 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 enfranchise- 
ment, 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 



THE PROBLEM SOLVED 


BootV. 




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 Tierra 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 op- 
portunity for the growth of his rude virtues; if their 
horizon is wider, it is but to reveal blessings that they 
cannot enjoy. 

There are some to whom this may seem like exaggera- 
tion, but it is only because they have never suffered 
themselves to realize the true condition of those classes 
upon whom the iron heel of modem civilization presses 
with full force. As De Tocqueville observes, in one of 
his letters to Mme. Swetchine, “we so soon become used 
to the thought of want that we do not feel that an evil 
which grows greater to the sufferer the longer it lasts 
becomes less to the observer by the very fact of its 
duration;” and perhaps the best proof of the justice of 
this observation is that in cities where there exists a 
pauper class and a criminal class, where young girls 
shiver as they sew for bread, and tattered and bare- 
footed children make a home in the streets, money is 
regularly raised to send missionaries to the ' heathen 1 
Send missionaries to the heathen! it would be laughable 
if it were not so sad. Baal no longer stretches forth his 
hideous, sloping arms; but in Christian lands mothers 
slay their infants for a burial fee! And I challenge the 
production from any authentic accounts of savage life of 
such descriptions of degradation as are to be found in 



Chap. //• 


THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY 


287 


official documents of highly civilized countries — in re- 
ports of Sanitary Commissioners and of inquiries into 
the condition of the laboring poor. 

The simple theory which I have outlined (if indeed it 
can be called a theory which is but the recognition of 
the most obvious relations) explains this conjunction 
of poverty with wealth, of low wages with high produc- 
tive power, of degradation amid enlightenment, of virtual 
slavery in political liberty. It harmonizes, as results 
flowing from a general and inexorable law, facts other- 
wise most perplexing, and exhibits the sequence and 
relation between phenomena that without reference to it 
are diverse and contradictory. It explains why interest 
and wages are higher in new than in older communities, 
though the average, as well as the aggregate, production 
of wealth is less. It explains why improvements which 
increase the productive power of labor and capital in- 
crease the reward of neither. It explains what is com- 
monly called the conflict between labor and capital, 
while proving the real harmony of interest between 
them. It cuts the last inch of ground from under the 
fallacies of protection, while showing why free trade 
fails to benefit permanently the working classes. It ex- 
plains why want increases with abundance, and wealth 
tends to greater and greater aggregations. It explains 
the periodically recurring depressions of industry with- 
out recourse either to the absurdity of “over-produc- 
tion” or the absurdity of “over-consumption.” It 
explains the enforced idleness of large numbers of would- 
be producers, which wastes the productive force of ad- 
vanced communities, without the absurd assumption 
that there is too little work to do or that there are too 
many to do it. It explains the ill effects upon the labor- 
ing classes which often follow the introduction of ma- 
chinery, without denying the natural advantages which 
the use of machinery gives. It explains the vice and 



288 


THE PROBLEM SOLVED 


misery which show themselves amid dense population, 
without attributing to the laws of the All-Wise and All- 
Beneficent defects which belong only to the short- 
sighted and selfish enactments of men. 

This explanation is in accordance with all the facts. 

Look over the world to-day. In countries the most 
widely differing — under conditions the most diverse as 
to government, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to cur- 
rency — you will find distress among the working classes; 
but everywhere that you thus find distress and destitu- 
tion in the midst of wealth you will find that the land 
is monopolized; that instead of being treated as the 
common property of the whole people, it is treated as 
the private property of individuals; that, for its use by 
labor, large revenues are extorted from the earnings of 
labor. Look over the world to-day, comparing differ- 
ent countries with each other, and you will see that it 
is not the abundance of capital or the productiveness 
of labor that makes wages high or low; but the extent 
to which the monopolizers of land can, in rent, levy 
tribute upon the earnings of labor. Is it not a notorious 
fact, known to the most ignorant, that new countries, 
where the aggregate wealth is small, but where land is 
cheap, are always oetter countries for the laboring 
classes than the rich countries, where land is dear? 
Wherever you find land relatively low, will you not find 
wages relatively high? And wherever land is high, will 
you not find wages low? As land increases in value, 
poverty deepens and pauperism appears. In the new 
settlements, where land is cheap, you will find no beg- 
gars, and the inequalities in condition are very slight. 
In the great cities, where land is so valuable that it is 
measured by the foot, you will find the extremes of pov- 
erty and of luxury. And this disparity in condition be- 
tween the two extremes of the social scale may always 
be measured by the price of land. Land in New York 



Chap. 11. THE PERSISTENCE 07 POVERTY 389 

is more valuable than in San Francisco; and in New 
York, the San Franciscan may see squalor and misery 
that will make him stand aghast. Land is more val- 
uable in London than in New York; and in London, 
there is squalor and destitution worse than that of 
New York. 

Compare the same country in different times, and the 
same relation is obvious. As the result of much investi- 
gation, Hallam says he is convinced that Jie wages of 
manual labor were greater in amount in England during 
the middle ages than they are now. Whether this is so 
or not, it is evident that they could not have been much, 
if any, less. The enormous increase in the efficiency of 
labor, which even in agriculture is estimated at seven or 
eight hundred per cent., and in many branches of indus- 
try is almost incalculable, has only added to rent. The 
rent of agricultural land in England is now, according to 
Professor Rogers, 120 times as great, measured in 
money, as it was 500 years ago, and 14 times as great, 
measured in wheat; while in the rent of building land, 
and mineral land, the advance has been enormously 
greater. According to the estimate of Professor Faw- 
cett, the capitalized rental value of the land of England 
now amounts to £4,500,000,000, or $21,870,000,000 — that 
is to say, a few thousand of the people of England hold 
a lien upon the labor of the rest, the capitalized value 
of which is more than twice as great as, at the average 
price of Southern negroes in 1860, would be the value of 
her whole population were they slaves. 

In Belgium and Flanders, in France and Germany, 
the rent and selling price of agricultural land have 
doubled within the last thirty years.* In short, in- 
creased power of production has everywhere added to 
the value of land; nowhere has it added to the value of 


* Systems of Tenure, published by the Cobden Club* 



290 


THE PROBLEM SOLVED 


Boot V. 


labor; for though actual wages may in some places 
have somewhat risen, the rise is clearly attributable to 
other causes. In more places they have fallen — that is, 
where it has been possible for them to fall — for there is 
a minimum below which laborers cannot keep up their 
numbers. And, everywhere, wages, as a proportion of 
the produce, have decreased. 

How the Black Death brought about the great rise of 
wages in England in the Fourteenth Century is clearly 
discernible, in the efforts of the land holders to regulate 
wages by statute. That that awful reduction in popula- 
tion, instead of increasing, really reduced the effective 
power of labor, there can be no doubt; but the lessen- 
ing of competition for land still more greatly reduced 
rent, and wages advanced so largely that force and 
penal laws were called in to keep them down. The re- 
verse effect followed the monopolization of land that 
went on in England during the reign of Henry VIII, in 
the inclosure of commons and the division of the church 
lands between the panders and parasites who were thus 
enabled to found noble families. The result was th* 
same as that to which a speculative increase in land 
values tends. According to Malthus (who, in his “Prin- 
ciples of Political Economy,” mentions the fact without 
connecting it with land tenures), in the reign of Henry 
VII, half a bushel of wheat would purchase but little 
more than a day’s common labor, but in the latter part 
of the reign of Elizabeth, half a bushel of wheat would 
purchase three days’ common labor. I can hardly be- 
lieve that the reduction in wages could have been so 
great as this comparison would indicate; but that there 
was a reduction in common wages, and great distress 
among the laboring classes, is evident from the com- 
plaints of “sturdy vagrants” and the statutes made to 
suppress them. The rapid monopolization of the land, 
the carrying of the speculative rent line beyond the nor- 



Chap, to* 


THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY 




mal rent line, produced tramps and paupers, just as like 
effects from like causes have lately been evident in the 
United States. 

“Land which went heretofore for twenty or forty 
pounds a year,” said Hugh Latimer, “now is let for fifty 
or a hundred. My father was a yeoman, and had no 
lands of his own; only he had a farm at a rent of three 
or four pounds -by the year at the uttermost, and there- 
upon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He 
had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked 
thirty kine; he was able and did find the King a harness 
with himself and his horse when he came to the place 
that he should receive the King’s wages. I can remem- 
ber that I buckled his harness when he went to Black- 
heath Field. He kept me to school; he married my 
sisters with five pounds apiece, so that he brought them 
up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality 
for his neighbors and some alms he gave to the poor. 
And all this he did of the same farm, where he that now 
hath it payeth sixteen pounds rent or more by year, and 
is not able to do anything for his Prince, for himself, 
nor his children, nor to give a cup of drink to the poor.” 

“In this way,” said Sir Thomas More, referring to the 
ejectment of small farmers which characterized this ad- 
vance of rent, “it comes to pass that these poor wretches, 
men, women, husbands, orphans, widows, parents with 
little children, householders greater in number than in 
wealth, all of these emigrate from their native fields, 
without knowing where to go.” 

And so from the stuff of the Latimers and Mores— 
from the sturdy spirit that amid the flames of the Ox' 
ford stake cried, “Play the man, Master Ridley I” and 
the mingled strength and sweetness that neither pros- 
perity could taint nor the ax of the executioner abash 
— were evolved thieves and vagrants, the mass of crimi- 
nality and pauperism that still blights the innermost 


SA'-AR JUNG BAHADUn 



292 


TSZ PROBLEM SOLVED 


Book V. 


petals and preys a gnawing worm at the root of Eng- 
land’s rose. 

But it were as well to cite historical illustrations of 
the attraction of gravitation. The principle is as uni- 
versal and as obvious. That rent must reduce wages, is 
as clear as that the greater the subtractor the less the 
remainder. That rent does reduce wages, any one, 
wherever situated, can see by merely looking around 
him. 

There is no mystery as to the cause which so suddenly 
and so largely raised wages in California in 1849, and 
in Australia in 1852. It was the discovery of the placer 
mines in unappropriated land to which labor was free 
that raised the wages of cooks in San Francisco restau- 
rants to $500 a month, and left ships to rot in the har- 
bor without officers or crew until their owners would 
consent to pay rates that in any other part of the globe 
seemed fabulous. Had these mines been on appropri- 
ated land, or had they been immediately monopolized so 
that rent could have arisen, it would have been land 
values that would have leaped upward, not wages. The 
Comstock lode has been richer than the placers, but the 
Comstock lode was readily monopolized, and it is only 
by virtue of the strong organization of the Miners’ As- 
sociation and the fears of the damage which it might 
do, that enables men to get four dollars a day for par- 
boiling themselves two thousand feet underground, 
where the air that they breathe must be pumped down 
to them. The wealth of the Comstock lode has added 
to rent. The selling price of these mines runs up into 
hundreds of millions, and it has produced individual 
fortunes whose monthly returns can be estimated only 
in hundreds of thousands, if not in millions. Nor is 
there any mystery about the cause which has operated 
to reduce wages in California from the maximum of the 
early days to very nearly a level with wages in the 



Chap, //• 


THE PERSISTENCE 07 POVERTY 


293 


Eastern States, and that is still operating to reduce 
them. The productiveness of labor has not decreased, 
on the contrary it has increased, as I have before shown; 
but, out of what it produces labor has now to pay rent. 
As the placer deposits were exhausted, labor had to re* 
sort to the deeper mines and to agricultural land, but 
monopolization of these being permitted, men now walk 
the streets of San Francisco ready to go to work for 
almost anything — for natural opportunities are now no 
longer free to labor. 

The truth is selftevident. Put to any one capable of 
consecutive thought this question: 

“Suppose there should arise from the English Chan- 
nel or the German Ocean a No-man’s land on which 
common labor to an unlimited amount should be able 
to make ten shillings a day and which should remain 
unappropriated and of free access, like the commons 
which once comprised so large a part of English soil. 
What would be the effect upon wages in England?” 

He would at once tell you that common wages 
throughout England must soon increase to ten shillings 
a day. 

And in response to another question, “What would be 
the effect on rents?” he would at a moment’s reflection 
say that rents must necessarily fall; and if he thought 
out the next step he would tell you that all this would 
happen without any very large part of English labor be- 
ing diverted to the new natural opportunities, or the 
forms and direction of industry being much changed; 
only that kind of production being abandoned which 
now yields to labor and to landlord together less than' 
labor could secure on the new opportunities. The great 
rise in wages would be at the expense of rent. 

Take now the same man or another — some hard- 
headed business man, who has no theories, but knows 
how to make money. Say to him: “Here is a little 



294 


THE PROBLEM SOLVED 


Book V. 


village; in ten years it will be a great city — in ten years 
the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, 
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, “Nol” 

“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 ad- 
vice, 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 richl 
In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion; but 
among its public buildings will be an almshouse. 

In all our long investigation we have been advancing 
to this simple truth: That as land is necessary to the 
exertion of labor in the production of wealth, to com- 
mand the land which is necessary to labor, is to com- 
mand all the fruits of labor save enough to enable labor 
to exist. We have been advancing as through an 
enemy’s country, in which every step must be secured, 
every position fortiu^d, and every by-path explored; 
for this simple truth, in its application to social and 



Chap. II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY 235 

political problems, is hid from the great masses of men 
partly by its very simplicity, and in greater part by 
widespread fallacies and erroneous habits of thought 
which lead them to look in every direction but the right 
one for an explanation of the evils which oppress and 
threaten the civilized world. And back of these elab- 
orate fallacies and misleading theories is an active, 
energetic power, a power that in every country, be its 
political forms what they may, writes laws and molds 
thought — the power of a vast and dominant pecuniary 
interest. 

But so simple and so clear is this truth, that to see it 
fully once is always to recognize it. There are pictures 
which, though looked at again and again, present only a 
confused labyrinth of lines or scroll work — a landscape, 
trees, or something of the kind — until once the attention 
is called to the fact that these things make up a face 
or a figure. This relation once recognized, is always 
afterward clear. It is so in this case. In the light of 
this truth all social facts group themselves in an orderly 
relation, and the most diverse phenomena are seen to 
spring from one great principle. It is not in the rela- 
tions 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 distribu- 
tion 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, 



296 


THE PROBLEM SOLVED 


Book V* 


without the use of land or its products. On the land we 
are born, from it wr live, to it we return again — children 
of the soil as truly as is the blade of grass or the flower 
of the field. Take away from man all that belongs to 
land, and he is but a disembodied spirit. Material 
progress cannot rid us of our dependence upon land; it 
can but add to the power of producing wealth from 
land; and hence, when land is monopolized, it might 
go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving 
the condition of those who have but their labor. It can 
but add to the value of land and the power which its 
possession gives. Everywhere, in all times, among all 
peoples, the possession of land is the base of aristocracy, 
the foundation of great fortunes, the source of power. 
As said the Brahmins, ages ag< 

“To whomsoever the soil at any time belongs , to him 
belong the fruits of it. White parasols and elephants 
mad with pride are the flowers of a grant of land. 9 * 



BOOK VI 

THE REMEDY 

t 

CHAPTER I. — INSUFFICIENCY OF REMEDIES CURRENTLY ED 

VOCATED 

CHAPTER II.— THE TRUE REMEDY 



A new and fair division of the goods and rights of this world 
should be the main object of those who conduct human affairs. — 
De Tocqueville. 


When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a peo- 
ple, small means do not merely produce small effects; they 
produce no effect at all . — John Stuart Mill 



CHAPTER I 


INSUFFICIENCY OF REMEDIES CURRENTLY ADVOCATED 

In tracing to its source the cause of increasing poverty 
amid advancing wealth, we have discovered the remedy ; 
but before passing to that branch of our subject it will 
be well to review the tendencies or remedies which are 
currently relied on or advocated The remedy to which 
our conclusions point is at once radical and simple — so 
radical that, on the one side, it will not be fairly consid- 
ered so long as any faith remains in the efficacy of less 
caustic measures; so simple that, on the other side, its 
real efficacy and comprehensiveness are likely to be over- 
looked, until the effect of more elaborate measures is 
estimated. 

The tendencies and measures which current literature 
and discussions show to be more or less relied on or ad- 
vocated as calculated to relieve poverty and distress 
among the masses may be divided into six classes. I do 
not mean that there are so many distinct parties or 
schools of thought, but merely that, for the purpose of 
our inquiry, prevailing opinions and proposed measures 
may be so grouped for review. Remedies which for the 
sake of greater convenience and clearness we shall con- 
sider separately are often combined in thought. 

There are many persons who still retain a comfortable 
belief that material progress will ultimately extirpate 
poverty, and there are many who look to prudential re- 
straint upon the increase of population as the most 
efficacious means, but the fallacy of these views has 

299 



300 


THU REMEDY 


Book VI. 


already been sufficiently shown. Let us now consider 
what may be hoped for: 

I. From greater economy in government. 

II. From the better education of the working classes 
and improved habits of industry and thrift. 

III. From combinations of workmen for the advance 
of wages. 

IV. From the co-operation of labor and capital. 

V. From governmental direction and interference. 

VI. From a more general distribution of land. 

Under these six heads I think we may in essential form 
review all hopes and propositions for the relief of social 
distress short of the simple but far-reaching measure 
which I shall propose. 

7 . — From Greater Economy in Government 

Until a very few years ago it was an article of faith 
with Americans — a belief shared by European liberals — 
that the poverty of the down-trodden masses of the Old 
World was due to aristocratic and monarchical institu- 
tions. This belief has rapidly passed away with the 
appearance in the United States, under republican insti- 
tutions, of social distress of the same kind, if not of the 
same intensity, as that prevailing in Europe. But social 
distress is still largely attributed to the immense burdens 
which existing governments impose — the great debts, 
the military and naval establishments, the extravagance 
which is characteristic as well of republican as of mon- 
archical rulers, and especially characteristic of the ad- 
ministration of great cities. To these must be added, 
in the United States, the robbery involved in the protec- 
tive tariff, which for every twenty-five cents it putB in 
the treasury takes a dollar and it may be four or five 
out of the pocket of the consumer. Now, there seems 
to be an evident connection between the immense sums 



Chav* J. 


INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 303 


thus taken from the people and the privations of the 
lower classes, and it is upon a superficial view natural 
to suppose that* a reduction in the enormous burdens 
thus uselessly imposed would make it easier for the poor- 
est to get a living. But a consideration of the matter in 
the light of the economic principles heretofore traced 
out will show that this would not be the effect. A re- 
duction in the amount taken from the aggregate produce 
of a community by taxation would be simply equivalent 
to an increase in the power of net production. It would 
in effect add to the productive power of labor just as 
do the increasing density of population and improve- 
ment in the arts. And as the advantage in the one case 
goes, and must go, to the owners of land, in increased 
rent, so would the advantage in the other. 

From the produce of the labor and capital of England 
are now supported the burden of an immense debt, an 
Established Church, an expensive royal family, a large 
number of sinecurists, a great army and great navy. 
Suppose the debt repudiated, the Church disestablished, 
the royal family set.adrift to make a living for them' 
selves, the sinecurists cut off, the army disbanded, the 
officers and men of the navy discharged and the ships 
sold. An enormous reduction in taxation would thus 
become possible. There would be a great addition to 
the net produce which remains to be distributed among 
the parties to production. But it would be only such an 
addition as improvement in the arts has been for a long 
time constantly making, and not so great an addition as 
steam and machinery have made within the last twenty 
or thirty years. And as these additions have not allevi- 
ated pauperism, but have only increased rent, so would 
this. English land owners would reap the whole benefit. 
I will not dispute that if all these things could be done 
suddenly, and without the destruction and expense in- 
volved in a revolution, there might be a temporary im- 



302 


TfcE REMEDY 


Book VZ. 


provement in the condition of the lowest class; but such 
a sudden and peaceable reform is manifestly impossible. 
And if it were, any temporary improvement would, by 
the process we now see going on in the United States, 
be ultimately swallowed up by increased land values. 

And, so, in the United States, if we were to reduce 
public expenditures to the lowest possible point, and meet 
them by revenue taxation, the benefit could certainly 
not be greater than that which railroads have brought. 
There would be more wealth left in the hands of the 
people as a whole, just as the railroads have put more 
wealth in the hands of the people as a whole, but the 
same inexorable laws would operate as to its distribu- 
tion. The condition of those who live by their labor 
would not ultimately be improved. 

A dim consciousness of this pervades — or, rather, is 
beginning to pervade — the masses, and constitutes one 
of the grave political difficulties that are closing in 
around the American republic. Those who have nothing 
but their labor, and especially the proletarians of the 
cities — a growing class — care little about the prodigality 
of government, and in many cases are disposed to look 
upon it as a good thing — “furnishing employment,” or 
“putting money in circulation.” Tweed, who robbed 
New York as a guerrilla chief might levy upon a cap- 
tured town (and who was but a type of the new banditti 
who are grasping the government of all our cities), was 
undoubtedly popular with a majority of the voters, 
though his thieving was notorious, and his spoils were 
blazoned in big diamonds and lavish personal expendi- 
ture. After his indictment, he was triumphantly elected 
to the Senate; and, even when a recaptured fugitive, 
was frequently cheered on his way from court to prison. 
He had robbed the public treasury of many millions, 
but the proletarians felt that he had not robbed them. 
A ri the vr^dict of political economy is the same as 
theirs. 



INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 





Let me be clearly understood. I do not say that gov- 
ernmental economy is not desirable ; but simply that re- 
duction in the expenses of government can have no 
direct effect in extirpating poverty and increasing wages, 
so long as land is monopolized. 

Although this is true, yet even with sole reference to 
the interests of the lowest class, no effort should be 
spared to keep down useless expenditures. The more 
complex and extravagant government becomes, the more 
it gets to be a power distinct from and independent of 
the people, and the more difficult does it become to bring 
questions of real public policy to a popular decision. 
Look at our elections in the United States — upon what 
do they turn? The most momentous problems are press- 
ing upon us, yet so great is the amount of money in poli- 
tics, so large are the personal interests involved, that the 
most important questions of government are but little 
considered. The average American voter has prejudices, 
party feelings, general notions of a certain kind, but he 
gives to the fundamental questions of government not 
much more thought than a street-car horse does to the 
profits of the line. Were this not the case, so many 
hoary abuses could not have survived and so many new 
ones been added. Anything that tends to make govern- 
ment simple and inexpensive tends to put it under 
control of the people and to bring questions of real im- 
portance to the front. But no reduction in the expenses 
of government can of itself cure or mitigate the evils 
that arise from a constant tendency to the unequal dis- 
tribution of wealth. 


II. — From the Diffusion of Education and Improved 
Habits of Industry and Thrift 

There is, and always has been, a widespread belief 
among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and 
suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry. 



304 


THE REMEDY 


Book Vi. 


frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once 
soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its 
suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prev- 
alent in countries like the United States, where all men 
are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of 
society, the differentiation into classes has been of indi- 
viduals rather than of families, than it is in older coun- 
tries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and 
are more sharply, drawn. It is but natural for those 
who can trace their own better circumstances to the 
superior industry and frugality that gave them a start, 
and the superior intelligence that enabled them to take 
advantage of every opportunity,* to imagine that those 
who remain poor do so simply from lack of these quali- 
ties. 

But whoever has grasped the laws of . the distribution 
of wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced 
out, will see the mistake in this notion. The fallacy is 
similar to that which would be involved in the assertion 
that every one of a number of competitors might win a 
race. , That any one might is true; that every one might 
is impossible. 

For, as soon as land acquires a value, wages, as we 
have seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or prod- 
uct of labor, but upon what is left to labor after rent is 
taken out; and when land is all monopolized, as it is 
everywhere except in the newest communities, rent must 
drive wages down to the point at which the poorest paid 
class will be just able to live and reproduce, and thus 
wages are forced to a minimum fixed by what is called 
the standard of comfort — that is, the amount of neces- 
saries and comforts which habit leads the working classes 


* To say nothing of superior want of conscience, which is 
often the determining quality which makes a millionaire out o* 
who otherwise might have been a poor man. 



Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 305 

• 

to demand as the lowest on which they will consent to 
maintain their numbers. This being the case, industry, 
skill, frugality, and intelligence can avail the individual 
only in so far as they are superior to the general level — 
just as in a race speed can avail the runner only in so 
far as it exceeds that of his competitors. If one man 
work harder, or with superior skill or intelligence than 
ordinary, he will get ahead; but if the average of in- 
dustry, skill, or intelligence be brought up to the higher 
point, the increased intensity of application will secure 
but the old rate of wages, and he who would get ahead 
must work harder still. 

One individual may save money from his wages by liv- 
ing as Dr. Franklin did when, during his apprenticeship 
and early journeyman days, he concluded to practice 
vegetarianism; and many poor families might be made 
more comfortable by, being taught to prepare the cheap 
dishes to which Franklin tried to limit the appetite of 
his employer Keimer, as a condition to his acceptance 
of the position of confuter of opponents to the new re- 
ligion of which Keimer wished to become the prophet,* 
but if the working classes generally came to live in that 
way, wages would ultimately fall in proportion, and who- 
ever wished to get ahead by the practice of economy, or 
to mitigate poverty by teaching it, would be compelled 
to devise some still cheaper mode of keeping soul and 
body together. If, under existing conditions, American 
mechanics would come down to the Chinese standard of 
living, they would ultimately have to come down to the 
Chinese standard of wages; or if English laborers would 
content themselves with the rice diet and scanty clothing 


* Franklin, in his inimitable way, relates how Keimer finally 
broke his resolution and ordering a roast pig invited two lady 
friends to dine with him, but the pig being brought in before 
the company arrived, Keimer could not resist the temptation 
and ate it all himself. 





THE REMEDY 


Book VI. 


of the Bengalee, labor would soon be as ill paid in Eng- 
land as in Bengal. The introduction of the potato into 
Ireland was expected to improve the condition of the 
poorer classes, by increasing the difference between 
the wages they received and the cost of their living. The 
consequences that did ensue were a rise of rent and a 
lowering of wages, and, with the potato blight, the rav- 
ages of famine among a population that had already 
reduced its standard of comfort so low that the next step 
was starvation. 

And, so, if one individual work more hours than the 
average, he will increase his wages; but the wages of all 
cannot be increased in this way. It is notorious that in 
occupations where working hours are long, wages are not 
higher than where working hours are shorter; generally 
the reverse, for the longer the working day, the more 
helpless does the laborer become — the less time has he to 
look around him and develop other powers than those 
called forth by his work; the less becomes his ability to 
change his occupation or to take advantage of circum- 
stances. And, so, the individual workman who gets his 
wife and children to assist him may thus increase his in- 
come; but in occupations where it has become habitual 
for the wife and children of the laborer to supplement 
his work, it is notorious that the wages earned by the 
whole family do not on the average exceed those of the 
head of the family in occupations where it is usual for 
him only to work. Swiss family labor in watch making 
competes in cheapness with American machinery. The 
Bohemian cigar makers of New York, who work, men, 
women, and children, in their tenement-house rooms, 
have reduced the prices of cigar making to less than the 
Chinese in San Francisco were getting. 

These general facts are well known. They are fully 
recognized in standard politico-economic works, where, 
however, they are explained upon the Malthusian theory 



Chap* /• 


INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 


307 


of the tendency of population to multiply up to the limit 
of subsistence. The true explanation, as I have suffi- 
ciently shown, is in the tendency of rent to reduce wages. 

As to the effects of education, it may be worth while 
to say a few words specially, for there is a prevailing 
disposition to attribute to it something like a magical 
influence. Now, education is only education in so far 
as it enables a man more effectively to use his natural 
powers, and this is something that what we call educa- 
tion in very great part fails to do. I remember a little 
girl, pretty well along in her school geography and 
astronomy, who was much astonished to find that the 
ground in her mother’s back yard was really the surface 
of the earth, and, if you talk with them, you will find 
that a good deal of the knowledge of many college 
graduates is much like that of the little girl. They sel- 
dom think any better, and sometimes not so well as men 
who have never been to college. 

A gentleman who had spent many years in Australia, 
and knew intimately the habits of the aborigines (Rev. 
Dr. Bleesdale) , after giving some instances of their won- 
derful skill in the use of their weapons, in foretelling 
changes in the wind and weather and in trapping the 
shyest birds, once said to me: “I think it a great mis- 
take to look on these black fellows as ignorant. Their 
knowledge is different from ours, but in it they are gen- 
erally better educated. As soon as they begin to toddle, 
they are taught to play with little boomerangs and other 
weapons, to observe and to judge, and, when they are 
old enough to take care of themselves, they are fully able 
to do so— are, in fact, in reference to the nature of their 
knowledge, what I should call well-educated gentlemen; 
which is more than I can say for many of our young fel- 
lows who have had what we call the best advantages, 
but who enter upon manhood unable to do anything 
either for themselves or for others.” 



308 


THE BEMEDT 


Book VI. 


Be this as it may, it is evident that intelligence, which 
is or should be the aim of education, until it induces and 
enables the masses to discover and remove che cause of 
the unequal distribution of wealth, can -operate upon 
wages only by increasing the effective power of labor. 
It has the same effect as increased skill or industry. 
And it can raise the wages of the individual only in so 
far as it renders him superior to others. When to read 
and write were rare accomplishments, a clerk commanded 
high respect and large wages, but now the ability to read 
and write has become so nearly universal as to give no 
advantage. Among the Chinese the ability to read and 
write seems absolutely universal, but wages in China 
touch the lowest possible point. The diffusion of intel- 
ligence, except as it may make men discontented with a 
state of things which condemns producers to a life of 
toil while non-producers loll in luxury, cannot tend to 
raise wages generally, or in any way improve the condi- 
tion of the lowest class — the “mud-sills” of society, as 
a Southern Senator once called them — who must rest on 
the soil, no matter how high the superstructure may be 
carried. No increase of the effective power of labor can 
increase general wages, so long as rent swallows up all 
the gain. This is not merely a deduction from princi- 
ples. It is the fact, proved by experience. The growth 
of knowledge and the progress of invention have multi- 
plied the effective power n f labor over and over again 
without increasing wages. In England there are over a 
million paupers. In the United States almshouses are 
increasing and wages are decreasing. 

It is true that greater industry and skill, greater pru- 
dence, and a higher intelligence, are, as a rule, found 
associated with a better material condition of the work- 
ing classes ; but that this is effect, not cause, is shown by 
the relation of the facts. Wherever the material condi- 
tion of the laboring classes has been improved, im- 



Chap. 1. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 30 !) 

provement in their personal qualities has followed, and 
wherever their material condition has been depressed, 
deterioration in these qualities has been the result; but 
nowhere can improvement in material condition be shown 
as the result of the increase of industry, skill, prudence, 
or intelligence in a class condemned to toil for a bare 
living, though these qualities when once attained (or, 
rather, their concomitant — the improvement in the 
standard of comfort) offer a strong, and, in many cases, 
a sufficient, resistance to the lowering of material con- 
dition. 

The fact is, that the qualities that raise man above 
the animal are superimposed on those which he shares 
with the animal, and that it is only as he is relieved 
from the wants of his animal nature that his intellectual 
and moral nature can grow. Compel a man to drudgery 
for the necessities of animal existence, and he will lose 
the incentive to industry — the progenitor of skill — and 
will do only what he is forced to do. Make his condi- 
tion such that it cannot be much worse, while there is 
little hope that anything he can do will make it much 
better, and he will cease to look beyond the day. Deny 
him leisure — and leisure does not mean the want of em- 
ployment, but the absence of the need which forces to 
uncongenial employment — and you cannot, even by run- 
ning the child through a common school and supplying 
the man with a newspaper, make him intelligent. 

It is true that improvement in the material condition 
of a people or class may not show immediately in mental 
and moral improvement. Increased wages may at first 
be taken out in idleness and dissipation. But they will 
ultimately bring increased industry, skill, intelligence, 
and thrift. Comparisons between different countries; 
between different classes in the same country; between 
the same people at different periods; and between the 
same people when their conditions are changed by emi- 



310 


THE REMEDY 


Book VI 


gration, show, as an invariable result, that the personal 
qualities of which we are speaking appear as material 
conditions are improved, and disappear as material con- 
ditions are depressed. Poverty is the Slough of Despond 
which Bunyan saw in his dream, and into which good 
books may be tossed forever without result. To make 
people industrious, prudent, skillful, and intelligent, 
they must be relieved from want. If you would have 
the slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must first 
make him free. 


III. — From Combinations of Workmen 

It is evident from the laws of distribution, as previ- 
ously traced, that combinations of workmen can 
advance wages, and this not at the expense of other 
workmen, as is sometimes said, nor yet at the expense of 
capital, as is generally believed; but, ultimately, at the 
expense of rent. That no general advance in wages can 
be secured by combination; that any advance in particu- 
lar wages thus secured must reduce other wages or the 
profits of capital, or both — are ideas that spring from 
the erroneous notion that wages are drawn from capital. 
The fallacy of these ideas is demonstrated, not alone by 
the laws of distribution as we have worked them out, 
but by experience, so far as it has gone. The advance 
of wages in particular trades by combinations of work- 
men, of which there are many examples, has nowhere 
.shown any effect in lowering wages in other trades, or 
in reducing the rate of profits. Except as it may affect 
his fixed capital or current engagements, a diminution 
of wages can benefit, and an increase of wages injure 
an employer only in so far as it gives him an advantage 
or puts him at a disadvantage as compared with other 
employers. The employer who first succeeds in reduc- 
ing the wages of his hands, or is first compelled to pay 



Vhap, /■ 


INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 


311 


an advance, gains an advantage, or is put at a disadvan- 
tage in regard to his competitors, which ceases when 
the movement includes them also. So far, however, as 
the change in wages affects his contracts or stock on 
hand, by changing the relative cost of production, it may 
be to him a real gain or loss, though this gain or loss, 
being purely relative, disappears when the whole com- 
munity is considered. And, if the change in wages works 
a change in relative demand, it may render capital fixed 
in .machinery, buildings, or otherwise, more or less 
profitable. But, in this, a new equilibrium is soon 
reached; for, especially in a progressive country, fixed 
capital is only somewhat less mobile than circulating 
capital. If there is too little in a certain form, the tend- 
ency of capital to assume that form soon brings it up 
to the required amount; if there is too much, the cessa- 
tion of increment soon restores the level. 

8ut, while a change in the rate of wages in any par- 
ticular occupation may induce a change in the relative 
demand for labor, it can produce no change in the ag- 
gregate demand. For instance, let us suppose that a 
combination of the workmen engaged in any particular 
manufacture raise wages in one country, while a combi- 
nation of employers reduce wages in the same manufac- 
ture in another country. If the change be great enough, 
the demand, or part of the demand, in the first country 
will now be supplied by importation of such manufac- 
tures from the second. But, evidently, this increase in 
importations of a particular kind must necessitate 
either a corresponding decrease in importations oi 
other kinds, or a corresponding increase in exportations. 
For, it is only with the produce of its labor and capital 
that one country can demand, or can obtain, in exchange, 
the produce of the labor and capital of another. The 
idea that the lowering of wages can increase, or the in- 
crease of wages can diminish, the trade of a country, is 



312 


THE REMEDY 


Book VI. 


as baseless as the idea that the prosperity of a country 
can be increased by taxes on imports, or diminished by 
the removal of restrictions on trade. If all wages in any 
particular country were to be doubled, that country 
would continue to export and import the same things, 
and in the same proportions; for exchange is determined 
not by absolute, but by relative, cost of production. 
But, if wages in some branches of production were 
doubled, and in others not increased, or not increased so 
much, there would be a change in the proportion of. the 
various things imported, but no change in the proportion 
between exports and imports. 

While most of the objections made to the combination 
of workmen for the advance of wages are thus baseless, 
while the success of such combinations cannot reduce 
other wages, or decrease the profits of capital, or injuri- 
ously affect national prosperity, yet so great are the 
difficulties in the way of the effective combinations of 
laborers, that the good that can be accomplished by them 
is extremely limited, while there are inherent disadvan- 
tages in the process. 

To raise wages in a particular occupation or occupa- 
tions, which is all that any combination of workmen yet 
made has been equal to attempting, is manifestly a task 
the difficulty of which progressively increases. For the 
higher are wages of any particular kind raised above 
their normal level with other wages, the stronger are 
the tendencies to bring them back. Thus, if a printers’ 
union, by a successful or threatened strike, raise the 
wages of typesetting ten per cent, above the normal rate 
as compared with other wages, relative demand and sup- 
ply are at once affected. On the one hand, there is a 
tendency to a diminution of the amount of typesetting 
nailed for; and, on the other, the higher rate of wages 
tends to increase the number of compositors in ways the 
strongest combination cannot altogether prevent. If the 



Shut. 1. 


INS UFFI CIENCY OF PHOPOSED REMEDIES 


313 


increase be twenty per cent., these tendencies are much 
stronger; if it is fifty per cent., they become stronger 
still, and so on. So that practically — even in countries 
like England, where the lines between different trades 
are much more distinct and difficult to pass than in 
countries like the United States — that which trades* 
unions, even when supporting each other, can do in the 
way of raising wages is comparatively little, and this 
little, moreover, is confined to their own sphere, and 
does not affect the lower stratum of unorganized la- 
borers, whose condition most needs alleviation and ulti- 
mately determines that of all above them. The only 
way by which wages could be raised to any extent and 
with any permanence by this method would be by a 
general combination, such as was aimed at by the In- 
ternationals, which should include laborers of all kinds. 
But such a combination may be set down as practically 
impossible, for the difficulties of combination, great 
enough in the most highly paid and smallest trades, be- 
come greater and greater as we descend in the industrial 
scale. 

Nor, in the struggle of endurance, which is the only 
method which combinations not to work for less than a 
certain minimum have of effecting the increase of wages, 
must it be forgotten who are the real parties pitted 
against each other. It is not labor and capital. It is 
laborers on the one side and the owners of land on the 
other. If the contest were between labor and capital, 
it would be on much more equal terms. For the power 
of capital to stand out is only some little greater than 
that of labor. Capital not only ceases to earn anything 
when not used, but it goes to waste — for in nearly all its 
forms it can be maintained only by constant reproduc- 
tion. But land will not starve like laborers or go to 
waste like capital — its owners can wait. They may be 
inconvenienced, it is true, but what is inconvenience to 



314 


THE REMEDY 


BookVL 


them, is destruction to capital and starvation to labor. 

The agricultural laborers in certain parts of England 
are now endeavoring to combine for the purpose of se- 
curing an increase in their miserably low wages. If it 
was capital that was receiving the enormous difference 
between the real produce of their labor and the pittance 
they get out of it, they would have but to make an 
effective combination to secure success; for the farmers, 
wh.o are their direct employers, can afford to go without 
labor but little, if any, better than the laborers can afford 
to go without wages. But the farmers cannot yield 
much without a reduction of rent; and thus it is between 
the land owners and the laborers that the real struggle 
must come. Suppose the combination to be so thorough 
as to include all agricultural laborers, and to prevent 
from doing so all who might be tempted to take their 
places. The laborers refuse to work except at a consid- 
erable advance of wages ; the farmers can give it only by 
securing a considerable reduction of rent, and have no 
way to back their demands except as the laborers back 
theirs, by refusing to go on with production. If culti- 
vation thus come to a dead-lock, the land owners would 
lose only their rent, while the land improved by lying 
fallow. But the laborers would starve. And if English 
laborers of all kinds were united in one grand league for 
a general increase of wages, the real contest would be the 
same, and under the same conditions. For wages could 
not be increased except to the decrease of rent; and in 
a general dead-lock, land owners could live, while la- 
borers of all sorts must starve or emigrate. The owners 
of the land of England are by virtue of their ownership 
the masters of England! So true is it that “to whomso- 
ever the soil at any time belongs, to him belong the fruits 
of it.” The white parasols and the elephants mad with 
pride passed with the grant of English land, and the 
people at large can never regain their power until that 



Chap, j, INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 315 

grant is resumed. What is true of England, is universally 
true. 

It may be said that such a dead-lock in production 
could never occur. This is true ; but true only beca ’se 
no such thorough combination of labor as might produce 
it is possible. But the fixed and definite nature of land 
enables land owners to combine much more easily and 
efficiently than either laborers or capitalists. How easy 
and efficient their combination is, there are many his- 
torical examples. And the absolute necessity for the 
use of land, and the certainty in all progressive countries 
that it must increase in value, produce among land 
owners, without any formal combination, all the effects 
that could be produced by the most rigorous combination 
among laborers or capitalists. Deprive a laborer of op- 
portunity of employment, and he will soon be anxious to 
get work on any terms, but when the receding wave of 
speculation leaves nominal land values clearly above 
real values, whoever has lived in a growing country 
knows with what tenacity land owners hold on. 

And, besides these practical difficulties in the plan of 
forcing by endurance an increase of wages, there are in 
such methods inherent disadvantages which workingmen 
should not blink. I speak without prejudice, for I am 
still an honorary member of the union which, while 
working at my trade, I always loyally supported. But, 
see: The methods by which a trade union can alone act 
are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily 
tyrannical. A strike, which is the only recourse by 
which a trade union can enforce its demands, is a de- 
structive contest — just such a contest as that to which 
an eccentric, called “The Money King,” once, in the 
early days of San Francisco, challenged a man who 
had taunted him with meanness, that they should go 
down to the wharf and alternately toss twenty-dollar 
pieces into the bay until one gave in. The struggle of 



316 


THE REMEDY 


Book VI. 


endurance involved in a strike is, really, what it has 
often been compared to — a war; and, like all war, it 
lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like 
the organization for war, be tyrannical. As even the 
man who would fight for freedom, must, when he enters 
an army, give up his personal freedom and become a 
mere part in a great machine, so must it be with work- 
men who organize for a strike. These combinations are, 
therefore, necessarily destructive of the very things 
which workmen seek to gain through them — wealth and 
freedom. 

There is an ancient Hindoo mode of compelling the 
payment of a just debt, traces of something akin to 
which Sir Henry Maine has found in the laws of the 
Irish Brqjions. It is called, sitting dhama — the creditor 
seeking enforcement of his debt by sitting down at the 
■door of the debtor, and refusing to eat or drink until he 
is paid. 

Like this is the method of labor combinations. In 
their strikes, trades’ unions sit dhama. But, unlike the 
Hindoo, they have not the power of superstition to back 
them. 

IV. — From Co-operation 

It is now, and has been for some time, the fashion to 
preach co-operation as the sovereign remedy for the 
grievances of the working classes. But, unfortunately 
for the efficacy of co-operation as a remedy for social 
evils, these evils, as we have seen, do not arise from any 
conflict between labor and capital; and if co-operation 
were universal, it could not raise wages or relieve pov- 
erty. This is readily seen. 

Co-operation is of two kinds— co-operation in supply 
and co-operation in production.. Now, co-operation in 
supply, let it go as far as it may in excluding middlemen, 
only reduces the cost of exchanges. It is simply a device 



Chap* /. 


INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 


31 ) 


to save labor and eliminate risk, and its effect upon dis- 
tribution' can be only that of the improvements and 
inventions which have in modem times so wonderfully 
cheapened and facilitated exchanges — viz., to increase 
rent. And co-operation in production is simply a rever- 
sion to that form of wages which still prevails in the 
whaling service, and is there termed a “lay.” It is the 
substitution of proportionate wages for fixed wages — a 
substitution of which there are occasional instances in 
almost all employments; or, if the management is left to 
the workmen, and the capitalist but takes his proportion 
of the net produce, it is simply the system that has pre- 
vailed to a large extent in European agriculture since: 
the days of the Roman Empire — the colonial or metayer 
system. All, that is claimed for co-operation in produc- 
tion is, that it makes the workman more active and in- 
dustrious — in other words, that it increases the efficiency 
of labor. Thus its effect is in the same direction as the 
steam engine, the cotton gin, the reaping machine — in 
short, all the things in which material progress consists, 
and it can produce only the same result — viz., the in- 
crease of rent. 

It is a striking proof of how first principles are ignored 
in dealing with social problems, that in current economic 
and semi-economic literature so much importance is at- 
tached to co-operation as a means for increasing wages 
and relieving poverty. That it can have no such general 
tendency is apparent. 

Waiving all the difficulties that under present condi- 
tions beset co-operation either of supply or of produc- 
tion, and supposing it so extended as to supplant present 
methods — that co-operative stores made the connection 
between producer and consumer with the minimum of 
expense, and co-operative workshops, factories, farms, 
and mines, abolished the employing capitalist who pays 
fixed wages, and greatly increased the efficiency of labor 



318 


THE REMEDY 


Book VI 


— what then? Why, simply that it would become pos- 
sible to produce the same amount of wealth* with less 
labor, and consequently that the owners of land, the 
source of all wealth, could command a greater amount 
of wealth for the use of their land. This is not a matter 
of mere theory; it is proved by experience and by exist- 
ing facts. Improved methods and improved machinery 
have the same effect that co-operation aims at — of reduc- 
ing the cost of bringing commodities to the consumer 
and increasing the efficiency of labor, and it is in these 
respects that the older countries have the advantage of 
new settlements. But, as experience has amply shown, 
improvements in the methods and machinery of produc- 
tion and exchange have no tendency to improve the con- 
dition of the lowest class, and w t ges are lower and 
poverty deeper where exchange goes on at the minimum 
of cost and production has the benefit of the best ma- 
chinery. The advantage but adds to rent. 

But suppose co-operation between producers and land 
owners? That would simply amount to the payment of 
rent in kind — the same system under which much land 
is rented in California and the Southern States where 
the land owner gets a share of the crop. Save as a mat- 
ter of computation it in no wise differs from the system 
which prevails in England of a fixed money rent. Call 
it co-operation, if you choose, the terms of the co- 
operation would still be fixed by the laws which de- 
termine rent, and wherever land was monopolized, 
increase in productive power would simply give the own- 
ers of the land the power to demand a larger share. 

That co-operation is by so many believed to be the 
solution of the “labor question” arises from the fact that, 
where it has been tried, it has in many instances im- 
proved perceptibly the condition of those immediately 
engaged in it. But this is due simply to the fact that 
these cases are isolated. Just as industry, economy, or 



Chap, I. INSUFFICIENCY 07 PROPOSED REMEDIES 319 

skill may improve the condition of the workmen who 
possess them in superior degree, but cease to have this 
effect when improvement in these respects becomes gen- 
eral, so a special advantage in procuring supplies, or a 
special efficiency given to some labor, may secure advan- 
tages which would be lost as soon as these improvements 
became so general as to affect the general relations of 
distribution. And the truth is, that, save possibly in 
educational effects, co-operation can produce no general 
results that competition will not produce. Just as the 
cheap-for-cash stores have a similar effect upon prices 
as the co-operative supply associations, so dtes competi- 
tion in production lead to a similar adjustment of forces 
and division of proceeds as would co-operative produc- 
tion. That increasing productive power does not add 
to the reward of labor, is not because of competition, 
but because competition is one-sided. Land, without 
which there can be no production, is monopolized, and 
the competition, of producers for its use forces wages to 
a minimum and gives all the advantage of increasing 
productive power to land owners, in higher rents and 
increased land values. Destroy this monopoly, and com- 
petition could exist only to accomplish the end which 
co-operation aims at — to give to each what he fairly 
earns. Destroy this monopoly, and industry must be- 
come the co-operation of equals. 

V. — From governmental Direction and Interference 

The limits within which I wish to keep this book will 
not permit an examination in detail of the Methods in 
which it is proposed to mitigate or extirpate poverty by 
governmental regulation of industry and accumulation, 
and which in their most thorough-going form are called 
socialistic. Nor is it necessary, for the same defects 
attach to them all. These are the substitution of gov- 


Al AO . II !ND 



320 


THE REMEDY 


Book VI. 


ernmental direction for the play of individual action, and 
the attempt to secure by restriction what can better be 
secured by freedom. As to the truths that are involved 
in socialistic ideas I shall have something to say here- 
after; but it is evident that whatever savors of regulation 
and restriction is in itself bad, and should not be re- 
sorted to if any other mode of accomplishing the same 
end presents itself. For instance, to take one of the 
simplest and mildest of the class of measures I refer to 
— a graduated tax on incomes. The object at which it 
aims, the reduction or prevention of immense concen- 
trations of firealth, is good ; but this means involves the 
employment of a large number of officials clothed with 
inquisitorial powers; temptations to bribery, and per- 
jury, and all other means of evasion, which beget a 
demoralization of opinion, and put a premium upon un- 
scrupulousness and a tax upon conscience; and, finally, 
just in proportion as the tax accomplishes its effect, a 
lessening in the incentive to the accumulation of wealth, 
which is one of the strong forces of industrial progress. 
While, if the elaborate schemes for regulating every- 
thing and finding a place for everybody could be carried 
out, we should have a state of society resembling that of 
ancient Peru, or that which, to their eternal honor, the 
Jesuits instituted and so long maintained in Paraguay* 
I will not say that such a state as this is not a better 
social state than that to which we now seem to be tend- 
ing, for in ancient Peru, though production went on 
under the greatest disadvantages, from the “want of iron 
and the domestic animals, yet there was no such thing as 
want, and the people went to their work with songs. 
But this it is unnecessary to discuss. Socialism in any- 
thing approaching such a form, modern society cannot 
successfully attempt. The only force that has ever 
proved competent for it — a strong and definite religious 
faith — is wanting and is daily growing less. We have 



Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 321 

passed out of the socialism of the tribal state, and can- 
not re-enter it again except by a retrogression that 
would involve anarchy and perhaps barbarism. Our 
governments, as is already plainly evident, would break 
down in the attempt. Instead of an intelligent award of 
duties and earnings, we should have a Roman distribu- 
tion of Sicilian corn, and the demagogue would soon 
become the Imperator. 

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. So- 
ciety is an organism, not a machine. It can live only 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. All that is necessary to social 
regeneration is included in the motto of those Russian 
patriots sometime^ called Nihilists — “Land and Lib- 
ertvl” 

V 

VI. — From a More General Distribution of Land 

There is a rapidly growing feeling that the tenure of 
land is in some manner connected with the social dis- 
tress which manifests itself in the most progressive 
countries; but this feeling as yet mostly shows itself in 
propositions which look to the more general division of 
landed property — in England, free trade in land, tenant 
right, or the equal partition of landed estates among 
heirs; in the iTnited States, restrictions upon the size of 
individual holdings. It has been also proposed in Eng- 
land that the state should buy out the landlords, and in 
the United States that grants of money should be made 
to enable the settlements of colonies upon public lands. 
The former proposition let us pass for the present; the 
latter, so far as its distinctive feature is concerned, falls 
into the category of the measures considered in the Iasi 



322 


THE REMEDY 


section. It needs no argument to show to what abuses 
and demoralization grants of public money or credit 
would lead. 

How what the English writers call “free trade in land” 
— the removal of duties and restrictions upon convey- 
ances — could facilitate the division of ownership in agri- 
cultural land, I cannot see, though it might to some 
extent have that effect as regards town property. The 
removal of restrictions upon buying and selling would 
merely permit the ownership of land to assume more 
quickly the form to which it tends. Now, that the tend- 
ency in Great Britain is to concentration is shown by the 
fact that, in spite of the difficulties interposed by the 
cost of transfer, land ownership has been and is steadily 
concentrating there, and that this tendency is a general 
one is shown by the fact that the same process of con- 
centration is observable in the United States. I say 
this unhesitatingly in regard to the United States, al- 
though statistical tables are sometimes quoted to show 
a different tendency. But how, in such a country as the 
United States, the ownership of land may be really con- 
centrating, while census tables show rather a diminution 
in the average size of holdings, is readily seen. As land 
is brought into use, and, with the growth of population, 
passes from a lower to a higher or intenser use, the size 
of holdings tends to diminish. A small stock range 
would be a large farm, a small farm would be a large 
orchard, vineyard, nursery, or vegetable, garden, and a 
patch of land which would be small even for these pur- 
poses would make a very large city property. Thus, 
the growth of population, which puts lands to higher or 
intenser uses, tends naturally to reduce the size of hold- 
ings, by a process very marked in new countries; but 
with this may go on a tendency to the concentration of 
land ownership, which, though not revealed by tables 
which show the average size of holdings, is just as clearly 



Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 


323 


seen. Average holdings of one acre in a city may show 
a much greater concentration of land ownership than 
average holdings of 640 acres in a newly settled town- 
ship. I refer to this to show the fallacy in the deductions 
drawn from the tables which are frequently paraded in 
the United States to show that land monopoly is an evil 
that will cure itself. On the contrary, it is obvious that 
the proportion of land owners to the whole population 
is constantly decreasing. 

And that there is in the United States, as there is in 

Great Britain, a strong tendency to the concentration of 

land ownership in agriculture is clearly seen. As, in 

England and Ireland, small farms are being thrown into 

larger ones, so in New England, according to the reports 

of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the 

size of farms increasing. This tendency is even more 

clearlv noticeable in the newer States and Territories. 
» * 

Only a few years ago a farm of 320 acres would, under 
the system of agriculture prevailing in the northern 
parts of the Union, have anywhere been a large one, 
probably as much as one man could cultivate to advan- 
tage. In California now there are farms (not cattle 
ranges) of five, ten, twenty, forty and sixty thousand 
acres, while the model farm of Dakota embraces 100,000 
acres. The reason is obvious. It is the application of 
machinery to agriculture and the general tendency to 
production on a large scale. The same tendency which 
substitutes the factory, with its army of operatives, for 
many independent hand-loom weavers, is beginning to 
exhibit itself in agriculture. 

Now, the existence of this tendency shows two things: 
first, that any measures which merely permit or facilitate 
the greater subdivision of land would be inoperative; 
and, second, that any measures which would compel it 
would have a tendency to check production. If land in 
large bodies can be cultivated more cheaply than land in 



324 


THE REMEDY 


Book VI. 


small bodies, to restrict ownership to small bodies will 
reduce the aggregate production of wealth, and, in so 
far as such restrictions are imposed and take effect, will 
they tend to diminish the general productiveness of labor 
and capital. 

The effort, therefore, to secure a fairer division of 
wealth by such restrictions is liable to the drawback of 
lessening the amount to be divided. The device is like 
that of the monkey, who, dividing the cheese between 
the cats, equalized matters by taking a bite off the big- 
gest piece. 

But there is not merely this objection, which weighs 
against every proposition to restrict the ownership of 
land, with a force that increases with the efficiency of 
the proposed measure. There is the further and fatal 
objection that restriction will not secure the end which 
is alone worth aiming at — a fair division of the produce. 
It will not reduce rent, and therefore cannot increase 
wages. It may make the comfortable classes larger, but 
will not improve the condition of those in the lowest 
class. 

If what is known as the Ulster tenant right were ex- 
tended to the whole of Great Britain, it would be but to 
carve out of the estate of the landlord an estate for the 
tenant. The condition of the laborer would not be a 
whit improved. If landlords were prohibited from ask- 
ing an increase of rent from their tenants and from 
ejecting a tenant so long as the fixed rent was paid, the 
body of the producers would gain nothing. Economic 
rent would still increase, and would still steadily lessen 
the proportion of the produce going to labor and capital. 
The only difference would be that the tenants of the first 
landlords, who would become landlords in their turn, 
would profit by the increase. 

If by a restriction upon the amount of land any one 
individual might hold, by the regulation of devises and 



Clap. I. 


INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 


329 


successions, or by cumulative taxation, the few thousand 
land holders of Great Britain should be increased by two 
or three million, these two or three million people would 
be gainers. But the rest of the population would gain 
nothing. They would have no more share in the ad- 
vantages of land ownership than before. And if, what 
is manifestly impossible, a fair distribution of the land 
were made among the whole population, giving to each 
his equal share, and laws enacted which would interpose 
a barrier to the tendency to concentration by forbidding 
the holding by any one of more than the fixed amount, 
what would become of the increase of population? 

Just what may be accomplished by the greater division 
of land may be seen in those districts of France and 
Belgium where minute division prevails. That such a 
division of land is on the whole much better, and that it 
gives a far more stable basis to the state than that which 
prevails in England, there can be no doubt. But that it 
does not make wages any higher or improve the condi- 
tion of the class who have only their labor, is equally 
clear. These French and Belgian peasants practice a 
rigid economy unknown to any of the English-speaking 
peoples. And if such striking symptoms of the poverty 
and distress of the lowest class are not apparent as on 
the other side of the channel, it must, I think, be at- 
tributed, not only to this fact, but to anbther fact, which 
accounts for the continuance of the minute division of 
the land — that material progress has not been so rapid. 

Neither has population increased with the same rapid- 
ity (on the contrary it has been nearly stationary), nor 
have improvements in the modes of production been so 
great. Nevertheless, M. de Laveleye, all of whose pre- 
possessions are in favor of small holdings, and whose 
testimony will therefore carry more weight than that of 
English observers, who may be supposed to harbor a 
prejudice for the system of their own country, states in 



126 


THE REMEDY 


Book VI 


his paper on the Land Systems of Belgium and Holland 
printed by the Cobden Club, that the condition of the 
laborer is worse under this system of the minute division 
of land than it is in England; while the tenant farmers 
— for tenancy largely prevails even where the morcelle- 
ment is greatest — are rack-rented with a mercilessness 
unknown in England, and even in Ireland, and the 
franchise “so far from raising them in the social scale, 
is but a source of mortification and humiliation to them, 
for they are forced to vote according to the dictates of 
the landlord instead of following the dictates of their 
own inclination and convictions.” 

But while the subdivision of land can thus do nothing 
to cure the evils of land monopoly, while it can have no 
effect in raising wages or in improving the condition of 
the lowest classes, its tendency is to prevent the adop- 
tion or even advocacy of more thorough-going measures, 
and to strengthen the existing unjust system by interest- 
ing a larger number in its maintenance. M. de Laveleye, 
in concluding the paper from which I have quoted, 
urges the greater division of land as the surest means of 
securing the great land owners of England from some- 
thing far more radical. Although in the districts where 
land is so minutely divided, the condition of the laborer 
is, he states, the worst in Europe and the renting farmer 
is much more ground down by his landlord than the 
Irish tenant, yet “feelings hostile to social order,” M. de 
Laveleye goes on to say, “do not manifest themselves,” 
because — 

"The tenant, although ground down by the constant rise of 
rents, lives among his equals, peasants like himself who have 
tenants whom they use just as the large land holder does his. 
His father, his brother, perhaps the man himself, possesses 
something like an acre of land, which he lets at as high a rent 
as he can get. In the public house peasant proprietors will boast 
of the high rents they get for their lands, just as they might 



Chap. /• 


INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 


327 


boast of having sold their pigs or potatoes veiy dear. Letting 
at as high a rent as possible comes thus to seem to him to be 
quite a matter of course, and he never dreams of finding fault 
with either the land owners as a class or with property in land. 
His mind is not likely :o dwell on the notion of a caste of 
domineering landlords, of ‘bloodthirsty tyrants/ fattening on 
the sweat of impoverished tenants and domg no work them- 
selves; for those who drive the hardest bargains are not the 
great land owners but his own fellows. Thus, the distribution 
of a number of small properties among the peasantry forms a 
kind of rampart and safeguard for the holders of large estates, 
and peasant property may without exaggeration be called the 
lightning conductor that averts from society dangers which 
might otherwise lead to violent catastrophes. 

“The concentration of land in large estates among a small 
number of families is a sort of provocation of leveling legisla- 
tion. The position of England, so enviable in many respects, 
seems to me to be in this respect full of danger for the future.” 

To me, for the very same reason that M. de Laveleye 
expresses, the position of England seems full of hope. 

Let us abandon all attempt to get rid of the evils of 
land monopoly by restricting land ownership. An equal 
distribution of land is impossible, and anything short of 
that would be only a mitigation, not a cure, and a mitiga- 
tion that would prevent the adoption of a cure. Nor is 
any remedy worth considering that does not fall in with 
the natural direction of social development, and swim, 
so to speak, with the current of the times. That con- 
centration is the order of development there can be no 
mistaking — the concentration of people in large cities, 
the concentration of handicrafts in large factories, the 
concentration of transportation by railroad and steam- 
ship lines, and of agricultural operations in large fields. 
The most trivial businesses are being concentrated in the 
same way — errands are rim and carpet sacks are carried 
by corporations. All the currents of the time run to 
concentration. To resist it successfully we must throt- 
tle steam and discharge electricity from human service 



CHAPTER II 


THE TRUE REMEDY 

We have traced the unequal distribution of wealth 
which is the curse and menace of modem civilization to 
the institution of private property in land. We have 
seen that so long as this institution exists no increase in 
productive power can permanently benefit the masses; 
but, on the contrary, must tend still further to depress 
their condition. We have examined all the remedies* 
short of the abolition of private property in land, which 
are currently relied on or proposed for the relief of pov- 
erty and the better distribution of wealth, and have 
found them all inefficacious or impracticable. 

There is but one way to remove an evil — and that is, 
to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth in- 
creases, 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 ex- 
tirpate 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. 

This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal 
distribution of wealth apparent in modem civilization, 
and for all the evils which flow from it: 

We must make land common property. 

We have reached this conclusion by an examination in 
which every step has been proved and secured. In the 

328 



Chap . II • 


THE TRUE REMEDY 


329 


chain of reasoning no link is wanting and no link is 
weak. Deduction and induction have brought us to the 
same truth — that the unequal ownership of land neces- 
sitates the unequal distribution of wealth. And as in 
the nature of things unequal ownership of land is in- 
separable from the recognition of individual property in 
land, it necessarily follows that the only remedy for the 
unjust distribution of wealth is in making land common 
property. 

But this is a truth which, in the present state of so- 
ciety, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must 
fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, there- 
fore, to meet the objections of those who, even when 
driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be 
practically applied. 

In doing this we shall bring our previous reasoning to 
a new and crucial test. Just as we try addition by sub- 
traction and multiplication by division, so may we, by 
testing the sufficiency of the remedy, prove the correct- 
ness of our conclusions as to the cause of the evil. 

The laws of the universe are harmonious. And if the 
Temedy to which we have been led is the true one, it 
must be consistent with justice; it must be practicable 
of application; it must accord with the tendencies of 
social development and must harmonize with other 
reforms. 

All this I propose to show. I propose to meet all 
practical objections that can be raised, and to show that 
this simple measure is not only easy of application; but 
that it is a sufficient remedy for all the evils which, as 
modern progress goes on, arise from the greater and 
greater inequality in the distribution of wealth — that it 
will substitute equality for inequality, plenty for want, 
justice for injustice, social strength for social weakness, 
and will open the way to grander and nobler advances of 
‘civilization. 





THE REMEDY 


Book Vi. 


I thus propose to show that the laws of the universe- do 
not deny the natural aspirations of the human heart; 
that the progress of society might be, and, if it is to con- 
tinue, must be, toward equality, not toward inequality; 
and that the economic harmonies prove the truth per- 
ceived by the Stoic Emperor — 

“We are made for co-operation — like feet, like hands, 
like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.” 



BOOK VII 

JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 

CHAPTER 1. — INJUSTICE OP PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 

CHAPTER II. — ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS THE ULTIMATE 

RESULT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 

CHAPTER m.— CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION 
CHAPTER IV.— PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 
CHAPTER V.— PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATTO 



Justice is a relation of congruity which really subsists between 
two things. This relation is always the same, whatever being 
considers it, whether it be God, or an angel, or lastly a man.— 
Montesquieu. 



CHAPTER I 


THE INJUSTICE OP PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 

When it is proposed to abolish private property in land 
the first question that will arise is that of justice. 
Though often warped by habit, superstition, and self- 
ishness into the most distorted forms, the sentiment of 
justice is yet fundamental to the human mind, and what- 
ever dispute arouses the passions of men, the conflict 
is sure to rage, not so much as to the question “Is it 
wise?” as to the question “Is it right?” 

This tendency of popular discussions to take an ethical 
form has a cause. It springs from a law of the human 
mind; it rests upon a vague and instinctive recognition 
of what is probably the deepest truth we can grasp. 
That alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring 
which is right. In the narrow scale of individual actions 
and individual life this truth may be often obscured, but 
in the wider field of national life it everywhere stands 
out. 

I bow to this arbitrament, and accept this test. If 
our inquiry into the cause which makes low wages and 
pauperism the accompaniments of material progress has 
led us to a correct conclusion, it will bear translation 
from terms of political economy into terms of ethics, and 
as the source of social evils show a wrong. If it will not 
do this, it is disproved. If it will do this, it is proved 
by the final decision. If private property in land be 
just, then is the remedy I propose a false one; if, on the 
contrary, private property in land be unjust, then is this 
remedy the true one. 


333 



334 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VII 


What constitutes the rightful basis of property? What 
is it that enables a man justly to say of a thing, “It is 
mine?” From what springs the sentiment which ac- 
knowledges 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? Is it not this individual right, which 
springs from and is testified to by the natural facts of in- 
dividual organization — the fact that each particular pair 
of hands obey a particular brain and are related to a 
particular stomach; the fact that each man is a definite, 
coherent, independent whole — which alone justifies indi- 
vidual ownership? As a man belongs to himself, so hip 
labor when put in concrete form belongs to him. 

And for this reason, that which a man makes or pro- 
duces is his own, as against all the world — to enjoy or to 
destroy, to use, to exchange, or to give. No one else 
can rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it in- 
volves no wrong to any one else. Thus there is to 
everything produced by human exertion a clear and in- 
disputable title to exclusive possession and enjoyment 
which is perfectly consistent with justice, as it descends 
from the original producer, in whom it vested by natural 
law. The pen with which I am writing is justly mine. 
No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it, for 
in me is the title of the producers who made it. It has 
become mine, because transferred to me by the stationer, 
to whom it was transferred by the importer, who ob- 
tained the exclusive right to it by transfer from the 
manufacturer, in whom, by the same process of pur- 
chase, vested the rights of those who dug the material 
from the ground and shaped it into a pen. Thus, my 
exclusive right of ownership in the pen springs from the 
natural right of the individual to the use of his own 
faculties. 

Now, this is not only the original source from which 



Chaf. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 335 


all ideas of exclusive ownership arise — as is evident from 
the natural tendency of the mind to revert to it when 
the idea of exclusive ownership is questioned, and the 
manner in which social relations develop — but it is nec- 
essarily the only source. 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 (2d) because the recognition of any other title is 
inconsistent with and destructive of this. 

For (1st) what other right exists from which the right 
to the exclusive possession of anything can be derived, 
save the right of a man to himself? With what other 
power is man by nature clothed, save the power of exert- 
ing his own faculties? How can he in any other way act 
upon or affect material things or other men? Paralyze 
the motor nerves, and your man has no more external 
influence or power than a log or stone. From what else, 
then, can the right of possessing and controlling things 
be derived? If it spring not from man himself, from 
what can it spring? 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 i ' 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 water except by swim- 



336 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VII 


ming; 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. 

2d. This right of ownership "that springs from labor 
excludes the possibility of any other right of ownership. 
If a man be rightfully entitled to the produce of his 
labor, then no one can be rightfully entitled to the own- 
ership of anything which is not the produce of his labor, 
or the labor of some one else from whom the right has 
passed to him. If production give to the producer the 
right to exclusive possession and enjoyment, there can 
rightfully be no exclusive possession and enjoyment of 
anything not the production of labor, and the recogni- 
tion of private property in land is a wrong. For the 
right to the produce of labor cannot be enjoyed without 
the right to the free use of the opportunities offered by 
nature, and to admit the right of property in these is 
to deny the right of property in the produce of labor. 
When non-producers can claim as rent a portion of the 
wealth created by producers, the right of the producers 
*o the fruits of their labor is to that extent denied. 

There is nn pscape from this position. To affirm that 


M I 


*. ft it iKir*. ca^uAni 



Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 337 

8 man can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in his 
own labor when embodied in material things, is to deny 
that any one can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in 
land. To affirm the rightfulness of property in land, is 
to affirm a claim which has no warrant in nature, as 
against a claim founded in the organization of man and 
the laws of the material universe. 

What most prevents the realization of the injustice of 
private property in land is the habit of including all the 
things that are made the subject of ownership in one 
category, as property, or, if any distinction is made, 
drawing the line, according to the unphilosophical dis- 
tinction of the lawyers, between personal property and 
real estate, or things movable and things immovable. 
The real and natural distinction is between things which 
are the produce of labor and Jbhings which are the gratu- 
itous offerings of nature; or, to adopt the terms of politi- 
cal economy, between wealth and land. 

These two classes of things are in essence and relations 
widely different, and to class them together as property 
is to confuse all thought when we come to consider the 
justice or the injustice, the right or the wrong of prop- 
erty. 

A house and the lot on which it stands are alike prop- 
erty, as being the subject of ownership, and are alike 
classed by the lawyers as real estate. Yet in nature and 
relations they differ widely. The one is produced by 
human labor, and belongs to the class in political econ- 
omy styled wealth. The other is a part of nature, and 
belongs to the class in political economy styled land. 

The essential character of the one class of things is 
that they embody labor, are brought into being by 
human exertion, their existence or non-existence, theii 
increase or diminution, depending on man. The essential 
character of the other class of things is that they do not 
embody labor, and exist irrespective of human exertion 



338 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VI i. 


and irrespective of man; they are the field or environ- 
ment in which man finds himself; the storehouse from 
which his needs must be supplied, the raw material upon 
which and the forces with which alone his labor can act. 

The moment this distinction is realized, that moment 
is it seen that the sanction which natural justice gives 
to one species of property is denied to the other; that 
the rightfulness which attaches to individual property 
in the produce of labor implies the wrongfulness of in- 
dividual property in land; that, whereas the recognition 
of the one places all men upon equal terms, securing to 
each the due reward of his labor, the recognition of the 
other is the denial of the equal rights of men, permitting 
those who do not labor to take the natural reward of 
those who do. 

Whatever may be said for the institution of private 
property in land, it is therefore plain that it cannot be 
defended on the score of justice. 

The equal right of all men to the use of land is as 
clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a 
right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we 
cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this 
world and others no right. 

If we are all here by the equal permission of the Crea- 
tor, 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 


♦ In saying that private property in land can, in the ultimate 
analysis, be justified only on the theory that some men have a 
better right to existence than others, I am stating only what 
the advocates of the existing system have themselves perceived. 
What gave to Malthus his popularity among the ruling classes 
— what caused his illogical book to be received as a new revela- 
tion, induced sovereigns to send him decorations, and the mean- 
est rich man in England to propose to give him a living, was 
the fact that he furnished a plausible reason for the assumption 
that some have a better right to existence than others — an* 


Chap* 1. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 339 


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 owner- 
ship 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 de- 
termine. Let the parchments be ever so many, or pos- 
session 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. 
Though his titles have been acquiesced in by generation 
after generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of 
Westminster the poorest child that is born in London 


assumption which is necessary for the justification of private prop- 
erty in land, and which Malthus clearly states in the declara- 
tion that the tendency of population is constantly to bring into 
the world human beings for whom nature refuses to provide, 
and who consequently “have not the slightest right to any share 
in the existing store of the necessaries of life;” whom she tells 
as interlopers to begone, “and does not hesitate to extort by 
force obedience to her mandates,” employing for that purpose 
“hunger and pestilence, war and crime, mortality and neglect 
of infantine life, prostitution and syphilis.” And to-day this 
Malthusian doctrine is the ultimate defense upon which those 
who justify private property in land fall back. In no other way 
can it be logically defended. 



340 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Booh VII. 


to-day has as much right as has his eldest son.* Though 
the sovereign people of the State of New York consent 
to the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest in- 
fant that comes wailing into the world in the squalidest 
room of the most miserable tenement house, becomes at 
that moment seized of an equal right with the million- 
aires. And it is robbed if the right is denied. 

Our previous conclusions, irresistible in themselves, 
thus stand approved by the highest and final test. 
Translated from terms of political economy into terms of 
ethics they show a wrong as the source of the evils which 
increase as material progress goes on. 

The masses of men, who in the midst of abundance 
suffer want; who, clothed with political freedom, are 
condemned to the wages of slavery ; to whose toil labor- 
saving inventions bring no relief, but rather seem to 
rob them of a privilege, instinctively feel that “there is 
something wrong.” And they are right. 

The wide-spreading social evils which everywhere op- 
press men amid an advancing civilization spring from a 
great primary wrong — the appropriation, as the exclusive 
property of some men, of the land on which and from 
which all must live. From this fundamental injustice 
flow all the injustices which distort and endanger modern 


♦This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and 
enjoyment of land is so apparent that it has been recognized 
by men wherever force or habit has not blunted first percep- 
tions. To give but one instance: The white settlers of New 
Zealand found themselves unable to get from the Maoris what 
the latter considered a complete title to land, because, although 
a whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would still 
claim with every new child bora among them an additional 
payment on the ground that they had parted with only their own 
rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. The govern- 
ment was obliged to step in and settle the matter by buying 
land for a tribal annuity, in which every child that is born 
acquires a share. 



Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 341 


development, which condemn the producer of wealth to 
poverty and pamper the non-producer in luxury, which 
rear the tenement house with the palace, plant the 
brothel behind the church, and compel us to build pris- 
ons as we open new schools. 

There is nothing strange or inexplicable in the phe- 
nomena 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 de- 
velopment 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 pro- 
vides for all men. 

The recognition of individual proprietorship of land is 
the denial of the natural rights of other individuals — it 
is a wrong which must show itself in the inequitable di- 
vision of wealth. For as labor cannot produce without 
the use of land, the denial, of the equal right to the use 
of land is necessarily the denial of the right of labor to 
its own produce. If one man can command the land 
upon which others must labor, he can appropriate the 
produce of their labor as the price of his permission to 
labor. The fundamental law of nature, that her enjoy- 
ment by man shall be consequent upon his exertion, is 
thus violated. The one receives without producing; the 
others produce without receiving. The one is unjustly 



342 


JUSTICE OF THE BEMEDT 


Book VII, 


enriched; the others are robbed. To this fundamental 
wrong we have traced the unjust distribution of wealth 
which is separating modern society into the very rich 
and the very poor. It is the continuous increase of rent 
— the price that labor is compelled to pay for the use of 
land, which strips the many of the wealth they justly 
earn, to pile it up in the hands of the few, who do noth- 
ing to earn it. 

Why should they who suffer from this injustice hesi- 
tate for one moment to sweep it away? Who are the 
land holders that they should thus be permitted to reap 
where they have not sown? 

Consider for a moment the utter absurdity of the 
titles by which we permit to be gravely passed from 
John Doe to Richard Roe the right exclusively to pos- 
sess the earth, giving absolute dominion as against aP 
others. In California our land titles go back to tht 
Supreme Government of Mexico, who took from the 
Spanish King, who took from the Pope, when he by a 
stroke of the pen divided lands yet to be discovered be- 
tween the Spanish or Portuguese — or if you please they 
rest upon conquest. In the Eastern States they go back 
to treaties with Indians and grants from English Kings; 
in Louisiana to the Government of France; in Florida 
to the Government of Spain; while in England they go 
back to the Norman conquerors. Everywhere, not to 
a right which obliges, but to a force which compels. 
And when a title rests but on force, no complaint can 
be made when force annuls it. 'Whenever the people, 
having the power, choose to annul those titles, no ob- 
jection can be made in the name of justice. There have 
existed men who had the power to hold or to give ex- 
clusive possession of portions of the earth’s surface, but 
when and where did there exist the human being who 
had the right? 

The right to exclusive ownership of anything of human 



Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 343 


production is clear. No matter how many the hands 
through which it has passed, there was, at the begin- 
ning of the line, human labor — some one who, having 
procured or produced it by his exertions, had to it a clear 
title as against all the rest of mankind, and which could 
justly pass from one to another by sale or gift. But 
at the end of what string of conveyances or grants can 
be shown or supposed a like title to any part of the ma- 
terial universe? To improvements, such an original title 
can be shown; but it is a title only to the improvements, 
and not to the land itself. If I clear a forest, drain a 
swamp, or fill a morass, all I can justly claim is the 
value given by these exertions. They give me no right to 
the land itself, no claim other than to my equal share 
with every other member of the .community in the value 
which is added to it by the growth of the community. 

But it will be sai 
healthier life of the frontiers, where the land had been 
divid ed among military settlers or the primitive usage? 

* Latifundia perdidere Italiam. — Pliny . 



374 


JUSTICE or THE REMEDY 


Book VII 


longer survived. But the latifundia, which had devoured 
the strength of Italy, crept steadily outward, carving 
the surface of Sicily, Africa, Spain, and Gaul into great 
estates cultivated by slaves or tenants. .The hardy 
virtues born of personal independence died out, an 
exhaustive agriculture impoverished the soil, and wild 
beasts supplanted men, until at length, with a strength 
nurtured in equality, the barbarians broke through; 
Rome perished; and of a civilization once so proud 
nothing was left but ruins. 

Thus came to pass that marvelous thing, which at 
the time of Rome’s grandeur would have seemed as 
impossible as it seems now to us that the Comanches 
or Flatheads should conquer the United States, or the 
Laplanders should desolate Europe. The fundamental 
cause is to be sought in the tenure of land. On the one 
hand, the denial of the common right to land had re- 
sulted in decay; on the other, equality gave strength. 

“Freedom,” says M. de Laveleye (“Primitive Prop- 
erty,” p. 116 ), “freedom, and, as a consequence, the 
ownership of an undivided share of the common prop- 
erty, to which the head of every family in the clan was 
equally entitled, were in the German village essential 
rights. This system of absolute equality impressed a 
remarkable character on the individual, which explains 
how small bands of barbarians made themselves masters 
of the Roman Empire, in spite of its skillful administra- 
tion, its perfect centralization and its civil law, which 
has preserved the name of written reason.” 

It was, on the other hand, that the heart was eaten 
out of that great empire. “Rome perished,” says Pro- 
fessor Seeley, “from the failure of the crop of men.” 

In his lectures on the “History of Civilization in 
Europe,” and more elaborately in his lectures on the 
“History of Civilization in France,” M. Guizot has 
vividly described the chaos that in Europe succeeded 



Chap. IV. 


PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 


37S 


the fall of the Roman Empire — a chaos which, as he 
says, “carried all things in its bosom,” and from which 
the structure of modem society was slowly evolved. 
It is a picture which cannot be compressed into a few 
lines, but suffice it to say that the result of this infu- 
sion of rude but vigorous life into Romanized society 
was a disorganization of the German, as well as the 
Roman structures — both a blending and an admixture 
of the idea of common rights in the soil with the idea of 
exclusive property, substantially as occurred in those 
provinces of the Eastern Empire subsequently overrun 
by the Turks. The feudal system, which was so readily 
adopted and so widely spread, was the result of such a 
blending; but underneath, and side by side with the 
feudal system, a more primitive organization, based on 
the common rights of the cultivators, took root or 
revived, and has left its traces all over Europe. This 
primitive organization, which allots equal shares of 
cultivated ground and the common use of uncultivated 
ground, and which existed in Ancient Italy as in Saxon 
England, has maintained itself beneath absolutism and 
serfdom in Russia, beneath Moslem oppression in Ser- 
via, and in India has been swept, but not entirely 
destroyed, by wave after wave of conquest, and cen- 
tury after century of oppression. 

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 



376 


JUSTICE OF THE EEMEDY 


Book VII. 


right to land. A fief was essentially a trust, and to 
enjoyment was annexed obligation. The sovereign, the- 
oretically 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 in- 
volved 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. 

In the feudal scheme the crown lands supported pub- 
lic expenditures which are now included in the civil 
list; the church lands defrayed the cost of public wor- 
ship and instruction, of the care of the sick and of the 
destitute, and maintained a class of men who were sup- 
posed to be, and no doubt to a great extent were, de- 
voting their lives to purposes of public good; while the 
military tenures provided for the public defense. In 
the obligation under which the military tenant lay to 
bring into the field such and such a force when need 
should be, as well as in the aid he had to give when the 
sovereign’s eldest son was knighted, his daughter mar- 
ried, or the sovereign himself made prisoner of war, was 
a rude and inefficient recognition, but still unquestion- 
ably a recognition, of the fact, obvious to the natural 
perceptions of all men, that land is not individual but 
common property. • 

Nor yet was the control of the possessor of land 
allowed to extend beyond his own life. Although the 
principle of inheritance soon displaced the principle of 
selection, as where power is concentrated it always must, 
yet feudal law required that there should always be 
some representative of a fief, capable of discharging 
the duties as well as of receiving the benefits which were 
annexed to a landed estate, and who this should be was 
not left to individual caprice, but rigorously determined 



Chap, IV. 


PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 


377 


in advance. Hence wardship and other feudal incidents. 
The system of primogeniture and its outgrowth, the 
entail, were in their beginnings not the absurdities they 
afterward became. 

The basis of the feudal system was the absolute own- 
ership of the land, an idea which the barbarians readily 
acquired in the midst of a conquered population to whom 
it was familiar; but over this, feudalism threw a 
superior* right, and the process of infeudation consisted 
of bringing individual dominion into subordination to 
the superior dominion, which represented the larger 
community or nation. Its units were the land owners, 
v/ho by virtue of their ownership were absolute lords 
on their own domains, and who there performed the 
office of protection which M. Taine has so graphically 
described, though perhaps with too strong a coloring, 
in the opening chapter of his “Ancient Regime.” The 
work of the feudal system was to bind together these 
jnits into nations, and to subordinate the powers and 
rights of the individual lords of land to the powers and 
nghts of collective society, as represented by the 
suzerain or king. 

Thus the feudal system, in its rise and development, 
was a triumph of the idea of the common right to land, 
changing an absolute tenure into a conditional tenure, 
and imposing peculiar obligations in return for the 
privilege of receiving rent. And during the same time, 
the power of land ownership was trenched, as it were, 
from below, the tenancy at will of the cultivators of the 
soil very generally hardening into tenancy by custom, 
and the rent which the lord could exact from the peasant 
becoming fixed and certain. 

And amid the feudal system there remained, or there 
grew up, communities of cultivators, more or less sub- 
ject to feudaf dues, who tilled the soil as common prop- 
erty; and although the lords, where and when they had 



378 


JUSTICE OF THE BEMEDY 


Book VII. 


the power, claimed pretty much all they thought worth 
claiming, yet the idea of common right was strong 
enough to attach itself by custom to a considerable part 
of the land. The commons, in feudal ages, must have 
embraced a very large proportion of the area of most 
European countries. For in France (although the ap- 
propriations of these lands by the aristocracy, occa- 
sionally checked and rescinded by royal edict, had gone 
on for some centuries prior to the Revolution, and dur- 
ing the Revolution and First Empire large distributions 
and sales were made), the common or communal lands 
still amount, according to M. de Laveleye, to 4,000,000 
hectares, or 9,884,400 acres. The extent of the ‘common 
land of England during the feudal ages may be inferred 
from the fact that though inclosures by the landed aris- 
tocracy began during the reign of Henry VII, it is stated 
that no less than 7,660,413 acres of common lands 
were inclosed under Acts passed between 1710 and 1843, 
of which 600,000 acres have been inclosed since 1845; 
and it is estimated that there still remain 2,000,000 acres 
of common in England, though of course the most worth- 
less parts of the soil. 

In addition to these common lands, there existed in 
France, until the Revolution, and in parts of Spain, 
until our own day, a custom having all the force of 
law, by which cultivated lands, after the harvest had 
been gathered, became common for purposes of pas- 
turage or travel, until the time had come to use the 
ground again; and in some places a custom by which 
any one had the right to go upon the ground which its 
owner neglected to cultivate, and there to sow and reap 
a crop in security. And if he chose to use manure for 
toe first crop, he acquired the right to sow and gather 
a second crop without let or hindrance from the owner. 

It is not merely the Swiss allmend, the Ditmarsh 
mark, the Servian and Russian village communities; 



Chap . IV. 


PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 


379 


not merely the long ridges which on English ground, now 
the exclusive property of individuals, still enable the 
antiquarian to trace out the great fields in ancient time 
devoted to the triennial rotation of crops, and in which 
each villager was annually allotted his equal plot; not 
merely the documentary evidence which careful stu- 
dents have within late years drawn from old records; 
but the very institutions under which modern civiliza- 
tion has developed, which prove the universality and 
long persistence of the recognition of the common right 
to the use of the soil. 

There still remain in our legal systems survivals that> 
have lost their meaning, that, like the still existing, 
remains of the ancient commons of England, point to 
this. The doctrine of eminent domain, existing as well 
in Mohammedan law, which makes the sovereign the- 
oretically the only absolute owner of land, springs from 
nothing but the recognition of the sovereign as the 
representative of the collective rights of the people; 
primogeniture and entail, which still exist in England, 
and which existed in some of the American States a 
hundred years ago, are but distorted forms of what 
was once an outgrowth of the apprehension of land as 
common property. The very distinction made in legal 
terminology between real and personal property is but 
the survival of a primitive distinction between what was 
originally looked upon as common property and what 
from its nature was always considered the peculiar 
property of the individual. And the greater care and 
ceremony which are yet required for the transfer of 
land is but a survival, now meaningless and useless, of 
the more general and ceremonious consent once required 
for the transfer of rights which were looked upon, not 
as belonging to any one member, but to every member 
of a family or tribe. 

The general course of the development of modern 



380 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VI l 


civilization since the feudal period has been to the sub- 
version of these natural and primary ideas of collective 
ownership in the soil. Paradoxical as it may appear, 
the emergence of liberty from feudal bonds has been 
accompanied by a tendency in the treatment of land to 
the form of ownership which involves the enslavement 
of the working classes, and which is now beginning to 
be strongly felt all over the civilized world, in the pres- 
sure of an iron yoke, which cannot be relieved by any 
extension of mere political power or personal liberty, 
and which political economists mistake for the pres- 
sure of natural laws* and workmen for the oppressions 
of capita!. 

This is clear — that in Great Britain to-day the right 
of the people as a whole to the soil of their native coun- 
try is much less fully acknowledged than it was in feudal 
times. A much smaller proportion of the people own the 
soil, and their ownership is much more absolute. The 
commons, once so extensive and so largely contribut- 
ing to the independence and support of the lower 
classes, have, all but a small remnant of yet worthless 
land, been appropriated to individual ownership and 
inclosed; the great estates of the church, which were 
essentially common property devoted to a public pur- 
pose, have been diverted from that trust to enrich 
individuals; the dues of the military tenants have been 
shaken off, and the cost of maintaining the military 
establishment and paying the interest upon an immense 
debt accumulated by wars has been saddled upon the 
whole people, in taxes upon the necessaries and com- 
forts of life. The crown lands have mostly passed into 
private possession, and for the support of the royal 
family and all the petty princelings who marry into it, 
the British workman must pay in the price of his mug 
of beer and pipe of tobacco. The English yeoman — the 
sturdy breed who won Crecy, and Poictiers, and Agin- 



Chap . IV . 


PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 


381 


court — is as extinct as the mastodon. The Scottish clans- 
man, whose right to the soil of his native hills was then 
as undisputed as that of his chieftain, has been driven 
out to make room for the sheep ranges or deer parks 
of that chieftain’s descendant; the tribal right of the 
Irishman has been turned into a tenancy-at-will. Thirty 
thousand men have legal power to expel the whole 
population from five-sixths of the British Islands, and 
the vast majority of the British people have no right 
whatever to their native land save to walk the streets or 
trudge the roads. To them may be fittingly applied the 
words of a Tribune of the Roman People: “Men oj 
Rome” said Tiberius Gracchus — “men oj Rome , you are 
called the lords of the world , yet have no right to a 
square foot oj its soil! The wild bea&ts have their dens, 
but the soldiers oj Italy have only water and air!” 

The result has, perhaps, been more marked in Eng- 
land than anywhere else, but the tendency is observ- 
able everywhere, having gone further in England owing 
to circumstances which have developed it with greater 
rapidity. 

The reason, I take it, that with the extension of the 
idea of personal freedom has gone on an extension of 
the idea of private property in land, is that as in the 
progress of civilization the grosser forms of supremacy 
connected with land ownership were dropped, or abol- 
ished, or became less obvious, attention was diverted 
from the more insidious, but really more potential forms, 
and the land owners were easily enabled to put property 
in land on the same basis as other property. 

The growth of national power, either in the form of 
royalty or parliamentary government, stripped the great 
lords of individual power and importance, and of their 
jurisdiction and power over persons, and so repressed 
striking abuses, as the growth of Roman Imperialism 
repressed the more striking cruelties of slavery. The 



882 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VII, 


disintegration of the large feudal estates, which, until 
the tendency to concentration arising from the modern 
tendency to production upon a large scale is strongly 
felt, operated to increase the number of land owners, 
and the abolition- of the restraints by which land owners 
when population was sparser endeavored to compel 
laborers to remain on their estates also contributed to 
draw away attention from the essential injustice in- 
volved in private property in land; while the steady 
progress of legal ideas drawn from the Roman law, 
which has been the great mine and storehouse of modern 
jurisprudence, tended to level the natural distinction 
between property in land and property in other things. 
Thus, with the extension of personal liberty, went on 
an extension of individual proprietorship in land. 

The political power of the barons was, moreover, not 
broken by the revolt of the classes who could clearly 
feel the injustice of land ownership. Such revolts took 
place, again and again; but again and again were they 
repressed with terrific cruelties. What broke the power 
of the barons was the growth of the artisan and trading 
classes, between whose wages and rent there is not the 
same obvious relation. These classes, too, developed 
under a system of close guilds and corporations, which, 
as I have previously explained in treating of trade com- 
binations and monopolies, enabled them somewhat to 
fence themselves in from the operation of the general 
law of wages, and which were much more easily main- 
tained than now, when the effect of improved methods 
of transportation, and the diffusion of rudimentary edu- 
cation and of current news, is steadily making popula- 
tion more mobile. These classes did not see, and do 
not yet see, that the tenure of land is the fundamental 
fact which must ultimately determine the conditions 
of industrial, social, and political life. And so the ten- 
dency has been to assimilate the idea of property in 



Chav. IV. 


PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 


383 


land with that of property in things of human produc- 
tion, and even steps backward have been taken, and 
been hailed, as steps in advance. The French Constitu- 
ent Assembly, in 1789, thought it was sweeping away a 
relic of tyranny when it abolished tithes and imposed 
the support of the clergy on general taxation. The 
Abb4 Sieyfcs stood alone when he told them that they 
were simply remitting to the proprietors a tax which was 
one of the conditions on which they held their lands, 
and reimposing it on the labor of the nation. But in 
vain. The Abbe Sieyfcs, being a priest, was looked 
on as defending the interests of his order, when in 
truth he was defending the rights of man. In those 
tithes, the French people might have retained a largo 
public revenue which would not have taken one cen- 
time from the wages of labor or the earnings of capital. 

And so the abolition of the military tenures in Eng- 
land by the Long Parliament, ratified after the acces- 
sion of Charles II, though simply an appropriation of 
public revenues by the feudal land holders, 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 
long been 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 mili- 
tary establishment. All this would have come from 
rent, which the land holders since that time have ap- 
propriated to themselves — from the tax which land 
ownership levies on the earnings of labor and capital. 



384 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VIZ 


The land holders 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 thou- 
sand 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 land holders been kept to this con- 
tract and no land been permitted to be inclosed except 
upon similar terms, the income accruing to the nation 
from English land would to-day be greater by many 
millions than the entire public revenues of the United 
Kingdom. England to-day might have enjoyed absolute 
free trade. There need not have been a customs duty, 
an excise, license, or income tax, yet all the present ex- 
penditures 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. 

Turning back, wherever there is light to guide us, 
we may everywhere see that in their first perceptions, 
all peoples have recognized the common ownership in 
land, and that private property is an usurpation, a 
creation of force and fraud. 

As Madame de Stael said, “Liberty is ancient.” 
Justice, if we turn to the most ancient records, will 
always be found to have the title of prescription. 


* Andrew Bisset, in “The Strength of Nations,’’ London, 1859, 
a suggestive work in which he calls the attention of the English 
people to this measure by which the land owners avoided the 
payment of their rent to the nation, disputes the statement of 
Blackstone that a knight’s service was but for 40 days, and says 
it was .during necessity. 



CHAPTER V 


OF PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 

In the earlier stages of civilization we see that land 
is everywhere regarded as common property. And, 
turning from the dim past to our own times, we may 
see that natural perceptions are still the same, and that 
when placed under circumstances in which the influ- 
ence of education and habit is weakened, men instinc- 
tively recognize the equality of right to the bounty of 
nature. 

The discovery of gold in California brought together 
in a new country men who had been used to look on 
land as the rightful subject of individual property, and 
of whom probably not one in a thousand had ever 
dreamed of drawing any distinction between property 
in land and property in anything else. But, for the 
first time in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, these 
men were brought into contact with land from which 
gold could be obtained by the simple operation of wash- 
ing it out. 

Had the land with which they were thus called upon 
to deal been agricultural, or grazing, or forest land, of 
peculiar richness; had it been land which derived pecu- 
liar value from its situation for commercial purposes,, 
or by reason of the water power which it afforded; o* 
even had it contained rich mines of coal, iron or lead, 
the land system to which they had been used would have 
been applied, and it would have been reduced to private 
ownership in large tracts, as even the pueblo lands a 1 

385 



386 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VII. 


San Francisco, really the most valuable in the State, 
which by Spanish law had been set apart to furnish 
homes for the future residents of that city, were reduced, 
without any protest worth speaking of. But the novelty 
of the case broke through habitual ideas, and threw men 
back upon first principles, and it was by common con- 
sent declared that this gold-bearing land should remain 
common property, of which no one might take more 
than he could reasonably use, 'or hold for a longer time 
than he continued to use it. This perception of natural 
justice was acquiesced in by the General Government 
and the courts, and while placer mining remained of 
importance, no attempt was made to overrule this 
reversion to primitive ideas. The title to the land re- 
mained in the government, and no individual could 
acquire more than a possessory claim. The miners in 
each district fixed the amount of ground an individual 
could take and the amount of work that must be done 
to constitute use. If this work were not done, any one 
could re-locate the ground. Thus, no one was allowed 
to forestall or to lock up natural resources. Labor was 
acknowledged as the creator of wealth, was given a 
free field, and secured in its reward. The device would, 
not have assured complete equality of rights under the 
conditions that in most countries prevail; but under 
the conditions that there and then existed — a sparse 
population, an unexplored country, and an occupation 
in its nature a lottery, it secured substantial justice. 
One man might strike an enormously rich deposit, and 
others might vainly prospect for months and years, but 
all had an equal chance. No one was allowed to play 
the dog in the manger with the bounty of the Creator. 
The essential idea of the mining regulations was to 
prevent forestalling and monopoly. Upon the same 
principle are based the mining laws of Mexico; and the 
same principle was adopted in Australia, in British 



Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 387 


Columbia, and in the diamond fields of South Africa, for 
it accords with natural perceptions of justice. 

With the decadence of placer mining in California, 
the accustomed idea of private property finally pre- 
vailed in the passage of a law permitting the patenting 
of mineral lands. The only effect is to lock up oppor- 
tunities — to give the owner of mining ground the power 
of saying that no one else may use what he does not 
choose to use himself. And there are many cases in 
which mining ground is thus withheld from use for 
speculative purposes, just as valuable building lots and 
agricultural land are withheld from use. But while thus 
preventing use, the extension to mineral land of the 
same principle of private ownership which marks the 
tenure of other lands has done nothing for the security 
of improvements. The greatest expenditures of capita] 
in opening and developing mines — expenditures that in 
some cases amounted to millions of dollars — were made 
upon possessory titles. 

Had the circumstances which beset the first English 
settlers in North America been* such as to call their 
attention de novo to the question of land ownership, 
there can be no doubt that they would have reverted to 
first principles, just as they reverted to first principles 
in matters of government; and individual land owner- 
ship would have been rejected, just as aristocracy and 
monarchy were rejected. But while in the country from 
which they came this system had not yet fully developed 
itself, nor its effects been fully felt, the fact that in the 
new country an immense continent invited settlement 
prevented any question of the justice and policy of 
private property in land from arising. For in a new 
country, equality seems sufficiently assured if no one is 
permitted to take land to the exclusion of the rest. At 
first no harm seems to be done by treating this land 
as absolute property. There is plenty of land left for 



388 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VII 


those who choose to take it, and the slavery that in a 
later stage of development necessarily springs from the 
individual ownership of land is not felt. 

In Virginia and to the South, where the settlement 
had an aristocratic character, the natural complement 
of the large estates into which the land was carved 
was introduced in the shape of negro slaves. But the 
first settlers of New England divided the land as, twelve 
centuries before, their ancestprs had divided the land 
of Britain, giving to each head of a family his town 
lot and his seed lot, while beyond lay the free common. 
So far as concerned the great proprietors whom the Eng- 
lish kings by letters patent endeavored to create, the 
settlers saw clearly enough the injustice of the attempted 
monopoly, and none of these proprietors got much from 
their grants; but the plentifulness of land prevented 
attention from being called to the monopoly which indi- 
vidual land ownership, even when the tracts are small, 
must involve when land becomes scarce. And so it 
has come to pass that the great republic of the modern 
world has adopted at the beginning of its career an 
institution that ruined the republics of antiquity; that 
a people who proclaim the inalienable rights of all men 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have ac- 
cepted without question a principle which, in denying 
the equal and inalienable right to the soil, finally denies 
the equal right to life and liberty; that a people who 
at the cost of a bloody war have abolished chattel 
slavery, yet permit slavery in a more widespread and 
dangerous form to take root. 

The continent has seemed so wide, the area over 
which population might yet pour so vast, that familiar- 
ized by habit with the idea of private property in land, 
we have not realized its essential injustice. For not 
merely has this background of unsettled land prevented 
the full effect of private appropriation from being felt. 



Chop. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 389 

even in the older sections, but to permit a man to take 
more land than he could use, that he might compel those 
who afterwards needed it to pay him for the privilege 
of using it, has not seemed so unjust when others in 
their turn might do the same thing by going further 
on. And more than this, the very fortunes that have 
resulted from the appropriation of land, and that have 
thus really been drawn from taxes levied upon the 
wages of labor, have seemed, and have been heralded, as 
prizes held out to the laborer. In all the newer States, 
and even to a considerable extent in the older ones, our 
landed aristocracy is yet in its first generation. Those 
who have profited by the increase in the value of land 
have been largely men who began life without a cent. 
Their great fortunes, many of them running up high 
into the millions, seem to them, and to many others, as 
the best proofs of the justice of existing social condi- 
tions in rewarding prudence, foresight, industry, and 
thrift; whereas, the truth is that these fortunes are but 
the gains of monopoly, and are necessarily made at the 
expense of labor. But the fact that those thus enriched 
started as laborers hides this, and the same feeling 
which leads every ticket holder in a lottery to delight 
in imagination in the magnitude of the prizes has pre- 
vented even the poor from quarreling with a system 
which thus made many poor men rich. 

In short, the American people have failed to see the 
essential injustice of private property in land, because 
as yet they have not felt its full effects. This public 
domain — the vast extent of land yet to be reduced to 
private possession, the enormous common to which the 
faces of the energetic were always turned, has been the 
great fact that, since the days when the first settlements 
began to fringe the Atlantic Coast, has formed our 
national character and colored our national thought. 
It is not that we have eschewed a titled aristocracy and 



390 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


BtokVIl. 


abolished primogeniture; that we elect all our officers 
from school director up to president; that our laws 
run in the name of the people, instead of in the name of 
a prince; that the State knows no religion, and our 
judges wear no wigs — that we have been exempted from 
the ills that Fourth of July orators used to point to as 
characteristic of the effete despotisms of the Old World. 
The general intelligence, the general comfort, the active 
invention, the power of adaptation and assimilation, 
, the free, independent spirit, the energy and hopefulness 
* that have marked our people, are not causes, but results 
— they have sprung from unfenced land. This public 
domain has been the transmuting force which has turned 
the thriftless, unambitious European peasant into the 
self-reliant Western farmer; it has given a consciousness 
of freedom even to the dweller in crowded cities, and 
has been a well-spring of hope even to those who have 
never thought of taking refuge upon it. The child of 
the people, as he grows to manhood in Europe, finds all 
the best seats at the banquet of life marked “taken,” 
and must struggle with his fellows for the crumbs that 
fall, without one chance in a thousand of forcing or 
sneaking his way to a seat. In America, whatever his 
condition, there has always been the consciousness that 
the public domain lay behind him; and the knowledge 
of this fact, acting and reacting, has penetrated our 
Whole national life, giving to it generosity and inde- 
pendence, elasticity and ambition. All that we are 
proud of in the American character; all that makes 
our conditions and institutions better than those of 
older countries, we may trace to the fact that land has 
been cheap in the United States, because new soil has 
been open to the emigrant. 

But our advance has reached the Pacific. Further 
west we cannot go, and increasing population can but 
expand north and south and fill up what has been passed 



Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 391 . 

over. North, it is already filling up the valley of the 
Red River, pressing into that of the Saskatchewan and 
pre-empting Washington Territory; south, it is covering 
Western Texas and taking up the arable valleys of New 
Mexico and Arizona. 

The republic has entered upon a new era, an era in 
which the monopoly of the land will tell with acceler- 
ating effect. The great fact which has been so potent 
is ceasing to be. The public domain is almost gone — a 
very few years will end its influence, already rapidly 
failing. I do not mean to say that there will be no public 
domain. For a long time to come there will be millions 
of acres of public lands carried on the books of the Land 
Department. But it must be remembered that the best 
part of the continent for agricultural purposes is already 
overrun, and that it is the poorest land that is left. It 
must be remembered that what remains comprises the 
great mountain ranges, the sterile deserts, the high plains 
fit only for grazing. And it must be remembered that 
much of this land which figures in the reports as open 
to settlement is unsurveyed land, which has been appro- 
priated by possessory claims or locations which do not 
appear until the land is returned as surveyed. Cali- 
fornia figures on the books of the Land Department as 
the greatest land State of the Union, containing nearly 
100,000,000 acres of public land — something like one- 
twelfth of the whole public domain. Yet so much of 
this is covered by railroad grants or held in the way 
of which I have spoken; so much consists of untillable 
mountains or plains which require irrigation; so much 
is monopolized by locations which command the water, 
that as a matter of fact it is difficult to point the immi- 
grant to any part of the State where he can take up a 
farm on which he can settle and maintain a family, and 
so men, weary of the quest, end by buying land or rent- 
ing it on shares. It is not that there is any real scarcity 



392 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VII 


9 

of land in California — for, an empire in herself, Cali- 
fornia will some day maintain a population as large as 
that of France — but appropriation has got ahead of the 
settler and manages to keep just ahead of him. 

Some twelve or fifteen years ago the late Ben Wade of 
Ohio said, in a speech in the United States Senate, that 
by the close of this century every acre of ordinary 
agricultural land in the United States would be worth 
$50 in gold. It is already clear that if he erred at all, 
it was in overstating the time. In the twenty-one years 
that remain of the present century, if our population 
keep on increasing at the rate which it has maintained 
since the institution of the government, with the excep- 
tion of the decade which included the civil war, there 
will be an addition to our present population of some- 
thing like forty-five millions, an addition of some seven 
millions more than the total population of the United 
States as shown by the census of 1870, and nearly half 
as much again as the present population of Great Britain. 
There is no question about the ability of the United 
States' to support such a population and many hundreds 
of millions more, and, under proper social adjustments, 
to support them in increased comfort; but in view of 
such an increase of population, what becomes of the 
unappropriated public domain? Practically there will 
soon cease to be any. It will be a very long time before 
it is all in use; but it will be a very short time, as we 
are going, before all that men can turn to use will have 
an owner. 

But the evil effects of making the land of a whole 
people the exclusive property of some do not wait for the 
final appropriation of the public domain to show them- 
selves. Zj is not necessary to contemplate them in the 
future; we may see them in the present. They have 
grown with our growth, and are still increasing. 

We plow new fields, we open new mines, we found new 



Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 393 


cities; we drive back the Indian and exterminate the 
buffalo; we girdle the land with iron roads and lace the 
air with telegraph wires; we add knowledge. to knowl- 
edge, and utilize invention after invention; we build 
schools and endow colleges; yet it becomes no easier 
for the masses of our people to make a living. On the 
contrary, it is becoming harder. The wealthy class is 
becoming more wealthy; but the poorer class is becom- 
ing more dependent. The gulf between the employed 
and the employer is growing wider; social contrasts are 
becoming sharper; as liveried carriages appear, so do 
barefooted children. We are becoming used to talk of 
the working classes and the propertied classes; beggars 
are becoming so common that where it was once thought 
a crime little short of highway robbery to refuse food 
to one who asked for it, the gate is now barred and the 
bulldog loosed, while laws are passed against vagrants 
which suggest those of Henry VIII. 

We call ourselves the most progressive people on earth. 
But what is the goal of our progress, if these are its 
wayside fruits? 

These are the results of private property in land — the 
effects of a principle that must act with increasing and 
increasing force. It is not that laborers have increased 
faster than capital; it is not that population is pressing 
against subsistence; it is not that machinery has made 
“work scarce;” it is not that there is any real antagonism 
between labor and capital — it is simpiy that land is 
becoming more valuable; that the terms on which labor 
can obtain access to the natural opportunities which 
alone enable it to produce are becoming harder and 
harder. The public domain is receding and narrowing. 
Property in land is concentrating. The proportion of 
our people who have no legal right to the land on which 
they live is becoming steadily larger. 

Says the New York World: “A non-resident pro- 



394 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY 


Book VII 


prietary, like that of Ireland, is getting to be the char- 
acteristic of large farming districts in New England, 
adding yearly to the nominal value of leasehold farms; 
advancing yearly the rent demanded, and steadily de- 
grading the character of the tenantry.” And the Nation , 
alluding to the same section, says: “Increased nominal 
value of land, higher rents, fewer farms occupied by 
owners; diminished product; lower wages; a more igno- 
rant population; increasing number of women employed 
at hard, outdoor labor (surest sign of a declining civili- 
sation) , and a steady deterioration in the style of farm- 
ing — these are the conditions described by a cumulative 
mass of evidence that is perfectly irresistible.” 

The same tendency is observable in the new States, 
where the large scale of cultivation recalls the latifundia 
that ruined ancient Italy. In California a very large 
proportion of the farming land is rented from year to 
year, at rates varying from a fourth to even half the 
crop. 

The harder times, the lower wages, the increasing 
poverty perceptible in the United States are but results 
of the natural laws we have traced — laws as universal 
and as irresistible as that of gravitation. We did not 
establish the republic when, in the face of principalities 
and powers, we flung the declaration of the inalienable 
rights of man; we shall never establish the republic until 
we practically carry out that declaration by securing 
to the poorest child bom among us an equal right to 
his native soil! We did not abolish slavery when we 
ratified the Fourteenth Amendment; to abolish slavery 
we must abolish private property in land! Unless we 
come back to first principles, unless we recognize natural 
perceptions of equity, unless we acknowledge the equal 
right of all to land, our free institutions will be in vain; 
our common schools will be in vain; our discoveries and 
inventions will but add to the force that presses the 
masses downl 



BOOK VIII 

APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 

CHAPTER I.— PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT WITH 

THE BEST USE OF LAND 

CHAPTER II. — HOW EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE 

ASSERTED AND SECURED 

CHAPTER IH.— THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS OF 

TAXATION 

CHAPTER IV. — INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS 



Why hesitate? Ye are full-bearded men, 

With God-implanted will, and courage if 
Ye dare but show it. Never yet was will 
But found some way or means to work it out, 

Nor e’er did Fortune frown on him who dared. 

Shall we in presence of this grievous wrong, 

In this supremest moment of all time, 

Stand trembling, cowering, when with one bold stroke 
These groaning millions might be ever free?- 
And that one stroke so just, so greatly good, 

So level with the happiness of man, 

That all the angels will applaud the deed. 

— E. R. Taylor, 



CHAPTER I 


PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT WITH THE 

BEST USE OF LAND 

m 

There is a delusion resulting from the tendency to 
confound the accidental with the essential — a delusion 
which the law writers have done their best to extend, 
and political economists generally have acquiesced in, 
rather'than endeavored to expose — that private property 
in land is necessary to the proper use of land, and that 
again to make land common property would be to 
destroy civilization and revert to barbarism. 

This delusion may be likened to the idea which, 
according to Charles Lamb, so long prevailed among the 
Chinese after the savor of roast pork had been acci- 
dentally discovered by the burning down of Ho-ti’s hut 
— that to cook a pig it was necessary to set fire to a 
house. But, though in Lamb’s charming dissertation it 
was required that a sage should arise to teach people that 
they might roast pigs without burning down houses, it 
does not take a sage to see that what is required for the 
improvement of land is not absolute ownership of the 
land, but security for the improvements. This will be 
obvious to whoever will look around him. While there 
is no more necessity for making a man the absolute and 
exclusive owner of land, in order to induce him to im- 
prove it, than there is of burning down a house in ordei 
to cook a pig; while the making of land private prop- 
erty is as rude, wasteful, and uncertain a device foi 
securing improvement, as the burning down of a house 

397 



398 


APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Boot VIII. 


is a rude, wasteful, and uncertain device for roasting a 
pig, we have not the excuse for persisting in the one 
that Lamb’s Chinamen had for persisting in the other. 
Until the sage arose who invented the rude gridiron, 
which, according to Lamb, preceded the spit and oven, 
no one had known or heard of a pig being roasted, 
except by a house being burned. But, among us, noth- 
ing is more common than for land to be improved by 
those who do not own it. The greater part of the land of 
Great Britain is cultivated by tenants, the greater part 
of the buildings of London are built upon leased ground, 
and even in the United States the same system prevails 
everywhere to a greater or less extent. Thus it is a 
common matter for use to be separated from ownership. 

Would not all this land be cultivated and improved 
just as well if the rent went to the State or municipality, 
as now, when it goes to private individuals? If no 
private ownership in land were acknowledged, but all 
land were held in this way, the occupier or user paying 
rent to the State, would not land be used and improved 
as well and as securely as now? There can be but one 
answer: Of course it would. Then would the resump- 
tion of land as common property in nowise interfere 
with the proper use and improvement of land. 

What is necessary for the use of land is not its private 
ownership, but the security of improvements. It is not 
necessary to say to a man, “this land is yours,” in order 
to induce him to cultivate or improve it. It is only 
necessary to say to him, “whatever your labor or capital 
produces on this land shall be yours.” Give a man se- 
curity that he may reap, and he will sow; assure him of 
the possession of the house he wants to build, and he 
will build it. These are the natural rewards of labor. 
It is for the sake of the reaping that men sow; it is 
for the sake of possessing houses that men build. The 
ownership of land has nothing to do with it. 



Chap. /. 


OWNERSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND 


399 


It was for the sake of obtaining this security, that 
in' the beginning of the feudal period so many of the 
smaller land holders surrendered the ownership of their 
lands to a military chieftain, receiving back the use of 
them in fief or trust, and kneeling bareheaded before 
the lord, with their hands between his hands, swore to 
serve him with life, and limb, and worldly honor. 
Similar instances of the giving up of ownership in land 
for the sake of security in its enjoyment are to be seen 
in Turkey, where a peculiar exemption from taxation 
and extortion attaches to vakouf, or church landB, and 
where it is a common thing for a land owner to sell his 
land to a mosque for a nominal price, with the under- 
standing that he may remain as tenant upon it at a 
fixed rent. 

It is not the magic of property, as Arthur Young said, 
that has turned Flemish sands into fruitful fields. It 
is the magic of security to labor. This can be secured 
in other ways than making land private property, just 
as the heat necessary to roast a pig can be secured in 
other ways than by burning down houses. The mere 
pledge of an Irish landlord that for twenty years he 
would not claim in rent any share in their cultivation 
induced Irish peasants to turn a barren mountain into 
gardens; on the mere security of a fixed ground rent 
for a term of years the most costly buildings of such 
cities as London and New York are erected on leased 
ground. If we give improvers such security, we may 
safely abolish private property in land. 

The complete recognition of common rights to land 
need in no way interfere with the complete recognition 
of individual right to improvements or produce. Two 
men may own a ship without sawing her in half. The 
ownership of a railway may be divided into a hundred 
thousand shares, and yet trains be run with as much 
system and precision as if there were but a single owner. 



APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Book VIII, . 




In London, joint stock companies have been formed to 
hold and manage real estate. Everything could go on 
as now, and yet the common right to land be fully recog- 
nized by appropriating rent to the common benefit. 
There is a lot in the center of San Francisco to which 
the common rights of the people of that city are yet 
legally recognized. This lot is not cut up into infinitesi- 
mal pieces nor yet is it an unused waste. It is covered 
with fine buildings, the property of private individuals, 
that stand there in perfect security. The only difference 
between this lot and those around it, is that the rent of 
the one goes into the common school fund, the rent 
of the others into private pockets. What is to prevent 
the land of a whole country being held by the people 
of the country in this way? 

It would be difficult to select any portion of the ter- 
ritory of the United States in which the conditions com- 
monly taken to necessitate the reduction of land to 
private ownership exist in higher degree than on the little 
islets of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the Aleutian Archi- 
pelago, acquired by the Alaska purchase from Russia. 
These islands are the breeding places of the fur seal, 
an animal so timid and wary that the slightest fright 
causes it to abandon its accustomed resort, never to 
return. To prevent the utter destruction of this fishery, 
without which the islands are of no use to man, it is 
not only necessary to avoid killing the females and 
young cubs, but even such noises as the discharge of a 
pistol or the barking of a dog. The men who do the 
killing must be in no hurry, but quietly walk around 
among the seals who line the rocky beaches, until the 
timid animals, so clumsy on land but so graceful in 
water, show no more sign of fear than lazily to waddle 
out of the way. Then those who can be killed without 
diminution of future increase are carefully separated 
and gently driven inland, out of sight and hearing of 



Chap* I. 


OWNERSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND 


401 


the herds, where they are dispatched with clubs. To 
throw such a fishery as this open to whoever chose to 
go and kill — which would make it to the interest of each 
party to kill as many as they could at the time without 
reference to the future — would be utterly to destroy it 
in a few seasons, as similar fisheries in other oceans have 
been destroyed. But it is not necessary, therefore, to 
make these islands private property. Though for rea- 
sons greatly less cogent, the great public domain of the 
American people has been made over to private owner- 
ship as fast as anybody could be got to take it, these 
islands have been leased at a rent of $317,500 per year * 
probably not very much less than they could have been 
sold for at the time of the Alaska purchase. They have 
already yielded two millions and a half to the national 
treasury, and they are still, in unimpaired value (for 
under the careful management of the Alaska Fur Com- 
pany the seals increase rather than diminish), the 
common property of the people of the United States. 

So far from the recognition of private property in 
land being necessary to the proper use of land, the con- 
trary is the case. Treating land as private property 
stands in the way of its proper use. Were land treated 
as public property it would be used and improved as 
soon as there was need for its use or improvement, but 
being treated as private property, the individual owner 
is permitted to prevent others from using or improving 
what he cannot or will not use or improve himself. 
When the title is in dispute, the most valuable land lies 
unimproved for years; in many parts of England im- 
provement is stopped because, the estates being entailed $ 
no security to improvers can be given; and large tracts 

♦The fixed rent under the lease to the Alaska Fur Company 
is $55,000 a year, with a payment of $2.62% on each skin, which 
on 100,000 skins, to which the take is limited, amounts to $262,-* 
500 — a total rent of $317,500. 




APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Book VIII. 


of ground which, were they treated as public property, 
would be covered with buildings and crops, are kept 
idle to gratify the caprice of the owner. In the thickly 
settled parts of the United States there is enough land 
to maintain three or four times our present population, 
lying unused, because its owners are holding it for higher 
prices, and immigrants are forced past this unused land 
to seek homes where their labor will be far less pro- 
ductive. In every city valuable lots may be seen lying 
vacant for the same reason. If the best use of land be 
the test, then private property in land is condemned, as 
it is condemned by every other consideration. It is 
as wasteful and uncertain a mode of securing the proper 
use of land as the burning down of houses is of roast- 
ing pigs. 



CHAPTER II 


HOW EQUAL BIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE ASSERTED AND 

SECURED 

We have traced the want and suffering that every- 
where prevail among the working classes, the recurring 
paroxysms of industrial depression, the scarcity of em- 
ployment, the stagnation of capital, the tendency of 
wages to the starvation point, that exhibit themselves 
more and more strongly as material progress goes on, to 
the fact that the land on which and from which all must 
live is made the exclusive property of some. 

We have seen that there is no possible remedy for 
these evils but the abolition of their cause ; we have seen 
that private property in land has no warrant in justice, 
but stands condemned as the denial of natural right — a 
subversion of the law of nature that as social develop- 
ment goes on must condemn the masses of men to a 
slavery the hardest and most degrading. 

We have weighed every objection, and seen that 
neither on the ground of equity or expediency is there 
anything to deter us from making land common prop- 
erty by confiscating rent. 

But a question of method remains. How shall we 
do it? 

We should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet 
all economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing 
all private titles, declaring all land public property, and 
letting it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit, under 
such conditions as would 3acredly guard the private right 
to improvements. 

403 



404 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY Book VIII. 

Thus we should secure, in a more complex state of 
society, the same equality of rights that in a ruder state 
were secured by equal partitions of the soil, and by 
giving the use of the land to whoever could procure 
the most from it, we should secure the greatest pro- 
duction. 

Such a plan, instead of being a wild, impracticable 
vagary, has (with the exception that he suggests com- 
pensation to the present holders of land — undoubtedly a 
careless concession which he upon reflection would recon- 
sider) been indorsed by no less eminent a thinker than 
Herbert Spencer, who (“Social Statics,” Chap. IX, Sec. 
8) says of it: 

“Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civiliza- 
tion; may be earned out without mvolvmg a community of 
goods, and need cause no veiy senous revolution in existing 
arrangements. The change required would simply be a change 
of landlords. Separate ownership would merge into the joint- 
stock ownership of the public. Instead of being in the posses- 
sion of individuals, the country would be held by the great 
corporate body — society. Instead of leasing his acres from an 
isolated .proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the nation. 
Instead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace, 
he would pay it to an agent or deputy agent of the community. 
Stewards would be public officials instead of private ones, and 
tenancy the only land tenure. A state of things so ordered 
would be in perfect harmony with the moral law. Under it all 
men would be equally landlords, all men would be alike free 
to become tenants. * * * Clearly, therefore, on such a sys- 
tem, the earth might be enclosed, occupied and cultivated, in 
entire subordination to the law of equal freedom ” 

But such a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not 
seem to me the best. Or rather I propose to accomplish 
the same thing in a simpler, easier, and quieter way, 
than that of formally confiscating all the land and 
formally letting it out to the highest bidders. 

To do that would involve a needless shock to present 
customs and habits of thought — which is to be avoided. 

To do that would involve a needless extension of 
governmental machinery — which is to be avoided. 



Chap. II. HOW EQUAL BIGHTS MAT BE ASBERTED 405 

* 

It is an axiom of statesmanship, which the successful 
founders of tyranny have understood and acted upon— 
chat great changes can best be brought about under old 
forms. We, who would free men, should heed the same 
truth. It is the natural method. When nature would 
make a higher type, she takes a lower one and develops 
it. This, also, is the law of social growth. Let us work 
by it. With the current we may glide fast and far. 
Against it, it is hard pulling and slow progress. 

I do not propose either to -purchase or to confiscate 
private property in land. The first would be ilnjust; 
the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold 
it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they 
are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to 
call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath 
and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we 
take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; 
it is only necessary to confiscate rent. 

Nor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that 
the State should bother with the letting of lands, and 
assume the chances of the favoritism, collusion, and 
corruption this might involve. It is not necessary that 
any new machinery should be created. The machinery 
already exists. Instead of extending it, all we have to 
do is to simplify and reduce it. By leaving to land 
owners a percentage of rent which would probably be 
much less than the cost and loss involved in attempting 
to rent lands through State agency, and by making use 
of this existing machinery, we may, without jar or shock, 
assert the common right to land by taking rent for public 
uses. 

We already take some rent in taxation. We have 
only to make some changes in our modes of taxation 
to take it all. 

What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sover- 
eign remedy, which will raise wages, increase the earn- 
ings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty. 





APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Book VIII . 


give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it, 
afford free scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate 
morals, and taste, and intelligence, purify government 
and carry civilization to yet nobler heights, is — to 
appropriate rent by taxation . 

In this way the State may become the universal land- 
lord without calling herself so, and without assuming a 
single new function. In form, the ownership of land 
would remain just as now. No owner of land need be 
dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon 
the amount of land any one could hold. For, rent being 
taken by the State in taxes, land, no matter in whose 
name it stood, or in what parcels it was held, would be 
really common property, and every member of the 
community would participate in the advantages of it* 
ownership. 

Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land values, 
must necessarily be increased just as we abolish other 
taxes, we may put the proposition into practical form 
by proposing — 

To abolish all taxation save that upon land values . 

As we have seen, the value of land is at the beginning 
of society nothing, but as society develops by the in- 
crease of population and the advance of the arts, it 
becomes greater and greater. In every civilized coun- 
try, even the newest, the value of the land taken as a 
whole is sufficient to bear the entire expenses of govern- 
ment. In the better developed countries it is much more 
than sufficient. Hence it will not be enough merely to 
place all taxes upon the value of land. It will be neces- 
sary, where rent exceeds the present governmental reve- 
nues, commensurately to increase the amount demanded 
in taxation, and to continue this increase as society pro- 
gresses and rent advances. But this is so natural and 
easy a matter, that it may be considered as involved, or 
at least understood, in the proposition to put all taxes 



Chap. II. HOW EQUAL RIGHTS MAY BE ASSERTED 407 

on the value of land. That is the first step, upon which 
the practical struggle must be made. When the hare 
is once caught and killed, cooking him will follow as a 
matter of course. When the common right to land is so 
far appreciated that all taxes are abolished save those 
which fall upon rent, there is no danger of much more 
than is necessary to induce them to collect the public 
revenues being left to individual land holders. 

Experience has taught me (for I have been for some 
years endeavoring to popularize this proposition) that 
wherever the idea of concentrating all taxation upon 
land values finds lodgment sufficient to induce considera- 
tion, it invariably makes way, but there are few of the 
classes most to be benefited by it, who at first, or even 
for a long time afterward, see its full significance and 
power. It is difficult for workingmen to get over the idea 
that there is a real antagonism between capital and 
labor. It is difficult for small farmers and homestead 
owners to get over the idea that to put all taxes on the 
value of land would be unduly to tax them. It is diffi- 
cult for both classes to get over the idea that to exempt 
capital from taxation would be to make the rich richer, 
and the poor poorer. These ideas spring from confused 
thought. But behind ignorance and prejudice there is a 
powerful interest, which has hitherto dominated litera- 
ture, education, and opinion. A great wrong always dies 
hard, and the great wrong which in every civilized 
country condemns the masses of men to poverty and 
want, will not die without a bitter struggle. 

I do not think the ideas of which I speak can be 
entertained by the reader who has followed me thus 
far; but inasmuch as any popular discussion must deal 
with the concrete, rather than the abstract, let me ask 
him to follow me somewhat further, that we may try 
the remedy I have proposed by the accepted canons of 
taxation. In doing so, many incidental bearings may 
be seen that otherwise might escape notice. 



CHAPTER III 


THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS OP TAXATION 

The best tax by which public revenues can be raised 
is evidently that which will closest conform to the fol- 
lowing conditions: 

1. That it bear as lightly as possible upon produc- 
tion — so as least to check the increase of the general 
fund from which taxes must be paid and the commu- 
nity maintained. 

2. That it be easily and cheaply collected, and fall 
as directly as may be upon the ultimate payers — so as 
to take from the people as little as possible in addition 
to what it yields the government. 

3. That it be certain — so as to give the least oppor- 
tunity for tyranny or corruption on the part of officials, 
and the least temptation to law-breaking and evasion 
on the part of the taxpayers. 

4. That it bear equally — so as to give no citizen an 
advantage or put any at a disadvantage, as compared 
with others. 

Let us consider what form of taxation best accords 
with these conditions. Whatever it be, that evidently 
will be the best mode in which the public revenues can 
be raised. 

J . — The Effect of Taxes upon Production 

All taxes must evidently come from the produce of 
land and labor, since there is no other source of wealth 
than the union of human exertion with the material and 

406 



chtp.ru. 


THE CANONS OF TAXATION 




forces of nature. But the manner in which equal 
amounts of taxation may be imposed may very differ- 
ently affect the production of wealth. Taxation which 
lessens the reward of the producer necessarily lessens 
the incentive to production; taxation which is condi- 
tioned upon the act of production, or the use of any of 
the three factors of production, necessarily discourages 
production. Thus taxation which diminishes the earn- 
ings of the laborer or the returns of the capitalist tends 
to render the one less industrious and intelligent, the 
other less disposed to save and invest. Taxation which 
falls upon the processes of production interposes an arti- 
ficial obstacle to the creation of wealth. Taxation which 
falls upon labor as it is exerted, wealth as it is used 
as capital, land as it is cultivated, will manifestly 
tend to discourage production much more powerfully 
than taxation to the same amount levied upon laborers, 
whether they work or play, upon wealth whether used 
productively or unproductively, or upon land whether 
cultivated or left waste. 

The mode of taxation is, in fact, 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 im- 
poverished and their power of producing wealth de- 
stroyed by taxation, which, if levied in another way, 
could be borne with ease. A tax on date-trees, imposed 
by Mohammed Ali, caused the Egyptian fellahs to cut 
down their trees; but a tax of twice the amount imposed 
on the land produced no such result. The tax of ten 
per cent, on all sales, imposed by the Duke of Alva in 
the Netherlands, would, had it been maintained, have 
all but stopped exchange while yielding but little 
revenue. 

But we need not go abroad for illustrations The 
production of wealth in the United States is largely les* 



410 


APPLICATION 07 THE REMEDY 


Boot vm 


eened by taxation which bears upon its processes. 
Ship-building, in which we excelled, has been all but de- 
stroyed, so far as the foreign trade is concerned, and 
many branches of production and exchange seriously 
crippled, by taxes which divert industry from more to 
less productive forms. 

This checking of production is in greater or less degree 
characteristic of most of the taxes by which the revenues 
of modem governments are raised. All taxes upon 
manufactures, all taxes upon commerce, all taxes upon 
capital, all taxes upon improvements, are of this kind. 
Their tendency is the same as that of Mohammed Ali’s 
tax on date-trees, though their effect may not be so 
clearly seen. 

All such taxes have a tendency to reduce the produc- 
tion of wealth, and should, therefore, never be resorted 
to when it is possible to raise money by taxes which do 
not check production. This becomes possible as society 
develops and wealth accumulates. Taxes which fall 
upon ostentation would simply turn into the public 
treasury what otherwise would be wasted in vain show 
for the sake of show; and taxes upon wills and devises 
of the rich would probably have little effect in checking 
the desire for accumulation, which, after it has fairly 
got hold of a man, becomes a blind passion. But the 
great class of taxes from which revenue may be derived 
without interference with production are taxes upon 
monopolies — for the profit of monopoly is in itself a tax 
levied upon production, and to tax it is simply to divert 
into the public coffers what production must in any 
event pay. 

There are among us various sorts of monopolies. For 
instance, there are the temporary monopolies created by 
the patent and copyright laws. These it would be ex- 
tremely unjust and unwise to tax, inasmuch as they 
are but recognitions of the right of labor to its intangible 



Chap, III. 


THE CANONS OF TAXATION 


4U 


productions, and constitute a reward held out to invent 
tion and authorship* There are also the onerous 
monopolies alluded to’ in Chapter IV of Book III, which 
result from the aggregation of capital in businesses 
which are of the nature of monopolies. But while it 
would be extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, 

♦ Following the habit of confounding the exclusive right 
granted by a patent and that granted by a copyright as recog- 
nitions of the right of labor to its intangible productions, I in 
this fell into error which I subsequently acknowledged and cor- 
rected in the Standard of June 23, 1888. The two things are 
not alike, but essentially different. The copyright is not a right 
to the exclusive use of a fact, an idea, or a combination, which 
by the natural law of property all are free to use; but only to 
the labor expended in the thing itself. It does not prevent 
any one from using for himself the facts, the knowledge, the 
laws or combinations for a similar production, but only from 
using the identical form of the particular book or other pro- 
duction— the actual labor which has in short been expended in 
producing it. It rests therefore upon the natural, moral right of 
each one to enjoy the products of his own exertion, and involves 
no interference with the similar right of any one else to do 
likewise. 

The patent, on the other hand, prohibits any one from doing 
a similar thing, and involves, usually for a specified time, an 
interference with the equal liberty on which the right of owner- 
ship rests. The copyright is therefore in accordance with the 
moral law — it gives to the man who has expended the intangible 
labor required to write a particular book or pamt a picture 
security against the copying of that identical thing. The patent 
is in defiance of this natural right. It prohibits others from 
doing what has been already attempted. Every one has * 
moral right to think what I think, or to perceive what I perceive, 
or to do what I do— no matter whether he gets the hint from 
me or independently of me. Discovery can give no right of 
ownership, for whatever is discovered must have been already 
here to be discovered. If a man nfake a wheelbarrow, or a 
book, or a picture, he has a moral right to that particular 
wheelbarrow, or book, or picture, but no right to ask that others 
be prevented from making similar things. Such a prohibition, 
though given for the purpose of stimulating discovery and 
invention, really in the long run operates as a check upon them. 




412 


APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Btok VIII. 


to levy taxes by general law so that they would fall 
exclusively on the returns of such monopoly and not 
become taxes on production or exchange, it is much 
better that these monopolies should be abolished. In 
large part they spring from legislative commission or 
omission, as, for instance, the ultimate reason that San 
Francisco merchants are compelled to pay more for 
goods sent direct from New York to San Francisco by 
the Isthmus route than it costs to ship them from New 
York to Liverpool or Southampton and thence to San 
Francisco, is to be found in the “protective” laws which 
make it so costly to build American steamers and which 
forbid foreign steamers to carry goods between Ameri- 
can ports. The reason that residents of Nevada are 
compelled to pay as much freight from the East as 
though their goods were carried to San Francisco and 
back again, is that the authority which prevents extor- 
tion on the part of a hack driver is not exercised in 
respect to a railroad company. And it may be said 
generally that businesses which are in their nature 
monopolies are properly part of the functions of the 
State, and should be assumed by the State. There is 
the same reason why Government should carry tele- 
graphic messages as that it should carry letters; that 
railroads should belong to the public as that common 
roads should. 

But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as com- 
pared with the monopoly of land. And the value of 
land expressing a monopoly, pure and simple, is in every 
respect fitted for taxation. That is to say, while the 
value of a railroad o.r telegraph line, the price of gas 
or of a patent medicine, may express the price of 
monopoly, it also expresses the exertion of labor and 
capital; but the value of land, or economic rent, as we 
have seen, is in no part made up from these factors, 
and expresses nothing but the advantage of appropria- 



Chap. Itl. 


THE CANONS OF TAXATION 


413 


tion. Taxes levied upon the value of land cannot check 
production in the slightest degree, until they exceed 
rent, or the value of land taken annually, for unlike 
taxes upon commodities, or exchange, or capital, or any 
of the tools or processes of production, they do not bear 
upon production. The value of land does not express the 
reward of production, as does the value of crops, of 
cattle, of buildings, or any of the things which are styled 
personal property and improvements. It expresses the 
exchange value of monopoly. It is not in any case the 
creation of the individual who owns the land; it is 
created by the growth of the community. Hence the 
community can take it all without in any way lessening 
the incentive to improvement or in the slightest degree 
lessening the production of wealth. Taxes may be im- 
posed upon the value of land until all rent is taken by 
the State, without reducing the wages of labor or the 
reward of capital one iota; without increasing the price 
of a single commodity, or making production in anj 
way more difficult. 

But more than this. Taxes on the value of land not 
only do not check production as do most other taxes, 
but they tend to increase production, by destroying 
speculative rent. How speculative rent checks produc- 
tion may be seen not only in the valuable land with- 
held from use, but in the paroxysms of industrial 
depression which, originating in the speculative advance 
in land values, propagate themselves over the whole 
civilized world, everywhere paralyzing industry, and 
causing more waste and probably more suffering than 
would a general war. Taxation which would take rent 
for public uses would prevent all this; while if land 
were taxed to anything near its rental value, no one 
could afford to hold land that he was not using, and, 
consequently, land not in use would be thrown open to 
those who would use it. Settlement would be closer, and, 



414 


APPLICATION 07 THE REMEDY 


Book VIII. 


consequently, labor and capital would be enabled to 
produce much more with the same exertion. The dog in 
the manger who, in this country especially, so wastes 
productive power, would be choked off. 

There is yet an even more important way by which, 
through its effect upon distribution, the taking of rent 
to public uses by taxation would stimulate the produc- 
tion of wealth. But reference to that may be reserved. 
It is sufficiently evident that with regard to production, 
the tax upon the value of land is the best tax that can 
be imposed. Tax manufactures, and the effect is to 
check manufacturing; tax improvements, and the effect 
is to lessen improvement; tax commerce, and the effect 
is to prevent exchange; tax capital, and the effect is to 
drive it away. But the whole value of land may be 
taken in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate 
industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and to 
increase the production of wealth. 

11. — As to Ease and Cheapness of Collection 

With, perhaps, the exception of certain licensee and 
stamp duties, which may be made almost to collect 
themselves, but which can be relied on for only a 
trivial amount of revenue, a tax upon land values can, 
of all taxes, be most easily and cheaply collected. For 
land cannot be hidden or carried off; its value can be 
readily ascertained, and the assessment once made, noth- 
ing but a receiver is required for collection. 

And as under all fiscal systems some part of the public 
revenues is collected from taxes on land, and the ma- 
chinery for that purpose already exists and could as 
well be made to collect all as a part, the cost of collect- 
ing the revenue now obtained by other taxes might be 
entirely saved by substituting the tax on land values 
for all other taxes. What an enormous saving might 



Chap. HI. THE CANONS OF TAXATION 415 

thus be made can be inferred from the horde of officials 
now engaged in collecting these taxes. 

This saving would largely reduce the difference be- 
tween what taxation now costs the people and what it 
yields, but the substitution of a tax on land values for 
all other taxes would operate to reduce this difference 
in an even more important way. 

A tax on land values does not add to prices, and is 
thus paid directly by the persons on whom it falls; 
whereas, all taxes upon things of unfixed quantity in- 
crease prices, and in the course of exchange are shifted 
from seller to buyer, increasing as they go. If we im- 
pose a tax upon money loaned, as has been often 
attempted, the lender will charge the tax to the borrower, 
and the borrower must pay it or not obtain the loan. 
If the borrower uses it in his business, he in his turn 
must get back the tax from his customers, or his busi- 
ness becomes unprofitable. 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 every one 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. 
Manila cigars cost, when bought of the importer in 
San Francisco, $70 a thousand, of which $14 is the 
cost of the cigars laid down in this port and $56 is 
the customs duty. But the dealer who purchases these 
cigars to sell again must charge a profit, not on $14, the 



416 


APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Book VI I J. 


real cost of the cigars, but on $70, the cost of the cigars 
plus the duty. In this way all taxes which add to prices 
are shifted from hand to hand, increasing as they go, 
until they ultimately rest upon consumers, who thus 
pay much more than is received by the government. 
Now, 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 land owners 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 specu- 
lation to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on land 
values tends to increase the competition between own- 
ers, and thus to reduce the price of land. 

Thus in all respects a tax upon land values is the 
cheapest tax by which a large revenue can be raised — 
giving to the government the largest net revenue in 
proportion to the amount taken from the people. 


Ill . — As to Certainty 

Certainty is an important element in taxation, for 
Just as the collection of a tax depends upon the dili- 
gence and faithfulness of the collectors and the public 
spirit and honesty of those who are to pay it, will oppor- 
tunities for tyranny and corruption be opened on the 
one side, and for evasions and frauds on the other. 

The methods by which the bulk of our revenues are 
collected are condemned on this ground, if on no other. 
The gross corruptions and fraud occasioned in the 
United States by the whisky and tobacco taxes are well 
known; the constant undervaluations of the Custom 
House, the ridiculous untruthfulness of income tax re- 
turns, and the absolute impossibility of getting anything 



Chap, III . 


THE CANONS OF TAXATION 


417 


like a just valuation of personal property, are matters 
of notoriety. The material loss which such taxes inflict 
— the item of cost which this uncertainty adds to the 
amount paid by the people but not received by the gov- 
ernment— is very great. When, in the days of the pro- 
tective system of England, her coasts were lined with 
an army of men endeavoring to prevent smuggling, and 
another army of men were engaged in evading them, it 
is evident that the maintenance of both armies had to 
come from the produce of labor and capital; that the 
expenses and profits of the smugglers, as well as the 
pay and bribes of the Custom House officers, constituted 
a tax upon the industry of the nation, in addition to 
what was received by the government. And so, all 
douceurs to assessors; all bribes to customs officials; all 
moneys expended in electing pliable officers or in pro- 
curing acts or decisions which avoid taxation; all the 
costly modes of bringing in goods so as to evade duties, 
and of manufacturing so as to evade imposts; all 
moieties, and expenses of detectives and spies; all ex- 
penses of legal proceedings and punishments, not only 
to the government, but to those prosecuted, are so much 
which these taxes take from the general fund of wealth, 
without adding to the revenue. 

Yet this is the least part of the cost. Taxes which 
lack the element of certainty tell most fearfully upon 
morals. Our revenue laws as a body might well be 
entitled, “Acts to promote the corruption of public offi- 
cials, to suppress honesty and encourage fraud, to set 
a premium upon perjury and the subornation of per- 
jury, and to divorce the idea of law from the idea of 
justice.” This, is their true character, and they succeed 
admirably. A Custom House oath ia a by-word; our 
assessors regularly swear to assess all property at its 
full, true, cash value, and habitually do nothing of the 
kind; men who pride themselves on their personal and 



418 


APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Book VIII 


commercial honor bribe officials and make false returns; 
and the demoralizing spectacle is constantly presented of 
the same court trying a murderer one day and a vendor 
of unstamped matches the next! 

So uncertain and so demoralizing are these modes of 
taxation that the New York Commission, composed of 
David A. Wells, Edwin Dodge and George W. Cuyler, 
who investigated the subject of taxation in that State, 
proposed to substitute for most of the taxes now levied, 
other than that on real estate, an arbitrary tax on each 
individual, estimated on the rental value of the premises 
he occupied. 

But there is no necessity of resorting to any arbitrary 
assessment. The tax on land values, which is the least 
arbitrary of taxes, possesses in the highest degree the 
element of certainty. It may be assessed and collected 
with a definiteness that partakes of the immovable and 
unconcealable character of the land itself. Taxes levied 
on land may be collected to the last cent, and though 
the assessment of land is now often unequal, yet the 
assessment of personal property is far more unequal, 
and these inequalities in the assessment of land largely 
arise from the taxation of improvements with land, and 
from the demoralization that, springing from the causes 
to which I have referred, affects the whole scheme of 
taxation. Were all taxes placed upon land values, irre- 
spective of improvements, the scheme of taxation would 
be so simple and clear, and public attention would be 
bo directed to it, that the valuation of taxation could 
and would be made with the same certainty that a real 
estate agent can determine the price a seller can get 
for a lot. 

IV. — As to Equality 

Adam Smith’s canon is, that “The subjects of every 
state ought to contribute toward the support of the gov- 



Chap . ///. 


THE CANONS OF TAXATION 


419 


emment as nearly as possible in proportion to their 
respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue 
which they respectively enjoy under the protection of 
the state.” Every tax, he goes on to say, which falls 
only upon rent, or only upon wages, or only upon inter- 
est, is necessarily unequal. In accordance with this is 
the common idea which our systems of taxing everything 
vainly attempt to carry out— that every one should pay 
taxes in proportion to his means, or in proportion to his 
income. 

But, waiving all the insuperable practical difficulties 
in the way of taxing every one according to his means, 
it is evident that justice cannot be thus attained. 

Here, for instance, are two men of equal means, or 
equal incomes, one having a large family, the other 
having no one to support but himself. Upon these two 
men indirect taxes fall very unequally, as the one cannot 
avoid the taxes on the food, clothing, etc., consumed by 
his family, while the other need pay only upon the neces- 
saries consumed by himself. But, supposing taxes levied 
directly, so that each pays the same amount. Still there 
is injustice. The income of the one is charged with the 
support of six, eight, or ten persons; the income of the 
other with that of but a single person. And unless 
the Malthusian doctrine be carried to the extent of re- 
garding the rearing of a new citizen as an injury to the, 
state, here is a gross injustice. 

But it may be said that this is a difficulty which 
cannot be got over; that it is Nature herself that brings 
human beings helpless into the world and devolves 
their support upon the parents, providing in compensa- 
tion therefor her own sweet and great rewards. Very 
well, then, let us turn to Nature, and read the mandates 
of justice in her law. 

Nature gives to labor; and to labor alone. In a very 
Garden of Eden a man would starve but for human 





APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY 


Book VIII. 


exertion. Now, here are two men of equal incomes — 
that of the one derived from the exertion of his labor, 
that of the other from the rent of land. Is it just that 
they should equally contribute to the expenses of the 
state? Evidently not. The income of the one repre- 
sents wealth he creates and adds to the general wealth 
of the state; the income of the other represents merely 
wealth that he takes from the general stock, returning 
nothing. The right of the one to the enjoyment of his 
income rests on the warrant of nature, which returns 
wealth to labor; the right of the other to the enjoyment 
of his income is a mere fictitious right, the creation of 
municipal regulation, which is unknown and unrecog- 
nized by nature. The father who is told that from his 
labor he must support his children must acquiesce, for 
such is the natural decree; but he may justly demand 
that from the income gained by his labor not one penny 
shall be taken, so long as a penny remains of incomes 
which are gained by a monopoly of the natural oppor- 
tunities which Nature offers impartially to all, and in 
which, his children have as their birthright an equal 
share. 

Adam Smith speaks of incomes as “enjoyed under the 
protection of the state;” and this is the ground upon 
which the equal taxation of all species of property is 
commonly insisted upon — that it is equally protected 
by the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that 
the enjoyment of property is made possible by the 
state — that there is a value created and maintained by 
the community, which is justly called upon to meet 
community expenses. Now, of what values is this true? 
Only of the value of land. This is a value that does 
not arise until a community is formed, and that, unlike 
other values, grows with the growth of the community. 
It exists only as the community exists. Scatter again 
the largest community, and land, now so valuable, would 



Chap. Ill, 


THE CANONS OP TAXATION 


421 


have no value at all. With every increase of popula- 
tion the value of land rises; with every decrease it falls. 
This is true of nothing else save of things which, like 
the ownership of land, are in their nature monopolies. 

The tax upon land values is, therefore, 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 prop- 
erty to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxa- 
tion 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 nat- 
ural return. 



CHAPTER IV 


INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS 

The grounds from which we have drawn the conclu- 
sion that the tax on land values or rent is the best 
method of raising public revenues have been admitted 
expressly or tacitly by all economists of standing, since 
the determination of the nature and law of rent. 

Ricardo says (Chap. X), “a tax on rent would fall 
wholly on landlords, and could not be shifted to any 
class of consumers,” for it “would leave unaltered the 
difference between the produce obtained from the least 
productive land in cultivation and that obtained from 
land of every other quality. * * * A tax on rent would 
not (discourage the cultivation of fresh land, for such 
land pays no rent and would be untaxed.” 

McCulloch (Note XXIV to “Wealth of Nations”) 
declares that “in a practical point of view taxes on the 
rent of land are among the most unjust and impolitic 
that can be imagined,” but he makes this assertion 
solely on the ground of his assumption that it is prac- 
tically impossible to distinguish in taxation between 
the sum paid for the use of the soil and that paid on 
account of the capital expended upon it. But, sup- 
posing that this separation could be effected, he admits 
that the sum paid to landlords for the use of the natural 
powers of the soil might be entirely swept away by a 
tax without their having it in their power to throw any 
portion of the burden upon any one else, and without 
affecting the price of produce. 

422 



i, hap. IV. 


INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS 


423 


John Stuart Mill not only admits all this, but expressly 
declares the expediency and justice of a peculiar tax on 
rent, asking what right the landlords have to the acces- 
sion of riches that comes to them from the general 
progress of society without work, risk, or economizing 
on their part, and although he expressly disapproves 
of interfering with their claim to the present value of 
land, he proposes to take the whole future increase as 
belonging to society by natural right. 

Mrs. Fawcett, in the little compendium of the writings 
of her husband, entitled “Political Economy for Begin- 
ners,” says: “The land tax, whether small or great 
in amount, partakes of the nature of a rent paid by the 
owner of land to the state. In a great part of India the 
land is owned by the government and therefore the land 
tax is rent paid direct to the state. The economic 
perfection of this system of tenure may be readily 
perceived.” 

In fact, that rent should, both on grounds of expedi- 
ency and justice, be the peculiar subject of taxation, is 
involved in the accepted doctrine of rent, and may be 
found in embryo in the works of all economists who 
have accepted the law of Ricardo. That these prin- 
ciples have not been pushed to their necessary conclu- 
sions, as I have pushed them, evidently arises from the 
indisposition to endanger or offend the enormous inter- 
est involved in private ownership in land, and from 
the false theories in regard to wages and the cause of 
poverty which have dominated economic thought. 

But there has been a school of economists who plainly 
perceived, what is clear to the natural perceptions of 
men when uninfluenced by habit — that the revenues of 
the common property, land, ought to be appropriated 
to the common service. The French Economists of the 
last century, headed by Quesnay and Turgot, proposed 
just what I have proposed, that all taxation should be 



424 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY Book VIU 

abolished save a tax upon the value of land. As I am 
acquainted with the doctrines of Quesnay and his dis- 
ciples only at second hand through the medium of the 
English writers, I am unable to say how far his peculiar 
ideas as to agriculture being the only productive avo- 
cation, etc., are erroneous apprehensions, or mere pe- 
culiarities of terminology. But' of this I am certain 
from the proposition in which his theory culminated — 
that he saw the fundamental relation between land and 
labor which has since been lost sight of, and that he 
arrived at practical truth, though, it may be, through 
a course of defectively expressed reasoning. The causes 
which leave in the hands of the landlord a “produce 
net” were by the Physiocrats no better explained than 
the suction of a pump was explained by the assumption 
that nature abhors a vacuum, but the fact in its prac- 
tical relations to social economy was recognized, and 
che benefit which would result from the perfect free- 
dom given to industry and trade by a substitution of a 
tax on rent for all the impositions which hamper and 
distort the application of labor was doubtless as clearly 
seen by them as it is by me. One of the things most to 
be regretted about the French Revolution is that it 
overwhelmed the ideas of the Economists, just as they 
were gaining strength among the thinking classes, and 
were apparently about to influence fiscal legislation. 

Without knowing anything of Quesnay or his doc- 
trines, I have reached the same practical conclusion by 
a route which cannot be disputed, and have based it on 
grounds which cannot be questioned by the accepted 
political economy. 

The only objection to the tax on rent or land values 
which is to be met with in standard politico-economic 
works is one which concedes its advantages — for it is, 
that from the difficulty of separation, we might, in tax- 
ing the rent of land, tax something else. McCulloch, 



Chap. tV. 


INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS 


428 


for instance, declares taxes on the rent of land to be 
impolitic and unjust because the return received for the 
natural and inherent powers of the soil cannot be clearly 
distinguished from the return received from improve- 
ments and meliorations, which might thus be discour- 
aged. Macaulay somewhere says that if the admission 
of the attraction of gravitation were inimical to any 
considerable pecuniary interest, there would not be 
wanting arguments against gravitation — a truth of 
which this objection is an illustration. For admitting 
that it is impossible invariably to separate the value 
of land from the value of improvements, is this neces- 
sity of continuing to tax some improvements any reason 
why we should continue to tax all improvements? If 
it discourage production to tax values which labor and 
capital have intimately combined with that of land, how 
much greater discouragement is involved in taxing not 
only these, but all the clearly distinguishable values 
which labor and capital create? 

But, as a matter of fact, the value of land can always 
be readily distinguished from the value of improvements. 
In countries like the United States there is much valu- 
able land that has never been improved; and in many 
of the States the value of the land and the value of im- 
provements are habitually estimated separately by the 
assessors, though afterward reunited under the term 
real estate. Nor where ground has been occupied from 
immemorial times, is there any difficulty in getting at 
the value of the bare land, for frequently the land is 
owned by one person and the buildings by another, and 
when a fire occurs and improvements are destroyed, 
a clear and definite value remains in the land. In the 
oldest country in the world no difficulty whatever can 
attend the separation, if all that be attempted is to 
separate the value of the clearly distinguishable im- 
provements, made within a moderate period, from the 



426 


APPLICATION OF TBS REMEDY 


Book VIII 


value of the land, should they be destroyed. This, 
manifestly, is all that justice or policy requires. Abso- 
lute accuracy is impossible in any system, and to at- 
tempt to separate all that the human race has done 
from what nature originally provided would be as ab- 
surd as impracticable. A swamp drained or a hill ter- 
raced by the Romans constitutes now as much a part 
of the natural advantages of the British Isles as though 
the work had been done by earthquake or glacier. The 
fact that after a certain lapse of time the value of such 
permanent improvements would be considered as hav- 
ing lapsed into that of the land, and would be taxed 
accordingly, could have no deterrent effect on such 
improvements, for such works are frequently under- 
taken upon leases for years. The fact is, that each 
generation builds and improves for itself, and not for 
the remote future. And the further fact is, that each 
generation is heir, not only to the natural powers of the 
earth, but to all that remains of the work of past gen- 
erations. 

An objection of a different kind may however be 
made. It may be said that where political power is dif- 
fused, it is highly desirable that taxation should fall 
not on one class, such as land owners, but on all; in 
order that all who exercise political power may feel a 
proper interest in economical government. Taxation 
and representation, it will be said, cannot safely be di- 
vorced. 

But however desirable it may be to combine with 
political power the consciousness of public burdens, the 
present system certainly does not secure it. Indirect 
taxes are largely raised from those who pay little or 
nothing consciously. In the United States the class is 
rapidly grooving who not only feel no interest in taxa- 
tion, but who have no concern in good government. In 
our large cities elections are in great measure deter- 



Chap. IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS 427 

mined not by considerations of public interest, but by 
such influences as determined elections in Rome when 
the masses had ceased to care for anything but bread 
and the circus. 

The effect of substituting for the manifold taxes now 
imposed a single tax on the value of land would hardly 
lessen the number of conscious taxpayers, for the divi- 
sion of land now held on speculation would much in- 
crease the number of land holders. But it would so 
equalize the distribution of wealth as to raise even the 
poorest above that condition of abject poverty in which 
public considerations have no weight; while it would at 
the same time cut down those overgrown fortunes which 
raise their possessors above concern in government. The 
dangerous classes politically are the very rich and very 
poor. It is not the taxes that he is conscious of paying 
that gives a man a stake in the country, an interest in 
its government; it is the consciousness of feeling that 
he is an integral part of the community; that its pros- 
perity is his prosperity, and its disgrace his shame. Let 
but the citizen feel this; let him be surrounded by all 
the influences that spring from and cluster round a com- 
fortable home, and the community may rely upon him, 
even to limb or to life. Men do not vote patriotically, 
any more than they fight patriotically, because of their 
payment of taxes. Whatever conduces to the comfort- 
able and independent material condition of the masses 
will best foster public spirit, will make the ultimate gov- 
erning power more intelligent and more virtuous. 

But it may be asked: If the tax on land values is 
so advantageous a mode of raising revenue, how is it 
that so many other taxes are resorted to in preference 
by all governments? 

The answer is obvious: The tax on land values is 
the only tax of any importance that does not distribute 
itself. It falls upon the owners of land, and there is 




BOOK IX 

EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 

CHAPTER L— OF THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OF 

WEALTH 

CHAPTER II. — OF THE EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND THENCE 

UPON PRODUCTION 

CHAPTER HI. — OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES 

CHAPTER IV.— OF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WROUGHT IN 

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 



I cannot play upon any stringed instrument; but I can tell 
you how of a little village to make a great and glorious city.— 
Themistocles . 

Instead of the thorn shall come up the nr tree, and instead 
of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree. 

And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall 
plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build 
and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat. — 
Isaiah. 



CHAPTER I 


OP THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH 

The elder Mirabeau, we are told, ranked the proposi- 
tion of Quesnay, to substitute one single tax on rent 
(the irrvpot unique) for all other taxes, as a discovery 
equal in utility to the invention of writing or the sub- 
stitution of the use of money for barter. 

To whomsoever will think over the matter, this say- 
ing will appear an evidence of penetration rather than 
of extravagance. The advantages which would be 
gained by substituting for the numerous taxes by which 
the public revenues are now raised, a single tax levied 
upon the value of land, will appear more and more im- 
portant the more they are considered. This is the secret 
which would transform the little village into the great 
city. With all the burdens removed which now oppress 
industry and hamper exchange, the production of wealth 
would go on with a rapidity now undreamed of. This, 
in its turn, would lead to an increase in the value of land 
— a new surplus which society might take for general 
purposes. And released from the difficulties which at- 
tend the collection of revenue in a way that begets 
corruption and renders legislation the tool of special 
interests, society could assume functions which the in- 
creasing complexity of life makes it desirable to assume, 
but which the prospect of political demoralization under 
the present system now leads thoughtful men to shrink 
from. 

Consider the effect upon the production of wealth, 

433 



EF FECT S 07 THE REMEDY 


BatkIX. 




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 im- 
mense 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 moun- 
tains; it costs more to get goods through a custom house 
than it does to carry them around the world. It oper- 
ates 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 manu- 
factory be erected we levy upon it an annual sum which 
would go far toward making a handsome profit. We 
say we want capital, but if any one 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. How heavily these taxes burden production 
only those realize who have attempted to follow our 
system of taxation through its ramifications, for, as I 
have before said, the heaviest part of taxation is that 
which falls in increased prices. But manifestly these 
taxes are in their nature akin to the Egyptian Pasha’s 
tax upon date-trees. If they do not cause the trees to 
be cut- down, they at least discourage the planting. 



Chap. I. 


UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH 


435 


To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole 
enormous weight of taxation from productive industry. 
The needle of the seamstress and the great manufac- 
tory ; the cart-horse and the locomotive ; the fishing boat 
and the steamship; the farmer's plow and the merchant's 
stock, would be alike untaxed. All would be free to 
make or to save, to buy or to sell, unfined by taxes, un- 
annoyed by the tax-gatherer. Instead of saying to the 
producer, as it does now, “The more you add to the 
general wealth the more shall you be taxed!” the state 
would say to the producer, “Be as industrious, as thrifty, 
as enterprising as you choose, you shall have your full 
reward! You shall not be fined for making two blades 
of grass grow where one grew before; you shall not be 
taxed for adding to the aggregate wealth.” 

And will not the community gain by thus refusing 
to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; by thus re- 
fraining 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, be- 
sides its return to those who undertake it, yields collat- 
eral advantages to others. If a man plant a fruit-tree, 
his gain is that he gathers the fruit in its time and sea- 
son, But in addition to his gain, there is a gain to the 
whole community. Others than the owner are bene- 
fited 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, bene- 
fits others besides those who get the direct profits. Na- 





EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX. 


ture 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. 

Well may the community leave to the individual pro- 
ducer all that prompts him to exertion; well may it 
let the laborer have the full reward of his labor, 
and the capitalist the full return of his capital. For 
the more that labor and capital produce, the greater 
grows the common wealth in which all may share. And 
in the value or rent of land is this general gain ex- 
pressed in a definite and concrete form. Here is a fund 
which the state may take while leaving to labor and 
capital their full reward. With increased activity of 
production this would commensurately increase. 

And to shift the burden of taxation from production 
and exchange to the value or rent of land would not 
merely be to give new stimulus to the production of 
wealth; it would be to open new opportunities. For 
under this system no one would care to hold land unless 
to use it, and land now withheld from use would every- 
where be thrown open to improvement. 

The selling price of land would fall ; land speculation 
Would receive its death blow ; land monopolization would 
no longer pay. Millions and millions of acres from 
which settlers are now shut out by high prices would be 
abandoned by their present owners or sold to settlers 
upon nominal terms. And this not merely on the 
frontiers, but within what are now considered well set- 
tled districts. Within a hundred miles of San Francisco 



Chap. I. 


UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH 


437 


would be thus thrown open land enough to support, even 
with present modes of cultivation, an agricultural popu- 
lation equal to that now scattered from the Oregon 
boundary to the Mexican line — a distance of 800 miles. 
In the same degree would this be true of most of the 
Western States, and in a great degree of the older East- 
ern States, for even in New York and Pennsylvania is 
population yet sparse as compared with the capacity of 
the land. And even in densely populated England would 
such a policy throw open to cultivation many hundreds 
of thousands of acres now held as private parks, deer 
preserves, and shooting grounds. 

For this simple device of placing all taxes on the value 
of land would be in effect putting up the land at auctioq 
to whomsoever would pay the highest rent to the state. 
The demand for land fixes its value, and hence, if taxes 
were placed so as very nearly to consume that value, 
the man who wished to hold land without using it would 
have to pay very nearly what it would be worth to any 
one who wanted to use it. 

And it must be remembered that this would apply, not 
merely to agricultural land, but to all land. Mineral 
land would be thrown open to use, just as agricultural 
land; and in the heart of a city no one could afford to 
keep land from its most profitable use, or on the out- 
skirts to demand more for it than the use to which it 
could at the time be put would warrant. Everywhere 
that land had attained a value, taxation, instead of oper- 
ating, as now, as a fine upon improvement, would operate 
to force improvement. Whoever planted an orchard, or 
sowed a field, or built a house, or erected a manufac- 
tory, no matter how costly, would have no more to pay 
in taxes than if he kept so much land idle. The mo- 
nopolist of agricultural land would be taxed as much as 
though his land were covered with houses and barns, 
with crops and with stock. The owner of a vacant city 



438 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX. 


lot would have to pay as much for the privilege of keep- 
ing other people off of it until he wanted to use it, as 
his neighbor who has a fine house upon his lot. It would 
cost as much to keep a row of tumble-down shanties 
upon valuable land as though it were covered with a 
grand hotel or a pile of great warehouses filled with 
costly goods. 

Thus, the bonus that wherever labor is most produc- 
tive must now be paid before labor can be exerted would 
disappear. The farmer would not have to pay out half 
his means, or mortgage his labor for years, in order to 
obtain land to cultivate; the builder of a city home- 
stead would not have to lay out as much for a small 
lot as for the house he puts upon it; the company that 
proposed to erect a manufactory would not have to ex- 
pend a great part of their capital for a site. And what 
would be paid from year to year to the state would be 
in lieu of all the taxes now levied upon improvements, 
machinery, and stock. 

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 competi- 
tors 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 feel- 
ing 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. 

With natural opportunities thus free to labor; witfc 



Chap. J. 


UPON THE PRODUCTION OP WEALTH 


439 


capital and improvements exempt from tax, and ex- 
change released from restrictions, the spectacle of will- 
ing men unable to turn their labor into the things they 
are suffering for would become impossible; the recurring 
paroxysms which paralyze industry would cease; every 
wheel of production would be set in motion; demand 
would keep pace with supply, and supply with demand; 
trade would increase in every direction, and wealth aug* 
ment on every hand. 



CHAPTER II 


OP THl EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND THENCE UPON 

PRODUCTION 

% 

But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a 
transference of all public burdens to a tax upon the 
value of land cannot be fully appreciated until we con- 
sider the effect upon the distribution of wealth. 

Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of 
wealth which appears in all civilized countries, with a 
constant tendency to greater and greater inequality as 
material progress goes on, we have found it in the fact 
that, as civilization advances, the ownership of land, 
now in private hands, gives a greater and greater power 
of appropriating the wealth produced by labor and 
capital. 

Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, 
direct and indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent, 
would be, as far as it went, to counteract this tendency 
to inequality, and, if it went so far as to take in taxa- 
tion the whole of rent, the cause of inequality would be 
totally destroyed. Rent, instead of causing inequality, 
as now, would then promote equality. Labor and capi- 
tal would then receive the whole produce, minus that 
portion taken by the state in the taxation of land values, 
which, being applied to public purposes, would be 
equally distributed in public benefits. 

That is to say, the wealth produced in every com- 
munity would be divided into two portions. One part 
would be distributed in wages and interest between in- 

440 



Chap. 11. 


UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 


441 


dividual producers, according to the part each had taken 
in the work of production; the other part would go to 
the community as a whole, to be distributed in public 
benefits to all its members. In this all would share 
equally — the weak with the strong, young children and 
decrepit old men, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, 
as well as the vigorous. And justly so — for while one 
part represents the result of individual effort in pro- 
duction, the other represents the increased power with 
which the community as a whole aids the individual. 

Thus, as material progress tends to increase rent, were 
rent taken by the community for fcommon purposes the 
very cause which now tends to produce inequality as 
material progress goes on would then tend to produce 
greater and greater equality. Fully to understand this 
effect, let us revert to principles previously worked out. 

We have seen that wages and interest must every- 
where be fixed by the rent line or margin of cultivation 
— that is to say, by the reward which labor and capital 
can secure on land for which no rent is paid; that the 
aggregate amount of wealth, which the aggregate of 
labor and capital employed in production will receive, 
will be the amount of wealth produced (or rather, when 
we consider taxes, the net amount) , minus what is taken 
as rent. 

We have seen that with material progress, as it is at 
present going on, there is a twofold tendency to the ad- 
vance of rent. Both are to the increase of the propor- 
tion of the wealth produced which goes as rent, and to 
the decrease of the proportion which goes as wages and 
interest. But the first, or natural tendency, which re- 
sults from the laws of social development, is to the in- 
crease of rent as a quantity, without the reduction of 
wages and interest as quantities, or even with their 
quantitative increase. The other tendency, which re- 
sults* from the unnatural appropriation of land to pri- 





EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX 


Fate ownership, is to the increase of rent as a quantity 
by the reduction of wages and interest as quantities. 

Now, it is evident that to take rent in taxation for 
public purposes, which virtually abolishes private own- 
ership in land, would be to destroy the tendency to an 
absolute decrease in wages and interest, by destroying 
the speculative monopolization of land and the specula 
tive increase in rent. It would be very largely to in- 
crease wages and interest, by throwing open natural 
opportunities now monopolized and reducing the price 
of land. Labor and capital would thus not merely gain 
what is now taken from them in taxation, but would 
gain by the positive decline in rent caused by the de- 
crease in speculative land values. A new equilibrium 
would be established, at which the common rate of wages 
and interest would be much higher than now. 

But this new equilibrium established, further ad- 
vances in productive power, and the tendency in this 
direction would be greatly accelerated, would result in 
still increasing rent, not at the expense of wages and in- 
terest,, but by new gains in production, which, as rent 
would be taken by the community for public uses, 
would accrue to the advantage of every member of the 
community. Thus, as material progress went on, the 
condition of the masses would constantly improve. Not 
merely one class would become richer, but all would be- 
come richer; not merely one class would have more of 
the necessaries, conveniences, and elegancies of life, but 
all would have more. For, the increasing power of pro- 
duction, which comes With increasing population, with 
every new discovery in the productive arts, with every 
labor-saving invention, with every extension and facili- 
tation of exchanges, Could be monopolized by none. 
That part of the benefit which did not go directly to 
increase the reward of labor and capital would go to 
the state — that is to say, to the whole community. With 



Chap. II. 


UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 


443 


all the enormous advantages, material and mental, of a 
dense population, would be united the freedom and 
equality that can now be found only in new and sparsely 
settled districts. 

And, then, consider how equalization in the distribu- 
tion of wealth would react upon production, everywhere 
preventing waste, everywhere increasing power. 

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 main- 
tains over a million paupers on official charity; the city 
of New York alone spends over seven miljion 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 poten- 
tial earnings of the labor thus going to waste, the cost 
of the reckless, improvident and idle habits thus gen- 
erated; 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 des- 
titution — 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 dis- 
tribution of wealth takes from the aggregate which, with 
present means of production, society might enjoy. Nor 
yet shall we have completed the account. The ignorance 
and vice, the recklessness and immorality engendered by 
the inequality in the distribution of wealth show them- 
selves in the imbecility and corruption of government; 
and the waste of public revenues, and the still greater 
waste involved in the ignorant and corrupt abuse of pub- 



444 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY Book /X 

lie powers and functions, are their legitimate conse- 
quences. 

But the increase in wages, and the opening of new 
avenues of employment which would result from the 
appropriation of rent to public purposes, would not 
merely stop these wastes and relieve society of these 
enormous losses; new power would be added to labor. 
It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its 
wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, 
the world over. 

What is remarked between the efficiency of labor in 
the agricultural districts of England where different 
rates of wages prevail; what Brassey noticed as between 
the work done by his better paid English navvies and 
that done by the worse paid labor of the continent; what 
was evident in the United States as between slave labor 
and free labor; what is seen by the astonishing number 
•of mechanics or servants required in India or China to 
get anything done, is universally true. The efficiency 
of labor always increases with the habitual wages of 
labor — for high wages mean increased self-respect, in- 
telligence, 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 in- 
crease 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! 

Who can say to what infinite powers the wealth-pro- 
ducing capacity of labor may not be raised by social 



Chap. II, 


UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 


445 


adjustments which will give to the producers of wealth 
their fair proportion of its advantages and enjoyments! 
With present processes the gain would be simply in- 
calculable, but just as wages are high, so do the inven- 
tion and utilization of improved processes and machinery 
go on with greater rapidity and ease. That the 
wheat crops of Southern Russia are still reaped with 
the scythe and beaten out with the flail is simply be- 
cause wages are there so low. ^American invention, 
American aptitude for labor-saving processes and ma- 
chinery are the result of the comparatively high wages 
that have prevailed in the United States. Had our pro- 
ducers been condemned to the low reward of the Egyp- 
tian fellah or Chinese coolie, we would be drawing water 
by hand and transporting goods on the shoulders of 
men. The increase in the reward of labor and capital 
would still further stimulate invention and hasten the 
adoption of improved processes, and these would truly 
appear, what in themselves they really are — an unmixed 
good. The injurious effects of labor-saving machinery 
upon the working classes, that are now so often appar- 
ent, and that, in spite of all argument, make so many 
people regard machinery as an evil instead of a blessing, 
would disappear. Every new power engaged in the serv- 
ice of man would improve the condition of all. And 
from the general intelligence and mental activity spring- 
ing from this general improvement of condition would 
come new developments of power of which we as yet 
cannot dream. 

But I shall not deny, and do not wish to lose sight of 
the fact, that while thus preventing waste and thus add- 
ing to the efficiency of labor, the equalization in the 
distribution of wealth that would result from the simple 
plan of taxation that I propose, must lessen the in- 
tensity with which wealth is pursued. It seems to me 
that in a condition of society in which no one need fear 



446 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY Book IX 

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 societv 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 over- 
coat on. When every one is sure of being able to get 
enough, no one will care to make a pack-horse of him- 
self. 

And though this incentive to production be with- 
drawn, can we not spare it? Whatever may have been 
its office in an earlier stage of development, it is not 
needed now. The dangers that menace our civilization 
do not come from the weakness of the springs of produc- 
tion. What it suffers from, and what, if a remedy be 
not applied, it must die from, is unequal distribution! 

Nor would the removal of this incentive, regarded 
only from the standpoint of production, be an unmixed 
loss. For, that the aggregate of production is greatly 
reduced by the greed with which riches are pursued, is 
one of the most obtrusive facts of modern society. 
While, were this insane desire to get rich at any cost 
lessened, mental activities now devoted to scraping to- 
gether riches would be translated into far higher spheres 
of usefulness. 



CHAPTER III 


OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES 

When it is first proposed to put all taxes upon the 
value of land, and thus confiscate rent, all land holders 
are likely to take the alarm, and there will not be want- 
ing appeals to the fears of small farm and homestead 
owners, who will be told that this is a proposition to rob 
them of their hard-earned property. But a moment’s 
reflection will show that this proposition should com- 
mend itself to all whose interests as land holders do not 
largely exceed their interests as laborers or capitalists, 
or both. And further consideration will show that 
though the large land holders may lose relatively, yet 
even in their case there will be an absolute gain. For, 
the increase in production will be so great that labor and 
capital will gain very much more than will be lost to 
private land ownership, while in these gains, and in the 
greater ones involved in a more healthy social condition, 
the whole community, including the land owners them- 
selves, will share. 

In a preceding chapter I have gone over the question 
of what is due to the present land holders, and have 
shown that they have no claim to compensation. But 
there is still another ground on which we may dismiss all 
idea of compensation. They will not really be injured. 

It is manifest, of course, that the change I propose 
will greatly benefit all those who live by wages, whether 
of hand or of head — laborers, operatives, mechanics, 
clerks, professional men of all sorts. It is manifest, 

447 



EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX 


also, that it will benefit all those who live partly by 
wages and partly by the earnings of their capital — • 
storekeepers, merchants, manufacturers, employing 01 
undertaking producers and exchangers of all sorts — > 
from the peddler or drayman to the railroad or steam- 
ship owner — and it is likewise manifest that it will in- 
crease the incomes of those whose incomes are drawn 
from the earnings of capital, or from investments other 
than in lands, save perhaps the holders of government 
bonds or other securities bearing fixed rates of inter- 
est, which will probably depreciate in selling value, 
owing to the rise in the general rate of interest, though 
the income from them will remain the same. 

Take, now, the case of the homestead owner — the 
mechanic, storekeeper, or professional man who has se- 
cured himself a house and lot, where he lives, and which 
he contemplates with satisfaction as a place from which 
his family cannot be ejected in case of his death. He ' 
will not be injured; on the contrary, he will be the 
gainer. The selling value of his lot will diminish — 
theoretically it will entirely disappear. But its useful- 
ness to him will not disappear. It will serve his purpose 
as well as ever. While, as the value of all other lots 
will diminish or disappear in the same ratio, he retains 
the same security of always having a lot that he had 
before. That is to say, he is a loser only as the man 
who has bought himself a pair of boots may be said to 
be a loser by a subsequent fall in the price of boots. 
His boots will be just as useful to him, and the next 
pair of boots he can get cheaper. So, to the homestead 
owner, his lot will be as useful, and should he look 
forward to getting a larger lot, or having his children, 
as they grow up, get homesteads of their own, he will, 
even in the matter of lots, be the gainer. And in the 
present, other things considered, he will be much the 
gainer. For though he will have more taxes to pay 



Chap, III. 


UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES 


449 


upon his land, he will be released from taxes upon his 
house and improvements, upon his furniture and per- 
sonal property, upon all that he and his family eat, 
drink and wear, while his earnings will be largely in- 
creased by the rise of wages, the constant employment, 
and the increased briskness of trade. His only loss will 
be, if he wants to sell his lot without getting another, and 
this will be a small loss compared with the great gain. 

And so with the farmer. I speak not now of the 
farmers who never touch the handles of a plow, who cul- 
tivate thousands of acres and enjoy incomes like those 
of the rich Southern planters before the war; but of the 
working farmers who constitute such a large class in 
the United States — men who own small farms, which 
they cultivate with the aid of their boys, and perhaps 
some hired help, and who in Europe would be called 
peasant proprietors,. Paradoxical as it may appear to 
these men until they understand the full bearings of the 
proposition, of all classes above that of the mere laborer 
they have most to gain by placing all taxes upon the 
value of land. That they do not now get as good a liv- 
ing as their hard .work ought to give them, they generally 
feel, though they may not be able to trace the cause. 
The fact is that taxation, as now levied, falls on them 
with peculiar severity. They are taxed on all their 
improvements — houses, barns, fences, crops, stock. The 
personal property which they have cannot be as readily 
concealed or undervalued as can the more valuable kinds 
which are concentrated in the cities. They are not only 
taxed on personal property and improvements, which 
the owners of unused land escape, but their land is gen- 
erally taxed at a higher rate than land held on specula- 
tion, simply because it is improved. But further than 
this, all taxes imposed on commodities, and especially 
the taxes which, like our protective duties, are imposed 
with a view of raising the prices of commodities, fal? 



450 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book JX- 


on the farmer without mitigation. For in a country 
like the United States, which exports agricultural prod- 
uce, the farmer cannot be protected. Whoever gains, 
he must lose. Some years ago the Free Trade League 
of New York published a broadside containing cuts of 
various articles of necessity marked with the duties im- 
posed by the tariff, and which read something in this 
wise: “The farmer rises in the morning and draws on 
his pantaloons taxed 40 per cent, and his boots taxed 30 
per cent., striking a light with a match taxed 200 per 
cent.,” and so on, following him through the day and 
through life, until, killed by taxation, he is lowered 
into the grave with a rope taxed 45 per cent. This is 
but a graphic illustration of the manner in which such 
taxes ultimately fall. The farmer would be a great 
gainer by the substitution of a single tax upon the value 
of land for all these taxes, for the taxation of land 
values would fall with greatest weight, not upon the 
agricultural districts, where land values are compara- 
tively small, but upon the towns and cities where land 
values are high; whereas taxes upon personal property 
and improvements fall as heavily in the country as in 
the city. And in sparsely settled districts there would 
be hardly any taxes at all for the farmer to pay. For 
taxes, being levied upon the value of the bare land, 
would fall as heavily upon unimproved as upon im- 
proved land. Acre for acre, the improved and culti- 
vated farm, with its buildings, fences, orchard, crops, 
and stock, could be taxed no more than unused land of 
equal quality. The result would be that speculative 
values would be kept down, and that cultivated and im- 
proved farms would have no taxes to pay until the 
country around them had been well settled. In fact, 
paradoxical as it may at first seem to them, the effect 
of putting all taxation upon the value of land would be 
to relieve the harder working farmers of all taxation. 



Chap. Ill UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES 451 

But the great gain of the working farmer can be 
seen only when the effect upon the distribution of popu- 
lation is considered. The destruction of speculative land 
values would tend to diffuse population where it is too 
dense and to concentrate it where it is too sparse; to 
substitute for the tenement house, homes surrounded 
by gardens, and fully to settle agricultural districts 
before people were driven far from neighbors to look 
for land. The people of the cities would thus get more 
of the pure air and sunshine of the country, the people 
of the country more of the economies and social life of 
the city. If, as is doubtless the case, the application 
of machinery tends to large fields, agricultural popula- 
tion will assume the primitive form and cluster in 
villages. The life of the average farmer is now unneces- 
sarily dreary. He is not only compelled to work early 
and late, but he is cut off by the sparseness of population 
from the conveniences, and amusements, the educational 
facilities, and the social and intellectual opportunities 
that come with the closer contact of man with man. He 
would be far better off in all these respects, and his 
labor would be far more productive, if he and those 
around him held no more land than they wanted to use.* 
While his children, as they grew up, would neither be 
so impelled to seek the excitement of a city nor would 
they be driven so far away to seek farms of their own. 
Their means of living would be in their own hands, and 
at home. 

In short, the working farmer, is both a laborer and 
a capitalist, as well as a land owner, and it is by his 

* Besides the enormous increase in the productive power qf 
labor which would result from the better distribution of popu- 
lation there would be also a similar economy in the productive 
power of land. The concentration of population in cities fed by 
the exhaustive cultivation of large, sparsely populated areas, 
results in a literal draining into the sea of the elements of fer- 
tility. How enormous this waste is may be seen from the 




452 


EFFECTS OF THE BElfEDT 


Book IX 


labor and capital that his living is made. His losi 
would be nominal; his gain would be real and great. 

In varying degrees is this true of all land holders, 
Many land holders are laborers of one sort or another. 
And it would be hard to find a land owner not a laborer, 
who is not also a capitalist — while the general rule is, 
that the larger the land owner the greater the capital- 
ist. So true is this that in common thought the char- 
acters are confounded. Thus to put all taxes on the 
value of land, while it would be largely to reduce all 
great fortunes, would in no case leave the rich man pen- 
niless. The Duke of Westminster, who owns a con- 
siderable part of the site of London, is probably the 
richest land owner in the world. To take all his ground 
rents by taxation would largely reduce his enormous in- 
come, but would still leave him his buildings and all the 
income from them, and doubtless much personal prop- 
erty 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. 

So would the Astors of New York .remain very rich. 
And so, t think, it will be seen throughout — this meas- 
ure would make no one poorer but such as could be 
made a great deal poorer without being really hurt. 
It would cut down great fortunes, but it would impov- 
erish no one. 

Wealth would not only be enormously increased; 
it would be equally distributed. I do not mean that 
each individual would get the same amount of wealth. 
That would not be equal distribution, so long as dif- 
ferent individuals have different powers and different 
desires. But I mean that wealth would be distributed 


calculations that have been made as to the sewage of our cities, 
and its practical result is to be seen in the diminishing pro- 
ductiveness of agriculture in large sections. In a great part 
of the United States we are steadily exhausting our lands. 



Chap. Ill . 


UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES 


45 & 


in accordance with the degree in which the industry, 
skill, knowledge, or prudence of each contributed to the 
common stock. The great cause which concentrates 
wealth in the hands of those who do not produce, and 
takes it from the hands of those who do, would be gone. 
The inequalities that continued to exist would be those 
of nature, not the artificial inequalities produced by the 
denial of natural law. The non-producer would no 
longer roll in luxury while the producer got but the 
barest necessities of animal existence. 

The monopoly of the land gone, there need be no fear 
of large fortunes. For then the riches of any individual 
must consist of wealth, properly so-called — of wealth, 
which is the product of labor, and which constantly 
tends to dissipation, for national debts, I imagine, would 
not long survive the abolition of the system from which 
they spring. All fear of great fortunes might be dis. 
missed, for when every one gets what he fairly earns, 
no one can get more than he fairly earns. How many 
men are there who fairly earn a million dollars? 



CHAPTER IV 


CF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WROUGHT IN SOCIAL 

ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 

We are dealing only with general principles. There 
are some matters of detail — such as those arising from 
the division of revenues between local and general gov- 
ernments — which upon application of these principles 
would come up, but these it is not necessary here to dis- 
cuss. When once principles are settled, details will be 
readily adjusted. 

Nor without too much elaboration is it possible t r 
notice all the changes which would be wrought, or wouK 
become possible, by a change which would readjust th 
very foundation of society, but to some main features 
let me' call attention. 

Noticeable among these is the great simplicity which 
would become possible in government. To collect taxes, 
to prevent and punish evasions, to check and counter- 
check revenues drawn from so many distinct sources, 
now make up probably three-fourths, perhaps seven- 
eighths of the business of government, outside of the 
preservation of order, the maintenance of the military 
arm, and the administration of justice. An immense 
and complicated network of governmental machinery 
would thus be dispensed with. 

In the administration of justice there would be a like 
saving of strain. Much of the civil business of our 
courts arises from disputes as to ownership of land. 

These would cease when the state was virtually acknowl- 

464 



Chap. TV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 


456 


edged as the sole owner of land, and all occupiers became 
practically rent-paying tenants. The growth of mor- 
ality consequent upon the cessation of want would tend 
to a like diminution in other civil business of the courts, 
which could be hastened by the adoption of the com- 
mon sense proposition of Bentham to abolish all laws for 
the collection of debts and the enforcement of private 
contracts. The rise of wages, the opening of oppor- 
tunities for all to make an easy and comfortable living, 
would at once lessen and would soon eliminate from 
society the thieves, swindlers, and other classes of crimi- 
nals who spring from the unequal distribution of wealth. 
Thus the administration of the criminal law, with all its 
paraphernalia of policemen, detectives, prisons, and 
penitentiaries, would, like the administration of the civil 
law, cease to make such a drain upon the vital force 
and attention of society. We should get rid not only of 
many judges, bailiffs, clerks, and prison keepers, but of 
the great host of lawyers who are now maintained at 
the expense of producers; and talent now wasted in legal 
subtleties would be turned to higher pursuits. 

The legislative, judicial, and executive functions of 
government would in this way be vastly simplified. Nor 
can I think that the public debts and the standing 
armies, which are historically the outgrowth of the 
change from feudal to allodial tenures, would long re- 
main after the reversion to the old idea that the land 
of a country is the common right of the people of the 
country. The former could readily be paid off by a tax 
that would not lessen the wages of labor nor check pro- 
duction, and the latter the growth of intelligence and 
independence among the masses, aided, perhaps, by the 
progress of invention, which is revolutionizing the mili- 
tary art, must soon cause to disappear. 

Society would thus approach the ideal of Jeffersonian 
democracy, the promised land of Herbert Spencer, the 



456 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX. 


abolition of government. But of government only as a 
directing and repressive power. It would at the same 
time, and in the same degree, become possible for it to 
realize the dream of socialism. All this simplification 
and abrogation of the present functions of government 
would make possible the assumption of certain other 
functions which are now pressing for recognition. Gov- 
ernment could take upon itself the transmission of mes- 
sages by telegraph, as well as by mail; of building and 
operating railroads, as well as of opening and maintain- 
ing common roads. With present functions so simplified 
and reduced, functions such as these could be assumed 
without danger or strain, and would be under the super- 
vision of public attention, which is now distracted. 
There would be a great and increasing surplus revenue 
from the taxation of land values, for material progress, 
which would go on with greatly accelerated rapidity, 
would tend constantly to increase rent. This revenue 
arising from the common property could be applied to 
the common benefit, as were the revenues of Sparta. 
We might not establish public tables — they would be 
unnecessary; but we could establish public baths, mu- 
seums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and 
dancing halls, theaters, universities, technical schools, 
shooting galleries, play grounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat, 
light, and motive power, as well as water, might be 
conducted through our streets at public expense; our 
roads be lined with fruit trees; discoverers and inventors 
rewarded, scientific investigations supported; and in a 
thousand ways the public revenues made to foster ef- 
forts for the public benefit. We should reach the ideal 
of the socialist, but not through government repression. 
Government would change its character, and would 
become the administration of a great co-operative so- 
ciety. It would become merely the agency by which the 



Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 457 

common property was administered for the common 
benefit. 

Does this seem impracticable? Consider for a mo- 
ment the vast changes that would be wrought in social 
life by a change which would assure to labor its full 
reward; which would banish want and the fear of want; 
and give to the humblest freedom to develop in natural 
symmetry. 

In thinking of the possibilities of social organization, 
we are apt to assume that greed is the strongest of hu- 
man motives, and that systems of administration can 
be safely based only upon the idea that the fear of 
punishment is necessary to keep men honest — that self- 
ish interests are always stronger than general interests. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. 

From whence springs this lust for gain, to gratify 
which men tread everything pure and noble under their 
feet; to which they sacrifice all the higher possibilities 
of life; which converts civility into a hollow pretense, 
patriotism into a sham, and religion into hypocrisy; 
which makes so much of civilized existence an Ishma- 
elitish warfare, of which the weapons are cunning and 
iraud? 

Does it not spring from the existence of want? Car- 
lyle somewhere says that poverty is the hell of which the 
modern Englishman is most afraid. And he is right. 
Poverty is the open-mouthed, relentless hell which 
yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough. 
The Vedas declare no truer thing than when the wise 
crow Bushanda tells the eagle-bearer of Vishnu that 
the keenest pain is in poverty. For poverty is not merely 
deprivation; it means shame, degradation; the searing 
of the most sensitive parts of our moral and mental na- 
ture as with hot irons; the denial of the strongest im- 
pulses and the sweetest affections; the wrenching of the 
most vital nerves. You love your wife, you love your 



458 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX. 


children; but would it not be easier to see them die 
than to see them reduced to the pinch of want in which 
large classes in every highly civilized community live? 
The strongest of animal passions is that with which 
we cling to life, but it is an everyday occurrence in civil- 
ized societies for men to put poison to their mouths or 
pistols to their heads from fear of poverty, and for 
one who does this there are probably a hundred who 
have the desire, but are restrained by instinctive shrink- 
ing, by religious considerations, or by family ties. 

From this hell of poverty, it is but natural that men 
should make every effort to escape. With the impulse 
to self-preservation and self-gratification combine nobler 
feelings, and love as well as fear urges in the struggle. 
Many a man does a mean thing, a dishonest thing, a 
greedy and grasping and unjust thing, in the effort to 
place above want, or the fear of want, mother or wife 
or children. 

And out of this condition of things arises a public 
opinion which enlists, as an impelling power in the 
struggle to grasp and to keep, one of the strongest — 
perhaps with many men the very strongest — springs of 
human action. The desire for approbation, the feeling 
that urges us to win the respect, admiration, or sym- 
pathy of our fellows, is instinctive and universal. Dis- 
torted sometimes into the most abnormal manifestations, 
it may yet be everywhere perceived. It is potent with 
the veriest savage, as with the most highly cultivated 
member of the most polished society; it shows itself 
with the first gleam of intelligence, and persists to the 
last breath. It triumphs over the love of ease, over the 
sense of pain, over the dread of death. It dictates 
the most trivial and the most important actions. 

The child just beginning to toddle or to talk will make 
new efforts as its cunning little tricks excite attention 
and laughter; the dying master of the world gathers his 



Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 


459 


robes around him, that he may pass away as becomes a 
king; Chinese mothers will deform their daughters’ feet 
by cruel stocks, European women will sacrifice their 
own comfort and the comfort of their families to similar 
dictates of fashion; the Polynesian, that he may excite 
admiration by his beautiful tattoo, will hold himself 
still while his flesh is torn by sharks , teeth; the North 
American Indian, tied to the stake, will bear the most 
fiendish tortures without a moan, and, that he may be 
respected and admired as a great brave, will taunt his 
tormentors to new cruelties. It is this that leads the 
forlorn hope; it is this that trims the lamp of the pale 
student; it is this that impels men to strive, to strain, 
to toil, and to die. It is this that raised the pyramids 
and that fired the Ephesian dome. 

Now, men admire what they desire. How sweet to 
the storm-stricken seems the safe harbor; food to the 
hungry, drink to the thirsty, warmth to the shivering, 
rest to the weary, power to the weak, knowledge to him 
in whom the intellectual yearnings of the soul have been 
aroused. And thus the sting of want and the fear of 
want make men admire above all things the possession 
of riches, and to become wealthy is to become respected, 
and admired, and influential. Get money — honestly, if 
you can, but at any rate get money ! This is the lesson 
that society is daily and hourly dinning in the ears of 
its members. Men instinctively admire virtue and truth, 
but the sting of want and the fear of want make thorn 
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 admira- 
tion, 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 



460 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Biofc JX 


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 attri- 
tion 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. 

Take the case of those miserable “men with muck- 
rakes,” who are to be seen in every community as plainly 
as Bunyan saw their type in his vision — who, long after 
they have accumulated wealth enough to satisfy every 
desire, go on working, scheming, striving to add riches 
to riches. It was the desire “to be something;” nay, in 
many cases, the desire to do noble and generous deeds, 
that started them on a career of money getting. And 
what compels them to it long after every possible need 
is satisfied, what urges them still with unsatisfied and 
ravenous greed, is not merely the force of tyrannous 
habit, but the subtler gratifications which the possession 
of riches gives — the sense of power and influence, the 
sense of being looked up to and respected, the sense that 



Chap. IV: UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 


461 


their wealth not merely raises them above want, but 
makes them men of mark in the community in which 
they live. It is this that makes the rich man so loath to 
part with his money, so anxious to get more. 

Against temptations that thus appeal to the strongest 
impulses of our nature, the sanctions of law and the pre- 
cepts of religion can effect but little ; and the wonder is, 
not that men are so self-seeking, but that they are not 
much more so. That under present circumstances men 
are not more grasping, more unfaithful, more selfish 
than they are, proves the goodness and fruitfulness of 
human nature, the ceaseless flow of the perennial foun- 
tains from which its moral qualities are fed. All of us 
have mothers; most of us have children, and so faith, 
and purity, and unselfishness can never be utterly ban- 
ished from the world, howsoever bad be social adjust- 
ments. 

But whatever is potent for evil may be made potent 
for good. The change I have proposed would destroy 
the conditions that distort impulses in themselves benefi- 
cent, and would transmute the forces which now tend 
to disintegrate society into forces which would tend to 
unite and purify it. 

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 
ibe 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 



462 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX 


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 be secured only for private interests, and a rail- 
road 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 econom- 
ically 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. 

Shortsighted is the philosophy which counts on self- 
ishness 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 mechan- 
ical 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 



Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 463 

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 fam- 
ine, 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 to-day, as ever, 
the world is full of it. To bp pitied is the man who has 
never seen and never felt it. Look around! among com- 
mon 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 — every here 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 strength- 
ening, 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. The wrong that pro- 
duces inequality; the wrong that in the midst of abun- 
dance tortures men with want or harries them with the 
fear of want ; that stunts them physically, degrades them 
intellectually, and distorts them morally, is what alone 
prevents harmonious social development. For “all that 
is from the gods is full of providence. We are made for 
co-operation — like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the 
rows of the upper and lower teeth/’ 



464 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY Book IX.' 

There are people into whose heads it never enters to 
conceive of any better state of society than that which 
now exists — who imagine that the idea that there could 
be a state of society in which greed would be banished, 
prisons stand empty, individual interests be subordi- 
nated to general interests, and no one seek to rob or to 
oppress his neighbor, is but the dream of impracticable 
dreamers, for whom these practical level-headed men, 
who pride themselves on recognizing facts as they are, 
have a hearty contempt. But such men — though some 
of them write books, and some of them occupy the chairs 
of universities, and some of them stand in pulpits — do 
not think. 

If they were accustomed to dine in such eating houses 
as are to be found in the lower quarters of London and 
Paris, where the knives and forks are chained to the 
table, they would deem it the natural, ineradicable dis- 
position of man to carry off the knife and fork with 
which he has eaten. 

Take a company of well-bred men and women dining 
together. There is no struggling for food, no attempt 
on the part of any one to get more than his neighbor; 
no* attempt to gorge or to carry off. On the contrary, 
each one is anxious to help his neighbor before he par- 
takes himself; to offer to others the best rather than 
pick it out for himself; and should any one show the 
slightest disposition to prefer the gratification of his own 
appetite to that of the others, or in any way to act the 
pig or pilferer, the swift and heavy penalty of social 
contempt and ostracism would show how such conduct 
is reprobated by common opinion. 

All this is so common as to excite no remark, as to 
seem the natural state of things. Yet it is no more 
natural that men should not be greedy of food than 
that they should not be greedy of wealth. They are 
greedy of food when they are not assured that there will 



Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 


469 


be a fair and equitable distribution which will give each 
enough. But when these conditions are assured, the; 
cease to be greedy of food. And so in society, as at 
present constituted, men are greedy of wealth because 
the conditions of distribution are so unjust that instead 
of each being sure of enough, many are certain to be 
condemned to want. It is the “devil catch the hind- 
most” of present social adjustments that causes the raw 
and scramble for wealth, in which all considerations ol 
justice, mercy, religion, and sentiment are trampled 
under foot; in which men forget their own souls, and 
struggle to the very verge of the grave for what they 
cannot take beyond. But an equitable distribution of 
wealth, that would exempt all from the fear of want,, 
would destroy the greed of wealth, just as in polite so- 
ciety the greed of food has been destroyed. 

On the crowded steamers of the early California lines, 
there was often a marked difference between the manners 
of the steerage and the cabin, which illustrates this prin- 
ciple of human nature. An abundance of food was pro- 
vided for the steerage as for the cabin, but in the former 
there were no regulations which insured efficient service, 
and the meals became a scramble. In the cabin, on the 
contrary, where each was allotted his place and there 
was no fear that everyone would not get enough, there 
was no such scrambling and waste as were witnessed in 
the steerage. The difference was not in the character of 
the people, but simply in this fact. The cabin pas- 
senger transferred to the steerage would participate in 
the greedy rush, and the steerage passenger transferred 
to the cabin would at once become decorous and polite. 
The same difference would show itself in society in 
general were the present unjust distribution of wealth 
replaced by a just distribution. 

Consider this existing fact of a cultivated and refined 
society, in which all the coarser passions are held in 



466 EFFECTS or THE REMEDY Boot /X 

e 

check, not by force, not by law, but by common opinion 
and the mutual desire of pleasing If this is possible 
for a part of a community, it is possible for a whole com- 
munity. There are states of society in which every on« 
has to go armed — in which every one has to hold him- 
self in readiness to defend person and property with the 
strong hand. If we have progressed beyond that, we 
may progress still further. 

But it may be said, to banish want and the fear of 
want, would be to destroy the stimulus to exertion; men 
would become simply idlers, and such a happy state of 
general comfort and content would be the death of prog- 
ress. This is the old slaveholders’ argument, that men 
can be driven to labor only with the lash. Nothing is 
more untrue. 

Want might be banished, but desire would remain. 
Man is the unsatisfied animal. He has but begun to ex- 
plore, and the universe lies before him. Each step that 
he takes opens new vistas and kindles new desires. He is 
the constructive animal; he builds, he improves, he 
invents, and puts together, and the greater the thing he 
does, the greater the thing he wants to do. He is more 
than an animal. Whatever be the intelligence that 
breathes through nature, it is in that likeness that man 
is made. The steamship, driven by her throbbing en- 
gines through the sea, is in kind, though not in degree, 
as much a creation as the whale that swims beneath. 
The telescope and the microscope, what are they but 
added eyes, which man has made for himself; the soft 
webs and fair colors in which our women array them- 
selves, do they not answer to the plumage that nature 
gives the bird? Man must be doing something, or fancy 
that he is doing something, for in him throbs the crea- 
tive impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a 
natural, but an abnormal man. 

As soon as a child can command its muscles, it will 



Chap . IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LITE 


467 


begin to make mud pies or dress a doll; its play is but 
the imitation of the work of its elders; its very de- 
structiveness arises from the desire to be doing some- 
thing, from the satisfaction of seeing itself accomplish 
something. There is no such thing as the pursuit of 
pleasure for the sake of pleasure. Our very amuse- 
ments amuse only as they are, or simulate, the learning 
or the doing of something. The moment they cease to 
appeal either to our inquisitive or to our constructive 
powers, they cease to amuse. It will spoil the interest 
of the novel reader to be told just how the story will 
end; it is only the chance and the skill involved in the 
game that enable the card-player to “kill time” by 
shuffling bits of pasteboard. The luxurious frivolities 
of Versailles were possible to human beings only because 
the king thought he was governing a kingdom and the 
courtiers were in pursuit of fresh honors and new pen- 
sions. People who lead what are called lives of fashion 
and pleasure must have some other object in view, or 
they would die of ennui; they support it only because 
they imagine that they are gaining pqsition, making 
friends, or improving the chances of their children. 
Shut a man up, and deny him employment, and he must 
either die or go mad. 

It is not labor in itself that is repugnant to man; it is 
not the natural necessity for exertion which is a curse. 
It is only labor which produces nothing — exertion of 
which he cannot see the results. To toil day after day, 
and yet get but the necessaries of life, this is indeed 
hard; it is like the infernal punishment of compelling 
a man to pump lest he be drowned, or to trudge on a 
treadmill lest he be crushed. But, released from this 
necessity, men would but work the harder and the bet- 
ter, for then they would work as their inclinations led 
them; then would they seem to be really doing some- 
thing for themselves or for others. Was Humboldt’s 



468 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY Book IT 

life an idle one? Did Franklin find no occupation when 
he retired from the printing business with enough to 
live on? Is Herbert Spencer a laggard? Did Michael 
Angelo paint for board and clothes? 

The fact is that the work which improves the condi- 
tion of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and 
increases power, and enriches literature, and elevates 
thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the 
work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of 
a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men 
who perform it for its own sake, and not that they may 
get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state 
of society where want was abolished, work of this sort 
would be enormously increased. 

I am inclined to think that the result of confiscating 
rent in the manner I have proposed would be to cause 
the organization of labor, wherever large capitals were 
used, to assume the co-operative form, since the more 
equal diffusion of wealth would unite capitalist and 
laborer in the; same person. But whether this would be 
so or not is of little moment. The hard toil of routine 
labor would disappear. Wages would be too high and 
opportunities too great to compel any man to stint and 
starve the higher qualities of his nature, and in every 
avocation the brain would aid the hand. Work, even of 
the coarser kinds, would become a lightsome thing, and 
the tendency of modern production to subdivision would 
not involve monotony or the contraction of ability in the 
worker; but would be relieved by short hours, by change,, 
by the alternation of intellectual with manual occupa- 
tions. There would result, not only the utilization of 
productive forces now going to waste; not only would 
our present knowledge, now so imperfectly applied, be 
fully used; but from the mobility of labor and the men- 
tal activity which would be generated, there would result 



Chap . IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 


469 


advances in the methods of production that we now 
cannot imagine. 

For, greatest of alL the enormous wastes which the 
present constitution of society involves, is that of mental 
power. How infinitesimal are the forces that concur to 
the advance of civilization, as compared to the forces 
that lie latent! How few are the thinkers, the discover- 
ers, the inventors, the organizers, as compared with the 
great mass of the people! Yet such men are bom in 
plenty; it is the conditions that permit so few to de- 
velop. There are among men infinite diversities of apti- 
tude and inclination, as there are such infinite diversities 
in physical structure that among a million there will not 
be two that cannot be . told apart. But, both from 
observation and reflection, I am inclined to think that 
the differences of natural power are no greater than the 
differences of stature or of physical strength. Turn to 
the lives of great men, and see how easily they might 
never have been heard of. Had Caesar come of a prole- 
tarian family; had Napoleon entered the world a few 
years earlier; had Columbus gone into the Church in- 
stead of going to sea; had Shakespeare been apprenticed 
to a cobbler or chimney-sweep; had Sir Isaac Newton 
been assigned by fate the education and the toil of an 
agricultural laborer; had Dr. Adam Smith been born in 
the coal hews, or Herbert Spencer forced to get his liv- 
ing as a factory operative, what would their talents have 
availed? But there would have been, it will be said, 
other Caesars or Napoleons, Columbuses or Shakespeares, 
Newtons, Smiths or Speticers. This is true. And it 
shows how prolific is our human nature. As the com- 
mon worker is on need transformed into queen bee, so, 
when circumstances favor his development, what might 
otherwise pass for a common man rises into a hero or 
leader, discoverer or teacher, sage or saint. So widely 
has the sower scattered the seed, so strong is the ger- 



470 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX 


minative force that bids it bud and blossom. But, alas 
for the stony ground, and the birds and the tares 1 For 
one who attains his full stature, how many are stunted 
and deformed. 

The will within us is the ultimate fact of conscious- 
ness. Yet how little have the best of us, in acquirements, 
in position, even in character, that may be cred- 
ited entirely to ourselves; how much to the influences 
that have molded us. Who is there, wise, learned, dis- 
creet, or strong, who might not, were he to trace the 
inner history of his life, turn, like the Stoic Emperor, 
to give thanks to the gods, that by this one and that one, 
and here and there, good examples have been set him, 
noble thoughts have reached him, and happy opportuni- 
ties opened before him. Who is there, who, with his 
eyes about him, has reached the meridian of life, who has 
not sometimes echoed the thought of the pious English- 
man, as the criminal passed to the gallows, “But for the 
grace of God, there go I.” How little does heredity 
count as compared with conditions. This one, we say, is 
the result of a thousand years of European progress, and 
that one of a thousand years of Chinese petrifaction; 
yet, placed an infant in the heart of China, and but for 
the angle of the eye or the shade of the hair, the Cau- 
casian would grow up as those around him, using the 
same speech, thinking the same thoughts, exhibiting the 
same tastes. Change Lady Vere de Vere in her cradle 
with an infant of the slums, and will the blood of a hun- 
dred earls give you a refined and cultured woman? 

To remove want and the fear of want, to give to all 
classes leisure, and comfort, and independence, the de- 
cencies and refinements of life, the opportunities of 
mental and moral development, would be like turning 
water into a desert. The sterile waste would clothe 
itself with verdure, and the barren places where life 
seemed banned would ere long be dappled with the 



Chap. tV. UPON (SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 


471 


shade of trees and musical with the song of birds. Tal- 
ents now hidden, virtues unsuspected, would come forth 
to make human life richer, fuller, happier, nobler. For 
in these round men who are stuck into three-cornered 
holes, and three-cornered men who are jammed into 
round holes; in these men who are wasting their energies 
in the scramble to be rich; in these who in factories 
are turned into machines, or are chained by necessity to 
bench or plow; in these children who are growing up in 
squalor, and vice, and ignorance, are powers of the 
highest order, talents the most splendid. They need but 
the opportunity to bring them forth. 

Consider the possibilities of a state of society that 
gave that opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out 
the picture; its colors grow too bright for words to 
paint. Consider the moral elevation, the intellectual 
activity, the social life. Consider how by a thousand 
actions and interactions the members of every com- 
munity are linked together, and how in the present con- 
dition of things even the fortunate few who stand upon 
the apex of the social pyramid must suffer, though they 
know it not, from the want, ignorance, and degradation 
that are underneath. Consider these things and then 
say whether the change I propose would not be for the 
benefit of every one — even the greatest land holder? 
Would he not be safer of the future of his children in 
leaving them penniless in such a state of society than 
in leaving them the largest fortune in this? Did such 
a state of society anywhere exist, would he not buy 
entrance to it cheaply by giving up all his possessions? 

I have now traced to their source social weakness and 
disease. I have shown the remedy. I have covered 
every point and met every objection. But the problems 
that we have been considering, great as they are, pass 
into problems greater yet — into the grandest problems 
with which the human mind can grapple. I am about 



472 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY 


Book IX 


to ask the reader who has gone with me so far, to go 
with me further, into still higher fields. But I ask him 
to remember that in the little space which remains of 
the limits to which this book must be confined, I cannot 
fully treat the questiqns which arise. I can but suggest 
some thoughts, which may, perhaps, serve as bints for 
further thought. 



BOOK X 

THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 

CHAPTER L — THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS— 

ITS INSUFFICIENCY 

CHAPTER EL— DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION— TO WHAT DUE 
CHAPTER HI.— THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 
CHAPTER IV.— HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE 
CHAPTER V.— THE CENTRAL TRUTH 



What in me is dark 
Illumine, what is low raise and support 
That to the height of this great argument 
£ may assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men. 

— Milton. 



CHAPTER I 


THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS — ITS 

INSUFFICIENCY 

If the conclusions at which we have arrived are cor- 
rect, they will fall under a larger generalization. 

Let us, therefore, recommence our inquiry from a 
higher standpoint, whence we may survey a wider field. 

What is the law of human progress t 

This is a question which, were it not for what has 
gone before, I should hesitate to review in the brief 
space I can now devote to it, as it involves, directly or 
indiiectly, some of the very highest problems with which 
the human mind can engage. But it is a question which 
naturally comes up. Are or are not the conclusions to 
which we have come consistent with the great law under 
which human development goes on? 

What is that law? We must find the answer to our 
question; for the current philosophy, though it clearly 
recognizes the existence of such a law, gives no more sat- 
isfactory account of it than the current political economy 
does of the persistence of want amid advancing wealth. 

Let us, as far as possible, keep to the firm ground of 
facts. Whether man was or was not gradually developed 
from an animal, it is not necessary to inquire. However 
intimate may be the connection between questions which 
relate to man as we know him and questions which relate 
to his genesis, it is only from the former upon the latter 
that light can be thrown. Inference cannot proceed 
from the unknown to the known. It is only from facts 

475 



476 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X. 


of which we are cognisant that we can infer what has 
preceded cognizance. 

However man may have originated, all we know of 
him is as man — just as he is now to be found. There is 
no record or trace of him in any lower condition than 
that in which savages are still to be met. By whatever 
bridge he may have crossed the wide chasm which now 
separates him from the brutes, there remain of it no 
vestiges. Between the lowest savages of whom we know 
and the highest animals, there is an irreconcilable differ- 
ence — a difference not merely of degree, but of kind. 
Many of the characteristics, actions, and emotions of 
man are exhibited by the lower animals; but man, no 
matter how low in the scale of humanity, has never yet 
been found destitute of one thing of which no animal 
shows the slightest trace, a clearly recognizable but al- 
most undefinable something, which gives him the power 
of improvement — which makes him the progressive 
animal. 

The beaver builds a dam, and the bird a nest, and the 
bee a cell; but while beavers’ dams, and birds’ nests, 
and bees’ cells are always constructed on the same model, 
the house of the man passes from the rude hut of leaves 
and branches to the magnificent mansion replete with 
modern conveniences. The dog can to a certain extent 
connect cause and effect, and may be taught some tricks; 
but his capacity in these respects has not been a whit 
increased during all the ages he has been the associate of 
improving man, and the dog of civilization is not a 
whit more accomplished or intelligent than the dog of 
the wandering savage. We know of no animal that 
uses clothes, that cooks its food, that makes itself tools 
or weapons, that breeds other animals that it wishes to 
eat, or that has an articulate language. But men who 
do not do such things have never yet been found, or 
heard of, except in fable. That is to say, man, wherever 



Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 


47 f 


we know him, exhibits this power— of supplementing 
what nature has done for him by what he does for him- 
self; and, in fact, so inferior is the physical endowment 
of man, that there is no part of the world, save perhaps 
some of the small islands of the Pacific, where without 
this faculty he could maintain an existence. 

Man everywhere and at all times exhibits this faculty 
— everywhere and at all times of which we have knowl- 
edge he has made some use of it. But the degree in 
which this has been done greatly varies. Between the 
rude canoe and the steamship; between the boomerang 
and the repeating rifle; between the roughly carved 
wooden idol and the breathing marble of Grecian art; 
between savage knowledge and modem science; between 
the wild Indian and the white settler; between the Hot- 
tentot woman and the belle of polished society, there 
is an enormous difference. 

The varying degrees in which this faculty is used can- 
not be ascribed to differences in original capacity — the 
most highly improved peoples of the present day were 
savages within historic times, and we meet with the 
widest differences between peoples of the same stock. 
Nor can they be wholly ascribed to differences in physi- 
cal environment — the cradles of learning and the arts 
are now in many cases tenanted by barbarians, and 
within a few years great cities rise on the hunting 
grounds of wild tribes. All these differences are evi- 
dently connected with social development. Beyond 
perhaps the veriest rudiments, it becomes possible for 
man to improve only as he lives with his fellows. All 
these improvements, therefore, in man’s powers and 
conditions we summarize in the term civilization. Men 
improve as they become civilized, or learn to co-operate 
in society. 

What is the law of this improvement? By what cpm- 
mon principle can we explain the different stages of civi- 



478 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


fixation at which different communities have arrived? 
In what consists essentially the progress of civilization, 
so that we may say of varying social adjustments, this 
favors it, and that does not; or explain why an institu- 
tion or condition which may at one time advance it may 
at another time retard it? 

The prevailing belief now is, that the progress of civi- 
lization is a development or evolution, in the course of 
which man’s powers are increased and his qualities im- 
proved by the operation of causes similar to those which 
are relied upon as explaining the genesis of species — 
viz., the survival of the fittest and the hereditary trans- 
mission of acquired qualities. 

That civilization is an evolution — that it is, in the 
language of Herbert Spencer, a progress from an in- 
definite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
heterogeneity — there is no doubt; but to say this is not 
to explain or identify the causes which forward or retard 
it. How far the sweeping generalizations of Spencer, 
which seek to account for all phenomena under terms 
of matter and force, may, properly understood, include 
all these causes, Lam unable to say; but, as scientifically 
expounded, the development philosophy has either not 
yet definitely met this question, or has given birth, or 
rather coherency, to an opinion which does not accord 
with the facts. 

The vulgar explanation of progress is, I think, very 
much like the view naturally taken by the money maker 
of the causes of the unequal distribution of wealth. His 
theory, if he has one, usually is, that there is plenty of 
money to be made by those who have will and ability, 
and that it is ignorance, or idleness, or extravagance, 
that makes the difference between the rich and the poor. 
And so the common explanation of differences of civili- 
zation is of differences in capacity. The civilized races 
are the superior races, and advance in civilization is ac- 



Cruip. i. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 479 

cording to this superiority — just as English victories 
were, in common English opinion, due to the natural 
superiority of Englishmen to frog-eating Frenchmen; and 
popular government, active invention, and greater aver- 
age comfort are, or were until lately, in common Ameri- 
can opinion, due to the greater "smartness of the Yankee 
Nation.” 

Now, just as the politico-economic doctrines which in 
the beginning of this inquiry we met and disproved, 
harmonize with the common opinion of men who see 
capitalists paying wages and competition reducing wages; 
just as the Malthusian theory harmonized with existing 
prejudices both of the rich and the poor; so does the ex- 
planation of progress as a gradual race improvement 
harmonize with the vulgar opinion which accounts by 
race differences for differences in civilization. It has 
given coherence and a scientific formula to opinions 
which already prevailed. Its wonderful spread since the 
time Darwin first startled the world with his “Origin 
of Species” has not been so much a conquest as an as- 
similation. 

The view which now dominates the world of thought 
is this: That the struggle for existence, just in propor- 
tion as it becomes intense, impels men to new efforts and 
inventions. That this improvement and capacity for 
improvement is fixed by hereditary transmission, and 
extended by the tendency of the best adapted individual, 
or most improved individual, to survive and propagate 
among individuals, and of the best adapted, or most im- 
proved tribe, nation, or race to survive in the struggle 
between social aggregates. On this theory the differ- 
ences between man aqd the animals, and differences in 
the relative progress of men, are now explained as confi- 
dently, and all but as generally, as a little while ago they 
were explained upon the theory of special creation and 
divine interposition. 


JUNG BAHADUR 





THB LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of 
hopeful fatalism, of which current literature ip. full.* In 
this view, progress is the result of forces which work 
slowly, steadily, and remorselessly, for the elevation of 
man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and 
pestilence, the want and misery which fester in modem 
civilization, are the impelling causes which drive man 
on, by eliminating poorer types and extending the 
higher; and hereditary transmission is the power by 
which advances are fixed, and past advances made the 
footing for new advances. The individual is the result 
of changes thus impressed upon and perpetuated through 
a long series of past individuals, and the social organiza- 
tion takes its form from the individuals of which it is 
composed. Thus, while this theory is, as Herbert 
Spencer saysf — “radical to a degree beyond anything 
which current radicalism conceives,” inasmuch as it 
looks for changes in the very nature of man; it is at the 
same time “conservative to a degree beyond anything 
conceived by current conservatism,” inasmuch as it holds 
that no change can avail save these slow changes in 
men’s natures. Philosophers may teach that this does 
not lessen the duty of endeavoring to reform abuses, 

* In semi-scientific or popularized form this may perhaps be 
seen in best, because frankest, expression in “The Martyrdom 
of Man,” by Winwood Reade, a writer of singular vividness and 
power. This book is in reality a history of progress, or, rather, 
a monograph upon its causes and methods, and will well repay 
perusal for its vivid pictures, whatever may be thought of the 
capacity of the author for philosophic generalization. The con- 
nection between subject and title may be seen by the conclu- 
sion: “I give to universal histoiy a strange but true title — 
The Martyrdom of Man . In each generation the human race 
has been tortured that their children might profit by their woes. 
Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is 
it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of 
those who are to come?” 

t“The Study of Sociology” — Conclusion. 



Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THU CURRENT THEORY 48 * 

just as the theologians who taught predestinarianism in- 
sisted on the duty of all to struggle for salvation; but, 
as generally apprehended, the result is fatalism — “do 
what we may, the mills of the gods grind on regardless 
either of our aid or our hindrance.” I allude to this only 
to illustrate what I take to be the opinion now rapidly 
spreading and permeating common thought; not that in 
the search for truth any regard for its effects should 
be permitted to bias the mind. But this I take to be 
the current view of civilization: That it is the result of 
forces, operating in the way indicated, which slowly 
change the character, and improve and elevate the pow- 
ers of man; that the difference between civilized man 
and savage is of a long race education, which has be- 
come permanently fixed in mental organization; and that 
this improvement tends to go on increasingly, to a 
higher and higher civilization. We have reached such 
a point that progress seems to be natural with us, and 
we look forward confidently to the greater achievements 
of the coming race — some even holding that the progress 
of science will finally give men immortality and enable 
them to make bodily the tour not only of the planets, 
but of the fixed stars, and at length to manufacture suns 
and systems for themselves.* 

But without soaring to the stars, the moment that 
this theory of progression, which seems so natural to us 
amid an advancing civilization, looks around the world, 
it comes against an enormous fact — the fixed, petrified 
civilizations. The majority of the human race to-day 
have no idea of progress; the majority of the human race 
to-day look (as until a few generations ago our own an- 
cestors looked) upon the past as the time of human per- 
fection. The difference between the savage and the 
civilized man may be explained on the theory that th% 


♦ Win wood Reade, “The Martyrdom of Man.” 





THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


B oo* X 


former is as yet so imperfectly developed that his prog- 
ress is hardly apparent; but how, upon the theory that 
human progress is the result of general and continuous 
causes, shall we account for the civilizations that have 
progressed so far and then stopped? It cannot be said 
of the Hindoo and of the Chinaman, as it may be said of 
the savage, that our superiority is the result of a longer 
education; that we are, as it were, the grown men of 
nature, while they are the children. The Hindoos and 
the Chinese were civilized when we were savages. They 
had great cities, highly organized and powerful govern- 
ments, literatures, philosophies, polished manners, con- 
siderable division of labor, large commerce, and elaborate 
arts, when our ancestors were wandering barbarians, 
living in huts and skin tents, not a whit further ad- 
vanced than the American Indians. While we have pro- 
gressed from this savage state to Nineteenth Century 
civilization, they have stood still. If progress be the 
result of fixed laws, inevitable and eternal, which impel 
men forward, how shall we account for this? 

One of the best popular expounders of the develop- 
ment philosophy, Walter Bagehot (“Physics and Poli- 
tics”), admits the force of this objection, and endeavors 
in this way to explain it: That the first thing necessary 
to civilize man is to tame him; to induce him to live in 
association with his fellows in subordination to law; and 
hence a body or “cake” of laws and customs grows up, 
being intensified and extended by natural selection, the 
tribe or nation thus bound together having an advantage 
over those who are not. That this cake of custom and 
law finally becomes too thick and hard to permit further 
progress, which can go on only as circumstances occur 
which introduce discussion, and thus permit the freedom 
and mobility necessary to improvement. 

This explanation, which Mr. Bagehot offers, as he 
says, with some misgivings, is I think at the expense of 



Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 483 


general theory. But it is not worth while speaking 
of that, for it, manifestly, does not explain the facts. 

The hardening tendency of which Mr. Bagehot speaks 
would show itself at a very early period of develop- 
ment, and his illustrations of it are nearly all drawn 
from savage or semi-savage life. Whereas, these ar- 
rested civilizations had gone a long distance before they 
stopped. There must have been a time when they were 
very far advanced as compared with the savage state, 
and were yet plastic, free, and advancing. These ar- 
rested civilizations stopped at a point which was hardly 
in anything inferior and in many respects superior to 
European civilization of, say, the sixteenth or at any 
rate the fifteenth century. Up to that point then there 
must have been discussion, the hailing of what was new, 
and mental activity of all sorts. They had architects 
who carried the art of building, necessarily by a series 
of innovations or improvements, up to a very high point; 
ship-builders who in the same way, by innovation after 
innovation, finally produced as good a vessel as the 
war ships of Henry VIII; inventors who stopped only 
on the verge of our most important improvements, and 
from some of whom we can yet learn; engineers who con- 
structed great irrigation works and navigable canals; 
rival schools of philosophy and conflicting ideas of 
religion. One great religion, in many respects resembling 
Christianity, rose in India, displaced the old religion, 
passed into China, sweeping over that country, and was 
displaced again in its old seats, just as Christianity was 
displaced in its first seats. There was life, and active 
life, and the innovation that begets improvement, long 
after men had learned to live together. And, moreover, 
both India and China have received the infusion of new 
life in conquering races, with different customs and 
modes of thought. 

The most fixed and petrified of all civilizations oj 



484 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS Bock X. 

which we know anything was that of Egypt, where 
even art finally assumed a conventional and inflexible 
form. But we know that behind this must have been a 
time of life and vigor — a freshly developing and expand- 
ing civilization, such as ours is now — or the arts and 
sciences could never have been carried to such a pitch. 
And recent excavations have brought to light from be- 
neath what we before knew of Egypt an earlier Egypt 
still — in statues and carvings which, instead of a hard 
and formal type, beam with life and expression, .which 
show art struggling, ardent, natural, and free, the sure 
indication of an active and expanding life. So it must 
have been once with all now unprogressive civilizations. 

But it is not merely these arrested civilizations that 
the current theory of development fails to account for. 
It is not merely that men have gone so far on the path 
of progress and then stopped; it is that men have gone 
far on the path of progress and then gone back. It is 
not merely an isolated case that thus confronts the 
theory — it is the universal rule. Every civilization that 
the world has yet seen has had its period of vigorous 
growth, of arrest and stagnation; its decline and fall. 
Of all. the civilizations that have arisen and flourished, 
there remain to-day but those that have been arrested, 
and our own, which is not yet as old as were the pyra- 
mids when Abraham looked upon them — while behind 
the pyramids were twenty centuries of recorded history. 

That our own civilization has a broader base, is of a 
more advanced type, moves quicker and soars higher 
than any preceding civilization is undoubtedly true; but 
in these respects it is hardly more in advance of the 
Greco-Roman civilization than that was in advance of 
Asiatic civilization; and if it were, that would prove 
nothing as to its permanence and future advance, unless 
it be shown that it is superior in those things which 



Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 485 


caused the ultimate failure of its predecessors. The 
current theory does not assume this. 

In truth, nothing could be further from explaining 
the facts of universal history than this theory that 
civilization is the result of a course of natural selection 
which operates to improve and elevate the powers of 
man. That civilization has arisen at different times in 
different places and has progressed at different rates, is 
not inconsistent with this theory; for that might result 
from the unequal balancing of impelling and resisting 
forces; but that progress everywhere commencing, for 
even among the lowest tribes it is held that there has 
been some progress, has nowhere been continuous, but 
has everywhere been brought to a stand or retrogres- 
sion, is absolutely inconsistent. For if progress operated 
to fix an improvement in man’s nature and thus to pro- 
duce further progress, though there might be occasional 
interruption, yet the general rule would be that progress 
would be continuous — that advance would lead to ad- 
vance, and civilization develop into higher civilization. 

Not merely the general rule, but the universal rule, 
is the reverse of this. The earth is the tomb of the dead 
empires, no less than of dead men. Instead of progress 
fitting men for greater progress, every civilization that 
was in its own time as vigorous and advancing as ours 
is now, has of itself come to a stop. Over and over 
again, art has declined, learning sunk, power waned, 
population become sparse, until the people who had 
built great temples and mighty cities, turned rivers and 
pierced mountains, cultivated the earth like a garden 
and introduced the utmost refinement into the minute 
affairs of life, remained but in a remnant of squalid 
barbarians, who had lost even the memory of what their 
ancestors had done, and regarded the surviving fragments 
of their grandeur as the work of genii, or of the mighty 
race before the flood. So true is this, that when we 



486 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Boot X 


think of the past, it seems like the inexorable law, from 
which we can no more hope to be exempt than the young 
man who “feels his life in every limb” can hope to be 
‘exempt from the dissolution which is the common fate 
of all. “Even this, O Rome, must one day be thy fate!” 
wept Scipio over the ruins of Carthage, and Macaulay’s 
picture of the New Zealander musing upon the broken 
arch of London Bridge appeals to the imagination of 
even those who see cities rising in the wilderness and 
help to lay the foundations of new empire. And so, 
when we erect a public building we make a hollow in 
the largest corner stone and carefully seal within it some 
mementos of our day, looking forward to the time when 
our works shall be ruins and ourselves forgot. 

Nor whether this alternate rise and fall of civiliza- 
tion, this retrogression that always follows progression, 
be, or be not, the rhythmic movement of an ascending 
line (and I think, though I will not open the question, 
that it would be much more difficult to prove the affirma- 
tive than is generally supposed) makes no difference; 
for the current theory is in either case disproved. Civi- 
lizations have died and made no sign, and hard-won 
progress has been lost to the race forever; but, even if 
it be admitted that each wave of progress has made 
possible a higher wave and each civilization passed the 
torch to a greater civilization, the theory that civiliza- 
tion advances by changes wrought in the nature of man 
fails to explain the facts; for in every case it is not the 
race that has been educated and hereditarily modified 
by the old civilization that begins the new, but a fresh 
race coming from a lower level. It is the barbarians of 
the one epoch who have been the civilized men of the 
next; to be in their turn succeeded -by fresh barbarians. 
For it has been heretofore always the case that men 
under the influences of civilization, though at first im- 
proving, afterward degenerate. The civilized man of to- 



Chmp. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 487 


day is vastly the superior of the uncivilized; but so in 
the time of its vigor was the civilized man of every dead 
civilization. But there are such things as the vices, the 
corruptions, the enervations of civilization, which past 
a certain point have always heretofore shown them- 
selves. Every civilization that has been overwhelmed 
by barbarians has really perished from internal decay. 

This universal fact, the moment that it is recognized, 
disposes of the theory that progress is by hereditary 
transmission. Looking over the history of the world, 
the line of greatest advance does not coincide for any 
length of time with any line of heredity. On any par- 
ticular line of heredity, retrogression seems always to 
follow advance. 

Shall we therefore say that there is a national or race 
life, as there is an individual life — that every social 
aggregate has, as it were, a certain amount of energy, 
the expenditure of which necessitates decay? This is an 
old and widespread idea, that is yet largely held, and 
that may be constantly seen cropping out incongruously 
in the writings of the expounders of the development 
philosophy. Indeed, I do. not see why it may not be 
stated in terms of matter and of motion so as to bring it 
dearly within the generalizations of evolution. For con- 
sidering its individuals as atoms, the growth of society is 
“an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation 
of motion; during which the matter passes from an in- 
definite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion 
undergoes a parallel transformation.”* And thus an 
analogy may be drawn between the life of a society and 
the life of a solar system upon the nebular hypothesis. 
As the heat and light of the sun are produced by the 


* Herbert Spencer’s definition of Evolution, “First Principles,'’ 1 
p. 396. 




488 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Boot X. 


aggregation of atoms evolving motion, which finally 
ceases when the atoms at length come to a state of 
equilibrium or rest, and a state of immobility succeeds, 
which can be broken in again only by the impact of ex- 
ternal forces, which reverse the process of evolution, 
integrating motion and dissipating matter in the form 
of gas, again to evolve motion by its condensation; so, 
it may be said, does the aggregation of individuals in 
a community evolve a force which produces the light 
and warmth of civilization, but when this process ceases 
and the individual components are brought into a state 
of equilibrium, assuming their fixed places, petrifaction 
ensues, and the breaking up and diffusion caused by an 
incursion of barbarians is necessary to the recommence- 
ment of the process and a new growth of civilization. 

But analogies are the most dangerous modes of 
thought. They may connect resemblances and yet dis- 
guise or cover up the truth. And all such analogies are 
superficial. While its members are constantly repro- 
duced in all the fresh vigor of childhood, a community 
cannot grow old, as does a man, by the decay of its 
powers. While its aggregate force must be the sum of 
the forces of its individual components, a community 
cannot lose vital power unless the vital powers of its 
components are lessened. 

Yet in both the common analogy which likens the life 
power of a nation to that of an individual, and in the 
one I have supposed, lurks the recognition of an obvious 
truth — the truth that the obstacles which finally bring 
progress to a halt are raised by the course of progress; 
that what has destroyed all previous civilizations has 
been the conditions produced by the growth of civiliza- 
tion itself. 

This is a truth which in the current philosophy is 
ignored; but it is a truth most pregnant. Any valid 
* theory of human progress must account for it. 



CHAPTER II 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION — TO WHAT DUE 

In attempting to discover the law of human progress,, 
the first step must be to determine the essential nature 
of these differences which we describe as differences in 
civilization. 

That the current philosophy, which attributes social 
progress to changes wrought in the nature of man, does 
not accord with historical facts, we have already seen. 
And we may also see, if we consider them, that the dif- 
ferences between communities in different stages of civi- 
lization cannot be ascribed to* innate differences in the 
individuals who compose these communities. That there 
are natural differences is true, and that there is such a 
thing as hereditary transmission of peculiarities is un- 
doubtedly true; but the great differences between men 
in different states of society cannot be explained in this 
way. The influence of heredity, which it is now the 
fashion to rate so highly, is as nothing compared with 
the influences which mold the man after he comes into 
the world. What is more ingrained in habit than lan- 
guage, which becomes not merely an automatic trick 
of the muscles, but the medium of thought? What per- 
sists longer, or will quicker show nationality? Yet we 
are not born with a predisposition to any language. Our 
mother tongue is our mother tongue only because we 
learned it in infancy. Although his ancestors have 
thought and spoken in one language for countless gen-* 
erations, a child who hears from the first nothing else, 

489 



(90 THE LAW OF HITMAN PROGRESS Book X 

will learn with equal facility any other tongue. And so 
of other national or local or class peculiarities. They 
seem to be matters of education and habit, not of trans- 
mission. Cases of white children captured by Indians 
in infancy and brought up in the wigwam show this. 
They become thorough Indians. And so, I believe, with 
children brought up by Gypsies. 

That this is not so true of the children of Indians or 
other distinctly marked races brought up by whites is, I 
think, due to the fact that they are never treated pre- 
cisely as white children. A gentleman who had taught 
a colored school once told me that he thought the colored 
children, up to the age of ten or twelve, were really 
brighter and learned more readily than white children, 
but that after that age they seemed to get dull and care- 
less. He thought this proof of innate race inferiority, 
and so did I at the time. But I afterward heard a 
highly intelligent negro gentleman (Bishop Hillery) in- 
cidentally make a remark which to my mind seems a 
sufficient explanation. He said: “Our children, when 
they are young, are fully as bright as white children, 
and learn as readily. But as soon as they get old enough 
to appreciate their status — to realize that they are looked 
upon as belonging to an inferior race, and can never 
hope to be anything more than cooks, waiters, or some- 
thing of that sort, they lose their ambition and cease 
to keep up.” And to this he might have added, that be- 
ing the children of poor, uncultivated and unambitious 
parents, home influences told against them. For, I be- 
lieve it is a matter of common observation that in the 
primary part of education the children of ignorant 
parents are quite as receptive as the children of intelli- 
gent parents, but by and by the latter, as a general rule, 
pull ahead and make the most intelligent men and 
women. The reason is plain. As to the first simple 
things which they learn only at school, they are on a 



Chap. II. 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 


491 


par, but as their studies become more complex, the 
child who at home is accustomed to good English, hears 
intelligent conversation, has access to books, can get 
questions answered, etc., has an advantage which tells. 

' The same thing may be seen later in life. Take a man 
who has raised himself from the ranks of common labor, 
and just as he is brought into contact with men of cul- 
ture and men of affairs, will he become more intelligent 
and polished. Take two brothers, the sons of poor par- 
ents, brought up in the same home and in the same way. 
One is put to a rude trade, and never gets beyond the 
necessity of making a living by hard daily labor; the 
other, commencing as an errand boy, gets a start in an- 
other direction, and becomes finally a successful lawyer, 
merchant, or politician. At forty or fifty the contrast 
between them will be striking, and the unreflecting will 
credit it to the greater natural ability which has en- 
abled the one to push himself ahead. But just as striking 
a difference in manners and intelligence will be mani- 
fested between two sisters, one of whom, married to a 
man who has remained poor, has her life fretted with 
petty cares and devoid of opportunities, and the other 
of whom has married a man whose subsequent position 
brings her into cultured society and opens to her oppor- 
tunities which refine taste and expand intelligence. And 
so deteriorations may be seen. That “evil communica- 
tions corrupt good manners” is but an expression of the 
general law that human character is profoundly modi- 
fied by its conditions and surroundings. 

I remember once seeing, in a Brazilian seaport, a 
negro man dressed in what was an evident attempt at 
the height of fashion, but without shoes and stockings. 
One of the sailors with whom I was in company, and who 
had made some runs in the slave trade, had a theory 
that a negro was not a man, but a sort of monkey, and 
pointed to this aB evidence in proof, contending that it 



192 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X. 


was not natural for a negro to wear shoes, and that in 
his wild state he would wear no clothes at all. I after- 
ward learned that it was not considered “the thing” 
there for slaves to wear shoes, just as in England it i| 
not considered the thing for a faultlessly attired butler 
to wear jewelry, though for that matter I have since 
seen white men at liberty to dress as they pleased get 
themselves up as incongruously as the Brazilian slave. 
But a great many of the facts adduced as showing 
hereditary transmission have really no more bearing 
than this of our forecastle Darwinian. 

That, for instance, a large number of criminals and 
recipients of public relief in New York have been shown 
to have descended from a pauper three or four genera- 
tions back is extensively cited as showing hereditary 
transmission. But it shows nothing of the kind, inas- 
much as an adequate explanation of the facts is nearer. 
Paupers will raise paupers, even if the children be not 
their own, just as familiar contact with criminals will 
make criminals of the children of virtuous parents. To 
learn to rely on charity is necessarily to lose the self- 
respect and independence necessary for self-reliance 
when the struggle is hard. So true is this that, as is 
well known, charity has the effect of increasing the de- 
mand for charity, and it is an open question whether 
public relief and private alms do not in this way do far 
more harm than good. And so of the disposition of 
children to show the same feelings, tastes, prejudices, or 
talents as their parents. They imbibe these dispositions 
just as they imbibe from their habitual associates. And 
the exceptions prove the rule, as dislikes or revulsions 
may be excited. 

And there is, I think, a subtler influence which often 
accounts for what are looked upon as atavisms of char- 
acter — the same influence that makes the boy who reads 
dime novels want to be a Dirate. I once knew a gentle- 



Clap. //. 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 


493 


man in whose veins ran the blood of Indian chiefs. He 
used to tell me traditions learned from his grandfather, 
which illustrated what is difficult for a white man to 
comprehend — the Indian habit of thought, the intense 
but patient blood thirst of the trail, and the fortitude of 
the stake. From the way in which he dwelt on these, 
I have no doubt that under certain circumstances, highly 
educated, civilized man that he was, he would have 
shown traits which would have been looked on as due 
to his Indian blood; but which in reality would have 
been sufficiently explained by the broodings of his imagi- 
nation upon the deeds of his ancestors. * 

In any large community we may see, as between differ- 
ent classes and groups, differences of the same kind as 
those which exist between communities which we speak 
of as differing in civilization — differences of knowledge, 
belief, customs, tastes, and speech, which in their ex- 
tremes show among people of the same race, living in 
the same country, differences almost as great as those 
between civilized and savage communities. As all stages 
of social development, from the stone age up, are yet 
to be found in contemporaneously existing communities, 
so in the same country and in the same city are to be 
found, side by side, groups which show similar diversi- 
ties. In such countries as England and Germany, chil- 
dren of the same race, bom and reared in the same place, 
will grow up, speaking the language differently, holding 
different beliefs, following different customs, and show- 
ing different tastes; and even in such a country as the 


* Wordsworth, in his “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,* 
has in highly poetical form alluded to this influence: 

Armor rusting in his halls 
On the blood of Clifford calls: 

“Quell the Scot,” exclaims the lance; 

“Bear me to the heart of France,” 
the longing of the shield. 



494 


THE LAW or HITMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


United States differences of the same kind, though not 
of tiie same degree, may be seen between different circles 
or groups. 

But these differences are certainly not innate. No 
baby is born a Methodist or Catholic, to drop its h’s or 
to sound them. All these differences which distinguish 
different groups or circles are derived from association in 
these circles. 

The Janissaries were made up of youths torn from 
Christian parents at an early age, but they were none the 
less fanatical Moslems and none the less exhibited all 
the Turkish traits; the Jesuits and other orders show 
distinct character, but it is certainly not perpetuated by 
hereditary transmissions; and even such associations as 
schools or regiments, where the components remain but 
a short time and are constantly changing, exhibit general 
characteristics, which are the result of mental impres- 
sions perpetuated by association. 

Now, it is this body of traditions, beliefs, customs, 
laws, habits, and associations, which arise in every com- 
munity and which surround every individual — this 
“super-organic environment,” as Herbert Spencer calls 
it, that, as I take it, is the great element in determining 
national character. It is this, rather than hereditary 
transmission, which makes the Englishman differ from 
the Frenchman, the German from the Italian, the Ameri- 
can from the Chinaman, and the civilized man from the 
savage man. It is in this way that national traits are 
preserved, extended, or altered. 

Within certain limits, or, if you choose, without limits 
in itself, hereditary transmission may develop or alter 
qualities, but this is much more true of the physical 
than of the mental part of a man, and much more true 
of animals than it is even of the physical part of man. 
Deductions from the breeding of pigeons or cattle will 
not apply to man, and the reason is clear. The life of 



Chap. //. 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 


495 


man, even in his rudest state, is infinitely more complex. 
He is constantly acted on by an infinitely greater number 
of influences, amid which the relative influence of he- 
redity becomes less and less. A race of men with no 
greater mental activity than the animals— men who only 
ate, drank, slept, and propagated — might, I doubt not, by 
careful treatment and selection in breeding, be made, in 
course of time, to exhibit as great diversities in bodily 
shape and character as similar means have produced in 
the domestic animals. But there are no such men; and 
in men as they are, mental influences, acting through 
the mind upon the body, would constantly interrupt the 
process. You cannot fatten a man whose mind is on the 
strain, by cooping him up and feeding him as you would 
fatten a pig. In all probability men have been upon 
the earth longer than many species of animals. They 
have been separated from each other under differences 
of climate that produce the most marked differences in 
animals, and yet the physical differences between the 
different races of men are hardly greater than the differ- 
ence between white horses and black horses — they are 
certainly nothing like as great as between dogs of the 
same sub-species, as, for instance, the different varieties 
of the terrier or spaniel. And even these physical differ- 
ences between races of men, it is held by those who 
account for them by natural selection and hereditary 
transmission, were brought out when man was much 
nearer the animal — that is to say, when he had less 
mind. 

And if this be true of the physical constitution of 
man, in how much higher degree is it true of his mental 
constitution? All our physical parts we bring with us 
into the world; but the mind develops afterward. ’ 

There is a stage in the growth of every organism in 
which it cannot be told, except by the environment, 
whether the animal that is to be will be fish or reptile, 



496 THE LAW or HUMAN PBOGRESS Book X 

monkey or man. And so with the new-born infant; 
whether the mind that is yet to awake to consciousness 
and power is to be English or German, American or 
Chinese — the mind of a civilized man or the mind of a 
savage — depends entirely on the social environment in 
which it is placed. 

Take a number of infants bom of the most highly 
civilized parents and transport them to an uninhabited 
country. Suppose them in some miraculous way to be 
sustained until they come of age to take care of them- 
selves, and what would you have? More helpless sav- 
ages than any we know of. They would have fire to 
discover; the rudest tools and weapons to invent; lan- 
guage to . construct. They would, in short, have to 
stumble their way to the simplest knowledge which the 
lowest races now possess, just as a child learns to walk. 
That they would in time do all these things I have not 
the slightest doubt, for all these possibilities are latent 
in the human mind just as the power of walking is 
latent in the human frame, but I do not believe they 
would do them any better or worse, any slower or 
quicker, than the children of barbarian parents placed 
in the same conditions. Given the very highest mental 
powers that exceptional individuals have ever displayed, 
and what could mankind be if one generation were sepa- 
rated from the next by an interval of time, as are the 
seventeen-year locusts? One such interval would reduce 
mankind, not to savagery, but to a condition compared 
with which savagery, as we know it, would seem civili- 
zation. 

And, reversely, suppose a number of savage infants 
could, unknown to the mothers, for even this would be 
necessary to make the experiment a fair one, be substi- 
tuted for as many children of civilization, can we sup- 
pose that growing up they would show any difference? 
I think no one who has mixed much with different peo- 



Chop. II 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 


497 


pies and classes will think so. The great lesson that is 
thus learned is that “human nature is human nature all 
the world over.” And this lesson, too, may be learned 
in the library. I speak not so much of the accounts of 
travelers, for the accounts given of savages by the civi- 
lized men who write books are very often just such ac- 
counts as savages would give of us did they make flying 
visits and then write books; but of those mementos of 
the life and thoughts of other times and other peoples, 
which, translated into our language of to-day, are like 
glimpses of our own lives and gleams of our own thought. 
The feeling they inspire is that of the essential similarity 
of men. “This,” says Emanuel Deutsch — “this is the 
end of all investigation into history or art. They were 
even as we are ” 

There is a people to be found in all parts of the 
world who well illustrate what peculiarities are due to 
hereditary transmission and what to transmission by 
association. The Jews have maintained the purity of 
their blood more scrupulously and for a far longer time 
than any of the European races, yet I am inclined tC 
think that the only characteristic that can be attributed 
to this is that of physiognomy, and this is in reality far 
less marked than is conventionally supposed, as any 
one who will take the trouble may see on observation. 
Although they have constantly married among them- 
selves, the Jews have everywhere been modified by 
their surroundings — the English, Russian, Polish, Ger- 
man, and Oriental Jews differing from each other in 
many respects as much as do the other people of those 
countries. Yet they have much in common, and have 
everywhere preserved their individuality. The reason 
is clear. It is the Hebrew religion — and certainly re- 
ligion is not transmitted by generation, but by associa- 
tion — which has everywhere preserved the distinctiveness 
of the Hebrew race. This religion, which children de- 



498 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRK88 


Boot X 


rive, not as they derive their physical characteristics, 
but by precept and association, is not merely exclusive 
in its teachings, but has, by engendering suspicion and 
dislike, produced a powerful outside pressure which, 
even more than its precepts, has everywhere constituted 
of the Jews a community within a community. Thus 
has been built up and maintained a certain peculiar en- 
vironment which gives a distinctive character. Jewish 
intermarriage has been the effect, not the cause of this. 
What persecution which stopped short of taking Jewish 
children from their parents and bringing them up out- 
side of this peculiar environment could not accomplish, 
will be accomplished by the lessening intensity of re- 
ligious belief, as is already evident in the United States, 
where the distinction between Jew and Gentile is fast 
disappearing. 

And it seems to me that the influence of this social 
net or environment will explain what is so often taken as 
proof of race differences — the difficulty which less civi- 
lized races show in receiving higher civilization, and the 
manner in which some of them melt away before it. 
Just as one social environment persists, so does it ren- 
der it difficult or impossible for those subject to it to 
accept another. 

The Chinese character is fixed if that of any people is. 
Yet the Chinese in California acquire American modes 
of working, trading, the use of machinery, etc., with 
such facility as to prove that they have no lack of 
flexibility, or natural capacity. That they do not 
change in other respects is due to the Chinese environ- 
ment that still persists and still surrounds them. Com- 
ing from China, they look forward to return to China ; 
and live while here in a little China of their own, just 
as the Englishmen in India maintain a little England. 
It is not merely that we naturally seek association with 
those who share our peculiarities, and that thus language^ 



Chap. II. 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 




religion and custom tend to persist where individuals 
are not absolutely isolated; but that these differences 
provoke an external pressure, which compels such asso- 
ciation. 

These obvious principles fully account for all the 
phenomena which are seen in the meeting of one stage 
or body of culture with another, without resort to the 
theory of ingrained differences. For instance, as com- 
parative philology has shown, the Hindoo is of the same 
race as his English conqueror, and individual instances 
have abundantly shown that if he could be placed com- 
pletely and exclusively in the English environment 
(which, as before stated, could be thoroughly done only 
by placing infants in English families in such a way that 
neither they, as they grow up, nor those around them, 
would be conscious of any distinction) one generation 
would be all required to thoroughly implant European 
civilization. But the progress of English ideas and 
habits in India must be necessarily very slow, because 
they meet there the web of ideas and habits constantly 
perpetuated through an immense population, and inter- 
faced with every act of life. 

Mr. Bagehot (“Physics and Politics”) endeavors to 
explain the reason why barbarians waste away before 
our civilization, while they did not before that of the 
ancients, by assuming that the progress of civilization 
has given us tougher physical constitutions. After al- 
luding to the fact that there is no lament in any clas- 
sical writer for the barbarians, but that everywhere the 
barbarian endured the contact with the Roman and the 
Roman allied himself to the barbarian, he says 
(pp. 47-8) : 

“Savages in the first year of the Christian era were pretty 
much what they were in the eighteen hundredth; and if they 
stood the contact of ancient civilized men and cannot stand 
ours, it follows that our race is presumably tougher than the 





THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


BookX. 


ancient; for we have to bear, and do bear, the seeds of greater 
diseases than the ancients carried with them. We may use, 
perhaps, the unvarying savage as a meter to gauge the vigor 
of the constitution to whose contact he is exposed.” 

Mr. Bagehot does not attempt to explain how it is that 
eighteen hundred years ago civilization did not give the 
like relative advantage over barbarism that it does now. 
But there is no use of talking about that, or of the lack 
of proof that the human constitution has been a whit 
improved. To any one who has seen how the contact of 
our civilization affects the inferior races, a much readier 
though less flattering explanation will occur. 

It is not because our constitutions are naturally 
tougher than those of the savage, that diseases which are 
comparatively innocuous to us are certain death to him. 
It is that we know and have the means of treating those 
diseases, while he is destitute both of knowledge and 
means. The same diseases with which the scum of civi- 
lization that floats in its advance inoculates the savage 
would prove as destructive to civilized men, if they knew 
no better than to let them run, as he in his ignorance 
has to let them run; and as a matter of fact they were as 
destructive, until we found out how to treat them. And 
not merely this, but the effect of the impingement of 
civilization upon barbarism is to weaken the power of 
the savage without bringing him into the conditions that 
give power to the civilized man. While his habits and 
customs still tend to persist, and do persist as far as they 
can, the conditions to which they were adapted are forci- 
bly changed. He is a hunter in a land stripped of game; 
a warrior deprived of his arms and called on to plead in 
legal technicalities. He is not merely placed between 
cultures, but, as Mr. Bagehot says of the European half- 
breeds in India, he is placed between moralities, and 
learns the vices of civilization without its virtues. He 
loses his accustomed means of subsistence, he loses self" 



Chap. II. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 501 

respect, he loses morality; he deteriorates and dies away. 
The miserable creatures who may be seen hanging 
around frontier towns or railroad stations, ready to beg, 
or steal, or solicit a viler commerce, are not fair repre- 
sentatives of the Indian before the white man had en- 
croached upon his hunting grounds. They have lost the 
strength and virtues of their former state, without gain- 
ing those of a higher. In fact, civilization, as it pushes 
the red man, shows no virtues. To the Anglo-Saxon of 
the frontier, as a rule, the aborigine has no rights which 
the white man is bound to respect. He is impoverished, 
misunderstood, cheated, and abused. He dies out, as, 
under similar conditions, we should die out. He disap- 
pears before civilization as the Romanized Britons dis- 
appeared before Saxon barbarism. 

The true reason why there is no lament in any classic 
writer for the barbarian, but that the Roman civilization 
assimilated instead of destroying, is, I take it, to be 
found not only in the fact that the ancient civilization 
was much nearer akin to the barbarians which it met, but 
in the more important fact that it was not extended ae 
ours has been. It was carried forward, not by an ad- 
vancing line of colonists, but by conquest which merely 
reduced the new province to general subjection, leaving 
the social, and generally the political organization of the 
people to a great degree unimpaired, so that, without 
shattering or deterioration, the process of assimilation 
went on. In a somewhat similar way the civilization of 
Japan seems to be now assimilating itself to European 
civilization. 

In America the Anglo-Saxon has exterminated, in- 
stead of civilizing, the Indian, simply because he has not 
brought the Indian into his environment, nor yet has the 
contact been in such a way as to induce or permit 
the Indian web of habitual thought and custom to be 
changed rapidly enough to meet the new conditions into 





THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


which he has been brought by the proximity of new and 
powerful neighbors. That there is no innate impedi- 
ment to the reception of our civilization by these un- 
civilized races has been shown over and over again in 
individual cases. And it has likewise been shown, so far 
as the experiments have been permitted to go, by the 
Jesuits in Paraguay, the Franciscans in California, and 
the Protestant missionaries on some of the Pacific 
islands. 

The assumption of physical improvement in the race 
within any time of which we have knowledge is utterly 
without warrant, and within the time of which Mr. 
Bagehot speaks, it is absolutely disproved. We know 
from classic statues, from the burdens carried and the 
marches made by ancient soldiers, from the records of 
runners and the feats of gymnasts, that neither in pro- 
portions nor strength has the race improved within two 
thousand years. But the assumption of mental improve- 
ment, which is even more confidently and generally 
made, is still more preposterous. As poets, artists, 
architects, philosophers, rhetoricians, statesmen, or sol- 
diers, can modem civilization show individuals of greater 
mental power than can the ancient? There is no use 
in recalling names — every schoolboy knows them. For 
our models and personifications of mental power we go 
back to the ancients, and if we can for a moment 
imagine the possibility of what is held by that oldest and 
most widespread of all beliefs — that belief which Less- 
ing declared on this account the most probably true, 
though he accepted it on metaphysical grounds — and 
suppose Homer or Virgil, Demosthenes or Cicero, Alex- 
ander, Hannibal or Csesar, Plato or Lucretius, Euclid 
or Aristotle, as re-entering this life again in the Nine- 
teenth Century, can we suppose that they would show 
any inferiority to the men of to-day? Or if we take 
any period since the classic age, even the darkest, or any 



Chap. 11. 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 


503 


previous period of whioh we know anything, shall we 
not find men who in the conditions and degree of 
knowledge of their times showed mental power of as 
high an order as men show now? And among the less 
advanced races do we not to-day, whenever our atten- 
tion is called to them, find men who in their conditions 
exhibit mental qualities as great as civilization can 
show? Did the invention of the railroad, coming when 
it did, prove any greater inventive power than did the 
invention of the wheelbarrow when wheelbarrows were 
not? We of modem civilization are raised far above 

those who have oreceded us and those of the less ad- 

* 

vanced races who are our contemporaries. But it it> 
because we stand on a pyramid, not that we are taller. 
What the centuries have done for us is not to increase 
our stature, but to build up a structure on which we 
may plant our feet. 

Let me repeat: I do not mean to say that all men 
possess the same capacities, or are mentally alike, any 
more than I mean to say that they are physically alike. 
Among all the countless millions who have come and 
gone on this earth, there were probably, never two who 
either physically or mentally were exact counterparts. 
Nor yet do I mean to say that there are not as clearly 
marked race differences in mind as there are clearly 
marked race differences in body. I do not deny the 
influence of heredity in transmitting peculiarities of mind 
in the same way, and possibly to the same degree, as 
bodily peculiarities are transmitted. But nevertheless, 
there is, it seems to me, a common standard and natural 
symmetry of mind, as there is of body, toward which 
all deviations tend to return. The conditions under 
which we fall may produce such distortions as the Flat- 
heads produce by compressing the heads of their infants 
or the Chinese by binding their daughters’ feet. But 
as Flathead babies continue to be born with naturally 



604 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS BookX. 

shaped heads and Chinese babies with naturally shaped 
feet, so does nature seem to revert to the normal mental 
type. A child no more inherits his father’s knowledge 
than he inherits his father’s glass eye or artificial leg; 
the child of the most ignorant parents may become a 
pioneer of science or a leader of thought. 

But this is the great fact with which we are concerned: 
That the differences between the people of communi- 
ties in different places and at different times, which 
We call differences of civilization, are not differences 
which inhere in the individuals, but differences which 
inhere in the society; that they are not, as Herbert 
Spencer holds, differences resulting from differences in 
the units; but that they are differences resulting from 
the conditions under which these units are brought 
in the society. In short, I take the explanation of the 
differences which distinguish communities to be this: 
That each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for 
itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, language, 
tastes, institutions, and laws. Into this web, woven by 
each society, or rather, into these webs, for each com- 
munity above the simplest is made up of minor societies, 
which overlap and interlace each other, the individual 
is received at birth and continues until his death. This 
is the matrix in which mind unfolds and from which it 
takes its stamp. This is the way in which customs, and 
religions, and prejudices, and tastes, and languages, 
grow up and are perpetuated. This is the way that 
skill is transmitted and knowledge is stored up, and the 
discoveries of one time made the common stock and 
stepping stone of the next. Though it is this that often 
offers the most serious obstacles to progress, it is this 
that makes progress possible. It is this that enables any 
schoolboy in our time to learn in a few hours more of 
the universe than Ptolemy knew; that places the most 
humdrum scientist far above the level reached by the 



Chap. II 


DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 


505 


giant mind of Aristotle. This is to the race what mem- 
ory is to the individual. Our wonderful arts, our far- 
reaching science, our marvelous inventions — they have 
come through this. 

Human progress goes on as the advances made by one 
generation are in this way. secured as the common prop- 
erty ol the next, and made the starting point for new 
advances. 



CHAPTER III 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 

What, then, is the law of human progress — the law 
under which civilization advances? 

It must explain clearly and definitely, and not by 
vague generalities or superficial analogies, why, though 
mankind started presumably with the same capacities 
and at the same time, there now exist such wide differ* 
ences in social development. It must account for the 
arrested civilizations and for the decayed and destroyed 
civilizations; for the general facts as to the rise of civili- 
zation, and for the petrifying or enervating force which 
the progress of civilization has heretofore always 
evolved. It must account for retrogression as well as for 
progression; for the differences in general character 
between Asiatic and European civilizations; for the 
difference between classical and modern civilizations; 
for the different rates at which progress goes on ; and for 
those bursts, and starts, and halts of progress which are 
so marked as minor phenomena. And, thus, it must 
show us what are the essential conditions of progress, 
and what social adjustments advance and what retard it. 

It is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but 
to look and we may see it. I do not pretend to give it 
scientific precision, but merely to point it out. 

The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in 
human nature — the desire to gratify the wants of the 
animal nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and 
the wants of the sympathetic nature; the. desire to be, 

W 



Chap. 111. 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


607 


to know, and to do — desires that short of infinity can 
never be satisfied, as they grow by what they feed on. 

Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and 
by which each advance is secured and made the vantage 
ground for new advances. Though he may not by tak- 
ing thought add a cubit to his stature, man may by 
taking thought extend his knowledge of the universe 
and his power over it, in what, so far as we can see, is 
an infinite degree. The narrow span of human life 
allows the individual to go but a short distance, but 
though each generation may do but little, yet genera- 
tions, succeeding to the gain of their predecessors, may 
gradually elevate the status of mankind, as coral polyps, 
building one generation upon the work of the other, 
gradually elevate themselves from the bottom of the 

S6&i 

Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and 
men tend to advance in proportion to the mental power 
expended in progression — the mental power which is de- 
voted to the extension of knowledge, the improvement 
of methods, and the betterment of social conditions. 

Now mental power is a fixed quantity — that is to say, 
there is a limit to the work a man can do with his mind, 
as there is to the work he can do with his body; there- 
fore, the mental power which can be devoted to progress 
is only what is left after what is required for non- 
progressive purposes. 

These non-progressive purposes in which mental power 
is consumed may be classified as maintenance and con- 
flict. By maintenance I mean, not only the support of 
existence, but the keeping up of the social condition and 
the holding of advances already gained. By conflict I 
mean not merely warfare and preparation for warfare, 
but all expenditure of mental power in seeking the grati- 
fication of desire at the expense of others, and in resist- 
ance to such aggression. 



608 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


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 bailing, 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 
set free for higher uses only 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 improve- 
ment. 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 im- 
provement, 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. 

Here is the law of progress, which will explain all 
diversities, all advances, all halts, and retrogressions. 
Men tend to progress just as they come closer together, 
and by co-operation with each other increase the men- 
tal power that may be devoted to improvement, but 
just as conflict is provoked, or association develops in- 
equality of condition and power, this tendency to pro- 
gression is lessened, checked, and finally reversed. 

Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident that 
social development will go on faster or slower, will stop 



Chap . ///. 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


509 


or turn back, according to the resistances it meets. In 
a general way these obstacles to improvement may, in 
relation to the society itself, be classed as external and 
internal — the first operating with greater force in the 
earlier stages of civilization, the latter becoming more 
important in the later stages. 

Man ip social in his nature. He does not require to 
be caught and tamed in order to induce him to live with 
his fellows. The utter helplessness with which he enters 
the world, and the long period required for the maturity 
of his powers, necessitate the family relation; which, as 
we may observe, is wider, and in its extensions stronger, 
among the ruder than among the more cultivated peo- 
ples. The first societies are families, expanding into 
tribes, still holding a mutual blood relationship, and even 
when they have become great nations claiming a common 
descent. 

Given beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such 
diversified surface and climate as this, and it is evident 
that, even with equal capacity, and an equal start, social 
development must be very different. The first limit or 
resistance to association will come from the conditions 
of physical nature, and as these greatly vary with local- 
ity, corresponding differences in social progress must 
show themselves. The net rapidity of increase, and the 
closeness with which men, as they increase, can keep to- 
gether, will, in the rude state of knowledge in which 
reliance for subsistence must be principally upon the 
spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend 
upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where 
much animal food and warm clothing are required; 
where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the 
exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man^ 
puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or 
arms of the sea separate and isolate men; association, 
and the power of improvement which it evolves, can at 



510 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS Book X 

first go but a little way. But on the rich plains of warm 
climates, where human existence can be maintained with 
a smaller expenditure of force, and from a much smaller 
area, men can keep closer together, and the mental 
power which can at first be devoted to improvement is 
much greater. Hence civilization naturally first arises 
in the great -valleys and table lands where we find its 
earliest monuments. 

But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely 
thus directly produce diversities in social development, 
but, by producing diversities in social development, bring 
out in man himself an obstacle, or rather an active coun- 
terforce, to improvement. As families and tribes are 
separated from each other, the social feeling ceases to 
operate between them, and differences arise in language, 
custom, tradition, religion — in short, in the whole social 
web which each community, however small or large, con- 
stantly spins. With these differences, prejudices grow, 
animosities spring up, contact easily produces quarrels, 
aggression begets aggression, and wrong kindles re- 
venge.* And so between these separate social aggregates 
arises the feeling of Ishmael and the spirit of Cain, war- 


* How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and dis- 
like; how natural it is for us to consider any difference in 
manners, customs, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of 
those who differ from us, any one who has emancipated him- 
self in any degree from prejudice, and who mixes with different 
classes, may see in civilized society. In religion, for instance, 
the spirit of the hymn— 

"I'd rather be a Baptist, and wear a shining face, 

Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace,” 

is observable in all denominations. As the Englidi Bishop 
said, "Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other 
doxy,” while the universal tendency is to classify all outside of 
the orthodoxies and heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as 
heathens or atheists. And the like tendency is observable as 
to all other differences. 




Chop. Ill . 


THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS 


611 


fare becomes the chronic and seemingly natural relation 
of societies to each other, and the powers of men are ex- 
pended in attack or defense, in mutual slaughter and 
mutual destruction of wealth, or in warlike preparations. 
How long this hostility persists, the protective tariffs 
and the standing armies of the civilized world to-day 
bear witness; how difficult it is to get over the idea that 
it is not theft to steal from a foreigner, the difficulty in 
procuring an international copyright act will show. Can 
we wonder at the perpetual hostilities x>f tribes and clans? 
Can we wonder that when each community was isolated 
from the others — when each, uninfluenced by the others, 
was spinning its separate web of social environment, 
which no individual can escape, that war should have 
been the rule and peace the exception? “They were 
even as we are.” 

Now, warfare is the negation of association. The 
separation of men into diverse tribes, by increasing war- 
fare, thus checks improvement; while in the localities 
where a large increase in numbers is possible without 
much separation, civilization gains the advantage of ex- 
emption from tribal war, even when the community as a 
whole is carrying on warfare beyond its borders. Thus, 
where the resistance of nature to the close association of 
men is slightest, the counterforce of warfare is likely at 
first to be least felt; and in the rich plains where civili- 
zation first begins, it may rise to a great height while 
scattered tribes are yet barbarous. And thus, when 
small, separated communities exist in a state of chronic 
warfare which forbids advance, the first step to their 
civilization is the advent of some conquering tribe or 
nation that unites these smaller communities into a 
larger one, in which internal peace is preserved. Where 
this power of peaceable association is broken up, either 
by external assaults or internal dissensions, the advance 
ceases and retrogression begins. 



512 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


But it is not conquest alone that has operated to pro- 
mote association, and, by liberating mental power from 
the necessities of warfare, to promote civilization. If 
the diversities of climate, soil, and configuration of the 
earth’s surface operate at first to separate mankind, they 
also operate to encourage exchange. And commerce, 
which is in itself a form of association or co-operation, 
operates to promote civilization, not only directly, but 
by building up interests which are opposed to warfare, 
and dispelling the ignorance which is the fertile mother 
of prejudices and animosities. 

And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed 
and the animosities it has aroused have often sundered 
men and produced warfare, yet it has at other times been 
the means of promoting association. A common wor- 
ship has often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and 
furnished the basis of union, while it is from the triumph 
of Christianity over the barbarians of Europe that mod- 
ern civilization springs. Had not the Christian Church 
existed when the Roman Empire went to pieces, Europe, 
destitute of any bond of association, might have fallen 
to a condition not much above that of the North Ameri- 
can Indians or only received civilization with an Asiatic 
impress from the conquering scimiters of the invading 
hordes which had been welded into a mighty power by a 
religion which, springing up in the deserts of Arabia, 
had united tribes separated from time immemorial, and, 
thence issuing, brought into the association of a common 
faith a great part of the human race. 

Looking over what we know of the history of the 
world, we thus see civilization everywhere springing up 
where men are brought into association, and everywhere 
disappearing as this association is broken up. Thus the 
Roman civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests 
which insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the 
incursions of the northern nations that broke society 



Chap. III. 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


513 


again into disconnected fragments; and the progress that 
now goes on in our modem civilization began as the 
feudal system again began to associate men in larger 
communities, and the spiritual supremacy of Home to 
bring these communities into a common relation, as her 
legions had done before. As the feudal bonr’ * grew into 
national autonomies, and Christianity worked the amel- 
ioration of manners, brought forth the knowledge that 
during the dark days she had hidden, bound the threads 
of peaceful union in her all-pervading organization, and 
taught association in her religious orders, a greater prog- 
ress became possible, which, as men have been brought 
into closer and closer association and co-operation, has 
gone on with greater and greater force. 

But we shall never understand the course of civiliza- 
tion, and the varied phenomena which its history pre- 
sents, without a consideration of what I may term the 
internal resistances, hr counter forces, which arise in the 
heart of advancing society, and which can alone explain 
how a civilization once fairly started should either come 
of itself to a halt or be destroyed by barbarians. 

The mental power, which is the motor of social prog- 
ress, is set free by association, which is, what, perhaps, 
it may be more properly called, an integration. Society 
in this process becomes more complex; its individuals 
more dependent upon each other. Occupations and 
functions are specialized. Instead of wandering, popu- 
lation becomes fixed. Instead of each man attempting 
to supply all of his wants, the various trades and indus- 
tries are separated — one man acquires skill in one thing, 
and another in another thing. So, too, of knowledge, 
the body of which constantly tends to become vaster than 
one man can grasp, and is separated into different parts, 
which different individuals acquire and pursue. So, too, 
the performance of religious ceremonies tends to pass 
into the hands of a body of men specially devoted to that 



514 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


BootZ 


purpose, and the preservation of order, the administra- 
tion of justice, the assignment of public duties and the 
distribution of awards, the conduct of war, etc., to be 
made the special functions of an organized government. 
In short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer 
has defined evolution, the development of society is, in 
relation to its component individuals, the passing from 
an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, 
coherent heterogeneity. The lower the stage of social 
development, the more society resembles one of those 
lowest of animal organisms which are without organs or 
limbs, and from which a part may be cut and yet live. 
The higher the stage of social development, the more 
society resembles those higher organisms in which func- 
tions and powers are specialized, and each member is 
vitally dependent on the others. 

Now, this process of integration, of the specialization 
of functions and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by 
virtue of what is probably one of the deepest laws of 
human nature, accompanied by a constant liability to 
inequality. I do not mean that inequality is the neces- 
sary result of social growth, but that it is the constant 
tendency of social growth if unaccompanied by changes 
in social adjustments which, in the new conditions that 
growth produces, will secure equality. I mean, so to 
speak, that the garment of laws, customs, and political 
institutions, which each society weaves for itself, is con- 
stantly tending to become too tight as the society de- 
velops. I mean, so to speak, that man, as he advances, 
threads a labyrinth, in which, if he keeps straight ahead, 
he will infallibly lose his way, and through which reason 
and justice can alone keep him continuously in an as- 
cending path. 

For, while the integration which accompanies growth 
tends in itself to set free mental power to work improve- 
ment, there is, both with increase of numbers and with 



Chap, III, 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


515 


increase in complexity of the social organization, a coun- 
ter tendency set up to the production of a state of in- 
equality, which wastes mental power, and, as it increases, 
brings improvement to a halt. 

To trace to its highest expression the law which thus 
operates to evolve with progress the force which stops 
progress, would be, it seems to me, to go far to the solu- 
tion of a problem deeper than that of the genesis of the 
material universe — the problem of the genesis of evil. 
Let me content myself with pointing -out the manner in 
which, as society develops, there arise tendencies which 
check development. 

There are two qualities of human nature which it will 
be well, however, to first call to mind. The one is the 
power of habit — the tendency to continue to do things 
in the same way; the other is the possibility of mental 
and moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social 
development is to 'continue habits, customs, laws, and 
methods, long after they have lost their original useful- 
ness, and the effect of the other is to permit the growth 
of institutions and modes of thought from which the 
normal perceptions of men instinctively revolt. 

Now the growth and development of society not 
merely tend to make each more and more dependent 
upon all, and to lessen the influence of individuals, even 
over their own conditions, as compared with the influ- 
ence of society; but the effect of association or integra- 
tion is to give rise to a collective power which is 
distinguishable from the sum of individual powers. 
Analogies, or, perhaps, rather illustrations of the same 
law, may be found in all directions. As animal organ- 
isms increase in complexity, there arise, above the life 
and power of the parts, a life and power of the integrated 
whole; above the capability of involuntary movements, 
the capability of voluntary movements. The actions 
and impulses of bodies of men are, as has often been 



516 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Boot X 


observed, different from those which, under the same 
circumstances, would be called forth in individuals. The 
fighting qualities of a regiment may be very different 
from those of the individual soldiers. But there is no 
need of illustrations. In our inquiries into the nature 
and rise of rent, we traced the very thing to which I 
allude. Where population is sparse, land has no value; 
just as men congregate together, the value of land ap- 
pears and rises — a clearly distinguishable thing from 
the values produced by individual effort; a value which 
springs from association, which increases as association 
grows greater, and disappears as association is broken 
up. And the same thing is true of power in other forms 
than those generally expressed in terms of wealth. 

Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue 
previous social adjustments tends to lodge this collective 
power, as it arises, in the hands of a portion of the com- 
munity; and this unequal distribution of the wealth and 
power gained as society advances tends to produce 
greater inequality, since aggression grows by what it 
feeds on, and the idea of justice is blurred by the 
habitual, toleration of injustice. 

In this way the patriarchal organization of society 
can easily grow into hereditary monarchy, in which the 
king is as a god on earth, and the masses of the people 
mere slaves of his caprice. It' is natural that the father 
should be the directing head of the family, and that at 
his death the eldest son, as the oldest and most experi- 
enced member of the little community, should succeed 
to the headship. But to continue this arrangement as 
the family expands, is to lodge power in a particular 
line, and the power thus lodged necessarily continues to 
increase, as the common stock becomes larger and larger, 
and the power of the community grows. The head of 
the family passes into 'the hereditary king, who comes 
to look upon himself and to be looked upon by others 



Chap. til. 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


51? 


as a being of superior rights. With the growth of the 
collective power as compared with the power of the in- 
dividual, his power to reward and to punish increases, 
and so increase the inducements to flatter and to fear 
him; until finally, if the process be not disturbed, a na- 
tion grovels at the foot of a throne, and a hundred 
thousand men toil for fifty years to prepare a tomb for 
one of their own mortal kind. 

So the war-chief of a little band of savages is but one 
of their number, whom they follow as their bravest and 
most wary. But when large bodies come to act together, 
personal selection becomes more difficult, a blinder 
obedience becomes necessary and can be enforced, and 
from the very necessities of warfare when conducted on 
a large scale absolute power arises. 

And so of the specialization of function. There is a 
manifest gain in productive power when social growth 
has gone so far that instead of every producer being 
summoned from his work for fighting purposes, a regu- 
lar military force can be specialized; but this inevitably 
tends to the concentration of power in the hands of the 
military class or their chiefs. The preservation of in- 
ternal order, the administration of justice, the construc- 
tion and care of public works, and, notably, the 
observances of religion, all tend in similar manner to 
pass into the hands of special classes, whose disposi- 
tion it is to magnify their function and extend their 
power. 

But the great cause of inequality is in the natural 
monopoly which is given by the possession of land. The 
first perceptions of men seem always to be that land if 
common property ; but the rude devices by which this is 
at first recognized — such as annual partitions or cultiva- 
tion in common — are consistent with only a low stage of 
development. The idea of property, which naturally 
arises with reference to things of human production, is 



«*«Jy tranaferred to land, and an institution which when 
population is sparse merely secures to the improver and 
user the due reward of his labor, finally, as population 
becomes dense and rent arises, operates to strip the pro- 
ducer of his wages. Not merely this, but the appropria- 
tion of rent for public purposes, which is the only way 
in which, with anything like a high development, land 
can be readily retained as common property, becomes, 
when political and religious power passes into the hands 
of a class, the ownership of the land by that class, and 
the rest of the community become merely tenants. And 
wars and conquests, which tend to the concentration of 
political power and to the institution of slavery, natu- 
rally result, where social growth has given land a value, 
in the appropriation of the soil. A dominant class, who 
concentrate power in their hands, will likewise soon con- 
centrate ownership of the land. To them will fall large 
partitions of conquered land, which the former inhabi- 
tants will till as tenants or serfs, and the public domain, 
or common lands, which in the natural course of social 
growth are left for awhile in every country, and in which 
state the primitive system of village culture leaves pas- 
ture and woodland, are readily acquired, as we see by 
modern instances. And inequality once established, the 
ownership of land tends to concentrate as development 
goes on. 

I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact 
that as a social development goes on, inequality tends 
to establish itself, and not to point out the particular 
sequence, which must necessarily vary with different con- 
ditions. But this main fact makes intelligible all the 
phenomena of petrifaction and retrogression. The un- 
equal distribution of the power and wealth gained by the 
integration of men in society tends to check, and finally 
to counterbalance, the force by which improvements are 
made and society advances. On the one side, the masses 
of the community are compelled to expend their mental 



Ckmp.111- 


THE LAW OF HUHAN FROGBB88 


519 


powers in merely maintaining existence. On the other 
side, mental power is expended in keeping up and inten- 
sifying the system of inequality, in ostentation, luxury, 
and warfare. A community divided into a class that 
rules and a class that is ruled — into the very rich and 
the very poor, may “build like giants and finish like 
jewelers;” but it will be monuments of ruthless pride 
and barren vanity, or of a religion tinned from its office 
of elevating man into an instrument for keeping him 
down. Invention may for awhile to some degree go on; 
but it will be the invention of refinements in luxury, 
not the inventions that relieve toil and increase power. 
In the arcana of temples or in the chambers of court 
physicians knowledge may still be sought; but it will be 
hidden as a secret thing, or if it dares come out to ele- 
vate common thought or brighten common life, it will be 
trodden down as a dangerous innovator. For as it tends 
to lessen the mental power devoted to improvement, so 
does inequality tend to render men adverse to improve- 
ment. How strong is the disposition to adhere to old 
methods among the classes who are kept in ignorance by 
being compelled to toil for a mere existence, is too well 
known to require illustration; and on the other hand the 
conservatism of the classes to whom the existing social 
adjustment gives special advantages is equally apparent. 
This tendency to resist innovation, even though it be 
improvement, is observable in every special organization 
— in religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in trade 
guilds; and it becomes intense just as the organization 
is close. A close corporation has always an instinctive 
dislike of innovation and innovators, which is but the 
expression of an instinctive fear that change may tend to 
throw down the barriers which hedge it in from the 
common herd, and so rob it of importance and power; 
and it is always disposed to guard carefully its special 
knowledge or skill. 

It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress* 

NAWAB SALAR JVjNCf BAHADUR 



520 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


The advance of inequality necessarily brings improve- 
ment to a halt, and as it still persists or provokes 
unavailing reactions, draws even upon the mental power 
necessary lor maintenance, and retrogression begins. 

These principles make intelligible the history of civili- 
zation. 

In the localities where climate, soil, and physical con- 
formation tended least to separate men as they increased, 
and where, accordingly, the first civilizations grew up, 
the internal resistances to progress would naturally 
develop in a more regular and thorough manner than 
where smaller communities, which in their separation 
had developed diversities, were afterward brought to- 
gether into a closer association. It is this, it seems to 
me, which accounts for the general characteristics of the 
earlier civilizations as compared with the later civiliza- 
tions of Europe. Such homogeneous communities, de- 
veloping from the first without the jar of conflict be- 
tween different customs, laws, religions, etc., would show 
a much greater uniformity. The concentrating and con- 
servative forces would all, so to speak, pull together. 
Rival chieftains would not counterbalance each other, 
nor diversities of belief hold the growth of priestly in- 
fluence in check. Political and religious power, wealth 
and knowledge, would thus tend to concentrate in the 
same centers. The same causes which tended to pro- 
duce the hereditary king and hereditary priest would 
tend to produce the hereditary artisan and laborer, and 
to separate society into castes. The power which as- 
sociation sets free for progress would thus be wasted, 
and barriers to further progress be gradually raised. 
The surplus energies of the masses would be devoted to 
the construction of temples, palaces, and pyramids; 
to ministering to the pride and pampering the luxury of 
their rulers ; and should any disposition to improvement 
arise among the classes of leisure it would at once be 



Chap. III. 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


521 


checked by the dread of innovation. Society develop- 
ing in this way must at length stop in a conservatism 
which permits no further progress. 

How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when 
once reached, will continue, seems to depend upon ex- 
ternal causes, for the iron bonds of the social environ- 
ment which grows up repress disintegrating forces as 
well as improvement. Such a community can be most 
easily conquered, for the masses of the people are trained 
to a passive acquiescence in a life of hopeless labor. If 
the conquerors merely take the place of the ruling class, 
as the Hyksos did in Egypt and the Tartars in China, 
everything will go on as before. If they ravage and de- 
stroy, the glory of palace and temple remains but in 
ruins, population becomes sparse, and knowledge and 
art are lost. 

European civilization differs in character from civiliza- 
tions of the Egyptian, type because it springs not from 
the association of a homogeneous people developing 
from the beginning, or at least for a long time, under 
the same conditions, but from the association of peoples 
who in separation had acquired distinctive social char- 
acteristics, and whose smaller organizations longer pre- 
vented the concentration of power and wealth in one 
center. The physical conformation of the Grecian penin- 
sula is such as to separate the people at first into a 
number of small communities. As those petty republics 
and nominal kingdoms ceased to waste their energies in 
warfare, and the peaceable co-operation of commerce 
extended, the light of civilization blazed up. But the 
principle of association was never strong enough to save 
Greece from inter-tribal war, and when this was put an 
end to by conquest, the tendency to inequality, which 
had been combated with various devices by Grecian 
sages and statesmen, worked its result, and Grecian 
valor, art, and literature became things of the past 



522 


THE LAW Or HUMAN PROGRESS 


BotkX 


And so in the rise and extension, the decline and fall, 
of Roman civilization, may be seen the working of these 
two principles of association and equality, from the 
combination of which springs progress. 

Springing from the association of the independent 
husbandmen and free citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh 
strength from conquests which brought hostile nations 
into common relations, the Roman power hushed the 
world in peace. But the tendency to inequality, check- 
ing real progress from the first, increased as the Roman 
civilization extended. The Roman civilization did not 
petrify as did the homogeneous civilizations where the 
strong bonds of custom and superstition that held the 
people in subjection probably also protected them, or at 
any rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled; it 
rotted, declined and fell. Long before Goth or Vandal 
had broken through the cordon of the legions, even while 
her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the 
heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had 
dried up the strength and destroyed the vigor of the 
Roman world. Government became despotism, which 
even assassination could not temper; patriotism became 
servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in pub- 
lic; literature sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; 
fertile districts became waste without the ravages of war 
—everywhere inequality produced decay, political, men- 
tal, moral, and material. The barbarism which over- 
whelmed Rome came not from without, but from within. 
It was the necessary product of the system which had 
substituted slaves and colonii for the independent hus- 
bandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates 
of senatorial families. 

Modem civilization owes its superiority to the growth 
of equality with the growth of association. Two great 
causes contributed to this — the splitting up of concen- 
trated power into innumerable little centers by the in- 



Chap. III. 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 




flux of the Northern nations, and the influence of 
Christianity. Without the first there would have been 
the petrifaction and slow decay of the Eastern Empire, 
where church and state were closely married and loss of 
external power brought no relief of internal tyranny. 
And but for the other there would have been barbarism, 
without principle of association or amelioration. The 
petty chiefs and allodial lords who everywhere grasped 
local sovereignty held each other in check. Italian 
cities recovered their ancient liberty, free towns were 
founded, village communities took root, and serfs ac- 
quired rights in the soil they tilled. The leaven of 
Teutonic ideas of equality worked through the disorgan- 
ized and disjointed fabric of society. And although 
society was split up into an innumerable number of 
separated fragments, yet the idea of closer association 
was always present — it existed in the recollections of a 
universal empire; it existed in the claims of a universal 
church. 

Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in 
percolating through a rotting civilization; though pagan 
gods were taken into her pantheon, and pagan forms 
into her ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed; yet 
her essential idea of the equality of men was never 
wholly destroyed. And two things happened of the 
utmost moment to incipient civilization — the establish- 
ment of the papacy and the celibacy of the clergy. The 
first prevented the spiritual power from concentrating in 
the same lines as the temporal power; and the latter 
prevented the establishment of a priestly caste, during 
a time when all power tended to hereditary form. 

In her efforts for the abolition of slavery ; in her Truce 
of God; in her monastic orders; in her councils which 
united nations, and her edicts which ran without regard 
to political boundaries; in the low-born hands in which 
she placed a sign before which the proudest knelt;‘in her 



524 


THE LAW OF HITMAN PROGRESS 


Book X. 


bishops who by consecration became the peers of the 
greatest nobles; in her “Servant of Servants,” for so 
his official title ran, who, by virtue of the ring of a 
simple fisherman, claimed the right to arbitrate between 
nations, and whose stirrup was held by kings; the 
Church, in spite of everything, was yet a promoter of 
association, a witness for the natural equality of men; 
and by the Church herself was nurtured a spirit that, 
when her early work of association and emancipation 
was well-nigh done — when the ties she had knit had 
become strong, and the learning she had preserved had 
been given to the world — broke the chains with which 
she would have fettered the human mind, and in a great 
part of Europe rent her organization. 

The rise and growth of European civilization is too 
vast and complex a subject to be thrown into proper 
perspective and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all 
its details, as in its main features, it illustrates the 
truth that progress goes on just as society tends toward 
closer association and greater equality. Civilization is 
co-operation. Union and liberty are its factors. The 
great extension of association — not alone in the growth 
of larger and denser communities, but in the increase of 
commerce and the manifold exchanges which knit each 
community together and link them with other though 
widely separated communities; the growth of interna- 
tional and municipal law; the advances in security of 
property and of person, in individual liberty, and to- 
wards democratic government — advances, in short, to- 
wards the recognition* of the equal rights to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness — it is these that make our 
modem civilization bo much greater, so much higher, 
than any that has gone before. It is these that have set 
free the mental power which has rolled back the veil of 
ignorance which hid all but a small portion of the globe 
from men’s knowledge; which has measured the orbits of 
the circling spheres and bids us see moving, pulsing life 



Chap. 111. 


THE LA W OF HCJMAN PROGRESS 


62 5 


in a drop of water; which has opened to us the ante- 
chamber of nature’s mysteries and read the secrets of a 
long-buried past; which has harnessed in our service 
physical forces beside which man’s efforts are puny; and 
increased productive power by a thousand great inven- 
tions. 

In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as 
pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak 
even of war and slavery as means of human progress. 
But war, which is the opposite of association, can aid 
progress only when it prevents further war or breaks 
down anti-social barriers which are themselves passive 
war. 

As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have 
aided in establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym 
of equality, is, from the very rudest state in which man 
can be imagined, the stimulus and condition of progress. 
Auguste Comte’s idea that the institution of slavery de- 
stroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia’s humorous 
notion of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast 
pig. It assumes that a propensity that has never been 
found developed in man save as the result of the most 
unnatural conditions — the direst want or the most bru- 
talizing superstitions* — is an original impulse, and that 
he, even in his lowest state the highest of all animals, 
has natural appetites which the nobler brutes do not 
show. And so of the idea that slavery began civilization 
by giving slave owners leisure for improvement. 

Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. 
Whether the community consist of a single master and 
a single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of 
slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human 


* The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by 
eating their bodies. Their bad and ✓ tyrannical chiefs they would 
not touch. The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating 
their enemies they acquired their strength and valor. And this 
seems to be the general origin of eating prisoners of war. 



626 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS Book JL 

power; for not only is slave labor less productive than 
free labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted 
in holding and watching their slaves, and is called away 
from directions in which real improvement lies. From 
first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natu- 
ral equality of men, has hampered and prevented prog- 
ress. Just in proportion as slavery plays an important 
part in the social organization does improvement cease. 
That in the classical world slavery was so universal, is 
undoubtedly the reason why the mental activity which 
so polished literature and refined art never hit on any 
of the great discoveries and inventions which distinguish 
modern civilization. No slave-holding people ever were 
an inventive people. In a slave-holding community the 
upper classes may become luxurious and polished; but 
never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and 
robs him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of 
invention and forbids the utilization of inventions and 
discoveries even when made. To freedom alone is given 
the spell of power which summons the genii in whose 
keeping are the treasures of earth and the viewless 
forces of the air. 

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 formu* 
late the spiritual yearnings of man. 


NAWaB S/*UR BAKAUUSt 



CHAPTER IV 


HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE 

The conclusion we have thus reached harmonizes com- 
pletely with our previous conclusions. 

This consideration of the law of human progress not 
only brings the politico-economic laws, which in this in- 
quiry we have worked out, within the scope of a higher 
law — perhaps the very highest law our minds can grasp 
— but it proves that the making of land common prop- 
erty in the way I have proposed would give an enormous 
impetus to civilization, while the refusal to do so must 
entail retrogression. A civilization like ours must either 
advance or go back; it cannot stand still. It is not like 
those homogeneous civilizations, such as that of the Nile 
Valley, which molded men for their places and put them 
in it like bricks into a pyramid. It much more resem- 
bles that civilization whose rise and fall is within his- 
toric times, and from which it sprung. 

There is just now a disposition to scoff at any impli- 
cation that we are not in all respects progressing, and 
the spirit of our times is that of the edict which the flat- 
tering premier proposed to the Chinese Emperor who 
burned the ancient books — “that all who may dare to 
speak together about the She and the Shoo be put to 
death; that those who make mention of the past bo as 
to blame the present be put to death along with their 
relatives.” 

Yet it is evident that there have been times of de- 
cline, just as there have been times of advance; and it is 

527 



528 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


BookX. 


further evident that these epochs of decline could not at 
first have been generally recognized. 

He would have been a rash man who, when Augustus 
was changing the Rome of brick to the Rome of marble, 
when wealth was augmenting and magnificence increas- 
ing, when victorious legions were extending the frontier, 
when maimers were becoming more refined, language 
more polished, and literature rising to higher splendors 
— he would have been a rash man who then would have 
said that Rome was entering her decline. Yet such was 
the case. 

And whoever will look may see that though our civili- 
zation is apparently advancing with greater rapidity 
than ever, the same cause which turned Roman progress 
into retrogression is operating now. 

What has destroyed every previous civilization has 
been the tendency to the unequal' distribution of wealth 
and power. This same tendency, operating with in- 
creasing force, is observable in our civilization to-day, 
showing itself in every progressive community, and with 
greater intensity the more progressive the community. 
Wages and interest tend constantly to fall, rent to rise, 
the rich to become very much richer, the poor to become 
more helpless and hopeless, and the middle class to be 
swept away. 

I have traced this tendency to its cause. I have shown 
by what simple means this cause may be removed. I 
now wish to point out how, if this is not done, progress 
must turn to decadence, and modern civilization decline 
to barbarism, as have all previous civilizations. It is 
worth while to point out how this may occur, as many 
people, being unable to see how progress may pass into 
retrogression, conceive such a thing impossible. Gibbon, 
for instance, thought that modem civilization could 
never be destroyed because there remained no barbarians 
to overrun it, and it is a common idea that the invention 



Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE 529 


of printing by so multiplying books has prevented the 
possibility of knowledge ever again being lost. 

The conditions of social progress, as we have traced 
the law, are association and equality. The general 
tendency of modern development, since the time when 
we can first discern the gleams of civilization in the 
darkness which followed the fall of the Western Empire, 
has been toward political and legal equality — to the 
abolition of slavery; to the abrogation of status; to the 
sweeping away of hereditary privileges; to the substitu- 
tion of parliamentary for arbitrary government; to the 
right of private judgment in matters of religion; to the 
more equal security in person and property of high and 
low, weak and strong; to the greater freedom of move- 
ment and occupation, of speech and of the press. The 
history of modem civilization is the history of advances 
in this direction— of the struggles and triumphs of per- 
sonal, political, and religious freedom. And the general 
law is shown by the fact that just as this tendency has 
asserted itself civilization has advanced, while just as it 
has been repressed or forced back civilization has been 
checked. 

This tendency has reached its full expression in the 
American Republic, where political and legal rights are 
absolutely equal, and, owing to the system of rotation in 
office, even the growth of a bureaucracy is prevented; 
where every religious belief or non-belief stands on the 
same footing; where every boy may hope to be Presi- 
dent, every man has an equal voice in public affairs, and 
every official is mediately or immediately dependent for 
the short lease of his place upon a popular vote. This 
tendency has yet some triumphs to win in England, in 
extending the suffrage, and sweeping away the vestiges 
of monarchy, aristocracy, and prelacy; while in such 
countries as Germany and Russia, where divine right is 
yet a good deal more than a legal fiction, it has a con* 



530 


- THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


BoakX. 


siderable distance to go. But it is the prevailing tend- 
ency, and how soon Europe will be completely republican 
is only a matter of time, or rather of accident. The 
United States are therefore, in this respect, the most ad- 
vanced of all the great nations, in a direction in which 
all are advancing, and in the United States we see just 
how much this tendency to personal and political free- 
dom can of itself accomplish. 

Now, the first effect of the tendency to political equal- 
ity was to the more equal distribution of wealth and 
power; for, while population is comparatively sparse, 
inequality in the distribution of wealth is principally due 
to the inequality of personal rights, and it is only as 
material progress goes on that the tendency to inequality 
involved in the reduction of land to private ownership 
strongly appears. But it is now manifest that absolute 
political equality does not in itself prevent the tendency 
to inequality involved in the private ownership of land, 
and it is further evident that political equality, co- 
existing with an increasing tendency to the unequal 
distribution of wealth, must ultimately beget either the 
despotism of organized tyranny or the worse despotism 
of anarchy. 

To turn a republican government into a despotism the 
basest and most brutal, it is not necessary formally to 
change its constitution or abandon popular elections. 
It was centuries after Caesar before the absolute master 
of the Roman world pretended to rule other than by 
authority of a Senate that trembled before him. 

But forms are nothing when substance has gone, and 
the forms of popular government are those from which 
the substance of freedom may most easily go. Extremes 
meet, and a government of universal suffrage and theo- 
retical equality may, under conditions which impel the 
change, most readily become a despotism. For them 
despotism advances in the name and with the might 



Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE 531 


of the people. The single source of power once secured, 
everything is secured. There is no unfranchised class 
to whom appeal may be made, no privileged orders who 
in defending their own rights may defend those of all. 
No bulwark remains to stay the flood, no eminence to 
rise above it. They were belted barons led by a mitered 
archbishop who curbed the Plantagenet with Magna 
Charta; it was the middle classes who broke the pride of 
the Stuarts ; but a mere aristocracy of wealth will never 
struggle while it can hope to bribe a tyrant. 

And when the disparity of condition increases, so does 
universal suffrage make it easy to seize the source of 
power, for the greater is the proportion of power in the 
hands of those who feel no direct interest in the conduct 
of government; who, tortured by want and embruted by 
poverty, are ready to sell their votes to the highest bid- 
der or follow the lead of the most blatant demagogue; 
or who, made bitter by hardships, may even look upon 
profligate and tyrannous government with the satisfac- 
tion we may imagine the proletarians and slaves of Rome 
to have felt, as they saw a Caligula or Nero raging 
among the rich patricians. Given a community with 
republican institutions, in which one class is too rich to 
be shorn of its luxuries, no matter how public affairs 
are administered, and another so poor that a few dollars 
on election day will seem more than any abstract con- 
sideration; in which the few roll in wealth and the many 
seethe with discontent at a condition of things they 
know not how to remedy, and power must pass into the 
hands of jobbers who will buy and sell it as the Praetori- 
ans sold the Roman purple, or into the hands of dema- 
gogues who will seize and wield it for a time, only to 
be displaced by worse demagogues. 

Where there is anything like an equal distribution of 
wealth — that is to say, where there is general patriotism, 
virtue, and intelligence — the more democratic the gov- 



532 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X. 


eminent the better it will be; but where there is gross 
inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more demo- 
cratic the government the worse it will be; for, while 
rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than rotten 
autocracy, its effects upon national character will be 
worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, to 
men to whom the chance to labor is a boon, to men who 
must beg, or steal, or starve, is, to invoke destruction. 
To put political power in the hands of men embittered 
and degraded by poverty is to tie firebrands to foxes and 
turn them loose amid the standing com ; it is to put out 
the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the 
pillars of national life. 

Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selec- 
tion by lot, the plan of some of the ancient republics, 
may sometimes place the wise and just in power; but in 
a corrupt democracy the tendency is always to give 
power to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are 
weighted, and unscrupulousness commands success. The 
best gravitate to the bottom, the worst float to the top, 
and the vile will only be ousted by the viler. While as 
national character must gradually assimilate to the 
qualities that win power, and consequently respect, that 
demoralization of opinion goes on which in the long 
panorama of history we may see over and over again 
transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves. 

As in England in the last century, when Parliament 
was but a close corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt 
oligarchy clearly fenced off from the masses may exist 
without much effect on national character, because in 
that case power is associated in the popular mind with 
other things than corruption. But where there are no 
hereditary distinctions, and men are habitually seen to 
raise themselves by corrupt qualities from the lowest 
places to wealth and power, tolerance of these qualities 
finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic gov- 



Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE 533 


ernment must finally corrupt the people, and when a 
people become corrupt there is no resurrection. The 
life is gone, only the carcass remains; and it is left but 
for the plowshares of fate to bury it out of sight. 

Now this transformation of popular government into 
despotism of the vilest and most degrading kind, which 
must inevitably result from the unequal distribution of 
wealth, is not a thing of the far future. It has already 
begun in the United States, and is rapidly going on 
under our eyes. That our legislative bodies are steadily 
deteriorating in standard; that men of the highest abil- 
ity and character are compelled to eschew politics, and 
the arts of the jobber count for more than the reputa- 
tion of the statesman; that voting is done more reck- 
lessly and the power of money is increasing; that it is 
harder to arouse the people to the necessity of reforms 
and more difficult to carry them out; that political dif- 
ferences are ceasing to be differences of principle, and 
abstract ideas are losing their power; that parties are 
passing into the control of what in general government 
would be oligarchies and dictatorships; are all evidences 
of political decline. 

The type of modem growth is the great city. Here 
are to be found the greatest wealth and the deepest pov- 
erty. And it is here that popular government has most 
clearly broken down. In all the great American cities 
there is to-day as clearly defined a ruling class as in the 
most aristocratic countries of the world. Its members 
carry wards in their pockets, make up the slates for 
nominating conventions, distribute offices as they bar- 
gain together, and — though they toil not, neither do 
they spin — wear the best of raiment and spend money 
lavishly. They are men of power, whose favor the ambi- 
tious must court and whose vengeance he must avoid. 
Who are these men? The wise, the good, the learned — 
men who have earned the confidence of their fellow- 



534 


THE LAW OF HITMAN PROGRESS 


BcokX. 


citizens by the purity of their lives, the splendor of their 
talents, their probity in public trusts, their deep study 
of the problems of government? No; they are gamblers, 
saloon keepers, pugilists, or worse, who have made a 
trade of controlling votes and of buying and selling 
offices and official acts. They stand to the government 
of these cities as the Praetorian Guards did to that of 
declining Rome. He who would wear the purple, fill 
the curule chair, or have the fasces carried before him, 
must go or send his messengers to their camps, give them 
donatives and make them promises. It is through these 
men that the rich corporations and powerful pecuniary 
interests can pack the Senate and the bench with their 
creatures. It is these men who make School Directors, 
Supervisors, Assessors, members of the Legislature, Con- 
gressmen. Why, there are many election districts in 
the United States in which a George Washington, a Ben- 
jamin Franklin or a Thomas Jefferson could no more go 
to the lower house of a State Legislature than under the 
Ancient Regime a base-born peasant could become a 
Marshal of France. Their very character would be an 
insuperable disqualification. 

In theory we are intense democrats. The proposal to 
sacrifice swine in the temple would hardly have excited 
greater horror and indignation in Jerusalem of old than 
would among us that of conferring a distinction of rank 
upon our most eminent citizen. But is there not grow- 
ing up among us a class who have all the power without 
any of the virtues of aristocracy? We have simple citi- 
zens who control thousands of miles of railroad, millions 
of acres of land, the means of livelihood of great num- 
bers of men; who name the Governors of sovereign States 
as they name their clerks, choose Senators as they choose 
attorneys, and whose will is as supreme with Legislatures 
as that of a French King sitting in bed of justice. The 
undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us back again 



Chat. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINB 53d 

to the old conditions from which we dreamed we had 
escaped. The development of the artisan and commer- 
cial classes gradually broke down feudalism after it had 
become so complete that men thought of heaven as 
organized on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and 
second persons of the Trinity as suzerain and tenant-in- 
chief. But now the development of manufactures and 
exchange, acting in a social organization in which land 
is made private property, threatens to compel every 
worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which followed 
the final break-up of the Roman Empire compelled every 
freeman to seek a lord. Nothing seems exempt from this 
tendency. Industry everywhere tends to assume a form 
in which one is master and many serve. And when 
one is master and the others serve, the one will control 
the others, even in such matters as votes. Just as the 
English landlord votes his tenants, so does the New 
England mill owner yote his operatives. 

There is no mistaking it — the very foundations of 
society are being sapped before our eyes, while we ask, 
how is it possible that such a civilization as this, with its 
railroads, and daily newspapers, and electric telegraphs, 
should ever be destroyed? While literature breathes but 
the belief that we have been, are, and for the future 
must be, leaving the savage state further and further 
behind us, there are indications that we are actually 
turning back again toward barbarism. Let me illus- 
trate: One of the characteristics of barbarism is the low 
regard for the rights of person and of property. That 
the laws of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors imposed as pen- 
alty for murder a fine proportioned to the rank of the 
victim, while our law knows no distinction of rank, and 
protects the lowest from the highest, the poorest from 
the richest, by the uniform penalty of death, is looked 
upon as evidence of their barbarism and our civilization. 
And so, that piracy, and robbery, and slave-trading, 



536 ~ 


THE LAW OFHUMAN PROGRESS 


BoekX. 


and blackmailing, were once regarded as legitimate 
occupations, is conclusive proof of the rude state of 
development from which we have so far progressed. 

But it is a matter of fact that, in spite of our laws, any 
one who has money enough and wants to kill another 
may go into any one of our great centers of population 
and business, and gratify his desire, and then surrender 
himself to justice, with the chances as a hundred to one 
that he will suffer no greater penalty than a temporary 
imprisonment and the loss of a sum proportioned partly 
to his own wealth and partly to the wealth and standing 
of the man he kills. His money will be paid, not to the 
family of the murdered man, who have lost their protec- 
tor; not to the state, which has lost a citizen; but to 
lawyers who understand how to secure delays, to find 
witnesses, and get juries to disagree. 

And so, if a man steal enough, he may be sure that 
his punishment will practically amount but to the loss 
of a part of the proceeds of his theft; and if he steal 
enough to get off with a fortune, he will be greeted by 
his acquaintances as a viking might have been greeted 
after a successful cruise. Even though he robbed those 
who trusted him; even though he robbed the widow and 
the fatherless; he has only to get enough, and he may 
safely flaunt his wealth in the eyes of day. 

Now, the tendency in this direction is an increasing 
one. It is shown in greatest force where the inequalities 
in the distribution of wealth are greatest, and it shows 
itself as they increase. If it be not a return to barbar- 
ism, what is it? The failures of justice to which I have 
alluded are only illustrative of the increasing debility 
of our legal machinery in every department. It is 
becoming common to hear men say that it would be 
better to revert to first principles and abolish law, for 
then in self-defense the people would form Vigilance 



Chat. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE 537 


Committees and take justice into their own hands. Is 
this indicative of advance or retrogression? 

All this is matter of common observation. Though 
we may not speak it openly, the general faith in repub' 
lican institutions is, where they have reached their full- 
est development, narrowing and weakening. It is no 
longer that confident belief in republicanism as the 
source of national blessings that it once was. Thought- 
ful men are beginning to see its dangers, without seeing 
how to escape them; are beginning to accept the view 
of Macaulay and distrust that of Jefferson.* And the 
people at large are becoming used to the growing cor- 
ruption. The most ominous political sign in the United 
3tates to-day is the growth of a sentiment which either 
doubts the existence of an honest man in public office 
or looks on him as a fool for not seizing his opportuni- 
ties. That is to say, the people themselves are becoming 
corrupted. Thus in the United States to-day is republi- 
can government running the course it must inevitably 
follow under conditions which cause the unequal dis- 
tribution of wealth. 

Where that course leads is clear to whoever will think. 
As corruption becomes chronic; as public spirit is lost; 
as traditions of honor, virtue, and patriotism are weak- 
ened; as law is brought into contempt and reforms 
become hopeless; then in the festering mass will be gen- 
erated volcanic forces, which shatter and rend when 
seeming accident gives them vent. Strong, unscrupulous 
men, rising up upon occasion, will become the exponents 
of blind popular desires or fierce popular passions, and 
dash aside forms that have lost their vitality. The 
sword will again be mightier than the pen, and in carni- 
vals of destruction brute force and wild frenzy will 

* See Macaulay's letter to Randall, the biographer of Jef- 
ferson. 



538 


THE LAW OF HUMAN FBOGBES8 


Boot X. 


alternate with the lethargy of a declining civilization. 

I speak of the United States only because the United 
States is the most advanced of all the great nations. 
What shall we say of Europe, where dams of ancient law 
and custom pen up the swelling waters and standing 
armies weigh down the safety valves, though year by 
year the fires grow hotter underneath? Europe tends to 
republicanism under conditions that will not admit of 
true republicanism — under conditions that substitute for 
the calm and august figure of Liberty the petroleuse and 
the guillotine! 

Whence shall come the new barbarians? Go through 
the squalid quarters of great cities, and you may see, 
even now, their gathering hordes! How shall learning 
perish? Men will cease to read, and books will kindle 
fires and be turned into cartridges! 

It is startling to think how slight the traces that would 
be left of our civilization did it pass through the throes 
which have accompanied the decline of every previous 
civilization. Paper will not last like parchment, nor are 
our most massive buildings and monuments to be com- 
pared in solidity with the rock-hewn temples and titanic 
edifices of the old civilizations.* And invention has 
given us, not merely the steam engine and the printing 
press, but petroleum, nitro-glycerine, and dynamite. 

Yet to hint, to-day, that our civilization may possibly 
be tending to decline, seems like the wildness of pessi- 
mism. The special tendencies to which I have alluded 
are obvious to thinking men, but with the majority of 
thinking men, as with the great masses, the belief in 
substantial progress is yet deep and strong — a funda- 
mental belief which admits not the shadow of a doubt. 

* It is also, it seems to me, instructive to note how inade- 
quate and utterly misleading would be the idea of our civilisa- 
tion which could be gained from the religious and funereal monu- 
ments of our time, which are all we have from which to gain our 
ideas of the buried civilizations. 




Chap, IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE 539 

But any one who will think over the matter will see 
that this must necessarily be the case where advance 
gradually passes into retrogression. For in social devel- 
opment, as in everything else, motion tends to persist in 
straight lines, and therefore, where there has been a 
previous advance, it is extremely difficult to recognize 
decline, even when it has fully commenced; there is an 
almost irresistible tendency to believe that the forward 
movement which has been advance, and is still going on, 
is still advance. The web of beliefs, customs, laws, 
institutions, and habits of thought, which each commu- 
nity is constantly spinning, and which produces in the 
individual environed by it all the differences of national 
character, is never unraveled. That is to say, in the de- 
cline of civilization, communities do not go down by the 
same paths that they came up. For instance, the de- 
cline of civilization as manifested in government would 
not take us back from republicanism to constitutional 
monarchy, and thence to the feudal system; it would 
take us to imperatorship and anarchy. As manifested 
in religion, it would not take us back into the faiths of 
our forefathers, into Protestantism or Catholicity, but 
into new forms of superstition, of which possibly Mor- 
monism and other even grosser “isms” may give some 
vague idea. As manifested in knowledge, it would not 
take us toward Bacon, but toward the literati of China. 

And how the retrogression of civilization, following a 
period of advance, may be so gradual as to attract no 
attention at the time; nay, how that decline must neces- 
sarily, by the great majority of men, be mistaken for 
advance, is easily seen. For instance, there is an enor- 
mous difference between Grecian art of the classic period 
and that of the lower empire; yet the change was accom- 
panied, or rather caused, by a change of taste. The 
artists who most quickly followed this change of taste 
were in their day regarded as the superior artists. And 


NAWAB SALAR JUNG BAHADUR 



540 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Soot £ 


so of literature. As it became more vapid, puerile, and 
stilted, it would be in obedience to an altered taste, 
which would regard its increasing weakness as increasing 
strength and beauty. The really good writer would not 
find readers; he would be regarded as rude, dry, or dull. 
And so would the drama decline; not because there was 
a lack of good plays, but because the prevailing taste 
became more and more that of a less cultured class, who, 
of course, regard that which they most admire as the 
best of its kind. And so, too, of religion; the supersti- 
tions which a superstitious people will add to it will be 
regarded by them as improvements. While, as the de- 
cline goes on, the return to barbarism, where it is not in 
itself regarded as an advance, will seem necessary to 
meet the exigencies of the times. 

For instance, flogging, as a punishment for certain 
offenses, has been recently restored to the penal code of 
England, and has been strongly advocated on this side 
of the Atlantic. I express no opinion as to whether this 
is or is not a better punishment for crime than imprison- 
ment. I only point to the fact as illustrating how an 
increasing amount of crime and an increasing embarrass- 
ment as to the maintenance of prisoners, both obvious 
tendencies at present, might lead to a fuller return to 
the physical cruelty of barbarous codes. The use of tor- 
ture in judicial investigations, which steadily grew with 
the decline of Roman civilization, it is thus easy to see, 
might, as manners brutalized and crime increased, be 
demanded as a necessary improvement of the criminal 
law. 

Whether in the present drifts of opinion and taste 
there are as yet any indications of retrogression, it is not 
necessary to inquire; but there are many things about 
which there can be no dispute, which go to show that 
our civilization has reached a critical period, and that 
unless a new dtart is made in the direction of social 



equality, the nineteenth century may to the future mark 
its climax. These industrial depressions, which cause as 
much waste and suffering as famines or wars, are like 
the twinges and shocks which precede paralysis. Every- 
where is it evident that the tendency to inequality, which 
is the necessary result of material progress where land 
is monopolized, cannot go much further without carry- 
ing our civilization into that downward path which is 
so easy to enter and so hard to abandon. Everywhere 
the increasing intensity of the struggle to live, the in- 
creasing necessity for straining every nerve to prevent 
being thrown down and trodden under foot in the scram- 
ble for wealth, is draining the forces which gain and 
maintain improvements. In every civilized country 
pauperism, crime, insanity, and suicides are increasing. 
In every civilized country the diseases are increasing 
which come froni overstrained nerves, from insufficient 
nourishment, from squalid lodgings, from unwholesome 
and monotonous occupations, from premature labor of 
children, from the tasks and crimes which poverty im- 
poses upon women. In every highly civilized country 
the expectation of life, which gradually rose for several 
centuries, and which seems to have culminated about the 
first quarter of this century, appears to be now dimin- 
ishing.* 

It is not an advancing civilization that such figures 
show. It is a civilization which in its undercurrents has 
already begun to recede. When the tide turns in bay 
or river from flood to ebb, it is not all at once; but here 
it still runs on, though there it has begun to recede. 


* Statistics which show these things are collected in con- 
venient form in a volume entitled “Deterioration and Race 
Education/’ by Samuel Royce, which has been largely dis- 
tributed by the venerable Peter Cooper of New York. Strangely 
enough, the only remedy proposed by Mr. Royce is the estab- 
lishment of Kindergarten schools. 





THE IiAW OF HUMAN PROGRE88 


Book X 


When tiie sun passes the meridian, it can be told only 
by the way the short shadows fall; for the heat of the 
day yet increases. But as sure as the turning tide must 
soon run full ebb; as sure as the declining sun must 
bring darkness, so sure is it, that though knowledge yet 
increases and invention marches on, and new states are 
being settled, and cities still expand, yet civilisation has 
begun to wane when, in proportion to population, we 
must build more and more prisons, more and more 
almshouses, more and more insane asylums. It is not 
from top to bottom that societies die ; it is from bottom 
to top. 

But there are evidences far more palpable than any 
that can be given by statistics, of tendencies to the ebb 
of civilization. There is a vague but general feeling of 
disappointment; an increased bitterness among the work- 
ing classes; a widespread feeling of unrest and brooding 
revolution. If this were accompanied by a definite idea 
of how relief is to be obtained, it would be a hopeful 
sign; but it is not. Though the schoolmaster has been 
abroad some time, the general power of tracing effect 
to cause does not seem a whit improved. The reaction 
toward protectionism, as the reaction toward other ex- 
ploded fallacies of government, shows this.* And even 
the philosophic free-thinker cannot look upon that vast 
change in religious ideas that is now sweeping over the 
civilized world without feeling that this tremendous fact 
may have most momentous relations, which only the 
future can develop. For what is going on is not a 
change in the form of religion, but the negation and 


*In point of constructive statesmanship — the recognition of 
fundamental principles and the adaptation of means to ends, 
the Constitution of the United States, adopted a century ago, 
is greatly superior to tlie latest 8tate Constitutions, the most 
recent of which is that of California— a piece of utter botch- 
work. 



Chap, IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE 543 


destruction of the ideas from which religion springs. 
Christianity is not simply clearing itself of superstitions, 
but in the popular mind it is dying at the root, as the 
old paganisms were dying when Christianity entered the 
world. And nothing arises to take its place. The fun- 
damental ideas of an intelligent Creator and of a future 
life are in the general mind rapidly weakening. Now, 
whether this may or may not be in itself an advance, the 
importance of the part which religion has played in the 
world’s history shows the importance of the change that 
is now going on. Unless human nature has suddenly 
altered in what the universal history of the race shows 
to be its deepest characteristics, the mightiest actions and 
reactions are thus preparing. Such stages of thought 
have heretofore always marked periods of transition. 
On a smaller scale and to a less depth (for I think any 
one who will notice the drift of our literature, and talk 
upon such subjects with the men he meets, will see that 
it is sub-soil and not surface plowing that materialistic 
ideas are now doing), such a state of thought preceded 
the French Revolution. But the closest parallel to the 
wreck of religious ideas now going on is to be found in 
that period in which ancient civilization began to pass 
from splendor to decline. What change may come, no 
mortal man can tell, but that some great change must 
come, thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world 
is trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either 
it must be a leap upward, which will open the way to 
advances yet undreamed of, or it must be a plunge 
downward which will carry us back toward barbarism. 



CHAPTER V 


THE CENTRAL TRUTH 

In the short space to which this latter part of our 
inquiry is necessarily confined, I have been obliged to 
omit much that I would like to say, and to touch briefly 
where an exhaustive consideration would not be out of 
place. 

Nevertheless, this, at least, is evident, that the truth 
to which we were led in the politico-economic branch of 
our inquiry is as clearly apparent in the rise and fall 
of nations and the growth and decay of civilizations, and 
that it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of 
relation and sequence that we denominate moral percep- 
tions. Thus have been given to our conclusions the 
greatest certitude and highest sanction. 

This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It 
shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal 
distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and 
more apparent as modem civilization goes on, are not 
incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring 
progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, 
but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, 
grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into 
barbarism by the road every previous civilization has 
trod. But it also shows that these evils are not imposed 
by natural laws; that they spring solely from social 
maladjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in 
removing their cause we shall be giving an enormous 
impetus to progress. 

644 



Chap. V. 


THE CENTRAL TRUTH 


545 


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 su- 
preme 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 in- 
equality 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. 

The reform I have proposed accords with all that is 
politically, socially, or morally desirable. It has the 
qualities of a true reform, for it will make all other re- 
forms easier. What is it but the carrying out in letter 
and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declaration of 
Independence — the “self-evident” truth that is the heart 
and soul of the Declaration — “ That all men are created 
equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, 
liberty , and the pursuit of happiness !” 

These rights are denied when the equal right to land 
— on which and by which men alone can live — is denied. 
Equality of political rights will not compensate for the 
denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature. Po- 
litical liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, 
becomes, as population increases and invention goes on, 
merely the liberty to compete for employment at star- 
vation wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. 





THE LAW OF HUMAN PBOGBES8 


BetkX 


And sq there come beggars in our streets and tramps on 
our roads; and poverty enslaves men whom we boast are 
political sovereigns; and want breeds ignorance that our 
schools cannot enlighten; and citizens vote as their mas- 
ters dictate; and the demagogue usurps the part of the 
statesman; and gold weighs in the scales of justice; and 
in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue 
even the compliment of hypocrisy ; and the pillars of the 
republic that we thought so strong already bend under 
an increasing strain. 

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 sym- 
metry 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 
ndt 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. 

We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, 
wealth, knowledge, invention, national strength and na- 
tional independence as other things. But, of all these, 
Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condi- 



Chap. V. 


THE CENTRAL TRUTH 


54 ? 


tion. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth 
what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are 
to sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of 
national strength, the spirit of national independence. 
Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth in- 
creases, knowledge expands, invention multiplies hu- 
man powers, and in strength and spirit the freer nation 
rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren 
— taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue 
fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, inven- 
tion ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and arts 
become a helpless prey to freer barbarians! 

Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sue 
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 plow the un- 
known 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 
Bcanty 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 husband- 
men, and born of her strength a power came forth that 
conquered the world. They glinted from shields of Ger- 
man warriors, and Augustus wept his legions. Out of 
ti»e night that followed her eclipse, her slanting rays fell 
again on free cities, and a lost learning revived, modern 
civilization began, a new world was unveiled; and as 



548 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 


Book X 


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 re- 
vival 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 suc- 
ceeded 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 them- 
selves 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 de- 
struction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson 
of the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in 
justice the social structure cannot stand. 

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. 
In allowing one man to own the land on which and from 



Chap . V. 


THE CENTRAL TRUTH 


549 


which other men must live, we have made them his 
bondsmen in a degree which increases as material prog- 
ress goes on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways 
they do not realize is extracting from the masses in 
every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; 
that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in 
place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing 
political despotism out of political freedom, and must 
soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy. 

It is this that turns the blessings of material progress 
into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into 
noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills 
prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and 
consumes them with greed; that robs women of the 
grace and beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes 
from little children the joy and innocence of life’s 
morning. 

Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal 
laws of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires 
testify, and the witness that is in every soul answers, 
that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevo- 
lence, something more august than Charity — it is Justice 
herself that demands of us to right this wrong. Jus- 
tice that wilj 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 blas- 
phemy 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. A merciful man would have 
better ordered the world; a just man would crush with 



550 


THE LAW Or HUMAN PB0GRBB8 


Boot X 


his foot such an ulcerous ant-hill! It is not the Al- 
mighty, but we who are responsible for the vice and 
misery that fester amid our civilization. The Creator 
showers upon us his gifts — more than enough for all. 
But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the 
mire — tread them in the mire, while we tear and rend 
each other 1 

In the very centers of our civilization to-day are want 
and suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does 
not close his eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn 
to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing 
the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the 
universe sprang into being there should glow in the sun 
a greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the 
soil; that for every blade of grass that now grows two 
should spring up, and the seed that now increases fifty- 
fold should increase a hundred-fold! Would poverty 
be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever 
benefit would accrue would be but temporary. The new 
powers streaming through the material universe could 
be utilized only through land. And land, being private 
property, the classes that now monopolize the bounty of 
the Creator would monopolize all the new bounty. Land 
owners would alone be benefited. . Rente wpuld increase, 
but wages would still tend to the starvation point! 

This is not merely a deduction of political economy; 
it is a fact of experience. We know it because we have 
seen it. Within our own times, under our very eyes, 
that Power which is above all, and in all, and through 
all; that Power of which the whole universe is but the 
manifestation; that Power which maketh all things, and 
without which is not anything made that is made, has 
increased the bounty which men may enjoy, Ss truly as 
though the fertility of nature had been increased. Into 
the mind of one came the thought that harnessed steam 
for the service of mankind. To. the inner ear of another 



Chap, V. 


THE CENTRAL TOOTH 


551 


was whispered the secret that compels the lig h tning to 
bear a message round the globe. In every direction 
have the laws of matter been revealed; in every de-_ 
partment of industry have arisen arms of iron and fin- 
gers of steel, whose effect upon the production of 
wealth has been precisely the same as an increase in 
the fertility of nature. What has been the result? Sim- 
ply that land owners get all the gain. The wonderful 
discoveries and inventions of our century have neither 
increased wages nor lightened toil. The effect has sim- 
ply been to make the few richer; the many more help- 
less! 

Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus 
misappropriated with impunity? Is it a light thing that 
labor should be robbed of its earnings while greed rolls 
in wealth — that the many should want while the few 
are surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may 
be read the lesson that such wrong never goes unpun- 
ished; that the Nemesis that follows injustice never 
falters nor sleeps! Look around to-day. Can this state 
of things continue? May we even say, “After us the 
deluge!” Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling 
even now, and the very foundations of society begin to 
quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The 
struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, 
is near at hand, if it be not already begun. 

The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, 
and the new powers born of progress, forces have entered 
the world that will either compel us to a higher plane or 
overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization 
after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is 
the delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the 
popular unrest with which the civilized world is fever- 
ishly pulsing only the passing effect of ephemeral causes. 
Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjust* 
ments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here 



552 


THE LAW 07 HOMAN PROGRESS 


Boot X. 


in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen 
arising. We cannot go on permitting men to vote and 
forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys 
and girls in our public schools and then refusing them 
the right to earn an honest living. We cannot go on 
prating of the inalienable rights of man and then deny- 
ing the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. 
Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to fer* 
ment, and elemental forces gather for the strife! 

But if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and 
obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dan- 
gers that now threaten must disappear, the forces tha< 
now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think oj 
the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowl- 
edge 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 equal- 
ity 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 Pat- 
mos 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! 



CONCLUSION 


THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 



The days of the nations bear no trace 
Of all the sunshine so far foretold; 

The cannon speaks in the teacher’s place — 
The age is weaiy with work and gold, 

And high hopes wither, and memories wane; 

On hearths and altars the fires are dead; 
But that brave faith hath not lived in vain— 
And this is all that our watcher said. 

— Frances Brown. 



CONCLUSION 


THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 

My task is done. 

Yet the thought still mounts. The problems we 
have been considering lead into a problem higher and 
deeper still. Behind the problems of social life lies the 
problem of individual life. I have found it impossible 
to think of the one without thinking of the other, and 
so, I imagine, will it be with those who, reading this 
book, go with me in thought. For, as says Guizot, 
“when the history of civilization is completed, when 
there is nothing more to say as to our present existence, 
man inevitably asks himself whether all is exhausted, 
whether he has reached the end of all things?” 

This problem I cannot now discuss. I speak of it only 
because the thought which, while writing this book, has 
come with inexpressible cheer to me, may also be of 
cheer to some who read it; for, whatever be its fate, it 
will be read by some who in their heart of hearts have 
taken the cross of a new crusade. This thought will 
come to them without my suggestion; but we are surer 
that we see a star when we know that others also see it. 

The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find 
easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been 
accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have 
been obscured. But it will find friends — those who will 
toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is the 
power of Truth. 





556 


CONCLUSION 


Will it at length prevail? Ultimately, yes. But in 
our own times, or in times of which any memory of us 
remains, who shall say? 

For the man who, seeing the want and misery, the 
ignorance and brutishness caused by unjust social in- 
stitutions, sets himself, in so far as he has strength, to 
right them, there is disappointment and bitterness. So 
it has been of old time. So is it even now. But the 
bitterest thought — and it sometimes comes to the best 
and bravest — is that of the hopelessness of the effort, 
the futility of the sacrifice. To how few of those who 
sow the seed is it given to see it grow, or even with cer- 
tainty to know that it will grow. 

Let us not disguise it. Over and over again has the 
standard of Truth and Justice been raised in this world. 
Over and over again has it been trampled down — often- 
times in blood. If they are weak forces that are op- 
posed to Truth, how should Error so long prevail? If 
Justice has but to raise her head to have Injustice flee 
before her, how should the wail of the oppressed so long 
go up? 

But for those who see Truth and would follow her; 
for those who recognize Justice and would stand for her, 
success is not the only thing. Success! Why, False- 
hood has often that to give; and Injustice often has that 
to give. Must not Truth and Justice have something to 
give that is their own by proper right — theirs in essence, 
and not by accident? 

That they have, and that here and now, every one 
who has felt their exaltation knows. But sometimes the 
clouds sweep down. It is sad, sad reading, the lives of 
the men who would have done something for their fel- 
lows. To Socrates they gave the hemlock; Gracchus 
they killed with sticks and stones; and One, greatest 
and purest of all, they crucified. These seem but types. 
To-day Russian prisons are full, and in long proces- 



THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 557 

sions, men and women, who, but for high-minded pa- 
triotism, might have lived in ease and luxury, move in 
chains towards the death-in-life of Siberia. And in 
penury and want, in neglect and contempt, destitute 
even of the sympathy that would have been so sweet, 
how many in every country have closed their eyes? 
This we see. 

But do v)e see it all? 

In writing I have picked up a newspaper. In it is « 
short account, evidently translated from a semi-official 
report, of the execution of three Nihilists at Kieff — the 
Prussian subject Brandtner, the unknown man calling 
himself Antonoff, and the nobleman Ossinsky. At the 
foot of the gallows they were permitted to kiss one an- 
other. “Then the hangman cut the rope, the surgeons 
pronounced the victims dead, the bodies were buried at 
the foot of the scaffold, and the Nihilists were given up 
to eternal oblivion.” Thus says the account. I do not 
believe it. No; not to oblivion! 

I have in this inquiry followed the course of my own 
thought. When, in mind, I set out on it I had no theory 
to support, no conclusions to prove. Only, when I first 
realized the squalid misery of a great city, it appalled 
and tormented me, and would not let me rest, for think- 
ing of what caused it and how it could be cured. 

But out of this inquiry has come to me something I 
did not think to find, and a faith that was dead revives. 

The yearning for a further life is natural and deep. It 
grows with intellectual growth, and perhaps none really 
feel it more than those who have begun to see how great 
is the universe and how infinite are the vistas which 
every advance in knowledge opens before us — vistas 
which would require nothing short of eternity to explore. 
But in the mental atmosphere of our times, to the great 

NAWAS SALAP JUNC? BAHADUR 



558 


CONCLUSION 


majority of men on whom mere creeds have lost their 
hold, it seems impossible to look on this yearning save 
as a vain and childish hope, arising from man’s egotism, 
and for which there is not the slightest ground or war* 
rant, but which, on the contrary, seems inconsistent with 
positive knowledge. 

Now, when we come to analyze and trace up the ideas 
that thus destroy the hope of a future life, we shall find 
them, I think, to have their source, not in any revela- 
tions of physical science, but in certain teachings of 
political and social science which have deeply permeated 
thought in all directions. They have their root in the 
doctrines, that there is a tendency to the production of 
more h uman beings than can be provided for; that vice 
and misery are the result of natural laws, and the means 
by which advance goes on; and that human progress is 
by a slow race development. These doctrines, which 
have been generally accepted as approved truth, do 
what, except as scientific interpretations have been 
colored by them, the extensions of physical science do 
not do — they reduce the individual to insignificance; 
they destroy the idea that there can be in the ordering 
of the universe any regard for his existence, or any 
recognition of what we call moral qualities. 

It is difficult to reconcile the idea of human immor- 
tality with the idea that nature wastes men by con- 
stantly bringing them into being where there is no room 
for them. It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an 
intelligent and beneficent Creator with the belief that 
the wretchedness and degradation which are the lot of 
such a large proportion of human kind result from his 
enactments; while the idea that man mentally and 
physically is the result of slow modifications perpetuated 
by heredity, irresistibly suggests the idea that it is the 
race life, not the individual life, which is the object of 
human existence. Thus has vanished with many of us, 



THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 


559 


and is still vanishing with more of us, that belief which 
in the, battles and ills of life affords the strongest sup- 
port and deepest consolation. 

Now, in the inquiry through which we have passed, 
we have met these doctrines and seen their fallacy. We 
have seen that population does not tend to outrun sub- 
sistence; we have seen that the waste of human powers 
and the prodigality of human suffering do not spring 
from natural laws, but from the ignorance and selfish- 
ness of men in refusing to conform to natural laws. We 
have seen that human progress is not by altering the 
nature of men; but that, on the contrary, the nature of 
men seems, generally speaking, always the same. 

Thus the nightmare which is banishing from the mod- 
ern world the belief in a future life is destroyed. Not 
that all difficulties are removed — for turn which way 
we may, we come to what we cannot comprehend; but 
that difficulties are removed which seem conclusive and 
insuperable. And, thus, hope springs up. 

But this is not all. 

Political Economy has been called the dismal science, 
and as currently taught, is hopeless and despairing. But 
this, as we have seen, is solely because she has been 
degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her har- 
monies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her 
mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an 
indorsement of injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free 
her — in her own proper symmetry, Political Economy is 
radiant with hope. 

For properly understood, the laws which govern the 
production and distribution of wealth show that the 
want and injustice of the present social state are not 
necessary; but that, on the contrary, a social state is 
possible in which poverty would be unknown, and all 





CONCLUSION 


the better qualities and higher powers of human nature 
would have opportunity for full development. 

And, further than this, when we see that socfal de- 
velopment is governed neither by a Special Providence 
nor by a merciless fate, but by law, at once unchange- 
able and beneficent; when we see that human will is 
the great factor, and that taking men in the aggregate, 
their condition is as they make it; when we see that eco- 
nomic law and moral law are essentially one, and that 
the truth which the intellect grasps after toilsome effort 
is but that which the moral sense reaches by a quick in- 
tuition, a flood of light breaks in upon the problem of 
individual life. These countless millions like ourselves, 
who on this earth of ours have passed and still are pass- 
ing, with their joys and sorrows, their toil and their 
striving, their aspirations and their fears, their strong 
perceptions of things deeper than sense, their common 
feelings which form the basis even of the most divergent 
creeds — their little lives do not seem so much like mean- 
ingless waste. 

The great fact which Science in all her branches shows 
is the universality of law. Wherever he can trace it, 
whether in the fall of an apple or in the revolution of 
binary suns, the astronomer sees the working of the 
same law, which operates in the minutest divisions in 
which we may distinguish space, as it does in the im- 
measurable distances with which his science deals. Out 
of that which lies beyond his telescope comes a moving 
body and again it disappears. So far as he can trace 
its course the law is ignored. Does he say that this is an 
exception? On the contrary, he says that this is merely 
a part of its orbit that he has seen; that beyond the 
reach of his telescope the law holds good. He makes 
his calculations, and after centuries they are proved. 

Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human 
life in society , we find that in the largest as in the small- 



THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 




est community, they are the same. We find that what 
seem at first sight like divergences and exceptions are 
but manifestations of the same principles. And we find 
that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into 
and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a 
community, justice infallibly brings its reward and in- 
justice its punishment. But this we cannot see in in- 
dividual life. If we look merely at individual life we 
cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slight- 
est relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or 
unjust.* Shall we then say that the law which is mani- 
fest in social life is not true of individual life? It is 
not scientific to say so. We would not say so in refer- 
ence to anything else. Shall we not rather say this sim- 
ply proves that we do not see the whole of individual 
life? 

The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the 
facts and relations of physical nature, harmonize with 
what seems to be the law of mental development — not a 
necessary and involuntary progress, but a progress in 
which the human will is an initiatory force. But in life, 
as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go 
but a little way. The mind hardly begins to awake 
ere the bodily powers decline — it but becomes dimly 
conscious of the vast fields before it, but begins to learn 
and use its strength, to recognize relations and extend 


* Let us not delude our children. If for no Other reason than 
for that which Plato gives, that when they come to discard that 
Which we told them a a pious fable they will also discard that 
Which we told them as truth. The virtues which relate to self do 
generally bring their reward. Either a merchant or a thief will 
be more successful if he be sober, prudent, and faithful to his 
promises; but as to the virtues which do not relate to self— 

"It seems a story from the world of spirits, 

When any one obtains that which he merits, 

Or any merits that which he obtains.” 




662 


CONCLUSION 


its sympathies, when, with the death of the body, it 
passes away. Unless there is something more, there 
seems here a break, a failure. Whether it be a Hum- 
boldt or a Herschel, a Moses who looks from Pisgah, a 
Joshua who leads the host, or one of those sweet and 
patient souls who in narrow circles live radiant lives, 
there seems, if mind and character here developed can 
go no further, a purposelessness inconsistent with what 
we can see of the linked sequence of the universe. 

By a fundamental law of our minds — the law, in fact, 
upon which Political Economy relies in all her deduc- 
tions — we cannot conceive of a means without an end; 
a contrivance without an object. Now, to all nature, so 
far as we come in contact with it in this world, the sup- 
port and employment of the intelligence that is in man 
furnishes such an end and object. But unless 'man him- 
self may rise to or bring forth something higher, his 
existence is unintelligible. So strong is this metaphysi- 
cal necessity that those who deny to the individual any- 
thing more than this life are compelled to transfer the 
idea of perfectibility to the race. But as we have seen, 
and the argument could have been made much more 
complete, there is nothing whatever to show any essen- 
tial race improvement. Human progress is not the im- 
provement of human nature. The advances in which 
civilization consists are not secured in the constitution 
of man, but in the constitution of society. They are 
thus not fixed and permanent, but may at any time be 
lost — nay, are constantly tending to be lost. And fur- 
ther than this, if human life does not continue beyond 
what we see of it here, then we are confronted, with re- 
gard to the race, with the same difficulty as with the 
individual! For it is as certain that the race must die 
as it is that the individual must die. We know that 
there have been geologic conditions under which human 
life was impossible on this earth. We know that they 



THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 

must return again. Even now, as the earth circles on 
her appointed orbit, the northern ice cap slowly thickens, 
and the time gradually approaches, when its glaciers 
will flow again, and austral seas, sweeping northward, 
bury the seats of present civilization under ocean wastes, 
as it may be they now bury what was once as high a 
civilization as our own. And beyond these periods, scie- 
nce discerns a dead earth, an exhausted sun — a time 
when, clashing together, the solar system shall resolve 
itself into a gaseous form, again to begin immeasurable 
mutations. 

What then is the meaning of life — of life absolutely 
and inevitably bounded by death? To me it seems 
intelligible only as the avenue and vestibule to another 
life. And its facts seem explainable only upon a theory 
which cannot be expressed but in myth and symbol, 
and which, everywhere and at all times, the myths and 
symbols in which men have tried to portray their deep- 
est perceptions do in some form express. 

The scriptures of the men who have been and gone— 
the Bibles, the Zend Avestas, the Vedas, the Dhamma- 
padas, and the Eorans; the esoteric doctrines of old 
philosophies, the inner meaning of grotesque religions, 
the dogmatic constitutions of Ecumenical Councils, the 
preachings of Foxes, and Wesleys, and Savonarolas, the 
traditions of red Indians, and beliefs of black savages, 
have a heart and core in which they agree — a something 
which seems like the variously distorted apprehensions 
of a primary truth. And out of the chain of thought we 
have been following there seems vaguely to rise a 
glimpse of what they vaguely saw — a shadowy gleam of 
ultimate relations, the endeavor to express which inevi- 
tably falls into type and allegory. A garden in which 
are set the trees of good and evil. A vineyard in which 
there is the Master’s work to do. A passage — from 



CONCLUSION 


664 

life behind to life beyond. A trial and a struggle, of 
which we cannot see the end. 

Look around to-day. 

Lo! here, now, in our civilized society, the old allego- 
ries 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 Ahri- 
man — the Prince of Light with the Powers of Darkness. 
He who will hear, to him the clarions of the 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. 

Though Truth and Right seem often overborne, we 
may not see it all. How can we see it all? All that is 
passing, even here, we cannot tell. The vibrations of 
matter which give the sensations of light and color be- 
come to us indistinguishable when they pass a certain 
point. It is only within a like range that we have cog- 
nizance of sounds. Even animals have senses which we 
have not. And, here? Compared with the solar system 
our earth is but an indistinguishable speck; and the 
solar system itself shrivels into nothingness when gauged 
with the star depths. Shall we say that what passes 
from our sight passes into oblivion? No; not into ob- 
livion. Far, far beyond our ken the eternal laws must 
hold their sway. 

The hope that rises is the heart of all religions! The 



THE PROBtLEM 07 INDIVIDUAL LIFE 


565 


poets have sung it, the seers have told it, and in its deep- 
est pulses the heart of man throbs responsive to its truth. 
This, that Plutarch said, is what in all times and in all 
tongues has been said by the pure hearted and strong 
sighted, who, standing as it were, on the mountain tops 
of thought and looking over the shadowy ocean, have 
beheld the loom of land: 

" Men's souls, encompassed here with bodies and pas- 
sions, have no communication with God, except what 
they can reach to in conception only, by means of 
philosophy, as by a kind of an obscure dream. But 
when they are loosed from the body, and removed into 
the unseen, invisible, impassable, and pure region, this 
God is then their leader and king; they there, as it were, 
hanging on him wholly, and beholding without weariness 
and passionately affecting that beauty which cannot 
be expressed or uttered by men.” 




INDEX 


Bagehot, Walter, arrest of civilisation, 
482-484; why barbarians waste away, 
499-601. 

Bastiat, cause of interest, 177-186. 

Bisset, Andrew, knight’s service, 884 m. 

Bodde, assumes current doctrine of 
wages, 18; on Mai thus, 92-98, 100; 
interest and profits, 158; relation be- 
tween rent, wages and interest, 171. 

Cairaes, J. E., high wages and interest 
in new countries, 20-22. 

California, economic principles exem- 
plified in, 19-20, 62-64, 79, 144-146, 
174, 267-258, 272-277, 292-298, 846, 
885-887. 894, 400, 486-487. 

Capital, current doctrine of its relation 
to wages, 17-18; idle in industrial 
depressions, 21; theory that wages 
are drawn from, 20-28; deductions 
from this theory, 24-25: varying defi- 
nitions of, 83-86 ; difficulties besetting 
use of term, 88-39; exclusions of 
term, 89-40; distinguished from 
wealth, 42-49, 72-73; used in two 
sense s. 68-69; definitions of Smith, 
Ricardo, McCulloch and Mill com- 
pared, 44-49; wages not drawn from, 
28-80, 50-70; does not limit industry, 
26-80, 58-69; 81-87; does not main- 
tain laborers, 71-79: modes in which 
it aids labor, 80, 186-188, 197-198; 
real functions of, 80-88; may limit 
form and productiveness of industry, 
81-83; apparent want of generally 
due to some other want, 88-87; 
limited by requirements of produc- 
tion, 86-87; poverty not due to 
scarcity of, 86, 87; not necessary to 
production, 164; a form of labor, 
164, 198, 208; its essence, 179; spuri- 
ous, 189-194; not fixed m quantity, 
195; if the only active factor in pro- 
duction, 202; its profits as affected 
by wins, 810-811: wastes when not 
used, 818; invested upon possessory 
tittles, 887. 

arsy, Henry C., on capital, 85; rent, 
227. 


Civilisation, what, 477-478: prevailing 
belief as to pro g r e ss of, 478-481; 
arrest of, 481-488; differences in, 
489-506; its law, 506-526; retrogres- 
sion, 484-488, 689-540; to endure 
must be based on justice, 646-549; 
character of European, 521, 529-580. 

Civilisation, modern, its riddle, 10; has 
not improved condition of the lowest 
dees, 288-286; development of, 878- 
884; superiority. 622-623; may de- 
cline, 527-531; indications of retro- 
gression, 540-648; its possibilities, 
454-472, 554. 

Communities, industrial, extent of, 197. 

Confucius, descendants of, 111-112. 

Consumption, supported by contem- 
poraneous production, 74-76; de- 
mand for determines production, 77; 
only relative term, 188; increase of ( 
shows increasing production, 149. 

Co-operation, not a remedy for poverty, 
816-819; but will follow from the 
extirpation of poverty, 454-472. 

Debts, public, not capital, 190-191; 
origin and abolition, 888-884, 455. 

Demand, not fixed, 245, 247-249. (See 
Supply and Demand.) 

Deutsch, Emanuel, human nature, 497. 

Development, concentration the order 
of, 327. 

Development Philosophy, relations to 
Malthusianism, 101-102; insuffi- 
ciency of, 475-488. 

Discount, high rates of, not interest, 

21m. 

Distribution, terms of exclusive, 88, 89, 
162; laws of, 158-224; their necessary 
relation, 160-164; as currently 
taught, 160-161; contrasted with true 
laws, 219; equality of, 452-458. 

Education no remedy for poverty, 
807-808. 

Exchange, functions of, 27-80, 76; a 
part of production, 48-49; brings 
increase, 182-188, 186-187; extends 


China, cause of poverty and famine, with p r o gr e ss of civilisation, 197-198; 
121-122; dvitfsatlon, 482-488. promotes civilisation, 512-518. 



568 


INDEX 


Exchange*, credit in, 276-277; effect of 
wagee on international, 811-812. 

Fawcett, Prof., Indian expenditure*, 
120n; value of land in England, 289. 

Fawcett, Mrs., laborer* maintained by 
capital, 71; land tax, 428. 

Feudal system, recognition of common 
rights to land, 874-378, 883; infeuda- 
tion, 898-899. 

Fortunes, great, 198-194, 888-889, 453. 

Franklin, Benjamin, his economy, 305. 

Government, improvements in increase 
production, 229, 254; will not relieve 
poverty, 800-803; simplification and 
change of character, 454-472; tend- 
ency to republicanism, 529-680; 
transition to despotism, 80S, 530-581. 

Guizot, Europe after fail of Roman 
Empire, 874-875; the question that 
arises from a review of civilisation, 
555. 

flyndman, H. M., Indian famine, 119- 

121 . 

Improvements in the arts, effect upon 
distribution, 244-254; in habits of 
industry and thrift, will not relieve 
poverty, 808-810; upon land, their 
value separable from land values, 
848-844,425-426. 

India, cause of poverty and famine, 
114-121; civilisation, 482, 483, 499. 

Industrial depressions, extent and sig- 
nificance, 5—6, 540-541; conflicting 
opinions as to cause, 10-11; their 
cause and course, 268-281; connec- 
tion with railroad building, 274-276; 
passing away, 281. 

Industry, not limited by capital, 26, 
58-59; may be limited in form and 
productiveness by capital, 81-87. 

Interest, confusion of term with profits, 
166-164; proper signification, 161- 
162; variations in, 174; cause of, 
174-188; justice of, 187; profits 
mistaken for, 189-194; law of; 195- 
208; normal point of, 198-199; 
formulation of law, 208. 

Interest and wages, evident connection, 
18-21; relation, 171-172; 198-208, 
219; why higher in new countries, 
22 8 1 

Inventions, labor-saving, failure to re- 
lieve poverty, 8-5; advantage of goes 
primarily to labor. 179. 195-196; 
except when not diffused, 258-254; 
effect of, 244-254; brought forth by 
freedom, 528-526. 

Ireland, cause of poverty and famine, 
128-128: effect of introduction ox 
potato, 806. 

Labor, purpose of; 27-80, 246-247, 898; 
uung of term, 89; produces wages. 


27-80, 50-70; precedes wages, 57-60: 
employs capital, 168, 195; eliminated 
from production, 202; productiveness 
varies with natural powers, 205; no 
fixed barriers between occupations, 
210-211: value of reduced by value 
of land, 228-224; supply and demand, 
270-271; land neceesaxy to, 272, 294- 
296; cause of want of employment, 
278-274; family, 806; combination, 
310-316; only lightful basis of prop- 
erty, 834-337; efficiency increases 
with wages, 444-445; not in itself 
repugnant, 467-468. 

Labor and Capital, different forms of 
same thing. 163-164,198, 208; whence 
idea of their conflict arises, 189, 194; 
harmony of interests, 198-208. 

Laborers, not maintained by capital, 
71-79; where land is monopolized, 
have no interest in increase of pro- 
ductive power, 288; made more 
dependent by civilization, 288-286; 
organizations of, 810-816; condition 
not improved by division of land, 
823-827; their enslavement the ulti- 
mate reeult of private property In 
land, 347-857. 

Land, meaning of term, 88; value of Is 
not wealth, 40, 165-166; diminishing 
productiveness cited in support Mal- 
thusian theory, 97; how far true, 
188-184, 230-243; maintenance of 
prices, 277; estimated value of in 
England, 289; effects of monopolisa- 
tion in Englimd, 288-290; relation 
of man to, 294-295; division of will 
not relieve poverty, 821-827; tend- 
ency to concentration in ownership, 
821-824; necessity for abolishing 
private ownership, 828-829; injustice 
of private property In, 888-894; 
absurdity of legal titles to. 842, 844- 
846; aristocracy and serfdom spriim 
from ownership of, 296-296, 850-857, 
617-518; purchase by government, 
859-860: development of private 
ownership, 868-384; commons, 877- 
878; tenures in the United States, 
885-894; private ownership incon- 
sistent with best use, 897-402; how 
may be mad* common property, 408- 
429; effects of this, 454-472; increase 
of product! von ee s from better distri- 
bution of population, 461n. 

Land owners, power of. 167, 294-296, 
847-857; esse of their combination, 
814-815; their claims to compensa- 
tion, 858-867; will not be injured by 
c o nfiscation of rent, 447-472. 

Latimer, Hugh, increase of rent In 
Sixteenth Century, 291. 

Laveleye, M. de, on small land holding*, 
825-827; primitive land tenures, 871; 
Teutonic equality, 878. 



INDEX 


569 


Lawyers, confiuiom in their termi- 
nology, 887; their inculcation of the 
sacredneas of property, 868; influence 
on land tenures, 872*. 


Life, quantity of human, 109-110; 
limits to, 129-184, reproductive 
power gives increase to capital. 181; 
balance of, 196-197; meaning of, 568. 


Macaulay, English rule in India, 116; 
future of United States, 587. 


Machinery. (See Inventions.) 

McCulloch, on wages fund, 22-23*; 
d efini tion of capital, 84; compared, 
44-46; principle of increase, 101; Irish 
poverty and distress, 126; rent, 284; 
tax on rent, 422, 424-427. 


Mai thus, purpose of Essay on Popula- 
tion, 98; its absurdities, 104-106, 187; 
his other works treated with con- 
tempt, 105—106*; fall of wages in 
Sixteenth Century, 290; cause of his 
popularity, 98—100, 838—839*. 

Malthusian Theory, stated, examined 
and disproved, 91-150; as stated by 
Mai thus, 98-94; as stated by Mill, 
94-95, 140-141; in its strongest form, 
96; its triumph and the causes, 96, 98; 
harmonises with ideas of working 
rlssstm. 98; defends inequality and 
discourages reform, 98-99, 140-141, 
888-889*; its extension in develop- 
ment philosophy, 101: now generally 
accepted, 101-102; its illegitimate 
inferences, 108-189; facts which dis- 
prove it, 140-160; its support from 
doctrine of rent, 97, 182-138, 230- 
281; effects predicated of increase of 
population result from improvements 
in the arts, 244-254; the ultimate 
defense of property in land, 338-839*. 

Man more than an animal, 131-138, 
135-136, 809, 466, 476-477, 494-495; 
his power to avail himself of the., 
reproductive forces of nature, 182t- 
188; primary right and power, 834- 
886; desire for approbation, 458-460; 
selfliriraess not the master motive, 
462-463; his infinite desires, 185-136, 
245, 247-249, 466-467, 506; how im- 
proves, 477-478; idea of national or 
race life, 487-488; cause of differences 
and progress, 489-505; hereditary 
transmission, 494—505; social in his 


nature, 608. 

Mill, John Stuart, definition of capital, 
85, 72-73; industry limited by capi- 
tal, 57-58*, 72-78; Malthusian 
doctrine, 95-96, 112; effect of unre- 
stricted increase of population, 140- 
141; confusion as to profits and 
interest, 158; law of rent, 168; wages, 
218-214; government resumption of 
increase of land values, 860-862; 
Influence of Malthusianism, 861-868; 
tax on rent, 428-425. 


Money, when capital, 46; in hands of 
consumer, 47*; confounded with 
wealth, 61-62; lack of commodities 
spoken of as lade of, 268-269. 

Monopolies, profits of, 192-194; cause 
of certain, 410-412. 

More, Sir Thomas, ejectments of cot- 
tagers, 291. 

Nature, its reproductive power, 181- 
188; utilisation of its variations, 183- 
184, 186-188; equation between 
reproduction and destruction, 196- 
197; impartiality of, 885-886. 

Nicholson, N. A., on capital, 86. 

Nightingale, Florence, causes of famine 
in India, 119, 119n, 120*. 

Perry, Arthur Latham, on capital, 36- 
86, rent, 227. 

Political Economy, its failure, its nature 
and its methods, 10-13; doctrines 
based upon the theory that wages 
are drawn from capital, 28-25; im- 
portance of definitions, 31-37; its 
terms abstract terms, 49; confusion 
of standard treatises, 58-59; 167-161, 
219; the erroneous standpoint which 
its investigators have adopted, 162- 
164; its fundamental principle, 12, 
204, 219, 562; writers on, stumbling 
over law of wages, 215-216: com- 
pared with astronomy, 221-222; deals 
with general tendencies, 280; admis- 
sions in standard works as to prop- 
erty in land, 358-360; principles 
not pushed to logical conclusions, 
423; the Physiocrats, 423,424; unison 
with moral truth, 231, 486; its hope- 
fulness, 559-560; effect on religious 
ideas, 557-558. 

Population and Subsistence, 91-150. 
(See Malthusian Theory.) 

Population, inferences as to increase, 
108-104; of world, no evidence of 
increase in, 107-110; present, 113*; 
increase of descendants not increase 
of, 112; only limited by space, 138- 
134; real law of increase, 137-189; 
effect of increase upon production 
and distribution, 230-248; increase 
of increases wealth, 140-160; puts 
land to intenser uses, 822; increase in 
United States, 392. 

Poverty, its connection with material 
progress, 6-10; failure to explain this, 
10—11; where deepest, 223-224; why 
it accompanies progress, 282-296; 
remedy for, 828-830; springs from 
injustice, 340-841, 544-545; it* 
effects, 856-357, 458-466. 

Price not measured by the necessity of 
the buyer, 185—186; equation of 
equalises reward of labor, 204. 

Production, same principles obvious is 
eo»i*pisT as in ample forms, 26-80; 



X3N0S3C 




Man at, * 08 , 212 , »MN; 

MMh wtae* «*-*", the iml 
mfltete result d labor, 95-68; 
inoM by dnud tor eonsump- 
tkn, 76; functions of adtii in, §0- 
88, 164; ilmpU modes of sometimes 
most efficient, 86-66; only relative 
term, 188; increased shown by in- 


e M. 


I mui| aw | n ini o so aoyi w w sv wto 

lorari, 180-188; time an element in, 
181-186; the modes of, 186-188; ra- 
eourse to lower points does not 
involve diminution of, 281-884; tend- 
ency to large scale, 828, 827, 684-685; 
susceptible of enormous increase, 
488-486, 468, 560. 

Profits, meaning of the term and eon- 
fusions in its use, 168-162, 180-194. 

Program, human, current theory of 
considered, 475-488; in what it cou- 
riste, 480-505; its law, 506-526, 544- 
562; retrograsrioii, 527-648. 

Progress, material, connection with 
po v ert y , 7-11, 224; in what it consists. 
228-229; effects upon distribution of 
wealth, 280-248; effect of expecta- 
tion railed by, 255-260; how it 
results in Industrial depressions, 268- 
281; why it produces poverty, 282- 


Property, basis of, 888-886, 842-844; 
erroneous categories of, 887;. deriva- 
tion of distinction between real and 
personal, 879; private in land not 
necemary to use of land, 897-402; 
Idea of transferred to bum, 517-618. 

Protection, ite falladee have their root 
in belief as to wages, 19; effect on 
agriculturists, 449-451; abolition by 
England, effect of, 264; how protoo- 
tive taxes fall, 449-450. 

Quesnay, his doctrine, 428-424, 438. y* * 

Bent, bearing upon Malthusian theory^ 
97-98. 182-184, 280-248/ 244-254£ 
meaning of the term, 165; arises from 
monopoly, 166: law of, 168-170; Its 
corollaries, 171, 218-219; effect of 
their recognition, 171-172; as related 1 
to interest, 201-208; as related to 
wages, 204-217: advance of explains 
why wages and interest do not ad- 
vance, 222-228: increased by increase 
of population, 280-248; increased by 
improvements, 244-254; by specula- 
tion, 265-260: speculative advance in 
the cause of industrial depression, 
268-281; advance In explains the 
pendstence of poverty, 282-296; in- 
crease of not p revent e d by tenant 
right 824; or by division of land, 
BMS7; ssrf, generally fixed, 856- 
866; confiscation of future increase, 
260; a continuous robbery, 864-966; 
feudal rents. 874-878; thwr abolition. 


ISO-888; their present value, 888* 
884; rent now taken by the State. 
899-402: State appropriation of, 408- 
429, 617-518; taxes on, 408M21; 
effects of thus appropriating, 488- 
488. 

Reads, Wlnwood, Martyrdom of M»« , 
480s, 481a. 

321; promotive of civilisation, 612, 
622-524; Hebrew, effects on race, 
497-498; retrogression in, 589-540; 
change going on, 642-648; mtlmori- 
ties created by, 510 m; consensus of, 
564-565. 

Ricardo, definition of capital, 84; In- 
ference as to population, 71; enun- 
ciation of law of rent, 168; narrow 
view of , 168-169, 227 ; tax on rent, 422. 

Royce, Samuel, Deterioration and Race 

' Education, 641m. 

Slaveholders of the South, their view 
of abolition, 854-855. 

Slavery, chattel, comparatively trivial 
effects of, 849; modifying influences, 
855-856; not truly abolished in 
United States, 857, 894; never aided 
pro g ra m , 525-526. 

Smith, Adam, definition of capital, 88- 
84, 87-44, 45, 47; recognises truth aa 
to source of wages and then abandons 
It, 51; influence of Malthusian theory 
upon, 92; profits, 157; how economists 
have followed him, 159; differences 
of wages in different occupations, 
207-208, 209-210; his failure to 
appreciate the laws of distribution, 
21o; taxation, 418-421. 

Socialism, its ends and means, 819-821; 

* practical realisation of its ideal, 488- 

afiprisl organisation and life, possible 

f-changm, 454-472. 

^SpeLofrr# Heabert, compensation of land 

< owners, 859-860, 864; public owner- 

* ship ox land, 404; evolution, 480, 487: 
•human p rogram , 489-481; social 

* * d|Jfer4nem t 504-50O. 

. Strike* 812-816. 

Subsistence, population and, 91-160; 
in cresses with population, 129-188; 
cannot be‘ exhausted, 188-184; in- 
cluded in wealth, 142, 246; demand 
for not fixed, 246-247. (See Mal- 
thusian Theory.) 

Supply and demand, of labor, 209-209: 
relative terms, 267-268; as affected 
by wages, 810-812. 


Swift, Dean, his Modest Proposal, 126. 

Taxation, eliminated In oonridering 
distribution. 155-166; reduction m 
will aot relieve poverty, 800-908; 


571 


eoiuHarad, 40*-4»; eaaaaa ol, 4M; 

414-416; certainty, 416-418; emgal- 
tty of, 418-421; opinions on, 422- 
426; objections to tax on tent, 
424-429; cause of manifold taxation, 
427-429; how taxation falls on agri- 
culturists. 449-452; effect of con- 
fiscating rent by taxation, 488-472. 


Tennant, Rev. Wo., 
India, 115-116. 


of famine in 


Thornton, Wm., on wage fond, 18»; on 
capital, 86. 

Values, equation of, 196-197. 


Wages, current doctrine, 17; It coincides 
with vulgar opinion, 18: but is incon- 
sistent with facts, 19-22; genesis 
of current theory, 22 ; difference 
between it and that herein advanced, 
28-26; not drawn from capital but 
produced by labor, 28, 26-80, 60-70; 
meaning of the term, 82-88; always 
subsequent to labor, 57-69: fallacy 
of tiie assumption that they axe 
drawn from capital, 68-69; for aerv- 
icea, 60n; connection b e t we en cur- 
rent doctrine and Malthusian theory, 
91-96, 96-97; confusion of terms 
produc'd by current theory, 169; 
rate of, 204; law of, 204-217; formu- 
lated. 218; in different occupations, 
207-212; os quantity and as propor- 


tion, 218-217; not increased by 

material pro g r am , 904-806; 

ftxsd tar standard of comfort, 804- 
*06; offset of increase or decrease on 
employers, 810-811; equilibrium of, 
811; not increased by division of Land, 
825-327; why they tend to wagee 3 
slavery, 848; efficiency of labor in- 
creases with, 444. 

Wagee and Interest, high or low to- 

R ther, 19-22; current explanation, 

; Cairnee* explanation, 20-22; true 
explanation, 170-172, 199-208, 222- 
223; formulated, 219. 

Wages of Superintendence, 159: used to 
indude profits of monopoly,.i91-192 

Walker, Amass, capital, 86. 

Walker, Prof. F. A., wages, 18*, 
capital, 86. 

Wayland, Professor, definition of capi- 
tal, 86. 


Wealth, increase of not generally 
shared, 8-9; meaning of term, 89-40; 
interchangeability of, 47-49, 142, 
181-182, ^46-249; confounded with 
money, 62-68; increases with popu- 
lation, 140-150; accumulated, 146- 
149; Laws of distribution, 168-217; 
formulated, 219; nature of, 148-160, 
180, 205; political effects of unequal 
distribution, 802, 680-538; effects of 
fust distribution, 446446, 462-458. 
464-472.