G3i 
 
 C T I 
 
4 
 

 
 
 

THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 WHAT IT INVOLVES, AND HOW 
 ALONE IT CAN BE SETTLED 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY GEORGE 
 
 oweu by then 1 < 
 
 Author of ‘ ‘ Progress and Poverty . ”11 
 “ A Perplexed Philoso 
 
 We hold thf - 
 that they are 
 that among th< 
 to secure these 
 their just powers 
 form of government' 
 the people to alter or a 
 
 or Free Trade?” “ Social Problems, 
 litical Economy,” etc. 
 
 4 
 
 ‘‘ hat men ale created equal; 
 r with certain qaalienable rights; 
 life, liberty, and the pur^jjt off happiness. That 
 vernments are institdfba a»ong men, deriving 
 pnsent of that whenever any 
 
 ends, it is the right of 
 7>f Independence. 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. 
 
 1898 
 
I 
 
 'hb 
 
 Copyright, 1881. by 
 Henry George. 
 
 rr n ?r 
 
THE 
 
 LAND QUESTION 
 
 WHAT IT INVOLVES, AND HOW ALONE IT CAN 
 
 BE SETTLED 
 
Copyright, 1881, by 
 Henry George. 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This book was first published in the early part of 1881, 
 under the title of u The Irish Land Question.” In order 
 better to indicate the general character of this subject, and 
 to conform to the title under which it had been republished 
 in other countries, the title was subsequently changed to 
 u The Land Question ” 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Unpalatable Truth. 7 
 
 n. Distress and Famine.15 
 
 III. A Universal Question.21 
 
 IV. Proposed Remedies.29 
 
 V. Whose Land is it?.35 
 
 VI. Landlords’ Right is Labor’s Wrong.38 
 
 VII. The Great-Great-Grandson of Captain Kidd. . 43 
 
 VIII. The Only Way, the Easy Way.52 
 
 IX. Principle the Best Policy.56 
 
 X. Appeals to Animosity.60 
 
 XI. How to Win.64 
 
 XII. In the United States.73 
 
 XHI. A Little Island or a Little World 0 . . . . 76 
 
 XIV. The Civilization that is Possible.80 
 
 XV. The Civilization that is.87 
 
 XVI. True Conservatism.97 
 
 XVII. In Hoc Signo Vinces.106 
 

 
 
 
 i. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 UNPALATABLE TRUTH. 
 
 I N charging the Dublin jury in the Land League cases, 
 Mr. Justice Fitzgerald told them that the land laws of 
 Ireland were more favorable to the tenant than those of 
 Great Britain, Belgium, or the United States. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Justice Fitzgerald is right. For in 
 Ireland certain local customs and the provisions of the 
 Bright Land Act mitigate somewhat the power of the 
 landlord in his dealings with the tenant. In Great Brit¬ 
 ain, save by custom in a few localities, there are no such 
 mitigations. In Belgium I believe there are none. There 
 are certainly none in the United States. 
 
 This fact which Justice Fitzgerald cites will be reechoed 
 by the enemies of the Irish movement. And it is a fact 
 well worth the consideration of its friends. For the Irish 
 movement has passed its first stage, and it is time for a 
 more definite understanding of what is needed and how 
 it is to be got. 
 
 It is the fashion of Land League orators and sympa¬ 
 thizing newspapers in this country to talk as if the dis¬ 
 tress and disquiet in Ireland were wholly due to political 
 oppression, and our national House of Representatives 
 
i 
 
 8 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 recently passed, by unanimous vote, a resolution which 
 censured England for her treatment of Ireland. But, 
 while it is indeed true that Ireland has been deeply 
 wronged and bitterly oppressed by England, it is not true 
 that there is any economic oppression of Ireland by Eng¬ 
 land now. To whatever cause Irish distress may be due, 
 it is certainly not due to the existence of laws which press 
 on industry more heavily in Ireland than in any other 
 part of the United Kingdom. 
 
 And, further than this, the Irish land system, which is 
 so much talked of as though it were some peculiarly 
 atrocious system, is essentially the same land system 
 which prevails in all civilized countries, which we of the 
 United States have accepted unquestioningly, and have 
 extended over the whole temperate zone of a new conti¬ 
 nent—the same system which all over the civilized world 
 men are accustomed to consider natural and just. 
 
 Justice Fitzgerald is unquestionably right. 
 
 As to England, it is well known that the English land¬ 
 lords exercise freely all the powers complained of in 
 the Irish landlords, without even the slight restrictions 
 imposed in Ireland. 
 
 As to Belgium, let me quote the high authority of the 
 distinguished Belgian publicist, M. Emile de Laveleye, of 
 the University of Liege. He says that the Belgian tenant- 
 farmers—for tenancy largely prevails even where the land 
 is most minutely divided—are rack-rented with a merciless¬ 
 ness unknown in England or even in Ireland, and are 
 compelled to vote as their landlords dictate! 
 
 And as to the United States, let me ask the men who to 
 applauding audiences are nightly comparing the freedom 
 of America with the oppression of Ireland—let me ask the 
 Representatives who voted for the resolution of sympathy 
 with Ireland, this simple question : What would the Irish 
 landlords lose, what would the Irish tenants gain, if, 
 
UNPALATABLE TRUTH. 
 
 9 
 
 to-morrow, Ireland were made a State in the American 
 Union and American law substituted for English law ? 
 
 I think it will puzzle them to reply. The truth is that 
 the gain would be to the landlords, the loss to the tenants. 
 The simple truth is, that, under our laws, the Irish land¬ 
 lords could rack-rent, distrain, evict, or absent themselves, 
 as they pleased, and without any restriction from Ulster 
 tenant-right or legal requirement of compensation for 
 improvements. Under our laws they could, just as freely 
 as they can now, impose whatever terms they pleased upon 
 their tenants—whether as to cultivation, as to improve¬ 
 ments, as to game, as to marriages, as to voting, or as to 
 anything else. For these powers do not spring from 
 special laws. They are merely incident to the right of 
 property; they result simply from the acknowledgment of 
 the right of the owner of land to do as he pleases with his 
 own—to let it, or not let it. So far as law can give them 
 to him, every American landlord has these powers as fully 
 as any Irish landlord. Cannot the American owner of 
 land make, in letting it, any stipulation he pleases as to 
 how it shall be used, or improved, or cultivated ? Can he 
 not reserve any of his own rights upon it, such as the 
 right of entry, or of cutting wood, or shooting game, or 
 catching fish ? And, in the absence of special agreement, 
 does not American law give him, what the law of Ireland 
 does not now give him, the ownership at the expiration 
 of the lease of all the improvements made by the tenant ? 
 
 What single power has the Irish landowner that the 
 American landowner has not as fully ? Is not the Ameri- 
 can landlord just as free as is the Irish landlord to refuse 
 
 to rent his lands or his houses to anv one who does not 
 
 «/ 
 
 attend a certain church or vote a certain ticket ? Is he not 
 quite as free to do this as he is free to refuse his contri¬ 
 butions to all but one particular benevolent society or 
 political committee? Or, if, not liking a certain news- 
 
10 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 paper, he chooses to give notice to quit to any tenant 
 whom he finds taking that newspaper, what law can be 
 invoked to prevent him? There is none. The property 
 is his, and he can let it, or not let it, as he wills. And, 
 having this power to let or not let, he has power to demand 
 any terms he pleases. 
 
 That Ireland is a conquered country; that centuries ago 
 her soil was taken from its native possessors and parceled 
 out among aliens, and that it has been confiscated again 
 and again, has nothing to do with the real question of 
 to-day— no more to do with it than have the confiscations 
 of Marius and Sylla. England, too, is a conquered coun¬ 
 try j her soil has been confiscated again and again; and, 
 spite of all talk about Saxon and Celt, it is not probable 
 that, after the admixture of generations, the division of 
 landholder and non-landholder any more coincides with 
 distinction of race in the one country than in the other. 
 That Irish land titles rest on force and fraud is true j but 
 so do land titles in every country—even to a large extent 
 in our own peacefully settled country. Even in our most 
 recently settled States, how much land is there to which 
 title has been got by fraud and perjury and bribery—by 
 the arts of the lobbyist or the cunning tricks of hired 
 lawyers, by double-barreled shotguns and repeating rifles ! 
 
 The truth is that the Irish land system is simply the 
 general system of modern civilization. In no essential 
 feature does it differ from the system that obtains here¬ 
 in what we are accustomed to consider the freest country 
 under the sun. Entails and primogeniture and family 
 settlements may be in themselves bad things, and may 
 sometimes interfere with putting the land to its best use, 
 but their effects upon the relations of landlord and tenant 
 are not worth talking about. As for rack-rent, which is 
 simply a rent fixed at short intervals by competition, that 
 is in the United States even a more common way of letting 
 
UNPALATABLE TRUTH. 
 
 11 
 
 land than in Ireland. In onr cities the majority of onr 
 people live in houses rented from month to month or year 
 to year for the highest price the landlord thinks he can 
 get. The usual term, in the newer States, at least, for the 
 letting of agricultural land is from season to season. And 
 that the rent of land in the United States comes, on the 
 whole, more closely to the standard of rack, or full com¬ 
 petition rent, there can be, I think, little doubt. That 
 the land of Ireland is, as the apologists for landlordism 
 say, largely under-rented (that is, not rented for the full 
 amount the landlord might get with free competition) is 
 probably true. Miss C. G. O’Brien, in a recent article 
 in the Nineteenth Century , states that the tenant-farmers 
 generally get for such patches as they sub-let to their 
 laborers twice the rent they pay the landlords. And we 
 hear incidentally of many u good landlords,” i.e., landlords 
 not in the habit of pushing their tenants for as much as 
 they might get by rigorously demanding all that any one 
 would give. 
 
 These things, as well as the peculiar bitterness of com¬ 
 plaints against middlemen and the speculators who have 
 purchased encumbered estates and manage them solely 
 with a view to profit, go to show the truth of the statement 
 that the land of Ireland has been, by its present owners, 
 largely underlet, when considered from what we would 
 deem a business point of view. And this is but what 
 might be expected. Human nature is about the same the 
 world over, and the Irish landlords as a class are no 
 better nor worse than would be other men under like 
 conditions. An aristocracy such as that of Ireland has its 
 virtues as well as its vices, and is influenced by sentiments 
 which do not enter into mere business transactions—sen¬ 
 timents which must often modify and soften the calcula¬ 
 tions of cold self-interest. But with us the letting of land 
 is as much a business matter as the buying or selling of 
 
12 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 wheat or of stocks. An American would not think he was 
 showing his goodness by renting his land for low rates, 
 any more than he would think he was showing his good¬ 
 ness by selling wheat for less than the market price, or 
 stocks for less than the quotations. So in those districts 
 of France and Belgium where the land is most sub-divided, 
 the peasant proprietors, says M. de Laveleye, boast to one 
 another of the high rents they get, just as they boast of 
 the high prices they get for pigs or for poultry. 
 
 The best measure of rent is, of course, its proportion 
 to the produce. The only estimate of Irish rent as a 
 proportion of which I know is that of Buckle, who puts 
 it at one-fourth of the produce. In this country I am 
 inclined to think one-fourth would generally be considered 
 a moderate rent. Even in California there is considerable 
 land rented for one-third the crop, and some that rents 
 for one-half the crop; while, according to a writer in the 
 Atlantic Monthly , the common rent in that great wheat¬ 
 growing section of the New Northwest now being opened 
 up is one-half the crop ! 
 
 It does not seem to me that Justice Fitzgerald’s state¬ 
 ment can be disputed, though of course its developments 
 are not yet as strikingly bad, for this is yet a new country, 
 and tenants are comparatively few, and land comparatively 
 easy to get. The American land system is really worse 
 for the tenant than the Irish system. For with us there 
 is neither sentiment nor custom to check the force of 
 competition or mitigate the natural desire of the landlord 
 to get all he can. 
 
 Nor is there anything in our system to prevent or check 
 absenteeism, so much complained of in regard to Ireland. 
 Before the modern era, which has so facilitated travel and 
 communication, and made the great cities so attractive to 
 those having money to spend, the prevalence of Irish 
 absenteeism may have been due to special causes, but at 
 
UNPALATABLE TRUTH. 
 
 13 
 
 the present day there is certainly nothing peculiar in it. 
 Most of the large English and Scotch landholders are 
 absentees for the greater part of the year, and many of 
 them live permanently or for long intervals upon the 
 Continent. So are our large American landowners gen¬ 
 erally absentees. In New York, in San Francisco, in 
 Washington, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis, live men who 
 own large tracts of land which they seldom or never see. 
 A resident of Rochester is said to own no less than four 
 hundred farms in different States, one of which (I believe 
 in Kentucky) comprises thirty-five thousand acres. Under 
 the plantation system of farming and that of stock-raising 
 on a grand scale, which are developing so rapidly in our 
 new States, very much of the profits go to professional 
 men and capitalists who live in distant cities. Corpora¬ 
 tions whose stock is held in the East or in Europe own 
 much greater bodies of land, at much greater distances, 
 than do the London corporations possessing landed estates 
 in Ireland. To say nothing of the great land-grant rail¬ 
 road companies, the Standard Oil Company probably owns 
 more acres of Western land than all the London companies 
 put together own of Irish land. And, although landlord¬ 
 ism in its grosser forms is only beginning in the United 
 States, there is probably no American, wherever he may 
 live, who cannot in his immediate vicinity see some 
 instance of absentee landlordism. The tendency to con¬ 
 centration born of the new era ushered in by the applica¬ 
 tion of steam shows itself in this way as in many others. 
 To those who can live where they please, the great cities 
 are becoming more and more attractive. 
 
 And it is further to be remarked that too much stress 
 is laid upon absenteeism, and that it might be prevented 
 without much of the evil often attributed to it being 
 cured. That is to say, that to his tenantry and neighbor¬ 
 hood the owner of land in Galway or Kilkenny would be 
 
14 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 as much an absentee if he lived in Dublin as if he lived 
 in London, and that, if Irish landlords were compelled to 
 live in Ireland, all that the Irish people would gain would 
 be, metaphorically speaking, the crumbs that fell from 
 the landlords’ tables. For if the butter and eggs, the pigs 
 and the poultry, of the Irish peasant must be taken from 
 him and exported to pay for his landlord’s wine and cigars, 
 what difference does it make to him where the wine is 
 drunk or the cigars are smoked ? 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 DISTRESS AND FAMINE. 
 
 B UT it will be asked: If the land system which prevails 
 in Ireland is essentially the same as that which pre¬ 
 vails elsewhere, how is it that it does not produce the same 
 results elsewhere ? 
 
 I answer that it does everywhere produce the same kind 
 of results. As there is nothing essentially pecnliar in the 
 Irish land system, so is there nothing essentially pecnliar 
 in Irish distress. Between the distress in Ireland and the 
 distress in other countries there may be differences in 
 degree and differences in manifestation; but that is all. 
 
 The truth is, that as there is nothing peculiar in the 
 Irish land system, so is there nothing peculiar in the dis¬ 
 tress which that land system causes. We hear a great 
 deal of Irish emigration, of the millions of sons and 
 daughters of Erin who have been compelled to leave their 
 native soil. But have not the Scottish Highlands been 
 all but depopulated ? Do not the English emigrate in the 
 same way, and for the same reasons ? Do not the Germans 
 and Italians and Scandinavians also emigrate? Is there 
 not a constant emigration from the Eastern States of the 
 Union to the Western—an emigration impelled by the 
 same motives as that which sets across the Atlantic ? Nor 
 am I sure that this is not in some respects a more demoral¬ 
 izing emigration than the Irish, for I do not think there 
 is any such monstrous disproportion of the sexes in Ire- 
 
16 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 land as in Massachusetts. If French and Belgian peasants 
 do not emigrate as do the Irish, is it not simply because 
 they do not have such “ long families ” ? 
 
 There has recently been deep and wide-spread distress 
 in Ireland, and but for the contributions of charity many 
 would have perished for want of food. But, to say nothing 
 of such countries as India, China, Persia, and Syria, is it 
 not true that within the last few years there have been 
 similar spasms of distress in the most highly civilized 
 countries—not merely in Russia and in Poland, but in 
 Germany and England ? Yes, even in the United States. 
 
 Have there not been, are there not constantly occurring, 
 in all these countries, times when the poorest classes are 
 reduced to the direct straits, and large numbers are saved 
 from starvation only by charity ? 
 
 When there is famine among savages it is because food 
 enough is not to be had. But this was not the case in Ire¬ 
 land. In any part of Ireland, during the height of what 
 was called the famine, there was food enough for whoever 
 had means to pay for it. The trouble was not in the 
 scarcity of food. There was, as a matter of fact, no real 
 scarcity of food, and the proof of it is that food did not 
 command scarcity prices. During all the so-called famine, 
 food was constantly exported from Ireland to England, 
 which would not have been the case had there been true 
 famine in one country any more than in the other. During 
 all the so-called famine a practically unlimited supply of 
 American meat and grain could have been poured into 
 Ireland, through the existing mechanism of exchange, so 
 quickly that the relief would have been felt instantane¬ 
 ously. Our sending of supplies in a national war-ship 
 was a piece of vulgar ostentation, fitly paralleled by their 
 ostentatious distribution in British gunboats under the 
 nominal superintendence of a royal prince. Had we been 
 bent on relief, not display, we might have saved our 
 
DISTRESS AND FAMINE. 
 
 17 
 
 government the expense of fitting up its antiquated war¬ 
 ship, the British gunboats their coal, the Lord Mayor his 
 dinner, and the Royal Prince his valuable time. A cable 
 draft, turned iu Dublin into postal orders, would have 
 afforded the relief, not merely much more easily and 
 cheaply, but in less time than it took, our war-ship to get 
 ready to receive her cargo j for the reason that so many 
 of the Irish people were starving was, not that the food 
 was not to be had, but that they had not the means to 
 buy it. Had the Irish people had money or its equivalent, 
 the bad seasons might have come and gone without stinting 
 any one of a full meal. Their effect would merely have 
 been to determine toward Ireland the flow of more abun¬ 
 dant harvests. 
 
 I wish clearly to bring to view this point. The Irish 
 famine was not a true famine arising from scarcity of 
 food. It was what an English writer styled the Indian 
 famine—a “ financial famine / 7 arising not from scarcity of 
 food but from the poverty of the people. The effect of 
 the short crops in producing distress was not so much in 
 raising the price of food as in cutting off the accustomed 
 incomes of the people. The masses of the Irish people 
 get so little in ordinary times that they are barely able to 
 live, and when anything occurs to interrupt their accus¬ 
 tomed incomes they have nothing to fall back on. 
 
 Yet is this not true of large classes in all countries? 
 And are not all countries subject to just such famines as 
 this Irish famine ? Good seasons and bad seasons are in 
 the order of nature, just as the day of sunshine and the 
 day of rain, the summer’s warmth and the winter’s snow. 
 But agriculture is, on the whole, as certain as any other 
 pursuit, for even those industries which may be carried 
 on regardless of weather are subject to alternations as 
 marked as those to which agriculture is liable. There are 
 good seasons and bad seasons even in fishing and hunting, 
 
18 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 while the alternations are very marked in mining and in 
 manufacturing. In fact, the more highly differentiated 
 branches of industry which advancing civilization tends 
 to develop, though less directly dependent upon rain and 
 sunshine, heat and cold, seem increasingly subject to 
 alternations more frequent and intense. Though in a 
 country of more diversified industry the failure of a crop 
 or two could not have such wide-spread effects as in Ire¬ 
 land, yet the countries of more complex industries are 
 liable to a greater variety of disasters. A war on another 
 continent produces famine in Lancashire; Parisian mil¬ 
 liners decree a change of fashion, and Coventr}^ operatives 
 are saved from starvation only by public alms; a railroad 
 combination decides to raise the price of coal, and Penn¬ 
 sylvania miners find their earnings diminished by half or 
 totally cut off j a bank breaks in New York, and in all the 
 large American cities soup-houses must be opened! 
 
 In this Irish famine which provoked the land agitation, 
 there is nothing that is peculiar. Such famines on a 
 smaller or a larger scale are constantly occurring. Nay, 
 more! the fact is, that famine, just such famine as this 
 Irish famine, constantly exists in the richest and most 
 highly civilized lands. It persists even in “ good times ” 
 when trade is u booming; ” it spreads and rages whenever 
 from any cause industrial depression conies. It is kept 
 under, or at least kept from showing its worst phases, by 
 poor-rates and almshouses, by private benevolence and by 
 vast organized charities, but it still exists, gnawing in 
 secret when it does not openly rage. In the very centers 
 of civilization, where the machinery of production and 
 exchange is at the highest point of efficiency, where bank- 
 vaults hold millions, and show-windows flash with more 
 than a prince’s ransom, where elevators and warehouses 
 are gorged with grain, and markets are piled with all 
 things succulent and toothsome, where the dinners of 
 
DISTRESS AND FAMINE. 
 
 19 
 
 Lucullus are eaten every day, and, if it be but cool, the 
 very greyhounds wear dainty blankets—in these centers 
 of wealth and power and refinement, there are always 
 hungry men and women and little children. Never the 
 sun goes down but on human beings prowling like wolves 
 for food, or huddling together like vermin for shelter and 
 warmth. u Always with You” is the significant heading 
 under which a New York paper, in these most prosperous 
 times, publishes daily the tales of chronic famine j and in 
 the greatest and richest city in the world—in that very 
 London where the plenty of meat in the butchers’ shops 
 seemed to some savages the most wondrous of all its 
 wonderful sights—in that very London, the mortuary 
 reports have a standing column for deaths by starvation. 
 
 But no more in its chronic than in its spasmodic forms 
 is famine to be measured by the deaths from starvation. 
 Perfect, indeed, in all its parts must be the human machine 
 if it can run till the last bit of available tissue be drawn 
 on to feed its fires. It is under the guise of disease to 
 which physicians can give less shocking names, that 
 famine—especially the chronic famine of civilization— 
 kills. And the statistics of mortality, especially of infant 
 mortality, show that in the richest communities famine is 
 constantly at its work. Insufficient nourishment, inade¬ 
 quate warmth and clothing, and unwholesome surround¬ 
 ings, constantly, in the very centers of plenty, swell the 
 death-rates. What is this but famine—just such famine 
 as the Irish famine ? It is not that the needed things are 
 really scarce; but that those whose need is direst have not 
 the means to get them, and, when not relieved by charity, 
 want kills them in its various ways. When, in the hot 
 midsummer, little children die like flies in the New York 
 tenement wards, what is that but famine! And those 
 barges crowded with such children that a noble and tender 
 charity sends down New York Harbor to catch the fresh 
 
20 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 salt breath of the Atlantic—are they not fighting famine 
 as truly as were our food-laden war-ship and the Royal 
 Prince’s gunboats ? Alas ! to find famine one has not to 
 cross the sea. 
 
 There was bitter satire in the cartoon that one of our 
 illustrated papers published when subscriptions to the 
 Irish famine fund were being made—a cartoon that repre¬ 
 sented James Gordon Bennett sailing away for Ireland 
 in a boat loaded down with provisions, while a sad-eyed, 
 hungry-looking, tattered group gazed wistfully on them 
 from the pier. The bite and the bitterness of it, the 
 humiliating sting and satire of it, were in its truth. 
 
 This is “ the home of freedom,” and u the asylum of 
 the oppressed • ” our population is yet sparse, our public 
 domain yet wide j we are the greatest of food producers, 
 yet even here there are beggars, tramps, paupers, men 
 torn by anxiety for the support of their families, women 
 who know not which way to turn, little children growing 
 up in such poverty and squalor that only a miracle can 
 keep them pure. “ Always with you,” even here. What 
 is the week or the day of the week that our papers do not 
 tell of man or woman who, to escape the tortures of want, 
 has stepped out of life unbidden? What is this but 
 famine ? 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 A UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 
 
 I ET me be understood. I am not endeavoring to ex- 
 J cuse or belittle Irish distress. I am merely point¬ 
 ing out that distress of the same kind exists elsewhere. 
 This is a fact I want to make clear, for it has hitherto, in 
 most of the discussions of the Irish Land Question, been 
 ignored. And without an appreciation of this fact the 
 real nature of the Irish Land Question is not understood, 
 nor the real importance of the agitation seen. 
 
 What I contend for is this: That it is a mistake to con¬ 
 sider the Irish Land Question as a mere local question, 
 arising out of conditions peculiar to Ireland, and which 
 can be settled by remedies that can have but local appli¬ 
 cation. On the contrary, I contend that what has been 
 brought into prominence by Irish distress, and forced into 
 discussion by Irish agitation, is something infinitely more 
 important than any mere local question could be; it is 
 nothing less than that question of transcendent importance 
 which is everywhere beginning to agitate, and, if not 
 settled, must soon convulse the civilized world—the ques¬ 
 tion whether, their political equality conceded (for, where 
 this has not already been, it soon will be), the masses of 
 mankind are to remain mere hewers of wood and drawers 
 of water for the benefit of a fortunate few? whether, 
 having escaped from feudalism, modern society is to pass 
 into an industrial organization more grinding and oppres- 
 
22 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 sive, more heartless and hopeless, than feudalism ? whether, 
 amid the abundance their labor creates, the producers of 
 wealth are to be content in good times with the barest of 
 livings and in bad times to suffer and to starve ? What 
 is involved in this Irish Land Question is not a mere local 
 matter between Irish landlords and Irish tenants, but the 
 great social problem of modern civilization. What is 
 arraigned in the arraignment of the claims of Irish land¬ 
 lords is nothing less than the wide-spread institution of 
 private property in land. In the assertion of the natural 
 rights of the Irish people is the assertion of the natural rights 
 that, by virtue of his existence, pertain everywhere to man. 
 
 It is probable that the Irish agitators did not at first 
 perceive the real bearing and importance of the question 
 they took in hand. But they—the more intelligent and 
 earnest of them, at least—must now begin to realize it.* 
 Yet, save, perhaps, on the part of the ultra-Tories, who 
 would resist any concession as the opening of a door that 
 cannot again be shut, there is on all sides a disposition to 
 ignore the real nature of the question, and to treat it as 
 springing from conditions peculiar to Ireland. On the 
 one hand, there is a large class in England and elsewhere, 
 who, while willing to concede or even actually desire 
 that something should be done for Ireland, fear any 
 extension of the agitation into a questioning of the rights 
 of landowners elsewhere. And, on the other hand, the 
 Irish leaders seem anxious to confine attention in the same 
 way, evidently fearing that, should the question assume 
 a broader aspect, strong forces now with them might fall 
 away and, perhaps to a large extent, become directly and 
 strongly antagonistic. 
 
 * The Irish World , which, though published in New York, has 
 exerted a large influence upon the agitation on both sides of the 
 Atlantic, does realize, and has from the first frankly declared, that 
 the fight must be against landlordism in toto and everywhere. 
 
A UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 
 
 23 
 
 But it is not possible so to confine the discussion; no 
 more possible than it was possible to confine to France 
 the questions involved in the French Revolution; no 
 more possible than it was possible to keep the discussion 
 which arose over slavery in the Territories confined to the 
 subject of slavery in the Territories. And it is best that 
 the truth be fully stated and clearly recognized. He who 
 sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is 
 for it or who is against it. This is not radicalism in the 
 bad sense which so many attach to the word. This is 
 conservatism in the true sense. 
 
 What gives to the Irish Land Question its supreme 
 significance is that it brings into attention and discussion 
 —nay, that it forces into attention and discussion, not a 
 mere Irish question, but a question of world-wide impor¬ 
 tance. 
 
 What has brought the land question to the front in 
 Ireland, what permits the relation between land and labor 
 to be seen there with such distinctness—to be seen even 
 by those who cannot in other places perceive them—is 
 certain special conditions. Ireland is a country of dense 
 population, so that competition for the use of land is so 
 sharp and high as to produce marked effects upon the 
 distribution of wealth. It is mainly an agricultural coun¬ 
 try, so that production is concerned directly and unmis¬ 
 takably with the soil. Its industrial organization is largely 
 that simple one in which an employing capitalist does not 
 stand between laborer and landowner, so that the connec¬ 
 tion between rent and wages is not obscured. Ireland, 
 moreover, was never conquered by the Romans, nor, until 
 comparatively recently, by any people who had felt in their 
 legal system the effect of Roman domination. It is the 
 European country in which primitive ideas as to land 
 tenures have longest held their sway, and the circum¬ 
 stances of its conquest, its cruel misgovernment, and the 
 
24 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 differences of race and religion between the masses of the 
 people and those among whom the land was parceled, 
 have tended to preserve old traditions and to direct the 
 strength of Irish feeling and the fervor of Irish imagina¬ 
 tion against a system which forces the descendant of the 
 ancient possessors of the soil to pay tribute for it to the 
 representative of a hated stranger. It is for these reasons 
 that the connection between Irish distress and Irish land¬ 
 lordism is so easily seen and readily realized. 
 
 But does not the same relation exist between English 
 pauperism and English landlordism—between American 
 tramps and the American land system? Essentially the 
 same land system as that of Ireland exists elsewhere, and, 
 wherever it exists, distress of essentially the same kind is 
 to be seen. And elsewhere, just as certainly as in Ireland, 
 is the connection between the two that of cause and effect. 
 
 When the agent of the Irish landlord takes from the 
 Irish cottier for rent his pigs, his poultry, or his potatoes, 
 or the money that he gains by the sale of these things, it 
 is clear enough that this rent comes from the earnings of 
 labor, and diminishes what the laborer gets. But is not 
 this in reality just as clear when a dozen middlemen stand 
 between laborer and landlord? Is it not just as clear 
 when, instead of being paid monthly or quarterly or 
 yearly, rent is paid in a lumped sum called purchase- 
 money? Whence come the incomes which the owners 
 of land in mining districts, in manufacturing districts, or 
 in commercial districts, receive for the use of their land ? 
 Manifestly, they must come from the earnings of labor— 
 there is no other source from which they can come. From 
 what are the revenues of Trinity Church corporation 
 drawn, if not from the earnings of labor? What is the 
 source of the income of the Astors, if it is not the labor 
 of laboring-men, women, and children? When a man 
 makes a fortune by the rise of real estate, as in New York 
 
A UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 
 
 25 
 
 and elsewhere many men have done within the past few 
 months, what does it mean ? It means that he may have 
 fine clothes, costly food, a grand house luxuriously fur¬ 
 nished, etc. Now, these things are not the spontaneous 
 fruits of the soil; neither do they fall from heaven, nor 
 are they cast up by the sea. They are products of labor 
 —can be produced only by labor. And hence, if men 
 who do no labor get them, it must necessarily be at the 
 expense of those who do labor. 
 
 It may seem as if I were needlessly dwelling upon a 
 truth apparent by mere statement. Yet, simple as this 
 truth is, it is persistently ignored. This is the reason 
 that the true relation and true importance of the question 
 which has come to the front in Ireland are so little realized. 
 
 To give an illustration : In his article in the North 
 American Review last year, Mr. Parnell speaks as though 
 the building up of manufactures in Ireland would lessen 
 the competition for land. What justification for such a 
 view is there either in theory or in fact ? Can manufac¬ 
 turing be carried on without land any more than agricul¬ 
 ture can be carried on without land ? Is not competition 
 for land measured by price, and, if Ireland were a manu¬ 
 facturing country, would not the value of her land be 
 greater than now ? Had English clamor for u protection 
 to home industry ” not been suffered to secure the stran¬ 
 gling of Irish industries in their infancy, Ireland might 
 now be more of a manufacturing country with larger 
 population and a greater aggregate production of wealth. 
 But the tribute which the landowners could have taken 
 would likewise have been greater. Put a Glasgow, a 
 Manchester, or a London in one of the Irish agricultural 
 counties, and, where the landlords now take pounds in 
 rent, they would be enabled to demand hundreds and 
 thousands of pounds. And it would necessarily come 
 from the same source—the ultimate source of all incomes 
 
26 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 —the earnings of labor. That so large a proportion of 
 the laboring-class would not have to compete with each 
 other for agricultural land is true. But they would have 
 to do what is precisely the same thing. They would have 
 to compete with each other for employment—for the 
 opportunity to make a living. And there is no reason to 
 think that this competition would be less intense than 
 now. On the contrary, in the manufacturing districts of 
 England and Scotland, just as in the agricultural districts 
 of Ireland, the competition for the privilege of earning a 
 living forces wages to such a minimum as, even in good 
 times, will give only a living. 
 
 What is the difference? The Irish peasant cultivator 
 hires his little farm from a landlord, and pays rent directly. 
 The English agricultural laborer hires himself to an 
 employing farmer who hires the land, and who out of the 
 produce pays to the one his wages and to the other his 
 rent. In both cases competition forces the laborer down 
 to a bare living as a net return for his work, and only 
 stops at that point because, when men do not get enough 
 to live on, they die and cease to compete. And, in the 
 same way, competition forces the employing farmer to 
 give up to the landlord all that he has left after paying 
 wages, save the ordinary returns of capital—for the profits 
 of the English farmer do not, on the average, I understand,* 
 exceed five or six per cent. And in other businesses, such 
 as manufacturing, competition in the same way forces 
 down wages to the minimum of a bare living, while rent 
 goes up and up. Thus is it clear that no change in 
 methods or improvements in the processes of industry 
 lessens the landlord’s power of claiming the lion’s share. 
 
 I am utterly unable to see in what essential thing the 
 condition of the Irish peasant would be a whit improved 
 were Ireland as rich as England, and her industries as 
 diversified. For the Irish peasant is not to be compared 
 
A UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 
 
 27 
 
 with the English tenant-farmer, who is really a capitalist, 
 hut with the English agricultural laborer and the lowest 
 class of factory operatives. Surely their condition is not 
 so much better than that of the Irish peasant as to make 
 a difference worth talking about. On the contrary, miser¬ 
 able as is the condition of the Irish peasantry, sickening 
 as are the stories of their suffering, I am inclined to think 
 that for the worst instances of human degradation one 
 must go to the reports that describe the condition of the 
 laboring poor of England, rather than to the literature of 
 Irish misery. For there are three things for which, in 
 spite of their poverty and wretchedness and occasional 
 famine, the very poorest of Irish peasants are by all 
 accounts remarkable—the physical vigor of their men, the 
 purity of their women, and the strength of the family 
 affections. This, to put it mildly, cannot be said of large 
 classes of the laboring populations of England and Scot¬ 
 land. In those rich manufacturing districts are classes 
 stunted and deteriorated physically by want and unwhole¬ 
 some employments; classes in which the idea of female 
 virtue is all but lost, and the family affections all but 
 trodden out. 
 
 But it is needless to compare sufferings and measure 
 miseries. I merely wish to correct that impression which 
 leads so many people to talk and write as though rent and 
 land tenures related solely to agriculture and to agricul¬ 
 tural communities. Nothing could be more erroneous. 
 Land is necessary to all production, no matter what be 
 its kind or form; land is the standing-place, the workshop, 
 the storehouse of labor; it is to the human being the only 
 means by which he can obtain access to the material 
 universe or utilize its powers. Without land man cannot 
 exist. To whom the ownership of land is given, to him is 
 given the virtual ownership of the men who must live 
 upon it. When this necessity is absolute, then does he 
 
28 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 necessarily become their absolute master. And just as 
 this point is neared—that is to say, just as competition 
 increases the demand for land—just in that degree does 
 the power of taking a larger and larger share of the earn¬ 
 ings of labor increase. It is this power that gives land 
 its value; this is the power that enables the owner of valu¬ 
 able land to reap where he has not sown—to appropriate 
 to himself wealth which he has had no share in producing. 
 Rent is always the devourer of wages. The owner of city 
 land takes, in the rents he receives for his land, the earn¬ 
 ings of labor just as clearly as does the owner of farming 
 land. And whether he be working in a garret ten stories 
 above the street, or in a mining drift thousands of feet 
 below the earth’s surface, it is the competition for the use 
 of land that ultimately determines what proportion of the 
 produce of his labor the laborer will get for himself. This 
 is the reason why modern progress does not tend to extir¬ 
 pate poverty; this is the reason why, with all the inventions 
 and improvements and economies which so enormously 
 increase productive power, wages everywhere tend to the 
 minimum of a bare living. The cause that in Ireland 
 produces poverty and distress—the ownership by some of 
 the people of the land on which and from which the whole 
 people must live—everywhere else produces the same 
 results. It is this that produces the hideous squalor of 
 London and Glasgow slums; it is this that makes want 
 jostle luxury in the streets of rich New York, that forces 
 little children to monotonous and stunting toil in Massa¬ 
 chusetts mills, and that fills the highways of our newest 
 States with tramps. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PROPOSED REMEDIES. 
 
 T HE facts we have been considering give to the Irish 
 agitation a significance and dignity that no effort 
 for the redress of merely local grievances, no struggle for 
 mere national independence could have. As the cause 
 which produces Irish distress exists everywhere throughout 
 modern civilization, and everywhere produces the same 
 results, the question as to what measures will fully meet 
 the case of Ireland has for us not merely a speculative 
 and sentimental interest, hut a direct and personal interest. 
 
 For a year and more the English journals and magazines 
 have been teeming with articles on the Irish Land Ques¬ 
 tion ; but, among all the remedies proposed, even by men 
 whose reputation is that of clear thinkers and advanced 
 Liberals, I have seen nothing which shows any adequate 
 grasp of the subject. And this is true also of the mea¬ 
 sures proposed by the agitators, so far as they have pro¬ 
 posed any. They are illogical and insufficient to the last 
 degree. They neither disclose any clear principle nor do 
 they aim at any result worth the struggle. 
 
 From the most timid to the most radical, these schemes 
 are restricted to one or more of the following proposi¬ 
 tions : 
 
 1st. To abolish entails and primogenitures and other 
 legal difficulties in the way of sales. 
 
 2d. To legalize and extend tenant-right. 
 
30 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 3d. To establish tribunals of arbitrament which shall 
 decide upon appeal the rent to be paid. 
 
 4th. To have the State buy out the landlords and sell 
 again on time to the tenants. 
 
 The first of these propositions is good in itself. To 
 make the transfer of land easy would be to remove obsta¬ 
 cles which prevent its passing into the hands of those who 
 would make the most out of it. But, so far as this will 
 have any effect at all, it will not be toward giving the 
 Irish tenants more merciful landlords ; nor yet will it be 
 to the diffusion of landed property. Those who think so 
 shut their eyes to the fact that the tendency of the time 
 is to concentration. 
 
 As for the propositions which look in various forms to 
 the establishment of tenant-right, it is to be observed that, 
 in so far as they go beyond giving the tenant surety for 
 his improvements, they merely carve out of the estate of 
 the landlord an estate for the tenant. Even if the pro¬ 
 posal to empower the courts, in cases of dispute, to decide 
 what is a fair rent were to amount to anything (and the 
 Land Leaguers say it would not), the fixing of a lower 
 rent as the share of the landlord would merely enable the 
 tenant to charge a higher price to his successor. What¬ 
 ever might thus be done for present agricultural tenants 
 would be of no use to future tenants, and nothing what¬ 
 ever would be done for the masses of the people. In fact, 
 that the effect would be to increase rent in the aggregate 
 there can be no doubt. Whatever modification might be 
 made in the landlord’s demands, the sum which the out¬ 
 going tenant would ask would be very certain to be all he 
 could possibly get, so that rent in the aggregate, instead 
 of being diminished, would be screwed up to the full 
 competition or rack-rent standard. 
 
 What seem to be considered the most radical proposi¬ 
 tions yet made are those for the creation of a “ peasant 
 
PROPOSED REMEDIES. 
 
 31 
 
 proprietary the State to buy out the landlords and resell 
 to the tenants, for annual payments extending over a term 
 of years, and covering principal and interest. Waiving 
 all practical difficulties, and they are very great, what 
 could thus be accomplished ? Nothing real and permanent. 
 For not merely is this, too, but a partial measure, which 
 could not improve the condition of the masses of the people 
 or help those most needing help, but no sooner were the 
 lands thus divided than a process of concentration would 
 infallibly set in which would be all the more rapid from 
 the fact that the new landholders would be heavily mort¬ 
 gaged. The tendency to concentration which has so 
 steadily operated in Great Britain, and is so plainly show¬ 
 ing itself in our new States, must operate in Ireland, and 
 would immediately begin to weld together again the little 
 patches of the newly created peasant proprietors. The 
 tendency of the time is against peasant proprietorships; 
 it is in everything to concentration, not to separation. 
 The tendency which has wiped out the small landowners, 
 the boasted yeomanry, of England—which in our new 
 States is uniting the quarter-sections of preemption and 
 homestead settlers into great farms of thousands of acres 
 —is already too strong to be resisted, and is constantly 
 becoming stronger and more penetrating. For it springs 
 from the inventions and improvements and economies 
 which are transforming modern industry—the same influ¬ 
 ences which are concentrating population in large cities, 
 business into the hands of great houses, and for the 
 blacksmith making his own nails or the weaver working his 
 own loom substitute the factory of the great corporation. 
 
 That a great deal that the English advocates of 
 peasant proprietorship have to say about the results of 
 their favorite system in continental Europe is not borne 
 out by the facts, any one who chooses to look over the 
 testimony may see. But it is useless to discuss that. 
 
32 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Peasant proprietorship in continental Europe is a sur¬ 
 vival. It exists only among populations which have not 
 felt fully the breath of the new era. It continues to exist 
 only by virtue of conditions which do not obtain in Ireland. 
 The Irish peasant is not the French or Belgian peasant. 
 He is in the habit of having very “long families,” they 
 very short ones. He has become familiar with the idea 
 of emigrating j they have not. He can hardly be expected 
 to have acquired those habits of close economy and careful 
 forethought for which they are so remarkable; and there 
 are various agencies, among which are to be counted the 
 national schools and the reaction from America, that have 
 roused in him aspirations and ambitions which would 
 prevent him from continuing to water his little patch 
 with his sweat, as do the French and Belgian peasant 
 proprietors, when he could sell it for enough to emigrate. 
 Peasant proprietorship, like that of France and Belgium, 
 might possibly have been instituted in Ireland some time 
 ago, before the railroad and the telegraph and the national 
 schools and the establishment of the steam bridge across 
 the Atlantic. But to do it now to any extent, and with 
 any permanency, seems to me about a-s practicable as to 
 go back to hand-loom weaving in Manchester. Much 
 more in accordance with modern tendencies is the notice 
 I have recently seen of the formation of a company to 
 buy up land in Southern Ireland, and cultivate it on a 
 large scale j for to production on a large scale modern 
 processes more and more strongly tend. It is not merely 
 the steam-plow and harvesting machinery that make the 
 cultivation of the large field more profitable than that of 
 the small one; it is the railroad, the telegraph, the mani¬ 
 fold inventions of all sorts. Even butter and cheese are 
 now made and chickens hatched and fattened in factories. 
 
 But the fatal defect of all these schemes as remedial 
 measures is, that they do not go to the cause of the disease. 
 
PROPOSED REMEDIES. 
 
 33 
 
 What they propose to do, they propose to do for merely 
 one class of the Irish people—the agricultural tenants. 
 Now, the agricultural tenants are not so large nor so poor 
 a class (among them are in fact many large capitalist 
 farmers of the English type) as the agricultural laborers, 
 while besides these there are the laborers of other kinds— 
 the artisans, operatives, and poorer classes of the cities. 
 What extension of tenant-right or conversion of tenant- 
 farmers into partial or absolute proprietors is to benefit 
 them ? Even if the number of owners of Irish soil could 
 thus be increased, the soil of Ireland would still be in the 
 hands of a class, though of a somewhat larger class. And 
 the spring of Irish misery would be untouched. Those 
 who had merely their labor would be as badly off as now, 
 if not in some respects worse off. Rent would soon devour 
 wages, and the injustice involved in the present system 
 would be intrenched by the increase in the number who 
 seemingly profit by it. 
 
 It is that peasant proprietors would strengthen the 
 existing system that makes schemes for creating them so 
 popular among certain sections of the propertied classes 
 of Great Britain. This is the ground on which these 
 schemes are largely urged. These small landowners are 
 desired that they may be used as a buffer and bulwark 
 against any questioning of the claims of the larger owners. 
 They would be put forward to resist the shock of u agrari¬ 
 anism,” just as the women are put forward in resistance 
 to the process-servers. u What! do you propose to rob 
 these poor peasants of their little homesteads ? ” would be 
 the answer to any one who proposed to attack the system 
 under which the larger landholders draw millions annually 
 from the produce of labor. 
 
 •And here is the danger in the adoption of measures not 
 based upon correct principles. They fail not only to do 
 any real and permanent good, but they make proper 
 
34 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 measures more difficult. Even if a majority of the people 
 of Ireland were made the owners of the soil, the injustice 
 to the minority would be as great as now, and wages 
 would still tend to the minimum, which in good times 
 means a bare living, and in bad times means starvation. 
 Even were it possible to cut up the soil of Ireland into 
 those little patches into which the soil of France and 
 Belgium is cut in the districts where the morcellement 
 prevails, this would not be the attainment of a just and 
 healthy social state. But it would make the attainment 
 of a just and healthy social state much more difficult. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHOSE LAND IS IT? 
 
 W HAT, then, is the true solution of the Irish problem ? 
 
 The answer is as important to other countries as 
 to Ireland, for the Irish problem is but a local phase of 
 the great problem which is everywhere pressing upon the 
 civilized world. 
 
 With the leaders of the Irish movement, the question 
 is, of course, not merely what ought to be done, but what 
 can be done. But, to a clear understanding of the whole 
 subject, the question of principle must necessarily precede 
 that of method. We must decide where we want to go 
 before we can decide what is the best road to take. 
 
 The first question that naturally arises is that of right. 
 Among whatever kind of people such a matter as this is 
 discussed, the question of right is sure to be raised. This, 
 to me, seems a very significant thing; for I believe it to 
 spring from nothing less than a universal perception of 
 the human mind—a perception often dim and vague, yet 
 still a universal perception, that justice is the supreme law 
 of the universe, so that, as a short road to what is best, 
 we instinctively ask what is right ? 
 
 Now, what are the rights of this case ? To whom right¬ 
 fully does the soil of Ireland belong? Who are justly 
 entitled to its use and to all the benefits that flow from its 
 use? Let us settle this question clearly and decisively, 
 before we attempt anything else. 
 
36 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Let me go to the heart of this question by asking 
 another question: Has or has not the child born in Ireland 
 a right to live ? There can be but one answer, for no one 
 would contend that it was right to drown Irish babies, or 
 that any human law could make it right. Well, then, if 
 every human being born in Ireland has a right to live in 
 Ireland, these rights must be equal. If each one has a 
 right to live, then no one can have any better right to live 
 than any other one. There can be no dispute about this. 
 No one will contend that it would be any less a crime to 
 drown a baby of an Irish peasant woman than it would 
 be to drown the baby of the proudest duchess, or that a 
 law commanding the one would be any more justifiable 
 than a law commanding the other. 
 
 Since, then, all the Irish people have the same equal 
 right to life, it follows that they must all have the same 
 equal right to the land of Ireland. If they are all in Ire¬ 
 land by the same equal permission of Nature, so that no 
 one of them can justly set up a superior claim to life than 
 any other one of them; so that all the rest of them could 
 not justly say to any one of them, “ You have not the same 
 right to live as we have; therefore we will pitch you out 
 of Ireland into the sea! ” then they must all have the 
 same equal rights to the elements which Nature has pro¬ 
 vided for the sustaining of life—to air, to water, and to 
 land. For to deny the equal right to the elements neces¬ 
 sary to the maintaining of life is to deny the equal right 
 to life. Any law that said, “ Certain babies have no right 
 to the soil of Ireland; therefore thej r shall be thrown off 
 the soil of Ireland;” would be precisely equivalent to a 
 law that said, u Certain babies have no right to live; 
 therefore they shall be thrown into the sea.” And as no 
 law or custom or agreement can justify the denial of the 
 equal right to life, so no law or custom or agreement can 
 justify the denial of the equal right to land. 
 
WHOSE LAND IS IT ? 
 
 37 
 
 It therefore follows, from the -very fact of their exis¬ 
 tence, that the right of each one of the people of Ireland 
 to an equal share in the land of Ireland is equal and 
 inalienable: that is to say, that the use and benefit of the 
 land of Ireland belong rightfully to the whole people of 
 Ireland, to each one as much as to every other j to no one 
 more than to any other—not to some individuals, to the 
 exclusion of other individuals; not to one class, to the 
 exclusion of other classes; not to landlords, not to tenants, 
 not to cultivators, but to the whole people. 
 
 This right is irrefutable and indefeasible. It pertains 
 to and springs from the fact of existence, the right to live. 
 No law, no covenant, no agreement, can bar it. One 
 generation cannot stipulate away the rights of another 
 generation. If the whole people of Ireland were to unite 
 in bargaining away their rights in the land, how could 
 they justly bargain away the right of the child who the 
 next moment is born ? No one can bargain away what is 
 not his; no one can stipulate away the rights of another. 
 And if the new-born infant has an equal right to life, then 
 has it an equal right to land. Its warrant, which comes 
 direct from Nature, and which sets aside all human laws 
 or title-deeds, is the fact that it is born. 
 
 Here we have a firm, self-apparent principle from which 
 we may safely proceed. The land of Ireland does not 
 belong to one individual more than to another individual; 
 to one class more than to another class; to one generation 
 more than to the generations that come after. It belongs 
 to the whole people who at the time exist upon it. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LANDLORDS’ RIGHT IS LABOR’S WRONG. 
 
 I DO not dwell upon this principle because it has not 
 yet been asserted. I dwell upon it because, although 
 it has been asserted, no proposal to carry it out has yet 
 been made. The cry has indeed gone up that the land of 
 Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland, but there the 
 recognition of the principle has stopped. To say that the 
 land of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland, and then 
 merely to ask that rents shall be reduced, or that tenant- 
 right be extended, or that the State shall buy the land 
 from one class and sell it to another class, is utterly 
 illogical and absurd. 
 
 Either the* land of Ireland rightfully belongs to the 
 Irish landlords, or it rightfully belongs to the Irish people; 
 there can be no middle ground. If it rightfully belongs 
 to the landlords, then is the whole agitation wrong, and 
 every scheme for interfering in any way with the land¬ 
 lords is condemned. If the land rightfully belongs to the 
 landlords, then it is nobody else’s business what they do 
 with it, or what rent they charge for it, or where or how 
 they spend the money they draw from it, and whoever 
 does not want to live upon it on the landlords’ terms is at 
 perfect liberty to starve or emigrate. But if, on the con¬ 
 trary, the land of Ireland rightfully belongs to the Irish 
 people, then the only logical demand is, not that the 
 tenants shall be made joint owners with the landlords, 
 
LANDLORDS’ RIGHT IS LABOR’S WRONG. 
 
 39 
 
 not that it be bought from a smaller class and sold to a 
 larger class, but that it be resumed by the whole people. 
 To propose to pay the landlords for it is to deny the right 
 of the people to it. The real fight for Irish rights must 
 be made outside of Ireland; and, above all things, the 
 Irish agitators ought to take a logical position, based upon 
 a broad, clear principle which can be everywhere under¬ 
 stood and appreciated. To ask for tenant-right or peasant 
 proprietorship is not to take such a position; to concede 
 that the landlords ought to be paid is utterly to abandon 
 the principle that the land belongs rightfully to the people. 
 
 To admit, as even the most radical of the Irish agitators 
 seem to admit, that the landlords should be paid the value 
 of their lands, is to deny the rights of the people. It is 
 an admission that the agitation is an interference with 
 the just rights of property. It is to ignore the only prin¬ 
 ciple on which the agitation can be justified, and on which 
 it can gather strength for the accomplishment of anything 
 real and permanent. To admit this is to admit that the 
 Irish people have no more right to the soil of Ireland than 
 any outsider. For, any outsider can go to Ireland and 
 buy land, if he will give its market value. To propose to 
 buy out the landlords is to propose to continue the present 
 injustice in another form. They would get in interest on 
 the debt created what they now get in rent. They would 
 still have a lien upon Irish labor. 
 
 And why should the landlords be paid ? If the land of 
 Ireland belongs of natural right to the Irish people, what 
 valid claim for payment can be set up by the landlords ? 
 No one will contend that the land is theirs of natural 
 right, for the day has gone by when men could be told 
 that the Creator of the universe intended his bounty for 
 the exclusive use and benefit of a privileged class of his 
 creatures—that he intended a few to roll in luxury while 
 their fellows toiled and starved for them. The claim of 
 
1 
 
 40 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 the landlords to the land rests not on natural right, but 
 merely on municipal law—on municipal law which con¬ 
 travenes natural right. And, whenever the sovereign 
 power changes municipal law so as to conform to natural 
 right, what claim can they assert to compensation ? Some 
 of them bought their lands, it is true $ but they got no 
 better title than the seller had to give. And what are 
 these titles? Titles based on murder and robbery, on 
 blood and rapine—titles which rest on the most atrocious 
 and wholesale crimes. Created by force and maintained 
 by force, they have not behind them the first shadow of 
 right. That Henry II. and James I. and Cromwell and 
 the Long Parliament had the power to give and grant 
 Irish lands is true; but will any one contend they had the 
 right ? Will any one contend that in all the past genera¬ 
 tions there has existed on the British Isles or anywhere 
 else any human being, or any number of human beings, 
 who had the right to say that in the year 1881 the great 
 mass of Irishmen should be compelled to pay—in many 
 cases to residents of England, France, or the United States 
 —for the privilege of living in their native country and 
 making a living from their native soil ? Even if it be said 
 that might makes right; even if it be contended that in 
 the twelfth, or seventeenth, or eighteenth century lived 
 men who, having the power, had therefore the right, to give 
 away the soil of Ireland, it cannot be contended that their 
 right went further than their power, or that their gifts and 
 grants are binding on the men of the present generation. 
 No one caji urge such a preposterous doctrine. And, if 
 might makes right, then the moment the people get power 
 to take the land the rights of the present landholders 
 utterly cease, and any proposal to compensate them is a 
 proposal to do a fresh wrong. 
 
 Should it be urged that, no matter on what thev origi- 
 nally rest, the lapse of time has given to the legal owners 
 
LANDLORDS’ RIGHT IS LABOR’S WRONG. 
 
 41 
 
 of Irisli land a title of which they cannot now he justly 
 deprived without compensation, it is sufficient to ask, with 
 Herbert Spencer, at what rate per annum wrong becomes 
 right? Even the shallow pretense that the acquiescence 
 of society can vest in a few the exclusive right to that 
 element on which and from which Nature has ordained 
 that all must live, cannot be urged in the case of Ireland. 
 For the Irish people have never acquiesced in their spolia¬ 
 tion, unless the bound and gagged victim may be said to 
 acquiesce in the robbery and maltreatment which he 
 cannot prevent. Though the memory of their ancient 
 rights in the land of their country may have been utterly 
 stamped out among the people of England, and have been 
 utterly forgotten among their kin on this side of the sea, 
 it has long survived among the Irish. If the Irish people 
 have gone hungry and cold and ignorant, if they have 
 been evicted from lands on which their ancestors had lived 
 from time immemorial, if they have been forced to emi¬ 
 grate or to starve, it has not been for the want of protest. 
 They have protested all they could; they have struggled 
 all they could. It has been but superior force that has 
 stifled their protests and made their struggles vain. In 
 a blind, dumb way, they are protesting now and strug¬ 
 gling now, though even if their hands were free they 
 might not at first know how to untie the knots in the cords 
 that bind them. But acquiesce they never have. 
 
 Yet, even supposing they had aquiesced, as in their 
 ignorance the working-classes of 'Such countries as Eng¬ 
 land and the United States now acquiesce, in the iniquitous 
 system which makes the common birthright of all the 
 exclusive property of some. What then? Does such 
 acquiescence turn wrong into right? If the sleeping 
 traveler wake to find a robber With his hand in his pocket, 
 is he bound to buy the robber off—bound not merely to 
 let him keep what he has previously taken, but pay him 
 
42 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 the full value of all he expected the sleep of his victim to 
 permit him to get? If the stockholders of a bank find 
 that for a long term of years their cashier has been appro¬ 
 priating the lion’s share of the profits, are they to be told 
 that they cannot discharge him without paying him for 
 what he might have got, had his peculations not been 
 discovered ? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 
 
 I APOLOGIZE to the Irish landlords and to all other 
 landlords for likening them to thieves and robbers. 
 I trust they will understand that I do not consider them 
 as personally worse than other men, but that I am obliged 
 to use such illustrations because no others will fit the case. 
 I am concerned not with individuals, but with the system. 
 What I want to do is, to point out a distinction that in 
 the plea for the vested rights of landowners is ignored— 
 a distinction which arises from the essential difference 
 between land and things that are the produce of human 
 labor, and which is obscured by our habit of classing 
 them all together as property. 
 
 The galleys that carried Caesar to Britain, the accoutre¬ 
 ments of his legionaries, the baggage that they carried, 
 the arms that they bore, the buildings that they erected; 
 the scythed chariots of the ancient Britons, the horses 
 that drew them, their wicker boats and wattled houses— 
 where are they now ? But the land for which Roman and 
 Briton fought, there it is still. That British soil is yet 
 as fresh and as new as it was in the days of the Romans. 
 Generation after generation has lived on it since, and 
 generation after generation will live on it yet. Now, here 
 is a very great difference. The right to possess and to 
 pass on the ownership of things that in their nature decay 
 and soon cease to be is a very different thing from the 
 
44 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 right to possess and to pass on the ownership of that 
 which does not decay, but from which each successive 
 generation must live. 
 
 To show how this difference between land and such 
 other species of property as are properly styled wealth 
 bears upon the argument for the vested rights of land¬ 
 holders, let me illustrate again. 
 
 Captain Kidd was a pirate. He made a business of 
 sailing the seas, capturing merchantmen, making their 
 crews walk the plank, and appropriating their cargoes. In 
 this way he accumulated much wealth, which he is thought 
 to have buried. But let us suppose, for the sake of the 
 illustration, that he did not bury his wealth, but left it 
 to his legal heirs, and they to their heirs and so on, until 
 at the present day this wealth or a part of it has come 
 to a great-great-grandson of Captain Kidd. Now, let us 
 suppose that some one—say a great-great-grandson of one 
 of the shipmasters whom Captain Kidd plundered, makes 
 complaint, and says : “ This man’s great-great-grandfather 
 plundered my great-great-grandfather of certain things 
 or certain sums, which have been transmitted to him, 
 whereas but for* this wrongful act they would have been 
 transmitted to me; therefore, I demand that he be made 
 to restore them.” What would society answer? 
 
 Society, speaking by its proper tribunals, and in accor¬ 
 dance with principles recognized among all civilized na¬ 
 tions, would say: “We cannot entertain such a demand. 
 It may be true that Mr. Kidd’s great-great-grandfather 
 robbed your great-great-grandfather, and that as the result 
 of this wrong he has got things that otherwise might have 
 come to you. But we cannot inquire into occurrences 
 that happened so long ago. Each generation has enough 
 to do to attend to its own affairs. If we go to righting 
 the wrongs and reopening the controversies of our great- 
 great-grandfathers, there will be endless disputes and 
 
THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 45 
 
 pretexts for dispute. What you say may be true, but 
 somewhere we must draw the line, and have an end to 
 strife. Though this man’s great-great-grandfatlier may 
 have robbed your great-great-grandfather, he has not 
 robbed you . He came into possession of these things 
 peacefully, and has held them peacefully, and we must 
 take this peaceful possession, when it has been continued 
 for a certain time, as absolute evidence of just title 5 for, 
 were we not to do that, there would be no end to dispute 
 and no secure possession of anything.” 
 
 Now, it is this common-sense principle that is expressed 
 in the statute of limitations—in the doctrine of vested 
 rights. This is the reason why it is held—and as to most 
 things held justly—that peaceable possession for a certain 
 time cures all defects of title. 
 
 But let us pursue the illustration a little further: 
 
 Let us suppose that Captain Kidd, having established 
 a large and profitable piratical business, left it to his son, 
 and he to his son, and so on, until the great-great-grand¬ 
 son, who now pursues it, has come to consider it the most 
 natural thing in the world that his ships should roam the 
 sea, capturing peaceful merchantmen, making their crews 
 walk the plank, and bringing home to him much plunder, 
 whereby he is enabled, though he does no work at all, to 
 live in very great luxury, and look down with contempt 
 upon people who have to work. But at last, let us sup¬ 
 pose, the merchants get tired of having their ships sunk 
 and their goods taken, and sailors get tired of trembling 
 for their lives every time a sail lifts above the horizon, 
 and they demand of society that piracy be stopped. 
 
 Now, what should society say if Mr. Kidd got indignant, 
 appealed to the doctrine of vested rights, and asserted 
 that society was bound to prevent any interference with 
 the business that he had inherited, and that, if it wanted 
 him to stop, it must buy him out, paying him all that his 
 
46 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 business was worth—that is to say, at least as much as he 
 could make in twenty years’ successful pirating, so that 
 if he stopped pirating he could still continue to live in 
 luxury off of the profits of the merchants and the earnings 
 of the sailors ? 
 
 What ought society to say to such a claim as this? 
 There will be but one answer. We will all say that society 
 should tell Mr. Kidd that his was a business to which the 
 statute of limitations and the doctrine of vested rights 
 did not apply; that because his father, and his grand¬ 
 father, and his great- and great-great-grandfather pursued 
 the business of capturing ships and making their crews 
 walk the plank, was no reason why he should be permitted 
 to pursue it. Society, we will all agree, ought to say he 
 would have to stop piracy and stop it at once, and that 
 without getting a cent for stopping. 
 
 Or supposing it had happened that Mr. Kidd had sold 
 out his piratical business to Smith, Jones, or Robinson, 
 we will all agree that society ought to say that their pur¬ 
 chase of the business gave them no greater right than 
 Mr. Kidd had. 
 
 We will all agree that that is what society ought to say. 
 Observe, I do not ask what society would say. 
 
 For, ridiculous and preposterous as it may appear, I 
 am satisfied that, under the circumstances I have supposed, 
 society would not for a long time say what we have 
 agreed it ought to say. Not only would all the Kidds 
 loudly claim that to make them give up their business 
 without full recompense would be a wicked interference 
 with vested rights, but the justice of this claim would at 
 first be assumed as a matter of course by all or nearly 
 all the influential classes—the great lawyers, the able 
 journalists, the writers for the magazines, the eloquent 
 clergymen, and the principal professors in the principal 
 universities. Nay, even the merchants and sailors, when 
 
THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 47 
 
 they first began to complain, would be so tyrannized and 
 browbeaten by this public opinion that they would hardly 
 think of more than of buying out the Kidds, and, wher¬ 
 ever here and there any one dared to raise his voice in 
 favor of stopping piracy at once and without compensa¬ 
 tion, he would only do so under penalty of being stigma¬ 
 tized as a reckless disturber and wicked foe of social 
 order. 
 
 If any one denies this, if any one says mankind are not 
 such fools, then I appeal to universal history to bear me 
 witness. I appeal to the facts of to-day. 
 
 Show me a wrong, no matter how monstrous, that ever 
 yet, among any people, became ingrafted in the social 
 system, and I will prove to you the truth of what I say. 
 
 The majority of men do not think; the majority of men 
 have to expend so much energy in the struggle to make 
 a living that they do not have time to think. The majority 
 of men accept, as a matter of course, whatever is. This 
 is what makes the task of the social reformer so difficult, 
 his path so hard. This is what brings upon those who 
 first raise their voices in behalf of a great truth the sneers 
 of the powerful and the curs s of the rabble, ostracism 
 and martyrdom, the robe of derision and the crown of 
 thorns. 
 
 Am I not right ? Have there not been states of society 
 in which piracy has been considered the most respectable 
 and honorable of pursuits ? Did the Roman populace see 
 anything more reprehensible in a gladiatorial show than 
 we do in a horse-race ? Does public opinion in Dahomey 
 see anything reprehensible in the custom of sacrificing a 
 thousand or two human beings by way of signalizing 
 grand occasions ? Are there not states of society in which, 
 in spite of the natural proportions of the sexes, polygamy 
 is considered a matter of course ? Are there not states of 
 society in which it would be considered the most ridiculous 
 
48 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 thing in the world to say that a man’s son was more closely 
 related to him than his nephew? Are there not states 
 of society in which it would he considered disreputable 
 for a man to carry a burden while a woman who could 
 stagger under it was around?—states of society in which 
 the husband who did not occasionally beat his wife would 
 be deemed by both sexes a weak-minded, low-spirited 
 fellow ? What would Chinese fashionable society consider 
 more outrageous than to be told that mothers should not 
 be permitted to squeeze their daughters’ feet, or Flathead 
 women than being restrained from tying a board on their 
 infants’ skulls ? How long has it been since the monstrous 
 doctrine of the divine right of kings was taught through 
 all Christendom ? 
 
 What is the slave-trade but piracy of the worst kind ? 
 Yet it is not long since the slave-trade was looked upon 
 as a perfectly respectable business, affording as legitimate 
 an opening for the investment of capital and the display 
 of enterprise as any other. The proposition to prohibit 
 it was first looked upon as ridiculous, then as fanatical, 
 then as wicked. It was only slowly and by hard fighting 
 that the truth in regard to it gained ground. Does not 
 our very Constitution bear witness to what I say? Does 
 not the fundamental law of the nation, adopted twelve 
 years after the enunciation of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
 pendence, declare that for twenty years the slave-trade 
 shall not be prohibited nor restricted? Such dominion 
 had the idea of vested interests over the minds of those 
 who had already proclaimed the inalienable right of man 
 to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! 
 
 Is it not but yesterday that in the freest and greatest 
 republic on earth, among the people who boast that they 
 lead the very van of civilization, this doctrine of vested 
 rights was deemed a sufficient justification for all the 
 cruel wrongs of human slavery ? Is it not but yesterday 
 
THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 49 
 
 when whoever dared to say that the rights of property did 
 not jnstly attach to human beings; when whoever dared 
 to deny that human beings could be rightfully bought 
 and sold like cattle—the husband torn from the wife and 
 the child from the mother; when whoever denied the 
 right of whoever had paid his money for him to work or 
 whip his own nigger was looked upon as a wicked assailant 
 of the rights of property ? Is it not but yesterday when 
 in the South whoever whispered such a thought took his 
 life in his hands; when in the North the abolitionist 
 was held by the churches as worse than an infidel, was 
 denounced by the politicians and rotten-egged by the mob ? 
 I was born in a Northern State, I have never lived in the 
 South, I am not yet gray; but I well remember, as every 
 American of middle age must remember, how over and 
 over again I have heard all questionings of slavery silenced 
 by the declaration that the negroes were the property of 
 their masters, and that to take away a man’s slave without 
 payment was as much a crime as to take away his horse 
 without paymen t. And whoever does not remember that 
 far back, let him look over American literature previous 
 to the war, and say whether, if the business of piracy had 
 been a flourishing business, it would have lacked defenders ? 
 Let him say whether any proposal to stop the business of 
 piracy without compensating the pirates would not have 
 been denounced at first as a proposal to set aside vested 
 rights ? 
 
 But I am appealing to other states of society and to 
 times that are past merely to get my readers, if I can, out 
 of their accustomed ruts of thought. The proof of what 
 I assert about the Kidds and their’ business is in the 
 thought and speech of to-day. 
 
 Here is a system which- robs the producers of wealth as 
 remorselessly and far more regularly and systematically 
 than the pirate robs the merchantman. Here is a system 
 
50 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 that steadily condemns thousands to far more lingering 
 and horrible deaths than that of walking the plank—to 
 death of the mind and death of the soul, as well as death of 
 the body. These things are undisputed. No one denies 
 that Irish pauperism and famine are the direct results of 
 this land system, and no one who will examine the subject 
 will deny that the chronic pauperism and chronic famine 
 which everywhere mark our civilization are the results 
 of this system. Yet we are told—nay, it seems to be 
 taken for granted—that this system cannot be abolished 
 without buying off those who profit by it. Was there 
 ever more degrading abasement of the human mind before 
 a fetish ? Can we wonder, as we see it, at any perversion 
 of ideas ? 
 
 Consider: is not the parallel I have drawn a true one ? 
 Is it not just as much a perversion of ideas to apply the 
 doctrine of vested rights to property in land, when these 
 are its admitted fruits, as it was to apply it to property 
 in human flesh and blood; as it would be to apply it to 
 the business of piracy? In what does the claim of the 
 Irish landholders differ from that of the hereditary pirate 
 or the man who has bought out a piratical business? 
 u Because I have inherited or purchased the business of 
 robbing merchantmen,” says the pirate, u therefore respect 
 for the rights of property mu t compel you to let me go 
 on robbing ships and making sailors walk the plank until 
 you buy me out.” 11 Because we have inherited or pur¬ 
 chased the privilege of appropriating to ourselves the 
 lion’s share of the produce of labor,” says the landlord, 
 “ therefore you must continue to let us do it, even though 
 poor wretches shiver with cold and faint with hunger, 
 even though, in their poverty and misery, they are reduced 
 to wallow with the pigs.” What is the difference? 
 
 This is the point I want to make clearly and distinctly, 
 for it shows a distinction that in current thought is over- 
 
THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 51 
 
 looked. Property in land, like property in slaves, is 
 essentially different from property in things that are the 
 result of labor. Rob a man or a people of money, or 
 goods, or cattle, and the robbery is finished there and 
 then. The lapse of time does not, indeed, change wrong 
 into right, but it obliterates the effects of the deed. That 
 is done ; it is over; and, unless it be very soon righted, it 
 glides away into the past, with the men who were parties 
 to it, so swiftly that nothing save omniscience can trace 
 its effects; and in attempting to right it we would be in 
 danger of doing fresh wrong. The past is forever beyond 
 us. We can neither punish nor recompense the dead. 
 But rob a people of the land on which they must live, 
 and the robbery is continuous. It is a fresh robbery of 
 every succeeding generation—a new robbery every year 
 and every day; it is like the robbery which condemns to 
 slavery the children of the slave. To apply to it the 
 statute of limitations, to acknowledge for it the title of 
 prescription, is not to condone the past; it is to legalize 
 robbery in the present, to justify it in the future. The 
 indictment which really lies against the Irish landlords is 
 not that their ancestors, or the ancestors of their grantors, 
 robbed the ancestors of the Irish people. That makes no 
 difference. “Let the dead bury their dead.” The indict¬ 
 ment that truly lies is that here, now, in the year 1881 , 
 they rob the Irish people. And shall we be told that 
 there can be a vested right to continue such robbery ? 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ONLY WAY, THE EASY WAY. 
 
 I HAVE dwelt so long upon this question of compen¬ 
 sating landowners, not merely because it is of great 
 practical importance, but because its discussion brings 
 clearly into view the principles upon which the land 
 question, in any country, can alone be justly and finally 
 settled. In the light of these principles we see that land- 
 owners have no rightful claim either to the land or to 
 compensation for its resumption by the people, and, 
 further than that, we see that no such rightful claim can 
 ever be created. It would be wrong to pay the present 
 landowners for u their ” land at the expense of the people; 
 it would likewise be wrong to sell it again to smaller 
 holders. It would be wrong to abolish the payment of 
 rent, and to give the land to its present cultivators. In 
 the very nature of things, land cannot rightfully be made 
 individual property. This principle is absolute. The 
 title of a peasant proprietor deserves no more respect 
 than the title of a great territorial noble. No sovereign 
 political power, no compact or agreement, even though 
 consented to by the whole population of the globe, can 
 give to an individual a valid title to the exclusive owner¬ 
 ship of a square inch of soil. The earth is an entailed 
 estate—entailed upon all the generations of the children 
 of men, by a deed written in the constitution of Nature, 
 a deed that no human proceedings can bar, and no pre- 
 
THE ONLY WAY, THE EASY WAY. 
 
 53 
 
 scription determine. Each succeeding generation has but 
 a tenancy for life. Admitting that any set of men may 
 barter away their own natural rights (and this logically 
 involves an admission of the right of suicide), they can 
 no more barter away the rights of their successors than 
 they can barter away the rights of the inhabitants of 
 other worlds. 
 
 What should be aimed at in the settlement of the Irish 
 Land Question is thus very clear. The u three F’s” are, 
 what they have already been called, three frauds; and the 
 proposition to create peasant proprietorship is no better. 
 It will not do merely to carve out of the estates of the 
 landlords minor estates for the tenants; it will not do 
 merely to substitute a larger for a smaller class of pro¬ 
 prietors ; it will not do to confine the settlement to agri¬ 
 cultural land, leaving to its present possessors the land of 
 the towns and villages. None of these lame and impotent 
 conclusions will satisfy the demands of justice or cure the 
 bitter evils now so apparent. The only true and just 
 solution of the problem, the only end worth aiming at, is 
 to make all the land the common property of all the 
 people. 
 
 This principle conceded, the question of method arises. 
 How shall this be done ? Nothing is easier. It is merely 
 necessary to divert the rent which now flows into the 
 pockets of the landlords into the common treasury of the 
 whole people. It is not possible so to divide up the land 
 of Ireland as to give each family, still less each individual, 
 an equal share. And, even if that were possible, it would 
 not be possible to maintain equality, for old people are 
 constantly dying and new people constantly being born, 
 while the relative value of land is constantly changing. 
 But it is possible to divide the rent equally, or, what 
 amounts to the same thing, to apply it to purposes of 
 common benefit. This is the way, and this is the only 
 
54 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 way, in which absolute justice can be done. This is the 
 way, and this is the only way, in which the equal right of 
 every man, woman, and child can be acknowledged and 
 secured. As Herbert Spencer says of it: * 
 
 Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civilization; 
 may he carried out without involving a community of goods, and 
 need cause no very serious 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 possession 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 com¬ 
 munity. 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 system, the earth might 
 be inclosed, occupied, and cultivated, in entire subordination to the 
 law of equal freedom. 
 
 Now, it is a very easy thing thus to sweep away all 
 private ownership of land, and convert all occupiers into 
 tenants of the State, by appropriating rent. No compli¬ 
 cated laws or cumbersome machinery is necessary. It 
 is necessary only to tax land up to its full value. Do 
 that, and without any talk about dispossessing landlords, 
 without any use of the ugly word “ confiscation,” without 
 any infringement of the just rights of property, the land 
 would become virtually the people’s, while the landlords 
 would be left the absolute and unqualified possessors of 
 —their deeds of title and conveyance! They could con¬ 
 tinue to call themselves landlords, if they wished to, just 
 as that poor old Bourbon, the Comte de Chambord, con¬ 
 tinues to call himself King of France; but, as what, under 
 
 * “ Social Statics,” Chapter IX., sec. 8. 
 
THE ONLY WAY, THE EASY WAY. 55 
 
 this system, was paid by the tenant would be taken by 
 the State, it is pretty clear that middlemen would not 
 long survive, and that very soon the occupiers of land 
 would come to be nominally the owners, though, in reality, 
 they would be the tenants of the whole people. 
 
 How beautifully this simple method would satisfy 
 every economic requirement $ how, freeing labor and 
 capital from the fetters that now oppress them (for all 
 other taxes could be easily remitted), it would enormously 
 increase the production of wealth; how it would make 
 distribution conform to the law of justice, dry up the 
 springs of want and misery, elevate society from its lowest 
 stratum, and give all their fair share in the blessings of 
 advancing civilization, can perhaps be fully shown only 
 by such a detailed examination of the whole social problem 
 as I have made in a book * which I hope will be read by 
 all the readers of this, since in it I go over much ground 
 and treat many subjects which cannot be even touched 
 upon here. Nevertheless, any one can see that to tax 
 land up to its full rental value would amount to precisely 
 the same thing as formally to take possession of it, and 
 then let it out to the highest bidders. 
 
 * “ Progress and Poverty.” 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PRINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY. 
 
 W E have now seen the point that should be aimed 
 at, and the method by which it is to be reached. 
 There is another branch of the subject which practical 
 men must consider: the political forces that may be mar¬ 
 shaled ; the political resistance that must be overcome. 
 It is one thing to work out such a problem in the closet— 
 to demonstrate its proper solution to the satisfaction of a 
 few intelligent readers. It is another thing to solve it 
 in the field of action, where ignorance, prejudice, and 
 powerful interests must be met. 
 
 It cannot be that the really earnest men in the Irish 
 movement are satisfied with any program yet put forth. 
 But they are doubtless influenced by the fear that the 
 avowal of radical views and aims would not merely 
 intensify present opposition, but frighten away from 
 their cause large numbers and important influences now 
 with it. To say nothing of English conservatism, there 
 is in Ireland a large class now supporting the movement 
 who are morbidly afraid of anything which savors of 
 u communism ” or “ socialism,” while in the United States, 
 whence much moral support and pecuniary aid have been 
 derived, it is certain that many of those who are now 
 loudest in their expressions of sympathy would slink away 
 from a movement which avowed the intention of abolish¬ 
 ing private property in land. A resolution expressive of 
 
PRINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY. 
 
 57 
 
 sympathy with the Irish people in their u struggle for the 
 repeal of oppressive land laws” was, by a unanimous 
 vote of the National House of Representatives, flung full 
 in the face of the British lion. How many votes would 
 that resolution have got had it involved a declaration of 
 hostility to the institution of individual property in land ? 
 
 I understand all this. Nevertheless, I am convinced 
 that the Irish land movement would gain, not lose, were 
 its earnest leaders, disdaining timid counsels, boldly to 
 avow the principle that the land of Ireland belongs of 
 right to the whole people of Ireland, and, without bothering 
 about compensation to the landholders, to propose its 
 resumption by the people in the simple way I have sug¬ 
 gested. That, in doing this, they w^ould lose strength 
 and increase antagonism in some directions is true, but 
 they would in other directions gain strength and allay 
 antagonisms. And, while the loss would constantly tend 
 to diminish, the gain would constantly tend to increase. 
 They would, to use the phrase of Emerson, have u hitched 
 their wagon to a star.” 
 
 I admit, as will be urged by those who would hold back 
 from such an avowal as I propose, that political progress 
 must be by short steps rather than by great leaps; that 
 those who' would have the people follow them readily, 
 and especially those who would enjoy a present popularity 
 and preferment, must not go too far in advance; and that 
 to demand a little at first is often the surest way to obtain 
 much at last. 
 
 So far as personal consideration is concerned, it is only 
 to earnest men capable of feeling the inspiration of a 
 great principle that I care to talk, or that I can hope to 
 convince. To them I wish to point out that caution is 
 not wisdom when it involves the ignoring of a great 
 principle ; that it is not every step that involves progres¬ 
 sion, but only such steps as are in the right line and 
 
58 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 make easier the next; that there are strong forces that 
 wait but the raising of the true standard to rally on its 
 side. 
 
 Let the time-servers, the demagogues, the compromisers, 
 to whom nothing is right and nothing is wrong, but who 
 are always seeking to find some half-way house between 
 right and wrong—let them all go their ways. Any cause 
 which can lay hold of a great truth is the stronger with¬ 
 out them. If the earnest men among the Irish leaders 
 abandon their present half-hearted, illogical position, and 
 take their stand frankly and firmly upon the principle 
 that the youngest child of the poorest peasant has as 
 good a right to tread the soil and breathe the air of 
 Ireland as the eldest son of the proudest duke, they will 
 have put their fight on the right line. Present defeat will 
 but pave the way for future victory, and each step won 
 makes easier the next. Their position will be not only 
 logically defensible, but will prove the stronger the more 
 it is discussed; for private property in land—which 
 never arises from the natural perceptions of men, but 
 springs historically from usurpation and robbery —is 
 something so utterly absurd, so outrageously unjust, so 
 clearly a waste of productive forces and a barrier to the 
 most profitable use of natural opportunities, so thoroughly 
 opposed to all sound maxims of public policy, so glaringly 
 in the way of further progress, that fit is only tolerated 
 because the majority of men never think about it or hear 
 it questioned. Once fairly arraign it, and it must be 
 condemned; once call upon its advocates to exhibit its 
 claims, and their cause is lost in advance. There is to-day 
 no political economist of standing who dare hazard his 
 reputation by defending it on economic grounds; there is 
 to-day no thinker of eminence who either does not, like 
 Herbert Spencer, openly declare the injustice of private 
 property in land, or tacitly make the same admission. 
 
PRINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY. 
 
 59 
 
 Once force the discussion on this line, and the Irish 
 reformers will compel to their side the most active and 
 powerful of the men who mold thought. 
 
 And they will not merely close up their own ranks, 
 now in danger of being broken; they will “ carry the 
 war into Africa/’ and make possible the most powerful of 
 political combinations. 
 
 It is already beginning to be perceived that the Irish 
 movement, so far as it has yet gone, is merely in the 
 interest of a class; that, so far as it has yet voiced any 
 demand, it promises nothing to the laboring and artisan 
 classes. Its opponents already see this opportunity for 
 division, which, even without their efforts, must soon 
 show itself, and which, now that the first impulse of the 
 movement is over, will the more readily develop. To 
 close up its ranks, and hold them firm, so that, even 
 though they be forced to bend, they will not break and 
 scatter, it must cease to be a movement looking merely 
 to the benefit of the tenant-farmer, and become a move¬ 
 ment for the benefit of the whole laboring-class. 
 
 And the moment this is done the Irish land agitation 
 assumes a new and a grander phase. It ceases to be an 
 Irish movement; it becomes but the van of a world-wide 
 struggle. Count the loss and the gain. 
 
 t 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 
 
 T HE Land League movement, as an Irish movement, 
 has in its favor the strength of Irish national feeling. 
 In assuming the radical ground I urge, it would lose some 
 of this; for there are doubtless a considerable number of 
 Irishmen on both sides of the Atlantic who would shrink 
 at first from the proposal to abolish private property in 
 land. But all that is worth having would soon come back 
 to it. And its strength would be more compact and in¬ 
 tense-animated by a more definite purpose and a more 
 profound conviction. 
 
 But in ceasing to be a movement having relation simply 
 to Ireland—in proclaiming a truth and proposing a remedy 
 which apply as well to every other country—it would 
 allay opposition, which, as a mere local movement, it 
 arouses, and bring to its support powerful forces. 
 
 The powerful landed interest of England is against the 
 movement anyhow. The natural allies of the Irish agita¬ 
 tors are the English working-classes—not merely the 
 Irishmen and sons of Irishmen who, in the larger English 
 cities, are numerous enough to make some show and exert 
 some voting power, without being numerous enough to 
 effect any important result—but the great laboring masses 
 of Great Britain. So long as merely Irish measures are 
 proposed, they cannot gain the hearty support even of 
 the English radicals; so long as race prejudices and 
 
* 
 
 APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 
 
 61 
 
 hatreds are appealed to, counter-prejudices and -hatreds 
 must be aroused. 
 
 It is the very madness of folly, it is one of those political 
 blunders worse than crimes, to permit in this land agita¬ 
 tion that indiscriminating denunciation of England and 
 everything English which is so common at Land League 
 meetings and in the newspapers which voice Irish senti¬ 
 ment. The men who do this may be giving way to a 
 natural sentiment; but they are most effectually doing 
 the work of the real oppressors of Ireland. Were they 
 secret emissaries of the London police, were they bribed 
 with the gold which the British oligarchy grinds out of 
 the toil of its white slaves in mill and mine and field, 
 they could not better be doing its work. “Divide and 
 conquer ” is the golden maxim of the oppressors of man¬ 
 kind. It is by arousing race antipathies and exciting 
 national animosities, by appealing to local prejudices and 
 setting people against people, that aristocracies and 
 despotisms have been founded and maintained. They 
 who would free men must rise above such feelings if 
 they would be successful. The greatest enemy of the 
 people’s cause is he who appeals to national passion and 
 excites old hatreds. He is its best friend who does his 
 utmost to bury them out of sight. For that action and 
 reaction are equal and uniform is the law of the moral as 
 of the physical world. Herein lies the far-reaching sweep 
 of those sublime teachings that, after centuries of nominal 
 acceptance, the so-called Christian world yet ignores, and 
 which call on us to answer not revilings with revilings, 
 but to meet hatred with love. “ For,” as say the Scrip¬ 
 tures of the Buddhists, u hatred never ceases by hatred at 
 any time; hatred ceases by love; that is an old rule.” 
 To undiscriminately denounce Englishmen is simply to 
 arouse prejudices and excite animosities—to separate 
 force that sought to be united. To make this the fight 
 
62 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 
 of the Irish people against the English people is to doom 
 it to failure. To make it the common cause of the people 
 everywhere against a system which everywhere oppresses 
 and robs them is to make its success assured. Had this 
 been made to appear, the Irish members would not have 
 stood alone when it came to the final resistance to coercion. 
 Had this been made to appear, Great Britain would be in 
 a ferment at the proposal to give the government despotic 
 powers. If the Irish leaders are wise, they may yet avail 
 themselves of the rising tide of British democracy. Let 
 the Land Leaguers adopt the noble maxim of the German 
 Social Democrats. Let them be Land Leaguers first, and 
 Irishmen afterward. Let them account him an enemy of 
 their cause who seeks to pander to prejudice and arouse 
 hate. Let them arouse to a higher love than the mere 
 love of country; to a wider patriotism than that which 
 exhausts itself on one little sub-division of the human 
 race, one little spot on the great earth’s surface; and in 
 this name, and by this sign, call upon their brothers, not 
 so much to aid them, as to strike for themselves. 
 
 The Irish people have the same inalienable right to 
 govern themselves as have every other people; but the 
 full recognition of this right need not necessarily involve 
 separation, and to talk of separation first is to arouse pas¬ 
 sions that will be utilized by the worst enemies of Ireland. 
 The demand for the full political rights of the Irish people 
 will be the stronger if it be made to line with and include 
 the demand for the full political rights of the unenfran¬ 
 chised British people. And it must be remembered that 
 all the tendencies of the time are not to separation, but 
 to integration; not to independence, but to interdepen¬ 
 dence. This is observable wherever modern influences 
 reach, and in all things. To attempt to resist it is to 
 attempt to turn back the tide of progress. 
 
APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 
 
 63 
 
 It is not with the English people that the Irish people 
 have canse of quarrel. It is with the system that op¬ 
 presses both. That is the thing to denounce; that is the 
 thing to fight. And it is to be fought most effectually by 
 uniting the masses against it. Monarchy, aristocracy, 
 landlordism, would get but a new lease of life by the 
 arousing of sectional passions. The greatest blow that 
 could be struck against them would be, scrupulously 
 avoiding everything that could excite antagonistic popular 
 feeling, to carry this land agitation into Great Britain, 
 not as a mere Irish question, but as a home question as 
 well. To proclaim the universal truth that land is of 
 natural right common property; to abandon all timid 
 and half-way schemes which attempt to compromise 
 between justice and injustice, and to demand nothing 
 more nor less than a full recognition of this natural right 
 would be to do this. It would inevitably be to put the 
 British masses upon inquiry; to put British landholders 
 upon the defensive, and give them more than enough to 
 do at home. Both England and Scotland are ripe for such 
 an agitation, and, once fairly begun, it can have but one 
 result—the victory of the popular cause. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HOW TO WIN. 
 
 OR is it merely the laboring-classes of Great Britain 
 1 1 who may thus be brought into the fight, if the true 
 standard be raised. To demand the nationalization of 
 land by the simple means I have proposed makes possible 
 —nay, as the discussion goes on, makes inevitable—an 
 irresistible combination, the combination of labor and 
 capital against landlordism. This combination proved 
 its power by winning the battle of free trade in 1846 
 against the most determined resistance of the landed 
 interest. It would be much more powerful now, and, if 
 it can again be made on the land question, it can again 
 force the intrencliments of the landed aristocracy. 
 
 This combination cannot be made on any of the timid, 
 illogical schemes as yet proposed; but it can be made on 
 the broad principle that land is rightfully common prop¬ 
 erty. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is yet true that, 
 while the present position of the Irish agitators does 
 involve a menace to capital, the absolute denial of the 
 right of private property in land would not. 
 
 In admitting that the landlords ought to get any rent 
 
 at all, in admitting that, if the land is taken from them, 
 
 they must be paid for it, the Irish agitators give away 
 
 their whole case. For in this thev admit that the land 
 
 «/ 
 
 really belongs to the landlords, and put property in land 
 in the same category with other property. Thus they 
 
HOW TO WIN. 
 
 66 
 
 place themselves in an indefensible position; thus they 
 give to the agitation a “communistic”* character, and 
 excite against it that natural and proper feeling which 
 strongly resents any attack upon the rights of property 
 as an attack upon the very foundations of society. It 
 was doubtless this mistake of the agitators in admitting 
 the right of private property in land to which Archbishop 
 McCabe recently alluded in saying that some of the utter¬ 
 ances of the agitators excited the solicitude of the Holy 
 See. For this mistake gives to the agitation the char¬ 
 acter of an attack upon the lights of property. If the 
 land is really the property of the landlords (and this is 
 admitted when it is admitted that they are entitled to 
 any rent or to any compensation), then to limit the rent 
 which they shall get, or to interfere with their freedom 
 to make what terms they please with tenants, is an attack 
 upon property rights. If the land is rightfully the land¬ 
 lords’, then is any compulsion as to how they shall let it, 
 or on what terms they shall part with it, a bad and dan¬ 
 gerous precedent, which naturally alarms capital and 
 excites the solicitude of those who are concerned for good 
 morals and social order. For, if a man may be made to 
 part with one species of property by boycotting or agita¬ 
 tion, why not with another ? If a man’s title to land is 
 as rightful as his title to his watch, what is the difference 
 between agitation by Land League meetings and Parlia¬ 
 mentary filibustering to make him give up the one and 
 agitation with a cocked pistol to make him give up the 
 other ? 
 
 But, if it be denied that land justly is, or can be, private 
 property, if the equal rights of the whole people to the use of 
 the elements gratuitously furnished by Nature be asserted 
 
 * I use the word in the usual sense in which it is used by the 
 vulgar, and in which a communist is understood as one who wants 
 to divide up other people’s property. 
 
66 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 without drawback or compromise, then the essential dif¬ 
 ference between property in land and property in things 
 of human production is at once brought out. Then will 
 it clearly appear not only that the denial of the right of 
 individual property in land does not involve any menace 
 to legitimate property rights, but that the maintenance of 
 private property in land necessarily involves a denial of 
 the right to all other property, and that the recognition 
 of the claims of the landlords means a continuous robbery 
 of capital as well as of labor. 
 
 All this will appear more and more clearly as the prac¬ 
 tical measures necessary to make land common property 
 are proposed and discussed. These simple measures 
 involve no harsh proceedings, no forcible dispossession, 
 no shock to public confidence, no retrogression to a lower 
 industrial organization, no loaning of public money, or 
 establishment of cumbrous commissions. Instead of 
 doing violence to the rightful sense of property, they 
 assert and vindicate it. The way to make land common 
 property is simply to take rent for the common benefit. 
 And to do this, the easy way is to abolish one tax after 
 another, until the whole weight of taxation falls upon 
 the value of land. When that point is reached, the battle 
 is won. The hare is caught, killed, and skinned, and to 
 cook him will be a very easy matter. The real fight will 
 come on the proposition to consolidate existing taxation 
 upon land values. When that is once won, the landholders 
 will not merely have been decisively defeated, they will 
 have been routed; and the nature of land values will be 
 so generally understood that to raise taxation so as to 
 take the whole rent for common purposes will be a mere 
 matter of course. 
 
 The political art is like the military art. It consists in 
 combining the greatest strength against the point of least 
 resistance. I have pointed out the way in which, in the 
 
HOW TO WIN. 
 
 67 
 
 case we are considering, this can be done. And, the more 
 the matter is considered, the clearer and clearer will it 
 appear that there is every practical reason, as there is 
 every theoretical reason, why the Irish reformers should 
 take this vantage-ground of principle. To propose to put 
 the public burdens upon the landholders is not a novel 
 and unheard-of thing against which English prejudice 
 would run as something u newfangled,” some new inven¬ 
 tion of modern socialism. On the contrary, it is the 
 ancient English practice. It would be but a return, in a 
 form adapted to modern times, to the system under which 
 English land was originally parceled out to the predeces¬ 
 sors of the present holders—the just system, recognized 
 for centuries, that those who enjoy the common property 
 should bear the common burdens. The putting of prop¬ 
 erty in land in the same category as property in things 
 produced by labor is comparatively modern. In England, 
 as in Ireland and Scotland, as in fact among every peo¬ 
 ple of whom we know anything, the land was originally 
 treated as common property, and this recognition ran all 
 through the feudal system. The essence of the feudal 
 system was in treating the landholder not as an owner, 
 but as a lessee. William the Conqueror did not give 
 away the land of England as the Church lands were given 
 away by Henry VIII., when he divided among his syco¬ 
 phants the property of the people, which, after the manner 
 of the times, had been set apart for the support of reli¬ 
 gious, educational, and charitable institutions. To every 
 grant of land made by the Conqueror was annexed a 
 condition which amounted to a heavy perpetual tax or 
 rent. One of his first acts was to divide the soil of Eng¬ 
 land into sixty thousand knights’ fees; and thus, besides 
 many other dues and obligations, was thrown upon the 
 landholders the cost of providing and maintaining the 
 army. All the long, costly wars that England fought 
 
68 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 during feudal times involved no public debt. Public 
 debt, pauperism, and the grinding poverty of the poorer 
 classes came in as the landholders gradually shook off 
 the obligations on which they had received their land, an 
 operation culminating in the abolition after the Restora¬ 
 tion of the feudal tenures, for which were substituted 
 indirect taxes that still weigh upon the whole people. To 
 now reverse this process, to abolish the taxes which are 
 borne by labor and capital, and to substitute for them a 
 tax on rent, would be not the adoption of anything new, 
 but a simple going back to the old plan. In England, as 
 in Ireland, the movement would appeal to the popular 
 imagination as a demand for the reassertion of ancient 
 rights. 
 
 There are other most important respects in which this 
 measure will commend itself to the English mind. The 
 tax upon land values or rent is in all economic respects 
 the most perfect of taxes. No political economist will 
 deny that it combines the maximum of certainty with the 
 minimum of loss and cost; that, unlike taxes upon capital 
 or exchange or improvement, it does not check production 
 or enhance prices or fall ultimately upon the consumer. 
 And, in proposing to abolish all other taxes in favor of 
 this theoretically perfect tax, the Land Reformers will 
 have on their side the advantage of ideas already current, 
 while they can bring the argumentum ad Jiominem to bear 
 on those who might never comprehend an abstract prin¬ 
 ciple. Englishmen of all classes have happily been edu¬ 
 cated up to a belief in free trade, though a very large 
 amount of revenue is still collected from customs. Let 
 the Land Reformers take advantage of this by proposing 
 to carry out the doctrine of free trade to its fullest extent. 
 If a revenue tariff is better than a protective tariff, then 
 no tariff at all is better than a revenue tariff. Let them 
 propose to abolish the customs duties entirely, and to 
 
HOW TO WIN. 
 
 69 
 
 abolish as well harbor dues and lighthouse dues and dock 
 charges, and in their place to add to the tax on rent, or 
 the value of land exclusive of improvements. Let them 
 in the same way propose to get rid of the excise, the 
 various license taxes, the tax upon buildings, the onerous 
 and unpopular income tax, etc., and to saddle all public 
 expenses on the landlords. 
 
 This would bring home the land question to thousands 
 and thousands who have never thought of it before; to 
 thousands and thousands who have heretofore looked 
 upon the land question as something peculiarly Irish, or 
 something that related exclusively to agriculture and to 
 farmers, and have never seen how, in various direct and 
 indirect ways, they have to contribute to the immense 
 sums received by the landlords as rent. It would be 
 putting the argument in a shape in which even the most 
 stupid could understand it. It would be directing the 
 appeal to a spot where even the unimaginative are sensi¬ 
 tive—the pocket. How long would a merchant or banker 
 or manufacturer or annuitant regard as dangerous and 
 wicked an agitation which proposed to take taxation off 
 of him? Even the most prejudiced can be relied on to 
 listen with patience to an argument in favor of making 
 some one else pay what they now are paying. 
 
 Let me illustrate by a little story what I feel confident 
 would be the effect of the policy I propose: 
 
 Once upon a time I was the Pacific-coast agent of an 
 Eastern news association, which took advantage of an 
 opposition telegraph company to run against the Asso¬ 
 ciated Press monopoly. The association in California 
 consisted of one strong San Francisco paper, to which 
 telegraphic news was of much importance, and a number 
 of interior papers, to which it was of minor importance, 
 if of any importance at all. It became necessary to raise 
 more money for the expenses of collecting and transmit- 
 
70 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 ting these despatches, and, thinking it only fair, I assessed 
 the increased cost to the strong metropolitan paper. The 
 proprietor of this paper was very indignant. He appealed 
 to the proprietors of all the other papers, and they all 
 joined in his protest. I replied by calling a meeting. At 
 this meeting the proprietor of the San Francisco paper 
 led off with an indignant speech. He was seconded by 
 several others, and evidently had the sympathy of the 
 whole crowd. Then came my turn. I said, in effect: 
 u Gentlemen, yon can do what you please about this 
 matter. Whatever satisfies you satisfies me. The only 
 thing fixed is, that more money has to be raised. As this 
 San Francisco paper pays now a much lower relative rate 
 than you do, I thought it only fair that it should pay the 
 increased cost. But, if you think otherwise, there is no 
 reason in the world why you should not pay it yourselves.” 
 The debate immediately took another turn, and in a few 
 minutes my action was indorsed by a unanimous vote, for 
 the San Francisco man was so disgusted by the way his 
 supporters left him that he would not vote at all. 
 
 Now, that is just about what will happen to the British 
 landlords if the question be put in the way I propose. 
 The British landowners are in numbers but an insignifi¬ 
 cant minority. And, the more they protested against the 
 injustice of having to pay all the taxes, the quicker would 
 the public mind realize the essential injustice of private 
 property in land, the quicker would the majority of the 
 people come to see that the landowners ought not only to 
 pay all the taxes, but a good deal more besides. Once 
 put the question in such a way that the British working¬ 
 man will realize that he pays two prices for his ale and 
 half a dozen prices for his tobacco, because a landowners’ 
 Parliament in the time of Charles II. shook off their ancient 
 dues to the State, and imposed them in indirect taxation 
 on him; once bring to the attention of the well-to-do 
 
HOW TO WIN. 
 
 71 
 
 Englishman, who grants as lie pays his income tax, the 
 question as to whether the landowner, who draws his 
 income from property that of natural right belongs to the 
 whole people, ought not to pay it instead of him, and it 
 will not be long before the absurd injustice of allowing 
 rent to be appropriated by individuals will be thoroughly 
 understood. This is a very different thing from asking 
 the British taxpayer to buy out the Irish landlord for ' 
 the sake of the Irish peasant. 
 
 I have been speaking as though all landholders would 
 resist the change which would sacrifice their special 
 interests to the larger interests of society. But I am 
 satisfied that to think this is to do landholders a great 
 injustice. For landholders as a class are not more stupid 
 nor more selfish than any other class. And as they saw, 
 as they must see, as the discussion progresses, that they 
 also would be the gainers in the great social change 
 which would abolish poverty and elevate the very lowest 
 classes—the “ mudsills ” of society, as a Southern Senator 
 expressively called them during the Slavery discussion— 
 above the want, the misery, the vice, and degradation in 
 which they are now plunged, there are many landowners 
 who would join heartily and unreservedly in the effort to 
 bring this change about. This I believe, not merely 
 because my reading and observation both teach me that 
 low, narrow views of self-interest are not the strongest 
 of human motives, but because I know that to-day among 
 those who see the truth I have here tried to set forth, and 
 who would carry out the reform I have proposed, are 
 many landholders* And, if they be earnest men, I appeal 
 
 * Among the warm friends my book “ Progress and Poverty ” has 
 found are many landholders—some of them large landholders. As 
 types I may mention the names of D. A. Learnard, of San Joaquin, 
 a considerable farmer, who had no sooner read it than he sent for a 
 dozen copies to circulate among his neighbors; Hiram Tubbs, of 
 
72 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 to landholders as confidently as to any other class. There 
 is that in a great truth that can raise a human soul above 
 the mists of selfishness. 
 
 The course which I suggest is the only course which 
 can be logically based on principle. It has everything to 
 commend it. It will concentrate the greatest strength 
 against the least resistance. And it will be on the right 
 line. Every step gained will be an advance toward the 
 ultimate goal; every step gained will make easier the 
 next. 
 
 San Francisco, the owner of much valuable real estate in and near 
 that city; and Sir George Grey, of New Zealand, the owner of a good 
 deal of land in that colony, of which he was formerly governor, as 
 well as, I understand, of valuable estates in England. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 I N speaking with special reference to the case of Ireland, 
 I have, so far as general principles are concerned, been 
 using it as a stalking-horse. In discussing the Irish Land 
 Question, we really discuss the most vital of American 
 questions. And if we of the United States cannot see the 
 beam in our own eye, save by looking at the mote in our 
 brother’s, then let ns look at the mote; and let us take 
 counsel together how lie may get it out. For, at least, 
 we shall in this way learn how we may deal with our own 
 case when we wake up to the consciousness of it. 
 
 And never had the parable of the mote and the beam 
 a better illustration than in the attitude of so many 
 Americans toward this Irish Land Question. We denounce 
 the Irish land system! We express our sympathy with 
 Ireland! We tender our advice by Congressional and 
 legislative resolution to our British brethren across the 
 sea! Truly our indignation is cheap and our sympathy 
 is cheap, and our advice is very, very cheap! For what 
 are we doing ? Extending over new soil the very institu¬ 
 tion that to them descended from a ruder and a darker 
 time. With what conscience can we lecture them ? With 
 all power in the hands of the people, with institutions yet 
 plastic, with millions of virgin acres yet to settle, it should 
 be ours to do more than vent denunciation, and express 
 sympathy, and give advice. It should be ours to show 
 
74 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 the way. This we have not done; this we do not do. 
 Out in our new States may be seen the growth of a 
 system of cultivation worse in its social effects than that 
 which prevails in Ireland. In Ireland the laborer has 
 some sort of a home, and enjoys some of the family affec¬ 
 tions. In these great “wheat-manufacturing” districts 
 the laborer is a nomad, his home is in his blankets, which 
 he carries around with him. The soil bears wheat, crop 
 after crop, till its fertility is gone. It does not bear chil¬ 
 dren. These machine-worked “grain factories” of the 
 great Republic of the New World are doing just what 
 was done by the slave-worked latifundia of the Roman 
 world. Here they prevent, where there they destroyed, 
 “ the crop of men.” And in our large cities may we not 
 see misery of the same kind as exists in Ireland ? If it is 
 less in amount, is it not merely because our country is 
 yet newer 5 because we have yet a wide territory and a 
 sparse population—conditions past which our progress is 
 rapidly carrying us? As for evictions, is it an unheard- 
 of thing, even in New York, for families to be turned out 
 of their homes because they cannot pay the rent? Are 
 there not many acres in this country from which those 
 who made homes have been driven by sheriffs’ posses, and 
 even by troops ? Do not a number of the Mussell Slough 
 settlers lie in Santa Clara jail to-day because a great rail¬ 
 road corporation set its envious eyes on soil which they 
 had turned from desert into garden, and they in their 
 madness tried to resist ejectment? 
 
 And the men on the other side of the Atlantic who 
 vainly imagine that they may settle the great question 
 now pressing upon them by free trade in land, or tenant- 
 right, or some mild device for establishing a peasant 
 proprietary—they may learn something about their own 
 case if they will turn their eyes to us. 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 75 
 
 We have had free trade in land; we have had in our 
 American farmer, owning his own acres, using his own 
 capital, and working with his own hands, something far 
 better than peasant proprietorship. We have had, what 
 no legislation can give the people of Great Britain, vast 
 areas of virgin soil. We have had all of these under 
 democratic institutions. Yet we have here social disease 
 of precisely the same kind as that which exists in Ireland 
 and England. And the reason is that we have had here 
 precisely the same cause — that we have made land private 
 property. So long as this exists, our democratic institu¬ 
 tions are vain, our pretense of equality but cruel irony, 
 our public schools can but sow the seeds of discontent. 
 So long as this exists, material progress can but force the 
 masses of our people into a harder and more hopeless 
 slavery. Until we in some way make the land, what 
 Nature intended it to be, common property, until we in 
 some way secure to every child born among us his natural 
 birthright, we have not established the Republic in any 
 sense worthy of the name, and we cannot establish the 
 Republic. Its foundations are quicksand. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A LITTLE ISLAND OR A LITTLE WORLD. 
 
 I MAGINE an island girt with ocean; imagine a little 
 world swimming in space. Put on it, in imagination, 
 hnman beings. Let them divide the land, share and share 
 alike, as individual property. At first, while population 
 is sparse and industrial processes rude and primitive, this 
 will work well enough. 
 
 Turn away the eyes of the mind for a moment, let time 
 pass, and look again. Some families will have died out, 
 some have greatly multiplied; on the whole, population 
 will have largely increased, and even supposing there have 
 been no important inventions or improvements in the 
 productive arts, the increase in population, by causing the 
 division of labor, will have made industry more complex. 
 During this time some of these people will have been 
 careless, generous, improvident; some will have been 
 thrifty and grasping. Some of them will have devoted 
 much of their powers to thinking of how they themselves 
 and the things they see around them came to be, to 
 inquiries and speculations as to what there is in the uni¬ 
 verse beyond their little island or their little world, to 
 making poems, painting pictures, or writing books; to 
 noting the differences in rocks and trees and shrubs and 
 grasses; to classifying beasts and birds and fishes and 
 insects—to the doing, in short, of all the many things 
 which add so largely to the sum of human knowledge 
 
A LITTLE ISLAND OR A LITTLE WORLD. 
 
 77 
 
 and human happiness, without much or any gain of wealth 
 to the doer. Others again will have devoted all their 
 energies to the extending of their possessions. What, 
 then, shall we see, land having been all this time treated 
 as private property ? Clearly, we shall see that the primi¬ 
 tive equality has given way to inequality. Some will 
 have very much more than one of the original shares into 
 which the land was divided; very many will have no land 
 at all. Suppose that, in all things save this, our little 
 island or our little world is Utopia—that there are no wars 
 or robberies; that the government is absolutely pure and 
 taxes nominal; suppose, if you want to, any sort of a cur¬ 
 rency j imagine, if you can imagine such a world or island, 
 that interest is utterly abolished; yet inequality in the 
 ownership of land will have produced poverty and virtual 
 slavery. 
 
 For the people we have supposed are human beings— 
 that is to say, in their physical natures at least, they are 
 animals who can live only on land and by the aid of the 
 products of land. They may make machines which will 
 enable them to float on the sea, or perhaps to fly in the 
 air, but to build and equip these machines they must have 
 land and the products of land, and must constantly come 
 back to land. Therefore those who own the land must 
 be the masters of the rest. Thus, if one man has come 
 to own all the land, he is their absolute master even to 
 life or death. If they can live on the land only on his 
 terms, then they can live only on his terms, for without 
 land thev cannot live. Thev are his absolute slaves, and 
 so long as his ownership is acknowledged, if they want 
 to live, they must do in everything as he wills. 
 
 If, however, the concentration of landownership has 
 not gone so far as to make one or a very few men the 
 owners of all the land—if there are still so many land- 
 owners that there is competition between them as well as 
 
78 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 between those who have only their labor—then the terms 
 on which these non-landholders can live will seem more 
 like free contract. But it will not be free contract. Land 
 can yield no wealth without the application of labor j labor 
 can produce no wealth without land. These are the two 
 equally necessary factors of production. Yet, to say that 
 they are equally necessary factors of production is not to 
 say that, in the making of contracts as to how the results 
 of production are divided, the possessors of these two 
 meet on equal terms. For the nature of these two factors 
 is very different. Land is a natural element; the human 
 being must have his stomach filled every few hours. Land 
 can exist without labor, but labor cannot exist without 
 land. If I own a piece of land, I can let it lie idle for a 
 year or for years, and it will eat nothing. But the laborer 
 must eat every day, and his family must eat. And so, in 
 the making of terms between them, the landowner has an 
 immense advantage over the laborer. It is on the side 
 of the laborer that the intense pressure of competition 
 comes, for in his case it is competition urged by hunger. 
 And, further than this: As population increases, as the 
 competition for the use of land becomes more and more 
 intense, so are the owners of land enabled to get for the 
 use of their land a larger and larger part of the wealth 
 which labor exerted upon it produces. That is to say, 
 the value of land steadily rises. Now, this steady rise in 
 the value of land brings about a confident expectation of 
 future increase of value, which produces among land- 
 owners all the effects of a combination to hold for higher 
 prices. Thus there is a constant tendency to force mere 
 laborers to take less and less or to give more and more 
 (put it which way you please, it amounts to the same thing) 
 of the products of their work for the opportunity to work. 
 And thus, in the very nature of things, we should see on 
 our little island or our little world that, after a time had 
 
A LITTLE ISLAND OR A LITTLE WORLD. 
 
 79 
 
 passed, some of the people would be able to take and enjoy 
 a superabundance of all the fruits of labor without doing 
 any labor at all, while others would be forced to work the 
 livelong day for a pitiful living. 
 
 But let us introduce another element into the supposi¬ 
 tion. Let us suppose great discoveries and inventions— 
 such as the steam-engine, the power-loom, the Bessemer 
 process, the reaping-machine, and the thousand and one 
 labor-saving devices that are such a marked feature of 
 our era. What would be the result ? 
 
 Manifestly, the effect of all such discoveries and inven¬ 
 tions is to increase the power of labor in producing wealth 
 —to enable the same amount of wealth to be produced by 
 less labor, or a greater amount with the same labor. But 
 none of them lessen, or can lessen the necessity for land. 
 Until we can discover some way of making something 
 out of nothing—and that is so far beyond our powers as 
 to be absolutely unthinkable—there is no possible dis¬ 
 covery or invention which can lessen the dependence of 
 labor upon land. And, this being the case, the effect of 
 these labor-saving devices, land being the private property 
 of some, would simply be to increase the proportion of 
 the wealth produced that landowners could demand for 
 the use of their land. The ultimate effect of these dis¬ 
 coveries and inventions would be not to benefit the laborer, 
 but to make him more dependent. 
 
 And, since we are imagining conditions, imagine labor- 
 saving inventions to go to the farthest imaginable point, 
 that is to say, to perfection. What then ? Why then, the 
 necessity for labor being done away with, all the wealth 
 that the land could produce would go entire to the land- 
 owners. None of it whatever could be claimed by any 
 one else. For the laborers there would be no use at all. 
 If they continued to exist, it would be merely as paupers 
 on the bounty of the landowners! 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 
 
 I N the effects upon the distribution of wealth, of making 
 land private property, we may thus see an explanation 
 of that paradox presented by modern progress. The 
 perplexing phenomena of deepening want with increasing 
 wealth, of labor rendered more dependent and helpless 
 by the very introduction of labor-saving machinery, are 
 the inevitable result of natural laws as fixed and certain 
 as the law of gravitation. Private property in land is the 
 primary cause of the monstrous inequalities which are 
 developing in modern society. It is this, and not any 
 miscalculation of Nature in bringing into the world more 
 mouths than she can feed, that gives rise to that tendency 
 of wages to a minimum—that “iron law of wages,” as the 
 Germans call it—that, in spite of all advances in produc¬ 
 tive power, compels the laboring-classes to the least return 
 on which they will consent to live. It is this that produces 
 all those phenomena that are so often attributed to the 
 conflict of labor and capital. It is this that condemns 
 Irish peasants to rags and hunger, that produces the 
 pauperism of England and the tramps of America. It is 
 this that makes the almshouse and the penitentiary the 
 marks of what we call high civilization; that in the midst 
 of schools and churches degrades and brutalizes men, 
 crushes the sweetness out of womanhood and the joy out 
 of childhood. It is this that makes lives that might be a 
 
THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 
 
 81 
 
 blessing a pain and a curse, and every year drives more 
 and more to seek unbidden refuge in the gates of death. 
 For, a permanent tendency to inequality once set up, 
 all the forces of progress tend to greater and greater 
 inequality. 
 
 All this is contrary to Nature. The poverty and misery, 
 the vice and degradation, that spring from the unequal 
 distribution of wealth, are not the results of natural law; 
 they spring from our defiance of natural law. They are 
 the fruits of our refusal to obey the supreme law of jus¬ 
 tice. It is because we rob the child of his birthright; 
 because we make the bounty which the Creator intended 
 for all the exclusive property of some, that these things 
 come upon us, and, though advancing and advancing, we 
 chase but the mirage. 
 
 When, lit by lightning-flash or friction amid dry grasses, 
 the consuming flames of fire first flung their lurid glow 
 into the face of man, how must he have started back in 
 affright! When he first stood by the shores of the sea, 
 how must its waves have said to him, “ Thus far shalt 
 thou go, but no farther ” ! Yet, as he learned to use them, 
 fire became his most useful servant, the sea his easiest 
 highway. The most destructive element of which we 
 know—that which for ages and ages seemed the very 
 thunderbolt of the angry gods—is, as we are now begin¬ 
 ning to learn, fraught for us with untold powers of use¬ 
 fulness. Already it enables us to annihilate space in our 
 messages, to illuminate the night with new suns; and its 
 uses are only beginning. And throughout all Nature, as 
 far as we can see, whatever is potent for evil is potent for 
 good. “Dirt,” said Lord Brougham, “is matter in the 
 wrong place.” And so the squalor and vice and misery 
 that abound in the verv heart of our civilization are but 
 results of the misapplication of forces in their nature most 
 elevating. 
 
82 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 I doubt not that whichever way a man may turn to 
 inquire of Nature, he will come upon adjustments which 
 will arouse not merely his wonder, but his gratitude. Yet 
 what has most impressed me with the feeling that the 
 laws of Nature are the laws of beneficent intelligence is 
 what I see of the social possibilities involved in the law 
 of rent. Rent* springs from natural causes. It arises, 
 as society develops, from the differences in natural oppor¬ 
 tunities and the differences in the distribution of popula- 
 
 * 
 
 tion. It increases with the division of labor, with the 
 advance of the arts, with the progress of invention. And 
 thus, by virtue of a law impressed upon the very nature 
 of things, has the Creator provided that the natural 
 advance of mankind shall be an advance toward equality, 
 an advance toward cooperation, an advance toward a 
 social state in which not even the weakest need be crowded 
 to the wall, in which even for the unfortunate and the 
 cripple there may be ample provision. For this revenue, 
 which arises from the common property, which represents * 
 not the creation of value by the individual, but the crea¬ 
 tion by the community as a whole, which increases just 
 as society develops, affords a common fund, which, properly 
 used, tends constantly to equalize conditions, to open the 
 largest opportunities for all, and utterly to banish want 
 or the fear of want. 
 
 The squalid poverty that festers in the heart of our 
 civilization, the vice and crime and degradation and 
 ravening greed that flow from it, are the results of a 
 treatment of land that ignores the simple law of justice, 
 a law so clear and plain that it is universally recognized 
 by the veriest savages. What is by nature the common 
 birthright of all, we have made the exclusive property of 
 
 * I, of course, use the word “rent” in its economic, not in its 
 common sense, meaning by it what is commonly called ground-rent. 
 
THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 
 
 83 
 
 individuals; what is by natural law the common fund, 
 from which common wants should be met, we give to a 
 few that they may lord it over their fellows. And so 
 some are gorged while some go hungry, and more is 
 wasted than would suffice to keep all in luxury. 
 
 In this nineteenth century, among any people who have 
 begun to utilize the forces and methods of modern pro¬ 
 duction, there is no necessity for want. There is no good 
 reason why even the poorest should not have all the com¬ 
 forts, all the luxuries, all the opportunities for culture, 
 all the gratifications of refined taste that only the richest 
 now enjoy. There is no reason why any one should be 
 compelled to long and monotonous labor. Did invention 
 and discovery stop to-day, the forces of production are 
 ample for this. What hampers production is the unnatural 
 inequality in distribution. And, with just distribution, 
 invention and discovery would only have begun. 
 
 Appropriate rent in the way I propose, and speculative 
 rent would be at once destroyed. The dogs in the manger 
 who are now holding so much land they have no use for, 
 in order to extract a high price from those who do want 
 to use it, would be at once choked off, and land from 
 which labor and capital are now debarred under penalty 
 of a heavy fine would be thrown open to improvement 
 and use. The incentive to land monopoly would be gone. 
 Population would spread where it is now too dense, and 
 become denser where it is now too sparse. 
 
 Appropriate rent in this way, and not only would natu¬ 
 ral opportunities be thus opened to labor and capital, but 
 all the taxes which now weigh upon production and rest 
 upon the consumer could be abolished. The demand for 
 labor would increase, wages would rise, every wheel of 
 production would be set in motion. 
 
 Appropriate rent in this way, and the present expenses 
 of government would be at once very much reduced— 
 
84 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 reduced directly by the saving in the present cumbrous 
 and expensive schemes of taxation, reduced indirectly by 
 the diminution in pauperism and in crime. This simpli¬ 
 fication in governmental machinery, this elevation of moral 
 tone which would result, would make it possible for govern¬ 
 ment to assume the running of railroads, telegraphs, and 
 other businesses which, being in their nature monopolies, 
 cannot, as experience is showing, be safely left in the 
 hands of private individuals and corporations. In short, 
 losing its character as a repressive agency, government 
 could thus gradually pass into an administrative agency 
 of the great cooperative association—society. 
 
 For, appropriate rent in this way, and there would be 
 at once a large surplus over and above what are now 
 considered the legitimate expenses of government. We 
 could divide this, if we wanted to, among the whole com¬ 
 munity, share and share alike. Or we could give every 
 boy a small capital for a start when he came of age, every 
 girl a dower, every widow an annuity, every aged person 
 a pension, out of this common estate. Or we could do 
 with our great common fund many, many things that 
 would be for the common benefit, many, many things that 
 would give to the poorest what even the richest cannot 
 now enjoy. We could establish free libraries, lectures, 
 museums, art-galleries, observatories, gymnasiums, baths, 
 parks, theaters; we could line our roads with fruit-trees, 
 and make our cities clean and wholesome and beautiful; 
 we could conduct experiments, and offer rewards for 
 inventions, and throw them open to public use.* 
 
 Think of the enormous waste,: that now go on: The 
 waste of false revenue systems, which hamper production 
 and bar exchange, which fine a man for erecting a building 
 
 * A million dollars spent in premiums and experiments would, in 
 all probability, make aerial navigation an accomplished fact. 
 
THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 
 
 85 
 
 where none stood before, or for making two blades of 
 grass grow where there was but one. The waste of unem¬ 
 ployed labor, of idle machinery, of those periodical depres¬ 
 sions of industry almost as destructive as war. The waste 
 entailed by poverty, and the vice and crime and thriftless¬ 
 ness and drunkenness that spring from it; the waste 
 entailed by that greed of gain that is its shadow, and 
 which makes business in large part but a masked war; 
 the waste entailed by the fret and worry about the mere 
 physical necessities of existence, to which so many of us 
 are condemned; the waste entailed by ignorance, by 
 cramped and undeveloped faculties, by the turning of 
 human beings into mere machines ! 
 
 Think of these enormous wastes, and of the others 
 which, like these, are due to the fundamental wrong which 
 produces an unjust distribution of wealth and distorts 
 the natural development of society, and you will begin to 
 see what a higher, purer, richer civilization would be 
 made possible by the simple measure that will assert 
 natural rights. You will begin to see how, even if no 
 one but the present landholders were to be considered, 
 this would be the greatest boon that could be vouchsafed 
 them by society, and that, for them to fight it, would be 
 as if the dog with a tin kettle tied to his tail should snap 
 at the hand that offered to free him. Even the greatest 
 landholder! As for such landholders as our working 
 farmers and homestead-owners, the slightest discussion 
 would show them that they had everything to gain by 
 the change. But even such landholders as the Duke of 
 Westminster and the Astors would be gainers. 
 
 For it is of the very nature of injustice that it really 
 profits no one. When and where was slavery good for 
 slaveholders? Did her cruelties in America, her expul¬ 
 sions of Moors and Jews, her burnings of heretics, profit 
 Spain? Has England gained by her injustice toward 
 
86 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Ireland? Did not the curse of an unjust social system 
 rest on Louis XIV. and Louis XV. as well as on the 
 poorest peasant whom it condemned to rags and starva¬ 
 tion—as well as on that Louis whom it sent to the block? 
 Is the Czar of Russia to be envied ? 
 
 This we may know certainly, this we may hold to con¬ 
 fidently: that which is unjust can really profit no one; 
 that which is just can really harm no one. Though all 
 other lights move and circle, this is the pole-star by which 
 we may safely steer. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 
 
 W HEN we think of the civilization that might be, 
 how poor and pitiful, how little better than utter 
 barbarism, seems this civilization of which we boast! 
 Even here, where it has had the freest field and fullest 
 development! Even here ! 
 
 This is a broad land and a rich land. How wide it is, 
 how rich it is, how the fifty millions of us already here 
 are but beginning to scratch it, a man cannot begin to 
 realize, till he does some thousands of miles of traveling- 
 over it. There are a school and a church and a newspaper 
 in every hamlet; we have no privileged orders, no legacies 
 of antiquated institutions, no strong and covertly hostile 
 neighbors* who in fancy or reality oblige us to keep up 
 great standing armies. We have had the experience of 
 all other nations to guide us in selecting what is good and 
 rejecting what is bad. In politics, in religion, in science, 
 in mechanism, everything shows the latest improvements. 
 We think we stand, and in fact we do stand, in the very 
 van of civilization. Food here is cheaper, wages higher, 
 than anywhere else. There is here a higher average of 
 education, of intelligence, of material comfort, and of 
 individual opportunity, than among any other of the 
 great civilized nations. Here modern civilization is at 
 its very best. Yet even here! 
 
88 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Last winter I was in San Francisco. There are in San 
 Francisco citizens who can build themselves houses that 
 cost a million and a half; citizens who can give each of 
 their children two millions of registered United States 
 bonds for a Christmas present; citizens who can send 
 their wives to Paris to keep house there, or rather to 
 “keep palace” in a style that outdoes the lavishness of 
 Russian grand dukes; citizens whose daughters are golden 
 prizes to the bluest-blooded of English aristocrats; citizens 
 who can buy seats in the United States Senate and leave 
 them empty, just to show their grandeur. There are, 
 also, in San Francisco other citizens. Last winter I could 
 hardfy walk a block without meeting a citizen begging 
 for ten cents. And, when a charity fund was raised to 
 give work with pick and shovel to such as would rather 
 work than beg, the applications were so numerous that, 
 to make the charity fund go as far as possible, one set of 
 men was discharged after having been given a few days’ 
 work, in order to make room for another set. This and 
 much else of the same sort I saw in San Francisco last 
 winter. Likewise in Sacramento, and in other towns. 
 
 Last summer, on the plains, I took from its tired 
 mother, and held in my arms, a little sun-browned baby, 
 the youngest of a family of the sturdy and keen Western 
 New England stock, who alone in their two wagons had 
 traveled near three thousand miles looking for some place 
 to locate and finding none, and who were now returning 
 to where the father and his biggest boy could go to work 
 on a railroad, what they had got by the sale of their 
 Nebraska farm all gone. And I walked awhile by the 
 side of long, lank Southwestern men who, after similar 
 fruitless journeyings way up into Washington Territory, 
 were going back to the Choctaw Nation. 
 
 This winter I have been in New York. New York is 
 the greatest and richest of American cities—the third city 
 
THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 
 
 89 
 
 of the modern world, and moving steadily toward the 
 first place. This is a time of great prosperity. Never 
 before were so many goods sold, so much business done. 
 Real estate is advancing with big jumps, and within the 
 last few months many fortunes have been made in buying 
 and selling vacant lots. Landlords nearly everywhere are 
 demanding increased rents $ asking in some of the business 
 quarters an increase of three hundred per cent. Money 
 is so plenty that government four per cents, sell for 114, 
 and a bill is passing Congress for refunding the maturing 
 national debt at three per cent, per annum, a rate that 
 awhile ago in California was not thought exorbitant per 
 month. All sorts of shares and bonds have been going 
 up and up. You can sell almost anything if you give it 
 a high-sounding corporate name and issue well-printed 
 shares of stock. Seats in the Board of Brokers are worth 
 thirty thousand dollars, and are cheap at that. There are 
 citizens here who rake in millions at a single operation with 
 as much ease as a faro-dealer rakes in a handful of chips; 
 
 Nor is this the mere seeming prosperity of feverish 
 speculation. The country is really prosperous. The crops 
 have been enormous, the demand insatiable. We have at 
 last a sound currency; gold has been pouring in. The 
 railroads have been choked with produce, steel rails are 
 being laid faster than ever before; all sorts of factories 
 are running full time or overtime. So prosperous is the 
 country, so good are the times, that, at the Presidential 
 election a few months since, the determining argument 
 was that we could not afford to take the chance of dis¬ 
 turbing so much material prosperity by a political change. 
 
 Nevertheless, prosperous as are these times, citizens of 
 the United States beg you on the streets for ten cents 
 and five cents, and although you know that there are in 
 this city two hundred charitable societies, although you 
 realize that on general principles to give money in this 
 
90 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 way is to do evil rather than good, you are afraid to refuse 
 them when you read of men in this great city freezing to 
 death and starving to death. Prosperous as are these 
 times, women are making overalls for sixty cents a dozen, 
 and you can hire citizens for trivial sums to parade up 
 and down the streets all day with advertising placards on 
 their backs. I get on a horse-car and ride with the driver. 
 He is evidently a sober, steady man, as intelligent as a 
 man can be who drives a horse-car all the time he is not 
 asleep or eating his meals. He tells me he has a wife and 
 four children. He gets home (if a couple of rooms can be 
 called a home) at two o’clock in the morning; he has to 
 be back on his car at nine. Sunday he has a couple of 
 hours more, which he has to put in in sleep, else, as he 
 says, he would utterly break down. His children he never 
 sees, save when one of them comes at noon or supper-time 
 to the liorse-car route with something for him to eat in 
 a tin pail. He gets for his day’s work one dollar and 
 seventy-five cents—a sum that will buy at Delmonico’s a 
 beefsteak and cup of coffee. I say to him that it must 
 be pretty hard to pay rent and keep six persons on one 
 dollar and seventy-five cents a day. He says it is; that 
 he has been trying for a month to get enough ahead to 
 buy a new pair of shoes, but he hasn’t yet succeeded. I 
 ask why he does not leave such a job. He says, “What 
 can I do ? There are a thousand men ready to step into 
 my place! ” And so, in this time of prosperity, he is 
 chained to his car. The horses that he drives, they are 
 changed six times during his working-day. They have 
 lots of time to stretch themselves and rest themselves and 
 eat in peace their plentiful meals, for they are worth from 
 one to two hundred dollars each, and it would be a loss 
 to the company for them to fall ill. But this driver, this 
 citizen of the United States, he may fall ill or drop dead, 
 and the company would not lose a cent. As between him 
 
THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 
 
 91 
 
 and the beasts he drives, I am inclined to think that this 
 most prosperous era is more prosperous for horses than 
 for men. 
 
 Our Napoleon of Wall Street, our rising Charlemagne 
 of railroads, who came to this city with nothing but a 
 new kind of mouse-trap in a mahogany box, but who now, 
 though yet in the vigor of his prime, counts his wealth 
 by hundreds of millions, if it can be counted at all, is 
 interviewed by a reporter just as he is about to step 
 aboard his palace-car for a grand combination expedition 
 into the Southwest. He descants upon the services he is 
 rendering in welding into one big machine a lot of smaller 
 machines, in uniting into one vast railroad empire the 
 separated railroad kingdoms. He likewise descants upon 
 the great prosperity of the whole country. Everybody is 
 prosperous and contented, he says: there is, of course, a 
 good deal of misery in the big cities, but, then, there 
 always is! 
 
 Yet not alone in the great cities. I ride on the Hudson 
 River Railroad on a bitter cold day, and from one of the 
 pretty towns with Dutch names gets in a constable with 
 a prisoner, whom he is to take to the Albany penitentiary. 
 In this case justice has been swift enough, for the crime, 
 the taking of a shovel, has been committed only a few 
 hours before. Such coat as the man has he keeps but¬ 
 toned up, even in the hot car, for, the constable says, he 
 has no underclothes at all. He stole the shovel to get to 
 the penitentiary, where it is warm. The constable says 
 they have lots of such cases, and that even in these good 
 times these pretty country towns are infested with such 
 tramps. With all our vast organizing, our developing of 
 productive powers and cheapening of transportation, we 
 are yet creating a class of utter pariahs. And they are to 
 be found not merely in the great cities, but wherever the 
 locomotive runs. 
 
92 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Is it real advance in civilization which, on the one hand, 
 produces these great captains of industry, and, on the 
 other, these social outcasts ? 
 
 It is the year of grace 1881, and of the Republic the 
 105th. The girl who has brought in coal for my fire is 
 twenty years old. She was born in New York, and can 
 neither read nor write. To me, when I heard it, this 
 seemed sin and shame, and I got her a spelling-book. She 
 is trying what she can, but it is uphill work. She has 
 really no time. Last night when I came in, at eleven, 
 she was not through scrubbing the halls. She gets four 
 dollars a month. Her shoes cost two dollars a pair. She 
 says she can sew; but I guess it is about as I can. In 
 the natural course of things, this girl will be a mother of 
 citizens of the Republic. 
 
 Underneath are girls who can sew; they run sewing- 
 machines with their feet all day. I have seen girls in 
 Asia carrying water-jugs on their heads and young women 
 in South America bearing burdens. They were lithe and 
 strong and symmetrical; but to turn a young woman into 
 motive power for a sewing-machine is to weaken and 
 injure her physically. And these girls are to rear, or 
 ought to rear, citizens of the Republic. 
 
 But there is worse and worse than this. Go out into 
 the streets at night, and you will find them filled with 
 girls who will never be mothers. To the man who has 
 known the love of mother, of sister, of sweetheart, wife, 
 and daughter, this is the saddest sight of all. 
 
 The ladies of the Brooklyn churches—they are getting 
 up petitions for the suppression of Mormon polygamy; 
 they would have it rooted out with pains and penalties, 
 trampled out, if need be, with fire and sword; and their 
 reverend Congressman-elect is going, when he takes his 
 seat, to introduce a most stringent bill to that end; for 
 that a man should have more wives than one is a burning 
 
THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 
 
 93 
 
 scandal in a Christian country. So it is; but there are 
 also other burning scandals. As for scandals that excite 
 talk, I will spare Brooklyn a comparison with Salt Lake. 
 But as to ordinary things: I have walked through the 
 streets of Salt Lake City, by day and by night, without 
 seeing what in the streets of New York or Brooklyn 
 excites no comment. Polygamy is unnatural and wrong, 
 no doubt of that, for Nature brings into the world some¬ 
 thing over twenty-two boys for every twenty girls. But 
 is not a state of society unnatural and wrong in which 
 there are thousands and thousands of girls for whom no 
 husband ever offers? Can we brag of a state of society 
 in which one citizen can load his wife with more diamonds 
 than an Indian chief can put beads on his squaw, while 
 many other citizens are afraid to marry lest they cannot 
 support a wife—a state of society in which prostitution 
 flourishes? Polygamy is bad, but is it not better than 
 that? Civilization is advancing day by day; never was 
 such progress as we are making! Yet divorces are 
 increasing and insanity is increasing. What is the goal 
 of a civilization that tends toward free love and the mad¬ 
 house ? 
 
 This is a most highly civilized community. There is 
 not a bear nor wolf on Manhattan Island, save in a mena¬ 
 gerie. Yet it is easier, where they are worst, to guard 
 against bears and wolves than it is to guard against the 
 human beasts of prey that roam this island. In this 
 highly civilized city every lower window has to be barred, 
 every door locked and bolted; even door-mats, not worth 
 twenty-five cents, you will see chained to the steps. Stop 
 for a moment in a crowd and your watch is gone as if by 
 magic; shirt-studs are taken from their owners 7 bosoms, 
 and ear-rings cut from ladies’ ears. Even a standing 
 army of policemen do not prevent highway robbery; 
 there are populous districts that to walk through after 
 
94 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 nightfall is a risk, and where yon have far more need to 
 go armed and to be wary than in tjie backwoods. There 
 are dens into which men are lured only to be drugged and 
 robbed, sometimes to be murdered. All the resources of 
 science and inventive genius are exhausted in making 
 burglar-proof strong rooms and safes, yet, as the steel 
 plate becomes thicker and harder, so does the burglar’s 
 tool become keener. If the combination lock cannot be 
 picked, it is blown open. If not a crack large enough for 
 the introduction of powder is left, then the air-pump is 
 applied and a vacuum is created. So that those who in 
 the heart of civilization would guard their treasures safely 
 must come back to the most barbarous device, and either 
 themselves, or by proxy, sleeplessly stand guard. What 
 sort of a civilization is this? In what does civilization 
 essentially consist if not in civility—that is to say, in 
 respect for the rights of person and of property? 
 
 Yet this is not all, nor the worst. These are but the 
 grosser forms of that spirit that in the midst of our civili¬ 
 zation compels every one to stand on guard. What is the 
 maxim of business intercourse among the most highly 
 respectable classes ? That if you are swindled it will be 
 your own fault; that you must treat every man you have 
 dealings with as though he but wanted the chance to cheat 
 and rob you. Caveat emptor. “Let the buyer beware.” 
 
 If a man steal a few dollars he mav stand a chance of 
 
 «/ 
 
 going to the penitentiary—I read the other day of a man 
 who was sent to the penitentiary for stealing four cents 
 from a liorse-car company. But, if he steal a million by 
 business methods,-he is courted and flattered, even though 
 he steal the poor little savings which washerwomen and 
 sewing-girls have brought to him in trust, even though 
 he rob widows and orphans of the security which dead 
 men have struggled and stinted to provide. 
 
 This is a most Christian city. There are churches and 
 churches. All sorts of churches, where are preached all 
 
THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 
 
 95 
 
 sorts of religions, save that which once in Galilee tanglit 
 the arrant socialistic doctrine that it is easier for a camel 
 to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
 to enter the kingdom of God • all save that which once in 
 Jerusalem drove the money-changers from the temple. 
 Churches of brown and gray and yellow stone, lifting^ 
 toward heaven in such noble symmetry that architecture 
 seems invocation and benison 5 where, on stained-glass 
 windows, glow angel and apostle, and the entering light 
 is dimmed to a soft glory; where such music throbs and 
 supplicates and bursts in joy as once in St. Sophia ravished 
 the souls of heathen Northmen • churches where richly 
 cushioned pews let for the very highest prices, and the 
 auctioneer determines who shall sit in the foremost seats; 
 churches outside of which on Sunday stand long lines of 
 carriages, on each carriage a coachman. And there are 
 white marble churches, so pure and shapely that the stone 
 seems to have bloomed and flowered—the concrete expres¬ 
 sion of a grand, sweet thought. Churches restful to the 
 very eye, and into which the weary and heavy-laden can 
 enter and join in the worship of their Creator for no 
 larger an admission fee than it costs on the Bowery to 
 see the bearded lady or the Zulu giant eight feet high. 
 And then there are mission churches, run expressly for 
 poor people, where it does not cost a cent. There is no 
 lack of churches. There are, in fact, more churches than 
 there are people who care to attend them. And there are 
 likewise Sunday-schools, and big religious “book con¬ 
 cerns,” and tract societies, and societies for spreading the 
 light of the gospel among the heathen in foreign parts. 
 
 Yet, land a heathen on the Battery with money in his 
 pocket, and he will be robbed of the last cent of it before 
 he is a day older. “ By their fruits ye shall know them.” 
 I wonder whether they who send missionaries to the hea¬ 
 then ever read the daily papers. I think I could take a 
 file of these newspapers, and from their daily clironiclings 
 
96 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 match anything that conld be told in the same period of 
 any heathen community—at least, of any heathen com¬ 
 munity in a like state of peace and prosperity. I think I 
 could take a file of these papers, and match, horror for 
 horror, all that returning missionaries have to tell—even 
 to the car of Juggernaut or infants tossed from mothers’ 
 arms into the sacred river; even to Ashantee “customs” 
 or cannibalistic feasts. 
 
 I do not say that such things are because of civilization, 
 or because of Christianity. On the contrary, I point to 
 them -as inconsistent with civilization, as incompatible 
 with Christianity. They show that our civilization is 
 one-sided and cannot last as at present based; they show 
 that our so-called Christian communities are not Christian 
 at all. I believe a civilization is possible in which all 
 could be civilized—in which such things would be impos¬ 
 sible. But it must be a civilization based on justice and 
 acknowledging the equal rights of all to natural oppor¬ 
 tunities. I believe that there is in true Christianity a 
 power to regenerate the world. But it must be a Chris¬ 
 tianity that attacks vested wrongs, not that spurious thing 
 that defends them. The religion which allies itself with 
 injustice to preach down the natural aspirations of the 
 masses is worse than atheism. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TRUE CONSERVATISM. 
 
 T HERE are those who may look on this little book as 
 very radical, in the bad sense they attach to the 
 word. They mistake. This is, in the true sense of the 
 word, a most conservative little book. I do not appeal 
 to prejudice and passion. I appeal to intelligence. I do 
 not incite to strife; I seek to prevent strife. 
 
 That the civilized world is on the verge of the most 
 tremendous struggle, which, according to the frankness 
 and sagacity with which it is met, will be a struggle of 
 ideas or a struggle of actual physical force, calling upon 
 all the potent agencies of destruction which modern 
 invention has discovered, every sign of the times portends. 
 The voices that proclaim the eve of revolution are in 
 the air. Steam and electricity are not merely transport¬ 
 ing goods and carrying messages. They are everywhere 
 changing social and industrial organization j they are 
 everywhere stimulating thought, and arousing new hopes 
 and fears and desires and passions; they are everywhere 
 breaking down the barriers that have separated men, and 
 integrating nations into one vast organism, through 
 which the same pulses throb and the same nerves tingle. 
 
 The present situation in Great Britain is full of dangers, 
 of dangers graver and nearer than those who there are 
 making history are likely to see. Who in France, a cen¬ 
 tury ago, foresaw the drama of blood so soon to open ? 
 
98 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Who in the United States dreamed of what was coining 
 till the cannon-shot rang and the hag fell on Sumter? 
 How confidently we said, “ The American people are too 
 intelligent, too practical, to go to cutting each other’s 
 throats”! How confidently we relied upon the strong 
 common sense of the great masses, upon the great busi¬ 
 ness interests, upon the universal desire to make money! 
 “War does not pay,” we said, “therefore war is impos¬ 
 sible.” A shot rang over Charleston harbor; a bit of 
 bunting dropped, and, riven into two hostile camps, a 
 nation sprang to its feet to close in the death-lock. 
 
 And to just such a point are events hurrying in Great 
 Britain to-day. History repeats itself, and what happened 
 a century ago on one side of the English Channel is 
 beginning again on the other. Already has the States- 
 General met, and the Third Estate put on their hats. 
 Already Necker is in despair. Already has the lit de 
 justice been held, and the Tennis-Court been locked, and 
 ball-cartridge been served to the Swiss Guard! For the 
 moment the forces of reaction triumph. Davitt is snatched 
 to prison; a “Liberal” government carries coercion by a 
 tremendous majority, and the most despotic powers are 
 invoked to make possible the eviction of Irish peasants. 
 The order of Warsaw is to reign in Ireland, and the 
 upholders of ancient wrong deem it secure again, as the 
 wave that was mounting seems sweeping back. Let them 
 wait a little and they will see. For again the wave lull 
 mount, and higher and higher, and soon the white foam 
 will seethe and hiss on its toppling crest. It is not true 
 conservatism which cries “ Peace ! peace ! ” when there is 
 no peace; which, like the ostrich, sticks its head in the 
 sand and fancies itself secure; which would compromise 
 matters by putting more coal in the furnace, and hanging 
 heavier weights on the safety-valve! That alone is true 
 conservatism which would look facts in the face, which 
 
TRUE CONSERVATISM. 
 
 99 
 
 would reconcile opposing forces on the only basis on 
 which reconciliation is possible—that of justice. 
 
 I speak again of Great Britain, but I speak with refer¬ 
 ence to the whole modern world. The true nature of 
 the inevitable conflict with which modern civilization is 
 everywhere beginning to throb, can, it seems to me, best 
 be seen in the United States, and in the newer States even 
 more clearly than in the older States. That intelligent 
 Englishmen imagine that in the democratization of political 
 institutions, in free trade in land, or in peasant proprie¬ 
 torship, can be found any solution of the difficulties which 
 are confronting them, is because they do not see what 
 may be seen in the United States by whoever will look. 
 That intelligent Americans imagine that by these ques¬ 
 tions which are so menacingly presenting themselves in 
 Europe their peace is to be unvexed, is because they shut 
 their eyes to what is going on around them, because they 
 attribute to themselves and their institutions what is really 
 due to conditions now rapidly passing away—to the 
 sparseness of population and the cheapness of land. Yet 
 it is here, in this American Republic, that the true nature 
 of that inevitable conflict now rapidly approaching which 
 must determine the fate of modern civilization may be 
 most clearly seen. 
 
 We have here abolished all hereditary privileges and 
 legal distinctions of class. Monarchy, aristocracy, prelacy, 
 we have swept them all away. We have carried mere 
 political democracy to its ultimate. Every child born in 
 the United States may aspire to be President. Every 
 man, even though he be a tramp or a pauper, has a vote, 
 and one man’s vote counts for as much as any other man’s 
 vote. Before the law all citizens are absolutely equal. 
 In the name of the people all laws run. They are the 
 source of all power, the fountain of all honor. In their 
 name and by their will all government is carried on; the 
 
100 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 highest officials are hut their servants. Primogeniture 
 and entail we have abolished wherever they existed. We 
 have and have had free trade in land. We started with 
 something infinitely better than any scheme of peasant 
 proprietorship which it is possible to carry into effect in 
 Great Britain. We have had for our public domain the 
 best part of an immense continent. We have had the 
 preemption law and the homestead law. It has been our 
 boast that here every one who wished it could have a 
 farm. We have had full liberty of speech and of the 
 press. We have not merely common schools, but high 
 schools and universities, open to all who may choose to 
 attend. Yet here the same social difficulties apparent on 
 the other side of the Atlantic are beginning to appear. 
 It is already clear that our democracy is a vain pretense, 
 our make-believe of equality a sham and a fraud. 
 
 Already are the sovereign people becoming but a roi 
 faineant , like the Merovingian kings of France, like the 
 Mikados of Japan. The shadow of power is theirs; but 
 the substance of power is being grasped and wielded by 
 the bandit chiefs of the stock exchange, the robber leaders 
 who organize politics into machines. In any matter in 
 which they are interested, the little finger of the great 
 corporations is thicker than the loins of the people. Is it 
 sovereign States or is it railroad corporations that are 
 really represented in the elective Senate which we have 
 substituted for an hereditary House of Lords? Where 
 is the count or marquis or duke in Europe who wields 
 such power as is wielded by such simple citizens as our 
 Stanfords, Goulds, and Vanderbilts? What does legal 
 equality amount to, when the fortunes of some citizens 
 can be estimated only in hundreds of millions, and other 
 citizens have nothing? What does the suffrage amount 
 to when, under threat of discharge from employment, 
 citizens can be forced to vote as their employers dictate? 
 
TRUE CONSERVATISM. 
 
 101 
 
 when votes can be bought on election day for a few dol¬ 
 lars apiece ? If there are citizens so dependent that they 
 must vote as their employers wish, so poor that a few 
 dollars on election day seem to them more than any higher 
 consideration, then giving them votes simply adds to the 
 political power of wealth, and universal suffrage becomes 
 the surest basis for the establishment of tyranny. u Tyr¬ 
 anny ”! There is a lesson in the very word. What are 
 our American bosses but the exact antitypes of the Greek 
 tyrants, from whom the word comes? They who gave 
 the word tyrant its meaning did not claim to rule by 
 right divine. They were simply the Grand Sachems of 
 Greek Tammanys, the organizers of Hellenic “ stalwart 
 machines/*’ 
 
 Even if universal history did not teach the lesson, it is 
 in the United States already becoming very evident that 
 political equality can continue to exist only upon a basis 
 of social equality; that where the disparity in the distri¬ 
 bution of wealth increases, political democracy only makes 
 easier the concentration of power, and must inevitably 
 lead to tyranny and anarchy. And it is already evident 
 that there is nothing in political democracy, nothing in 
 popular education, nothing in any of our American 
 institutions, to prevent the most enormous disparity in 
 the distribution of wealth. Nowhere in the world are 
 such great fortunes growing up as in the United States. 
 Considering that the average income of the working 
 masses of our people is only a few hundred dollars a year, 
 a fortune of a million dollars is a monstrous thing—a 
 more monstrous and dangerous thing under a democratic 
 government than anywhere else. Yet fortunes of ten 
 and twelve million dollars are with us ceasing to be 
 noticeable. We already have citizens whose wealth can 
 be estimated only in hundreds of millions, and before the 
 end of the century, if present tendencies continue, we are 
 
102 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 likely to have fortunes estimated in thousands of millions 
 —such monstrous fortunes as the world has never seen 
 since the growth of similar fortunes ate out the heart of 
 Rome. And the necessary correlative of the growth of 
 such fortunes is the impoverishment and loss of indepen¬ 
 dence on the part of the masses. These great aggrega¬ 
 tions of wealth are like great trees, which strike deep 
 roots and spread wide branches, and which, by sucking 
 up the moisture from the soil and intercepting the sun¬ 
 shine, stunt and kill the vegetation around them. When 
 a capital of a million dollars comes into competition with 
 capitals of thousands of dollars, the smaller capitalists 
 must be driven out of the business or destroyed. With 
 great capital nothing can compete save great capital. 
 Hence, every aggregation of wealth increases the tendency 
 to the aggregation of wealth, and decreases the possibility 
 of the employee ever becoming more than an employee, 
 compelling him to compete with his fellows as to who 
 will work cheapest for the great capitalist—a competition 
 that can have but one result, that of forcing wages to the 
 minimum at which the supply of labor can be kept up. 
 Where we are is not so important as in what direction 
 we are going, and in the United States all tendencies are 
 clearly in this direction. Awhile ago, and any journey¬ 
 man shoemaker could set up in business for himself with 
 the savings of a few months. But now the operative 
 shoemaker could not in a lifetime save enough from his 
 wages to go into business for himself. And, now that 
 great capital has entered agriculture, it must be with the 
 same results. The large farmer, who can buy the latest 
 machinery at the lowest cash prices and use it to the best 
 advantage, who can run a straight furrow for miles, who 
 can make special rates with railroad companies, take 
 advantage of the market, and sell in large lots for the 
 least commission, must drive out the small farmer of the 
 
TRUE CONSERVATISM. 
 
 103 
 
 early American type just as the shoe factory has driven 
 out the journeyman shoemaker. And this is going on 
 to-day. 
 
 There is nothing unnatural in this. On the contrary, 
 it is in the highest degree natural. Social development is 
 in accordance with certain immutable laws. And the law 
 of development, whether it be the development of a solar 
 system, of the tiniest organism, or of a human society, is 
 the law of integration. It is in obedience to this law—a 
 law evidently as all-compelling as the law of gravitation 
 —that these new agencies, which so powerfully stimulate 
 social growth, tend to the specialization and interdepen¬ 
 dence of industry. It is in obedience to this law that the 
 factory is superseding the independent mechanic, the 
 large farm is swallowing up the little one, the big store 
 shutting up the small one, that corporations are arising 
 that dwarf the State, and that population tends more and 
 more to concentrate in cities. Men must work together in 
 larger and in more closely related groups. Production 
 must be on a greater scale. The only question is, whether 
 the relation in which men are thus drawn together and 
 compelled to act together shall be the natural relation 
 of interdependence in equality, or the unnatural relation 
 of dependence upon a master. If the one, then may 
 civilization advance in what is evidently the natural 
 order, each step leading to a higher step. If the other, 
 then what Nature has intended as a blessing becomes a 
 curse, and a condition of inequality is produced which 
 will inevitably destroy civilization. Every new invention 
 but hastens the catastrophe. 
 
 Now, all this we may deduce from natural laws as fixed 
 and certain as the law of gravitation. And all this we 
 may see going on to-day. This is the reason why modern 
 progress, great as it has been, fails to relieve poverty; 
 this is the secret of the increasing discontent which per- 
 
104 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 vades every civilized country. Under present conditions, 
 with land treated as private property, material progress 
 is developing two diverse tendencies, two opposing cur¬ 
 rents. On the one side, the tendency of increasing popu¬ 
 lation and of all improvement in the arts of production 
 is to build up enormous fortunes, to wipe out the inter¬ 
 mediate classes, and to crowd down the masses to a level 
 of lower wages and greater dependence. On the other 
 hand, by bringing men closer together, by stimulating 
 thought, by creating new wants, by arousing new ambi¬ 
 tions, the tendency of modern progress is to make the 
 masses discontented with their condition, to feel bitterly 
 its injustice. The result can be predicted just as certainly 
 as the result can be predicted when two trains are rushing 
 toward each other on the same track. 
 
 This thing is absolutely certain: Private property in 
 land blocks the way of advancing civilization. The two 
 cannot long coexist. Either private property in land must 
 be abolished, or, as has happened again and again in the 
 history of mankind, civilization must again turn back in 
 anarchy and bloodshed. Let the remaining years of the 
 nineteenth century bear me witness. Even now, I believe, 
 the inevitable struggle has begun. It is not conservatism 
 which would ignore such a tremendous fact. It is the 
 blindness that invites destruction. He that is truly con¬ 
 servative let him look the facts in the face; let him speak 
 frankly and dispassionately. This is the duty of the hour. 
 For, when a great social question presses for settlement, 
 it is only for a little while that the voice of Reason can 
 be heard. The masses of men hardly think at any time. 
 It is difficult even in sober moments to get them to reason 
 calmly. But when passion is roused, then they are like a 
 herd of stampeded bulls. I do not fear that present social 
 adjustments can continue. That is impossible. What I 
 fear is that the dams may hold till the flood rises to fury. 
 
TRUE CONSERVATISM. 
 
 105 
 
 What I fear is that dogged resistance on the one side may 
 kindle a passionate sense of wrong on the other. What 
 I fear are the demagogues and the accidents. 
 
 The present condition of all civilized countries is that 
 of increasing unstable equilibrium. In steam and elec¬ 
 tricity, and all the countless inventions which they typify, 
 mighty forces have entered the world. If rightly used, 
 they are our servants, more potent to do our bidding 
 than the genii of Arabian story. If w r rongly used, they, 
 too, must turn to monsters of destruction. They require 
 and will compel great social changes. That we may 
 already see. Operating under social institutions which 
 are based on natural justice, which acknowledge the equal 
 rights of all to the material and opportunities of nature, 
 their elevating power will be equally exerted, and indus¬ 
 trial organization will pass naturally into that of a vast 
 cooperative society. Operating under social institutions 
 which deny natural justice by treating land as private 
 property, their power is unequally exerted, and tends, by 
 producing inequality, to engender forces that will tear and 
 rend and shatter. The old bottles cannot hold the new 
 wine. This is the ferment which throughout the civilized 
 world is everywhere beginning. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. 
 
 I ET me recapitulate. 
 
 A What I want to impress upon those who may read 
 this book is this : 
 
 The land question is nowhere a mere local question; it 
 is a universal question. It involves the great problem of 
 the distribution of wealth, which is everywhere forcing 
 itself npon attention. 
 
 It cannot be settled by measures which in their nature 
 can have but local application. It can be settled only by 
 measures which in their nature will apply everywhere. 
 
 It cannot be settled by half-way measures. It can be 
 settled only by the acknowledgment of equal rights to 
 land. Upon this basis it can be settled easily and per- 
 manentlv. 
 
 c/ 
 
 If the Irish reformers take this ground, they will make 
 their fight the common fight of all the peoples; they will 
 concentrate strength and divide opposition. They will 
 turn the flank of the system that oppresses them, and 
 awake the struggle in its very intrenchments. They will 
 rouse against it a force that is like the force of rising 
 tides. 
 
 What I urge the men of Ireland to do is to proclaim, 
 without limitation or evasion, that the land, of natural 
 right, is the common property of the whole people, and 
 
IN HOC SIGrNO VINCES. 
 
 107 
 
 to propose practical measures which will recognize this 
 right in all countries as well as in Ireland. 
 
 What I urge the Land Leagues of the United States to 
 do is to announce this great principle as of universal appli¬ 
 cation ; to give their movement a reference to America as 
 well as to Ireland; to broaden and deepen and strengthen 
 it by making it a movement for the regeneration of the 
 world—a movement which shall concentrate and give 
 shape to aspirations that are stirring among all nations. 
 
 Ask not for Ireland mere charity or sympathy. Let 
 her call be the call of fraternity: “For yourselves, O 
 brothers, as well as for us ! ” Let her rallying cry awake 
 all who slumber, and rouse to a common struggle all who 
 are oppressed. Let it breathe not old hates; let it ring 
 and echo with the new hope! 
 
 In many lands her sons are true to her; under many 
 skies her daughters burn with the love of her. Lo! the 
 ages bring their opportunity. Let those wdio would honor 
 her bear her banner to the front! 
 
 The harp and the shamrock, the golden sunburst on 
 the field of living green! emblems of a country without 
 nationality; standard of a people downtrodden and 
 oppressed! The hour has come when they may lead 
 the van of the great world-struggle. Types of harmony 
 and of ever-spriuging hope, of light and of life ! The 
 hour has come when they may stand for something higher 
 than local patriotism; something grander than national 
 independence. The hour has come when they may stand 
 forth to speak the world’s hope, to lead the world’s 
 advance! 
 
 Torn away by pirates, tending in a strange land a 
 heathen master’s swine, the slave boy, with the spirit of 
 Christ in his heart, praying in the snow for those who 
 had enslaved him, and returning to bring to his oppressors 
 the message of the gospel, returning with good to give 
 
108 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 where evil had been received, to kindle in the darkness a 
 great light—this is Ireland’s patron saint. In his spirit 
 let Ireland’s struggle be. Not merely through Irish vales 
 and hamlets, but into England, into Scotland, into Wales, 
 wherever our common tongue is spoken, let the torch be 
 carried and the word be preached. And beyond! The 
 brotherhood of man stops not with d fferences of speech 
 any more than with seas or mountain-chains. A century 
 ago it was ours to speak the ringing word. Then it was 
 France’s. Now it may be Ireland’s, if her sons be true. 
 
 But wherever, or by whom, the word must be spoken, 
 the standard will be raised. No matter what the Irish 
 leaders do or do not do, it is too la,te to settle permanently 
 the question on any basis short of the recognition of 
 equal natural right. And, whether the Land Leagues 
 move forward or slink back, the agitation must spread to 
 this side of the Atlantic. The Republic, the true Republic, 
 is not yet here. But her birth-struggle must soon begin. 
 Already, with the hope of her, men’s thoughts are stirring. 
 
 Not a republic of landlords and peasants; not a republic 
 of millionaires and tramps; not a republic in which some 
 are masters and some serve. But a republic of equal 
 citizens, where competition becomes cooperation, and the 
 interdependence of all gives true independence to each; 
 where moral progress goes hand in hand with intellectual 
 progress, and material progress elevates and enfranchises 
 even the poorest and weakest and lowliest. 
 
 And the gospel of deliverance, let us not forget it: it is 
 the gospel of love, not of hate. He whom it emancipates 
 will know neither Jew nor Gentile, nor Irishman nor 
 
 •r 
 
 Englishman, nor German nor Frenchman, nor European 
 nor American, nor difference of color or of race, nor 
 animosities of class or condition. Let us set our feet on 
 old prejudices, let us bury the old hates. There have 
 
IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. 
 
 109 
 
 been “Holy Alliances” of kings. Let us strive for the 
 Holy Alliance of the people. 
 
 Liberty, equality, fraternity! Write them on the ban¬ 
 ners. Let them be for sign and countersign. Without 
 equality, liberty cannot be; without fraternity, neither 
 equality nor liberty can be achieved. 
 
 Liberty—the full freedom of each bounded only by the 
 equal freedom of every other! 
 
 Equality—the equal right of each to the use and enjoy¬ 
 ment of all natural opportunities, to all the essentials of 
 happy, healthful, human life ! 
 
 Fraternity—that sjunpathy which links together those 
 who struggle in a noble cause; that would live and let 
 live; that would help as well as be helped; that, in seeking 
 the good of all, finds the highest good of each! 
 
 “ By this sign shall ye conquer! ” 
 
 u We hold these truths to he self-evident—that all men are 
 created equal ; that they are endowed hy their Creator with 
 certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life , liberty , 
 and the 'pursuit of happiness! v 
 
 It is over a century since these words rang out. It is 
 time to give them their full, true meaning. Let the 
 standard be lifted that all may see it; let the advance be 
 sounded that all may hear it. Let those who would fall 
 back, fall back. Let those who would oppose, oppose. 
 Everywhere are those who will rally. The stars in their 
 courses fight against Sisera ! 
 
 Henry George. 
 
 New York, February 28 , 1881 . 
 
PROPERTY IN LAND 
 
 A PASSAGE-AT-ARMS 
 
 BETWEEN THE 
 
 DUKE OF ARGYLL AND HENRY GEORGE 
 

 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE. 
 
 The literary reputation and the high social and political 
 rank of the Duke of Argyll have attracted unusual atten¬ 
 tion to his arraignment of Henry George’s doctrine as to 
 property in land. Mr. George has made a vigorous and 
 aggressive reply, which is here given in juxtaposition with 
 the Duke’s attack. This passage-at-arms triply challenges 
 attention because of the burning interest in the question 
 itself at present, the representative character of the dis¬ 
 putants, and the dialectic skill with which the controversy 
 is conducted. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Prophet of San Francisco.7 
 
 By the Duke of Argyll, in the Nineteenth Century for April, 
 1884. 
 
 •II. The “Reduction to Iniquity”.41 
 
 By Henry George, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 
 1884. 
 
' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 * • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. 
 
 T HERE are some advantages in being a citizen—even 
 a very humble citizen—in the Republic of Letters. 
 If any man has ever written anything on matters of seri¬ 
 ous concern, which others have read with interest, he will 
 very soon find himself in contact with curious diversities 
 of mind. Subtle sources of sympathy will open up before 
 him in contrast with sources, not less subtle, of antipathy, 
 and both of them are often interesting and instructive in 
 the highest degree. 
 
 A good many years ago a friend of mine, whose opinion 
 I greatly value, was kind enough to tell me of his approval 
 of a little book which I had then lately published. As he 
 was a man of pure taste, and naturally much more inclined 
 to criticism than assent, his approval gave me pleasure. 
 But being a man also very honest and outspoken, he took 
 care to explain that his approval was not unqualified. He 
 liked the whole book except one chapter, u in which,” he 
 added, u it seems to me there is a good deal of nonsense.” 
 
 There was no need to ask him what that chapter was. 
 I knew it very well. It could be none other than a chapter 
 
8 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 called “ Law in Politics/’ which was devoted to the ques¬ 
 tion how far, in human conduct and affairs, we can trace 
 the Reign of Law in the same sense, or in a sense very 
 closely analogous to that in which we can trace it in the 
 physical sciences. There were several things in that 
 chapter which my friend was not predisposed to like. In 
 the first place, he was an active politician, and such men 
 are sure to feel the reasoning to be unnatural and unjust 
 which tends to represent all the activities of their life as 
 more or less the results of circumstance. In the second 
 place, he was above all other things a Free Trader, and 
 the governing idea of that school is that every attempt to 
 interfere by law with anything connected with trade or 
 manufacture is a folly if not a crime. Now, one main 
 object of my “nonsense” chapter was to show that this 
 doctrine is not true as an absolute proposition. It drew 
 a line between two provinces of legislation, in one of which 
 such interference had indeed been proved to be mischie¬ 
 vous, but in the other of which interference had been 
 equally proved to be absolutely required. Protection, it 
 was shown, had been found to be wrong in all attempts to 
 regulate the value or the price of anything. But Protec¬ 
 tion, it was also shown, had been found to be right and 
 necessary in defending the interests of life, health, and 
 morals. As a matter of historical fact, it was pointed out 
 that during the present century there had been two steady 
 movements on the part of Parliament—one a movement 
 of retreat, the other a movement of advance. Step by 
 step legislation had been abandoned in all endeavors to 
 regulate interests purely economic; while, step by step, 
 not less steadily, legislation had been adopted more and 
 more extensively for the regulation of matters in which 
 those higher interests were concerned. Moreover, I had 
 ventured to represent both these movements as equally 
 important—the movement in favor of Protection in one 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 9 
 
 direction being quite as valuable as the movement against 
 Protection in another direction. It was not in the nature 
 of things that my friend should admit this equality, or 
 even any approach to a comparison between the two 
 movements. In promoting one of them he had spent his 
 life, and the truths it represented were to him the subject 
 of passionate conviction. Of the other movement he had 
 been at best only a passive spectator, or had followed its 
 steps with cold and critical toleration. To place them on 
 anything like the same level as steps of advance in the 
 science of government, could not but appear to him as a 
 proposition involving “a good deal of nonsense.” But 
 critics may themselves be criticized j and sometimes authors 
 are in the happy position of seeing behind both the praise 
 and the blame they get. In this case I am unrepentant. 
 I am firmly convinced that the social and political value 
 of the principle which has led to the repeal of all laws for 
 the regulation of price is not greater than the value of the 
 principle which has led to the enactment of many laws 
 for the regulation of labor. If the Factory Acts and 
 many others of the like kind had not been passed we 
 should for many years have been hearing a hundred 
 “bitter cries” for every one which assails us now, and the 
 social problems which still confront us would have been 
 much more difficult and dangerous than they are. 
 
 Certain it is that if the train of thought which led up 
 to this conclusion was distasteful to some minds, it turned 
 out to be eminently attractive to many others. And of 
 this, some years later, I had a curious proof. From the 
 other side of the world, and from a perfect stranger, there 
 came a courteous letter accompanied by the present of a 
 book. The author had read mine, and he sent his own. 
 In spite of prepossessions, he had confidence in a candid 
 hearing. The letter was from Mr. Henry George, and 
 the book was “ Progress and Poverty.” Both were then 
 
10 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 unknown to fame 3 nor was it possible for me fully to 
 appreciate the compliment conveyed until I found that 
 the book was directed to prove that almost all the evils 
 of humanity are to be traced to the very existence of 
 landowners, and that by divine right land could only 
 belong to everybody in general and to nobody in particular. 
 
 The credit of being open to conviction is a great credit, 
 and even the heaviest drafts upon it cannot well be made 
 the subject of complaint. And so I could not be otherwise 
 than flattered when this appeal in the sphere of politics 
 was followed by another in the sphere of science. Another 
 author was good enough to present me with his book • and 
 I found that it was directed to prove that all the errors 
 of modern physical philosophy arise from the prevalent 
 belief that our planet is a globe. In reality it is flat. 
 Elaborate chapters and equally elaborate diagrams are 
 devoted to the proof. At first I thought that the argu¬ 
 ment was a joke, like Archbishop Whately’s ‘‘Historic 
 Doubts.” But I soon saw that the author was quite as 
 earnest as Mr. Henry George. Lately I have seen that 
 both these authors have been addressing public meetings 
 with great success 5 and considering that all obvious 
 appearances and the language of common life are against 
 the accepted doctrine of Copernicus, it is perhaps not 
 surprising that the popular audiences which have listened 
 to the two reformers have evidently been almost as incom¬ 
 petent to detect the blunders of the one as to see through 
 the logical fallacies of the other. But the Californian 
 philosopher has one immense advantage. Nobody has any 
 personal interest in believing that the world is flat. But 
 many persons may have an interest, very personal indeed, 
 in believing that they have a right to appropriate a share 
 in their neighbor’s vineyard. 
 
 There are, at least, a few axioms in life on which we 
 are entitled to decline discussion. Even the most skeptical 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 11 
 
 minds have done so. The mind of Voltaire was certainly 
 not disposed to accept without question any of the beliefs 
 that underlay the rotten political system which he saw and 
 hated. He was one of those who assailed it with every 
 weapon, and who ultimately overthrew it. Among his 
 fellows in that work there was a perfect revelry of rebel¬ 
 lion and of unbelief. In the grotesque procession of new 
 opinions which had begun to pass across the stage while 
 he was still upon it, this particular opinion against prop¬ 
 erty in land had been advocated by the famous “Jean 
 Jacques.” Voltaire turned his powerful glance upon it, 
 and this is how he treated it 
 
 B. Avez-vous oublie que Jean-Jacques, un des p&res de Plilglise 
 Moderne, a dit, que le premier qui osa clore et cultiver un terrain 
 fut l’ennemi du genre humain, qu’il fallait l’exterminer, et que les 
 fruits sont a tous, et que la terre n'est a personne ? N’avons-nous 
 pas deja examine ensemble cette belle proposition si utile a la So¬ 
 ciety? 
 
 A. Quel est ce Jean-Jacques? II faut que ce soit quelque Hun, 
 bel esprit, qui ait ecrit cette impertinence abominable, ou quelque 
 mauvais plaisant, buffo magro, qui ait voulu rire de ce que le monde 
 entier a de plus serieux. . . . 
 
 For my own part, however, I confess that the mocking 
 spirit of Voltaire is not the spirit in which I am ever 
 tempted to look at the fallacies of Communism. Apart 
 altogether from the appeal which was made to me by this 
 author, I have always felt the high interest which belongs 
 to those fallacies, because of the protean forms in which 
 they tend to revive and reappear, and because of the call 
 they make upon us from time to time to examine and 
 identify the fundamental facts which do really govern 
 the condition of mankind. Never, perhaps, have commu¬ 
 nistic theories assumed a form more curious, or lent 
 
 * Dictionnaire Pliilosophique, 1764, art. “Loi Naturelle.” 
 
12 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 themselves to more fruitful processes of analysis, than in 
 the writings of Mr. Henry George. These writings now 
 include a volume on “ Social Problems,” published recently. 
 It represents the same ideas as those which inspire the 
 work on “ Progress and Poverty.” They are often "ex¬ 
 pressed in almost the same words, but they exhibit some 
 development and applications which are of high interest 
 and importance. In this paper I shall refer to both, but for 
 the present I can do no more than group together some of 
 the more prominent features of this new political philosophy. 
 
 In the first place, it is not a little remarkable to find 
 one of the most extreme doctrines of Communism advo¬ 
 cated by a man who is a citizen of the United States. We 
 have been accustomed to associate that country with 
 boundless resources and an almost inexhaustible future. 
 It has been for two centuries, and it still is, the land of 
 refuge and the land of promise to millions of the human 
 race. And among all the States which are there u united,” 
 those which occupy the Far West are credited with the 
 largest share in this abundant present, and this still more 
 abundant future. Yet it is out of these United States, 
 and out of the one State which, perhaps, above all others, 
 has this fame of opulence, that we have a solitary voice, 
 prophesying a future of intolerable woes. • He declares 
 that all the miseries of the Old World are already firmly 
 established in the New. He declares that they are increas¬ 
 ing in an ever-accelerating ratio, growing with the growth 
 of the people, and strengthening with its apparent strength. 
 He tells us of crowded cities, of pestilential rooms, of men 
 and women struggling for employments however mean, 
 of the breathlessness of competition, of the extremes of 
 poverty and of wealth—in short, of all the inequalities 
 of condition, of all the pressures and suffocations which 
 accompany the struggle for existence in the oldest and 
 most crowded societies in the world. 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 13 
 
 I do not pretend to accept this picture as an accurate 
 representation of the truth. At the best it is a picture 
 only of the darkest shadows with a complete omission of 
 the lights. The author is above all things a Pessimist, 
 and he is under obvious temptations to adopt this kind of 
 coloring. He has a theory of his own as to the only 
 remedy for all the evils of humanity; and this remedy he 
 knows to be regarded with aversion both by the intellect 
 and by the conscience of his countrymen. He can only 
 hope for success by trying to convince Society that it is 
 in the grasp of some deadly malady. Large allowance 
 must be made for this temptation. Still, after making 
 every allowance, it remains a most remarkable fact that 
 such a picture can be drawn by a citizen of the United 
 States. There can be no doubt whatever that at least as 
 regards many of the great cities of the Union, it is quite 
 as true a picture of them as it would be of the great cities 
 of Europe. And even as regards the population of the 
 States as a whole, other observers have reported on the 
 feverish atmosphere which accompanies its eager pursuit 
 of wealth, and on the strain which is everywhere manifest 
 for the attainment of standards of living and of enjoyment 
 which are never reached except by a very few. So far, 
 at least, we may accept Mr. George’s representations as 
 borne out by independent evidence. 
 
 But here we encounter another most remarkable cir¬ 
 cumstance in Mr. George’s books. The man who gives 
 this dark—this almost black—picture of the tendencies of 
 American progress, is the same man who rejects with 
 indignation the doctrine that population does everywhere 
 tend to press in the same way upon the limits of subsis¬ 
 tence. This, as is well known, is the general proposition 
 which is historically connected with the name of Malthus, 
 although other writers before him had unconsciously felt 
 and assumed its truth. Since his time it has been almost 
 
14 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 universally admitted not as a theory but as a fact, and one 
 of the most clearly ascertained of all the facts of economic 
 science. But, like all Communists, Mr. George hates the 
 very name of Malthus. He admits and even exaggerates 
 the fact of pressure as applicable to the people of America. 
 He admits it as applicable to the people of Europe, and of 
 India, and of China. He admits it as a fact as applicable 
 more or less obviously to every existing population of the 
 globe. But he will not allow the fact to be generalized 
 into a law. He will not allow this—because the generali¬ 
 zation suggests a cause which he denies, and shuts out 
 another cause which he asserts. But this is not a legiti¬ 
 mate reason for refusing to express phenomena in terms 
 as wide and general as their actual occurrence. Never 
 mind causes until we have clearly ascertained facts; but 
 when these are clearly ascertained let us record them 
 fearlessly in terms as wide as the truth demands. If 
 there is not a single population on the globe which does 
 not exhibit the fact of pressure more or less severe on the 
 limits of their actual subsistence, let us at least recognize 
 this fact in all its breadth and sweep. The diversities of 
 laws and institutions, of habits and of manners, are 
 almost infinite. Yet amid all these diversities this one 
 fact is universal. Mr. George himself is the latest witness. 
 He sees it to be a fact—a terrible and alarming fact, in 
 his opinion—as applicable to the young and hopeful 
 society of the New World. In a country where there is 
 no monarch, no aristocracy, no ancient families, no entails 
 of land, no standing armies worthy of the name, no pen¬ 
 sions, no courtiers, where all are absolutely equal before 
 the law, there, even there—in this paradise of Democracy, 
 Mr. George tells us that the pressure of the masses upon 
 the means of living and enjoyment which are open to 
 them is becoming more and more severe, and that the 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 15 
 
 inequalities of men are becoming as wide and glaring as 
 in the oldest societies of Asia and of Europe. 
 
 The contrast between this wonderful confirmation of 
 Malthusian facts, and the vehement denunciation of Mal¬ 
 thusian u law/’ is surely one of the curiosities of literature. 
 But the explanation is clear enough. Mr. George sees 
 that facts common to so many nations must be due to 
 some cause as common as the result. But, on the other 
 hand, it would not suit his theory to admit that this cause 
 can possibly be anything inherent in the constitution of 
 Man, or in the natural System under which he lives. 
 From this region, therefore, he steadily averts his face. 
 There are a good many other facts in human nature and 
 in human conditions that have this common and universal 
 'character. There are a number of such facts connected 
 with the mind, another number connected with the body, 
 and still another number connected with the opportunities 
 of men. But all of these Mr. George passes over—in order 
 that he may fix attention upon one solitary fact—namely, 
 that in all nations individual men, and individual commu¬ 
 nities of men, have hitherto been allowed to acquire bits 
 of land and to deal with them as their own. 
 
 The distinction between Natural Law and Positive 
 Institution is indeed a distinction not to be neglected. 
 But it is one of the very deepest subjects in all philosophy, 
 and there are many indications that Mr. George has dipped 
 into its abysmal waters with the very shortest of sounding¬ 
 lines. Human laws are evolyed out of human instincts, 
 and these are among the gifts of nature. Reason may 
 pervert them, and Reason is all the more apt to do so 
 when it begins to spin logical webs out of its own bowels. 
 But it may be safely said that in direct proportion as 
 human laws, and the accepted ideas on which they rest, 
 are really universal, in that same proportion they have a 
 
16 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 claim to be regarded as really natural, and as the legiti¬ 
 mate expression of fundamental truths. Sometimes the 
 very men who set up as reformers against such laws, and 
 denounce as “ stupid even the greatest nations which 
 have abided by them, are themselves unconsciously subject 
 to the same ideas, and are only working out of them some 
 perverted application. 
 
 For here, again, we come upon another wonderful cir¬ 
 cumstance affecting Mr. George’s writings. I have spoken 
 of Mr. George as a citizen of the United States, and also 
 as a citizen of the particular State of California. In this 
 latter capacity, as the citizen of a democratic government, 
 he is a member of that government, which is the govern¬ 
 ment of the whole people. Now, what is the most striking 
 feature about the power claimed by that government, and 
 actually exercised by it every day? It is the power of 
 excluding the whole human race absolutely, except on its 
 own conditions, from a large portion of the earth’s surface 
 —a portion so large that it embraces no less than ninety- 
 nine millions of acres, or 156,000 square miles of plain and 
 valley, of mountain and of hill, of lake and river, and of 
 estuaries of the sea. Yet the community which claims 
 and exercises this exclusive ownership over this enormous 
 territory is, as compared with its extent, a mere handful 
 of men. The whole population of the State of California 
 represents only the fractional number of 5.5 to the square 
 mile. It is less than one-quarter of the population of 
 London. If the whole of it could be collected into one 
 place they would hardly make a black spot in the enormous 
 landscape if it were swept by a telescope. Such is the 
 little company of men which claims to own absolutely and 
 exclusively this enormous territory. Yet it is a member 
 
 * This is the epithet applied by Mr. George to the English people, 
 because they will persist in allowing what all other nations have 
 equally allowed. 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 17 
 
 of this community who goes about the world preaching 
 the doctrine, as a doctrine of divine right, that land is to 
 be as free as the atmosphere, which is the common prop¬ 
 erty of all, and in which no exclusive ownership can be 
 claimed by any. It is true that Mr. George does denounce 
 the conduct of his own Government in the matter of its 
 disposal of land. But strange to say, he does not denounce 
 it because it claims this exclusive ownership. On the 
 contrary, he denounces it because it ever consents to part 
 with it. Not the land only, but the very atmosphere of 
 California—to use his own phraseology—is to be held so 
 absolutely and so exclusively as the property of this com¬ 
 munity, that it is never to be parted with except on lease 
 and for such annual rent as the Government may deter¬ 
 mine. Who gave this exclusive ownership over this 
 immense territory to this particular community? Was 
 it conquest? And if so, may it not be as rightfully 
 acquired by any who are strong enough to seize it? And 
 if exclusive ownership is conferred by conquest, then has 
 it not been open to every conquering army, and to every 
 occupying host in all ages and in all countries of the world, 
 to establish a similar ownership, and to deal with it as 
 they please ? 
 
 It is at this point that we catch sight of one aspect of 
 Mr. George’s theory in which it is capable of at least a 
 rational explanation. The question how a comparatively 
 small community of ’ men like the first gold-diggers of 
 California and their descendants can with best advantage 
 use or employ its exclusive claims of ownership over so 
 vast an area, is clearly quite an open question. It is one 
 thing for any given political society to refuse to divide its 
 vacant territory among individual owners. It is quite 
 another thing for a political society, which for ages has 
 recognized such ownership and encouraged it, to break 
 faith with those who have acquired such ownership and 
 
18 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 have lived and labored, and bought and sold, and willed 
 upon the faith of it. If Mr. George can persuade the 
 State of which he is a citizen, and the Government of 
 which he is in this sense a member, that it would be best 
 never any more to sell any bit of its unoccupied territory 
 to any individual, by all means let him try to do so, and 
 some plausible arguments might be used in favor of such 
 a course. But there is a strong presumption against it 
 and him. The question of the best method of disposing 
 of such territory has been before every one of our great 
 colonies, and before the United States for several genera¬ 
 tions ; and the universal instinct of them all has been 
 that the individual ownership of land is the one great 
 attraction which they can hold out to the settlers whom 
 it is their highest interest to invite and to establish. They 
 know that the land of a country is never so well u nation¬ 
 alized ” as when it is committed to the ownership of men 
 whose interest it is to make the most of it. They know 
 that under no other inducement could men be found to 
 clear the soil from stifling forests, or to water it from arid 
 wastes, or to drain it from pestilential swamps, or to 
 inclose it from the access of wild animals, or to defend it 
 from the assaults of savage tribes. Accordingly their 
 verdict has been unanimous; and it has been given under 
 conditions in which they were free from all traditions 
 except those which they carried with them as parts of 
 their own nature, in harmony and correspondence with the 
 nature of things around them. I do not stop to argue this 
 question here; but I do stop to point out that both solu¬ 
 tions of it—the one quite as much as the other—involve 
 the exclusive occupation of land by individuals, and the 
 doctrine of absolute ownership vested in particular com¬ 
 munities, as against all the rest of mankind. Both are 
 equally incompatible with the fustian which compares the 
 exclusive occupation of land to exclusive occupation of 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 19 
 
 ' H 
 
 the atmosphere. Supposing that settlers could be found 
 willing to devote the years of labor and of skill which are 
 necessary to make wild soils productive, under no other 
 tenure than that of a long “ improvement lease,” paying 
 of course for some long period either no rent at all, or 
 else a rent which must be purely nominal; supposing this 
 to be true, still equally the whole area of any given region 
 would soon be in the exclusive possession for long periods 
 of time of a certain number of individual farmers, and 
 would not be open to the occupation by the poor of all 
 the world. Thus the absolute ownership which Mr. George 
 declares to be blasphemous against God and Nature, is 
 still asserted on behalf of some mere fraction of the human 
 race, and this absolute ownership is again doled out to the 
 members of this small communitv, and to them alone, in 
 such shares as it considers to be most remunerative to 
 itself. 
 
 And here again, for the third time, we come upon a 
 most remarkable testimony to facts in Mr. George’s book, 
 the import and bearing of which he does not apparently 
 perceive. Of course the question whether it is most 
 advantageous to any given society of men to own and 
 cultivate its own lands in severalty or in common, is a 
 question largely depending on the conduct and the motives 
 and the character of governments, as compared with the 
 conduct and the character and the motives of individual 
 men. In the disposal and application of wealth, as well 
 as in the acquisition of it, are men more pure and honest 
 when they act in public capacities as members of a Govern¬ 
 ment or of a Legislature, than when they act in private 
 capacities toward their fellow-men ? Is it not notoriously 
 the reverse ? Is it not obvious that men will do, and are 
 constantly seen doing, as politicians, what they would be 
 ashamed to do in private life? And has not this been 
 proved under all the forms which government has taken 
 
20 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 in the history of political societies ? Lastly, I will ask one 
 other question—Is it not true that, to say the very least, 
 this inherent tendency to corruption has received no check 
 from the democratic constitutions of those many “ new 
 worlds ” in which kings were left behind, and aristocracies 
 have not had time to be established ? 
 
 These are the very questions which Mr. George answers 
 with no faltering voice j and it is impossible to disregard 
 his evidence. He declares over and over again, in lan¬ 
 guage of virtuous indignation, that government in the 
 United States is everywhere becoming more and more 
 corrupt. Not only are the Legislatures corrupt, but that 
 last refuge of virtue even in the worst societies—the 
 Judiciary—is corrupt also. In none of the old countries 
 of the world has the very name of politician fallen so low 
 as in the democratic communities of America. Nor would 
 it be true to say that it is the wealthy classes who. have 
 corrupted the constituencies. These—at least to a very 
 large extent—are themselves corrupt. Probably there is 
 no sample of the Demos more infected with corruption 
 than the Demos of New York. Its management of the 
 municipal rates is alleged to be a system of scandalous 
 jobbery. Now, the wonderful thing is that of all this 
 Mr. George is thoroughly aware. He sees it, he repeats 
 it in every variety of form. Let us hear a single 
 passage 
 
 It behooves us to look facts in the face. The experiment of popu¬ 
 lar government in the United States is clearly a failure. Not that 
 it is a failure everywhere and in everything. An experiment of this 
 kind does not have to be fully worked out to be proved a failure. 
 But speaking generally of the whole country, from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, our government by the 
 people has in large degree become, is in larger degree becoming, 
 government by the strong and unscrupulous. 
 
 * “Social Problems/’ Chapter II. 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 21 
 
 Again, I say that it is fair to remember that Mr. George 
 is a Pessimist. But while remembering this, and making 
 every possible allowance for it, we must not less remember 
 that his evidence does not stand alone. In the United 
 States, from citizens still proud of their country, and out 
 of the United States, from representative Americans, I 
 have been told of transactions from personal knowledge 
 which conclusively indicated a condition of things closely 
 corresponding to the indictment of Mr. George. At all 
 events we cannot be wrong in our conclusion that it is not 
 among the public bodies and Governments of the States 
 of America that we are to look in that country for the 
 best exhibitions of purity or of virtue. 
 
 Yet it is to these bodies—legislative, administrative, and 
 judicial, of which he gives us such an account—that Mr. 
 George would confine the rights of absolute ownership in 
 the soil. It is these bodies that he would constitute the 
 sole and universal landlord, and it is to them he would 
 confide the duty of assessing and of spending the rents of 
 everybody all over the area of every State. He tells us 
 that a great revenue, fit for the support of some such great 
 rulers as have been common in the Old World, could be 
 afforded out of one-half the “ waste and stealages ” of such 
 Municipalities as his own at San Francisco. What would 
 be the “ waste and stealages ” of a governing body having 
 at its disposal the whole agricultural and mining wealth 
 of such States as California and Texas, of Illinois and 
 Colorado ? 
 
 But this is not all. The testimony which is borne by 
 Mr. George as to what the governing bodies of America 
 now are is as nothing to the testimony of his own writings 
 as to what they would be—if they were ever to adopt his 
 system, and if they were ever to listen to his teaching. 
 Like all Communists, he regards Society not as consisting 
 of individuals whose separate welfare is to be the basis of 
 
22 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 the welfare of the whole, but as a great abstract Person¬ 
 ality, in which all power is to be centered, and to which 
 all separate rights and interests are to be subordinate. 
 If this is to be the doctrine, we might at least have hoped 
 that with such powers committed to Governments, as 
 against the individual, corresponding duties and responsi¬ 
 bilities, toward the individual, would have been recognized 
 as an indispensable accompaniment. If, for example, 
 every political society as a whole is an abiding Personality, 
 with a continuity of rights over all its members, we might 
 at least have expected that the continuous obligation of 
 honor and good faith would have been recognized as 
 equally binding on this Personality in all its relations 
 with those who are subject to its rule. But this is not 
 at all Mr. George’s view. On the contrary, he preaches 
 systematically not only the high privilege, but the positive 
 duty of repudiation. He is not content with urging that 
 no more bits of unoccupied land should be ever sold, but 
 he insists upon it that the ownership of every bit already 
 sold shall be resumed without compensation to the settler 
 who has bought it, who has spent upon it years of labor, 
 and who from first to last has relied on the security of 
 the State and on the honor of its Government. There is 
 no mere practice of corruption which has ever been alleged 
 against the worst administrative body in any country that 
 can be compared in corruption with the desolating dis¬ 
 honor of this teaching. In olden times, under violent and 
 rapacious rulers, the Prophets of Israel and of Judah used 
 to raise their voices against all forms of wrong and rob¬ 
 bery, and they pronounced a special benediction upon 
 him who sweareth to his own hurt and cliangetli not. 
 But the new Prophet of San Francisco is of a different 
 opinion. Ahab would have been saved all his trouble, 
 and Jezebel would' have been saved all her tortuous 
 intrigues if only tliev could have had beside them the 
 
I 
 
 THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 23 
 
 voice of Mr. Henry George. Elijah was a fool. What 
 right could Naboth have to talk about the “inheritance of 
 his fathers ” ? * His fathers could have no more right to 
 acquire the ownership of those acres on the Hill of Jezreel 
 than he could have to continue in the usurpation of it. 
 No matter what might be his pretended title, no man and 
 no body of men could give it: —not Joshua nor the Judges; 
 not Saul nor David; not Solomon in all his glory—could 
 “make sure” to Naboth’s fathers that portion of God’s 
 earth against the undying claims of the head of the State, 
 and of the representative of the whole people of Israel. 
 
 But now another vista of consequence opens up before 
 us. If the doctrine be established that no faith is to be 
 kept with the owners of land, will the same principle not 
 apply to tenancy as well as ownership ? If one generation 
 cannot bind the next to recognize a purchase, can one 
 generation bind another to recognize a lease ? If the one 
 promise can be broken and ought to be broken, why 
 should the other be admitted to be binding ? If the accu¬ 
 mulated value arising out of many years, or even genera¬ 
 tions, of labor, can be and ought to be appropriated, is 
 there any just impediment against seizing that value every 
 year as it comes to be? If this new gospel be indeed 
 gospel, why should not this Californian form of “faith 
 unfaithful” keep us perennially and forever “falsely 
 true ” ? 
 
 Nay, more, is there any reason why the doctrine of 
 repudiation should be confined to pledges respecting 
 either the tenancy or the ownership of land? This ques¬ 
 tion naturally arose in the minds of all who read with 
 any intelligence “Progress and Poverty” when it first 
 appeared. But the extent to which its immoral doctrines 
 might be applied was then a matter of inference only, 
 
 * 1 Kings xxi. 3. 
 
24 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 however clear that inference might be. If all owners of 
 land, great and small, might be robbed, and ought to be 
 robbed of that which Society had from time immemorial 
 allowed them and encouraged them to acquire and to call 
 their ownj if the thousands of men, women, and children 
 who directly and indirectly live on rent, whether in the 
 form of returns to the improver, or of mortgage to the 
 capitalist, or jointure to the widow, or portion to the 
 children, are all equally to be ruined by the confiscation 
 of the fund on which they depend—are there not other 
 funds which would be all swept into the same net of envy 
 and of violence ? In particular, what is to become of that 
 great fund on which also thousands and thousands depend 
 —men, women, and children, the aged, the widow, and 
 the orphan—the fund which the State has borrowed and 
 which constitutes the Debt of Nations! Even in “Prog¬ 
 ress and Poverty there were dark hints and individual 
 passages which indicated the goal of all its reasoning in 
 this direction. But men’s intellects just now are so flabby 
 on these subjects, and they are so fond of shaking their 
 heads when property in land is compared with property in 
 other things, that such suspicions and forebodings as to 
 the issue of Mr. George’s arguments would to many have 
 seemed overstrained. Fortunately, in his later book he 
 has had the courage of his opinions, and the logic of false 
 premises has steeled his moral sense against the iniquity 
 of even the most dishonorable conclusions. All National 
 Debts are as unjust as property in land; all such Debts 
 are to be treated with the sponge. As no faith is due to 
 landowners, or to any who depend on their sources of 
 income, so neither is any faith to be kept with bond¬ 
 holders, or with any who depend on the revenues which 
 have been pledged to them. The Jew who may have lent 
 a million, and the small tradesman who may have lent his 
 little savings to the State—the trust-funds of children and 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 25 
 
 of widows which have been similarly lent—are all equally 
 to be the victims of repudiation. When we remember 
 the enormous amount of the National Debts of Europe and 
 of the American States, and the vast number of persons 
 of all kinds and degrees of wealth whose property is 
 invested in these “promises to pay,” we can perhaps 
 faintly imagine the ruin which would be caused by the 
 gigantic fraud recommended by Mr. George. Take Eng¬ 
 land alone. About seven hundred and fifty millions is 
 the amount of her Public Debt. This great sum is held 
 by about 181,721 persons, of whom the immense majority 
 —about 111,000—receive dividends amounting to £400 a 
 year and under. Of. these, again, by far the greater part 
 enjoy incomes of less than £100 a year. And then the 
 same principle is of course applicable to the debt of all 
 public bodies ; those of the Municipalities alone, which are 
 rapidly increasing, would now amount to something like 
 
 one hundred and fiftv millions more. 
 
 «/ 
 
 Everything in America is on a gigantic scale, even its 
 forms of villainy, and the villainy advocated by Mr. George 
 is an illustration of this as striking as the Mammoth Cave 
 of Kentucky, or the frauds of the celebrated “ Tammany 
 Ring” in New York. The world has never seen such a 
 Preacher of Unrighteousness as Mr. Henry George. For 
 he goes to the roots of things, and shows us how unfounded 
 are the rules of probity, and what mere senseless super¬ 
 stitions are the obligations which have been only too long 
 acknowledged. Let us hear him on National Debts, for 
 it is an excellent specimen of his childish logic, and of his 
 profligate conclusions: 
 
 The institution of public debts, like the institution of private 
 property in land, rests upon the preposterous assumption that one 
 generation may bind another generation. If a man were to come to 
 me and say, “ Here is a promissory note which your great-grand¬ 
 father gave to my great-grandfather, and which you will oblige me 
 
26 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 by paying,” I would laugh at him, and tell him that if he wanted to 
 collect his note he had better hunt up the man who made it; that I 
 had nothing to do with my great-grandfather’s promises. And 
 if he were to insist upon payment, and to call my attention to the 
 terms of the bond in which my great-grandfather expressly stipu¬ 
 lated with his great-grandfather that I should pay him, I w r ould only 
 laugh the more, and be the more certain that he was a lunatic. To 
 such a demand any one of us would reply in effect, “My great-grand¬ 
 father was evidently a knave or a joker, and your great-grandfather 
 was certainly a fool, which quality you surely have inherited if you 
 expect me to pay you money because my great-grandfather promised 
 that I should do so. He might as well have given your great-grand¬ 
 father a draft upon Adam or a check upon the First National Bank 
 of the Moon.” 
 
 Yet upon this assumption that ascendants may bind descendants, 
 that one generation may legislate for another generation, rests the 
 assumed validity of our land titles and public debts.* 
 
 Yet even in this wonderful passage we have not touched 
 the bottom of Mr. George’s lessons in the philosophy of 
 spoliation. If we may take the property of those who 
 have trusted to our honor, surely it must be still more 
 legitimate to take the property of those who have placed 
 in us no such confidence. If we may fleece the public 
 creditor, it must be at least equally open to us to fleece all 
 those who have invested otherwise their private fortunes. 
 All the other accumulations of industry must be as right¬ 
 fully liable to confiscation. Whenever u the people ” see 
 any large handful in the hands of any one, they have a 
 right to have it—in order to save themselves from any 
 necessity of submitting to taxation. 
 
 Accordingly we find, as usual, that Mr. George has a 
 wonderful honesty in avowing what hitherto the unin¬ 
 structed world has been agreed upon considering as 
 dishonesty. But this time the avowal comes out under 
 circumstances which are deserving of special notice. Wo. 
 
 * 
 
 “Social Problems,” Chapter XYI. 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 27 
 
 all know that not many years ago the United States was 
 engaged in a civil war of long duration, at one time 
 apparently of doubtful issue, and on which the national 
 existence hung. I was one of those—not too many in 
 this country—who held from the beginning of that ter¬ 
 rible contest that “the North” were right in fighting it. 
 Lord Russell, on a celebrated occasion, said that they 
 were fighting for “ dominion.” Yes; and for what else 
 have nations ever fought, and by what else than dominion, 
 in one sense or another—have great nations ever come to 
 be ? The Demos has no greater right to fight for dominion 
 than Kings; but it has the same. But behind and above 
 the existence of the Union as a nation there was the further 
 question involved whether, in this nineteenth century of 
 the Christian era, there was to be established a great 
 dominion of civilized men which was to have negro 
 slavery as its fundamental doctrine and as the cherished 
 basis of its constitution. On both of these great questions 
 the people of the Northern States—in whatever propor¬ 
 tions the one or the other issue might affect individual 
 minds—had before them as noble a cause as any which 
 has ever called men to arms. It is a cause which will be 
 forever associated in the memory of mankind with one 
 great figure—the figure of Abraham Lincoln, the best and 
 highest representative of the American people in that 
 tremendous crisis. In nothing has the bearing of that 
 people been more admirable than in the patient and willing 
 submission of the masses, as of one man, not only to the 
 desolating sacrifice of life which it entailed, but to the 
 heavy and lasting burden of taxation which was insepa¬ 
 rable from it. It is indeed deplorable—nothing I have 
 ever read in all literature has struck me as so deplorable 
 —that at this time of day, when by patient continu¬ 
 ance in well-doing the burden has become comparatively 
 light, and there is a near prospect of its final disappear- 
 
28 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 ance, one single American citizen should be found who 
 appreciates so little the glory of his country as to express 
 his regret that they did not begin this great contest by 
 an act of stealing. Yet this is the case with Mr. Henry 
 George. In strict pursuance of his dishonest doctrines of 
 repudiation respecting public debts, and knowing that the 
 war could not have been prosecuted without funds, he 
 speaks with absolute bitterness of the folly which led the 
 Government to u shrink” from at once seizing the whole, 
 or all but a mere fraction, of the property of the few 
 individual citizens who had the reputation of being excep¬ 
 tionally rich. If, for example, it were known that any 
 man had made a fortune of £200,000, the Washington 
 Government ought not to have u shrunk ” from taking 
 the whole—except some £200, which remainder might, 
 perhaps, by a great favor, be left for such support as it 
 might afford to the former owner. And so by a number 
 of seizures of this kind, all over the States, the war might 
 possibly have been conducted for the benefit of all at the 
 cost of a very few.* 
 
 It may be worth while to illustrate how this would have 
 worked in a single instance. When I was in New York, 
 a few years ago, one of the sights which was pointed out 
 to me was a house of great size and of great beauty both 
 in respect to material and to workmanship. In these 
 respects at least, if not in its architecture, it was equal to 
 any of the palaces which are owned by private citizens in 
 any of the richest capitals of the Old World. It was built 
 wholly of pure white marble, and the owner, not having 
 been satisfied with any of the marbles of America, had 
 
 * Mr. George’s words are these : “ If, when we called on men to 
 die for their country, we had not shrunk from taking, if necessary, 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars from every million¬ 
 aire, we need not have created any debt” (“Social Problems,” 
 Chapter XVI. 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 29 
 
 gone to the expense of importing Italian marble for the 
 building. This beautiful and costly house was, I was 
 further told, the property of a Scotchman who had emi¬ 
 grated to America with no other fortune and no other 
 capital than his own good brains. He had begun by 
 selling ribbons. By selling cheap, and for ready money, 
 but always also goods of the best quality, he had soon 
 acquired a reputation for dealings which were eminently 
 advantageous to those who bought. But those who 
 bought were the public, and so a larger and a larger por¬ 
 tion of the public became eager to secure the advantages 
 of this exceptionally moderate and honest dealer. With 
 the industry of his race he had also its thrift, and the 
 constant turning of his capital on an ever-increasing scale, 
 coupled with his own limited expenditure, had soon led to 
 larger and larger savings. These, again, had been judi¬ 
 ciously invested in promoting every public undertaking 
 which promised advantage to his adopted country, and 
 which, by fulfilling that promise, could alone become 
 remunerative. And so by a process which, in ever}^ step 
 of it, was an eminent service to the community of which 
 he was a member, he became what is called a millionaire. 
 Nor in the spending of his wealth had he done otherwise 
 than contribute to the taste and splendor of his country, 
 as well as to the lucrative employment of its people. All 
 Nature is full of the love of ornament, and the habita¬ 
 tions of creatures, even the lowest in the scale of being, 
 are rich in coloring and in carving of the most exquisite 
 and elaborate decoration. It is only an ignorant and 
 uncultured spirit which denounces the same love of orna¬ 
 ment in Man, and it is a stupid doctrine which sees in it 
 nothing but a waste of means. The great merchant of 
 New,York had indeed built his house at great cost; but 
 this is only another form of saying that he had spent 
 among the artificers of that city a great sum of money, 
 
30 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 and had in the same proportion contributed to the only 
 employment by which they live. In every way, therefore, 
 both as regards the getting and the spending of his wealth, 
 this millionaire was an honor and a benefactor to his 
 country. This is the man on whom that same country 
 would have been incited by Mr. Henry George to turn 
 the big eyes of brutal envy, and to rob of all his earnings. 
 It is not so much the dishonesty or the violence of such 
 teaching that strikes us most, but its unutterable mean¬ 
 ness. That a great nation, having a great cause at stake, 
 and representing in the history of the world a life-and- 
 deatli struggle against barbarous institutions, ought to 
 have begun its memorable war by plundering a few of 
 its own citizens—this is surely the very lowest depth 
 which has ever been reached by any political philosophy. 
 
 And not less instructive than the results of this philos¬ 
 ophy are the methods of its reasoning, its methods of 
 illustration, and its way of representing facts. Of these 
 we cannot have a better example than the passage before 
 quoted, in which Mr. Henry George explains the right 
 of nations and the right of individuals to repudiate an 
 hereditary debt. It is well to see that the man who 
 defends the most dishonorable conduct on the part of 
 Governments defends it equally on the part of private 
 persons. The passage is a typical specimen of the kind 
 of stuff of which Mr. George’s works are full. The ele¬ 
 ment of plausibility in it is the idea that a man should 
 not be held responsible for promises to which he was not 
 himself a consenting party. This idea is presented by 
 itself, with a careful suppression of the conditions which 
 make it inapplicable to the case in hand. Hereditary 
 debts do not attach to persons except in respect to heredi¬ 
 tary possessions. Are these possessions to be kept while 
 the corresponding obligations are to be denied! Mr. 
 George is loud on the absurdity of calling upon him to 
 honor any promise which his great-grandfather may have 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 31 
 
 made, but he is silent about giving up any resources 
 which his great-grandfather may have left. Possibly he 
 might get out of this difficulty by avowing that he would 
 allow no property to pass from one generation to another 
 —not even from father to son—that upon every death all 
 the savings of every individual should be confiscated by 
 the State. Such a proposal would not be one whit more 
 violent, or more destructive to society, than other pro¬ 
 posals which he does avow. But so far as I have observed, 
 this particular consequence of his reasoning is either not 
 seen, or is kept in the dark. With all his apparent and 
 occasional honesty in confronting results however anar¬ 
 chical, there is a good deal of evidence that he knows how 
 to conceal his hand. The prominence given in his agita¬ 
 tion to an attack on the particular class of capitalists who 
 are owners of land, and the total or comparative silence 
 which he maintains on his desire to rob fund-holders of 
 all kinds, and especially the public creditor, is a clear 
 indication of a strategy which is more dexterous than 
 honest. And so it may really be true that he repudiates 
 all hereditary debt because he will also destroy all heredi¬ 
 tary succession in savings of any kind. But it must be 
 observed that even thus he cannot escape from the incon¬ 
 sistency I have pointed out, as it affects all public debts. 
 These have all been contracted for the purpose of effecting 
 great national objects, such as the preservation of national 
 independence, or the acquisition of national territory, or 
 the preparations needed for national defense. The State 
 cannot be disinherited of the benefits and possessions thus 
 secured, as individuals may be disinherited of their fathers 7 
 gains. In the case of National Debts, therefore, it is quite 
 clear that the immorality of Mr. George’s argument is as 
 conspicuous as the childishness of its reasoning. 
 
 But there are other examples, quite as striking, of the 
 incredible absurdity of his reasoning, which are immedi¬ 
 ately connected with his dominant idea about property in 
 
32 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 land. Thus the notion that because all the natural and 
 elementary substances which constitute the raw materials 
 of human wealth are substances derived from the ground, 
 therefore all forms of that wealth must ultimately tend 
 to concentration in the hands of those who own the land j 
 this notion must strike a landowner as one worthy only 
 of Bedlam. He may not be able at a moment’s notice to 
 unravel all the fallacies on which it rests, and he may 
 even be able to see in it the mad mimicry of logic which 
 deceives the ignorant. But it does not need to be a land- 
 owner to see immediately that the conclusion is an 
 absurdity. We have only to apply this notion in detail in 
 order to see more and more clearly its discrepancy with 
 fact. Thus, for example, we may put one application of 
 it thus: All houses are built of materials derived from the 
 soil, of stone, of lime, of brick, or of wood, or of all four 
 combined. But of these materials three are not only 
 products of the soil, but parts of its very substance and 
 material. Clearly it must follow that the whole value of 
 house property must end in passing into the hands of 
 those who own these materials, quarries of building-stone, 
 beds of brick-earth, beds of lime, and forests. Unfortu¬ 
 nately for landowners, this wonderful demonstration does 
 not, somehow, take effect. 
 
 But Mr. Henry George’s processes in matters of reason¬ 
 ing are not more absurd than his assumptions in matters 
 of fact. The whole tone is based on the assumption that 
 owners of land are not producers, and that rent does not 
 represent, or represents only in a very minor degree, the 
 interest of capital. Even an American ought to know 
 better than this; because, although there are in some 
 parts of the United States immense areas of prairie land 
 which are ready for the plow with almost no preliminary 
 labor, yet even in the New World the areas are still more 
 immense in which the soil can only be made capable of 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 33 
 
 producing; human food by the hardest of labor, and the 
 most prolonged. But in the old countries of Europe, and 
 especially in our own, every landowner knows well, and 
 others ought to know a little, that the present condition 
 of the soil is the result of generations of costly improve¬ 
 ments, and of renewed and reiterated outlays to keep 
 these improvements in effective order. Yet on this subject 
 I fear that many persons are almost as ignorant as Mr. 
 Henry George. My own experience now extends over a 
 period of the best part of forty years. During that time 
 I have built more than fifty homesteads complete for man 
 and beast; I have drained and reclaimed many hundreds, 
 and inclosed some thousands, of acres. In this sense I 
 have “ added house to house and field to field,” not—as 
 pulpit orators have assumed in similar cases—that I might 
 u dwell alone in the land,” but that the cultivating class 
 might live more comfortably, and with better appliances 
 for increasing the produce of the soil. I know no more 
 animating scene than that presented to us in the essays 
 and journals which give an account of the agricultural 
 improvements effected in Scotland since the close of the 
 Civil Wars in 1745. Thousands and thousands of acres 
 have been reclaimed from bog and waste. Ignorance has 
 given place to science, and barbarous customs of immemo¬ 
 rial strength have been replaced by habits of intelligence 
 and of business. In every county the great landowners, 
 and very often the smaller, were the great pioneers in a 
 process which has transformed the whole face of the 
 country. And this process is still in full career. If I 
 mention again my own case, it is because I know it to be 
 only a specimen, and that others have been working on a 
 still larger scale. During the four years since Mr. George 
 did me the honor of sending to me a book assuming that 
 landowners are not producers, I find that I have spent on 
 one property alone the sum of £40,000 entirely on the 
 
34 
 
 PEOPEETY IN LAND. 
 
 improvement of the soil. Moreover, I know that this 
 outlay on my own part, and similar outlay on the part of 
 my neighbors, so far from having power to absorb and 
 concentrate in our hands all other forms of wealth, is 
 unable to secure anything like the return which the same 
 capital would have won—and won easily—in many other 
 kinds of enterprise. I am in possession of authentic 
 information that on one great estate in England the outlay 
 on improvements purely agricultural has, for twenty-one 
 years past, been at the rate of £35,000 a year, while 
 including outlay on churches and schools, it has amounted 
 in the last forty years to nearly £2,000,000 sterling. To 
 such outlays landowners are incited very often, and to a 
 great extent, by the mere love of seeing a happier land¬ 
 scape and a more prosperous people. From much of the 
 capital so invested they often seek no return at all, and 
 from very little of it indeed do they ever get a high rate 
 of interest. And yet the whole—every farthing of it— 
 goes directly to the public advantage. Production is 
 increased in full proportion, although the profit on that 
 production is small to the owner. There has been grown 
 more corn, more potatoes, more turnips; there has been 
 produced more milk, more butter, more cheese, more beef, 
 more mutton, more pork, more fowls and eggs, and all 
 these articles in direct proportion to their abundance have 
 been sold at lower prices to the people. When a man tells 
 me, and argues on steps of logic which he boasts as irre¬ 
 futable, that in all this I and others have been serving no 
 interests but our own—nav, more, that we have been but 
 making “the poor poorer” than they were—I know very 
 well that, whether I can unravel his fallacies or not, he 
 is talking the most arrant nonsense, and must have in 
 his composition, however ingenious and however eloquent, 
 a rich combination and a very large percentage of the 
 fanatic and of the goose. 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 35 
 
 And here, again, we have a new indication of these 
 elements in one great assumption of fact, and that is the 
 assumption that wealth has been becoming less and less 
 diffused— “ the rich richer, the poor poorer.” It did not 
 require the recent elaborate and able statistical examina¬ 
 tion of Mr. Giffen to convince me that this assumption is 
 altogether false. It is impossible for any man to have 
 been a considerable employer of labor during a period 
 embracing one full generation, without his seeing and 
 feeling abundant evidence that all classes have partaken 
 in the progress of the country, and no class more exten¬ 
 sively than that which lives by labor. He must know 
 that wages have more than doubled—sometimes a great 
 deal more—while the continuous remission of taxes has 
 tended to make, and has actually made almost every article 
 of subsistence a great deal cheaper than it was thirty years 
 ago. And outside the province of mere muscular labor, 
 among all the classes who are concerned in the work of 
 distribution or of manufacture, I have seen around me, 
 and on my own property, the enormous increase of those 
 whose incomes must be comfortable without being large. 
 The houses that are built for their weeks of rest and 
 leisure, the furniture with which these houses are provided, 
 the gardens and shrubberies which are planted for the 
 ornament of them ; all of these indications, and a thousand 
 more, tell of increasing comfort far more widely if not 
 universally diffused. 
 
 And if personal experience enables me to contradict 
 absolutely one of Mr. George’s assumptions, official experi¬ 
 ence enables me not less certainly to contradict another. 
 Personally I know what private ownership has done for 
 one country. Officially I have had only too good cause 
 to know what State ownership has not done for another 
 country. India is a country in which, theoretically at 
 least, the State is the only and the universal landowner, 
 
36 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 and over a large part of it the State does actually take to 
 itself a share of the gross produce which fully represents 
 ordinary rent. Yet this is the very country in which the 
 poverty of the masses is so abject that millions live only 
 from hand to mouth, and when there is any—even a 
 partial—failure of the crops, thousands and hundreds of 
 thousands are in danger of actual starvation. The Indian 
 Government is not corrupt—whatever other failings it 
 may have—and the rents of a vast territory can be far 
 more safe if left to its disposal than they could be left at 
 the disposal of such popular Governments as those which 
 Mr. George has denounced on the American Continent. 
 Yet somehow the functions and duties which in more 
 civilized countries are discharged by the institution of 
 private ownership in land are not as adequately discharged 
 by the Indian Administration. Moreover, I could not fail 
 to observe, when I was connected with the Government of 
 India, that the portion of that country which has most 
 grown in wealth is precisely that part of it in which the 
 Government has parted with its power of absorbing rent 
 by having agreed to a Permanent Settlement. Many 
 Anglo-Indian statesmen have looked with envious eyes 
 at the wealth which has been developed in Lower Bengal, 
 and have mourned over the policy by which the State has 
 been withheld from taking it into the hands of Govern¬ 
 ment. There are two questions, however, which have 
 always occurred to me when this mourning lias been 
 expressed—the first is whether we are quite sure that the 
 wealth of Lower Bengal would ever have arisen if its 
 sources had not been thus protected; and the second is 
 whether even now it is quite certain that any Govern¬ 
 ments, even the best, spend wealth better for the public 
 interests than those to whom it belongs by the natural 
 processes of acquisition. These questions have never, I 
 think, been adequately considered. But whatever may be 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 37 
 
 the true answer to either of them, there is at least one 
 question on which all English statesmen have been unan¬ 
 imous—and that is, that promises once given by the 
 Government, however long ago, must be absolutely kept. 
 When landed property has been bought and sold and 
 inherited in Bengal for some three generations—since 
 1793—under the guaranty of the Government that the 
 - Rent Tax upon it is to remain at a fixed amount, no public 
 man, so far as I know, has ever suggested that the public 
 faith should be violated. And not only so, but there has 
 been a disposition even to put upon the engagement of 
 the Government an overstrained interpretation, and to 
 claim for the landowners who are protected under it an 
 immunity from all other taxes affecting the same sources 
 of income. As Secretary of State for India I had to deal 
 with this question along with my colleagues in the Indian 
 Council, and the result we arrived at was embodied in a 
 despatch which laid dow T n the principles applicable to 
 the case so clearly that in India it appears to have been 
 accepted as conclusive. The Land Tax was a special 
 impost upon rent. The promise was that this special 
 impost should never be increased 5 or, in its own words, 
 that there should be no u augmentation of the public 
 assessment in consequence of the improvement of their 
 estates.” It was not a promise that no other taxes should 
 ever be raised affecting the same sources of income, pro¬ 
 vided such taxes were not special, but affected all other 
 sources of income equally. On this interpretation the 
 growing wealth of Bengal accruing under the Permanent 
 Settlement would remain accessible to taxation along with 
 the growing wealth derived from all other kinds of prop¬ 
 erty, but not otherwise. There was to be no confiscation 
 by the State of the increased value of land, any more than 
 of the increased value of other kinds of property, on the 
 pretext that this increase was unearned. On the other 
 
38 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 hand, the State did not exempt that increased value from 
 any taxation which might be levied also and equally from 
 all the rest of the community. In this way we reconciled 
 and established two great principles which to short-sighted 
 theorists may seem antagonistic. One of these principles 
 is that it is the interest of every community to give equal 
 and absolute security to every one of its members in his 
 pursuit of wealth; the other is that when the public inter¬ 
 ests demand a public revenue all forms of wealth should 
 be equally accessible to taxation. 
 
 It would have saved us all, both in London and in 
 Calcutta, much anxious and careful reasoning if we could 
 only have persuaded ourselves that the Government of 
 1793 could not possibly bind the Government of 1870. 
 It would have given us a still wider margin if we had been 
 able to believe that no faith can be pledged to landowners, 
 and that we had a divine right to seize not only all the 
 wealth of the Zemindars of Bengal, but also all the 
 property derived from the same source which had grown 
 up since 1793, and has now become distributed and 
 absorbed among a great number of intermediate sharers, 
 standing between the actual cultivator and the representa¬ 
 tives of those to whom the promise was originally given. 
 But one doctrine has been tenaciously held by the “ stupid 
 English people’ 7 in the government of their Eastern 
 Empire, and that is, that our honor is the greatest of our 
 possessions, and that absolute trust in that honor is one 
 of the strongest foundations of our power. 
 
 In this paper it has not been my aim to argue. A 
 simple record and exposure of a few of the results arrived 
 at by Mr. Henry George, has been all that I intended to 
 accomplish. To see what are the practical consequences 
 of any train of reasoning is so much gained. And there 
 are cases in which this gain is everything. In mathe¬ 
 matical reasoning the u reduction to absurdity ” is one of 
 
THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 39 
 
 the most familiar methods of disproof. In political rea¬ 
 soning the u reduction to iniquity ” ought to be of equal 
 value. And if it is not found to bo so with all minds, 
 this is because of a peculiarity in human character which 
 is the secret of all its corruption, and of the most dreadful 
 forms in which that corruption has been exhibited. In 
 pursuing another investigation I have lately had occasion 
 to observe upon the contrast which, in this respect, exists 
 between our moral and our purely intellectual faculties* 
 Our Reason is so constituted in respect to certain funda¬ 
 mental truths that those truths are intuitively perceived, 
 and any rejection of them is at once seen to be absurd. 
 But in the far higher sphere of Morals and Religion, it 
 would seem that we have no equally secure moorings to 
 duty and to truth. There is no consequence, however 
 hideous or cruel its application may be, that men have 
 been prevented from accepting because of such hideous¬ 
 ness or of such cruelty. Nothing, however shocking, is 
 quite sure to shock them. If it follows from some false 
 belief, or from some fallacious verbal proposition, they 
 will entertain it, and sometimes will even rejoice in it 
 with a savage fanaticism. It is a fact that none of us 
 should.ever forget that the moral faculties of Man do not 
 as certainly revolt against iniquity as his reasoning facul¬ 
 ties do revolt against absurdity. All history is crowded 
 with illustrations of this distinction, and it is the only 
 explanation of a thousand horrors. There has seldom 
 been such a curious example as the immoral teachings of 
 Mr. Henry George. Here we have a man who probably 
 sincerely thinks he is a Christian, and who sets up as a 
 philosopher, but who is not the least shocked by conse¬ 
 quences which abolish the Decalogue, and deny the pri¬ 
 mary obligations both of public and of private honor. This 
 
 * “Unity of Nature,” Chapter X., pp. 440-445. 
 
40 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 is a very curious phenomenon, and well deserving of some 
 closer investigation. What are the erroneous data—what 
 are the abstract propositions—which so overpower the 
 Moral Sense, and coming from the sphere of Speculation 
 dictate such flagitious recommendations in the sphere of 
 Conduct? To this question I may perhaps return, not 
 with exclusive reference to the writings of one man, but 
 with reference to the writings of many others who have 
 tried to reduce to scientific form the laws which govern 
 the social de velopments of our race, and who in doing so 
 have forgotten—strangely forgotten—some of the most 
 fundamental facts of Nature. 
 
II. 
 
 THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 BY HENRY GEORGE. 
 
 “ TN this paper it has not "been my aim to argue,” says 
 JL the Duke of Argyll, in concluding his article entitled 
 “The Prophet of San Francisco.” It is generally waste 
 of time to reply to those who do not argue. Yet, partly 
 because of my respect for other writings of his, and partly 
 because of the ground to which he invites me, I take the 
 first opportunity I have had to reply to the Duke. 
 
 In doing so, let me explain the personal incident to 
 which he refers, and which he has seemingly misunder¬ 
 stood. In sending the Duke of Argyll a copy of “ Prog¬ 
 ress and Poverty,” I intended no impertinence, and was 
 unconscious of any impropriety. Instead, I paid him a 
 high compliment. For, as I stated in an accompanying 
 note, I sent him my book not only to mark my esteem for 
 the author of “ The Reign of Law,” but because I thought 
 him a man superior to his accidents. 
 
 I am still conscious of the profit I derived from “ The 
 Reign of Law,” and can still recall the pleasure it gave 
 me. What attracted me, however, was not, as the Duke 
 seems to think, what he styles his “nonsense chapter.” 
 On the contrary, the notion that it is necessary to impose 
 restrictions upon labor seems to me strangely incongruous, 
 not only with free trade, but with the idea of the domi- 
 
42 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 nance and harmony of natural laws, which in preceding 
 chapters he so well develops. Where such restrictions as 
 Factory Acts seem needed in the interests of labor, the 
 seeming need, to my mind, arises from previous restric¬ 
 tions, in the removal of which, and not in further restric¬ 
 tions, the true remedy is to be sought. What attracted 
 me in “ The Reign of Law’ 7 was the manner in which the 
 Duke points out the existence of physical laws and adapta¬ 
 tions which compel the mind that thinks upon them to 
 the recognition of creative purpose. In this way the 
 Duke’s book was to me useful and grateful, as I doubt 
 not it has been to many others. 
 
 My book, I thought, might, in return, be useful and 
 grateful to the Duke—might give him something of that 
 “immense and instinctive pleasure” of which he had 
 spoken as arising from the recognition of the grand 
 simplicity and unspeakable harmony of universal law. 
 And in the domain in which I had, as I believed, done 
 something to point out the reign of law this pleasure is 
 perhaps even more intense than in that of which he had 
 written. For in physical laws we recognize only intelli¬ 
 gence, and can but trust that infinite wisdom implies 
 infinite goodness. But in social laws he who looks may 
 recognize beneficence as well as intelligence • may see that 
 the moral perceptions of men are perceptions of realities; 
 and find ground for an abiding faith that this short life 
 does not bound the destiny of the human soul. I knew 
 the Duke of Argyll then only by his book. I had never 
 been in Scotland, or learned the character as a landlord 
 he bears there. I intended to pay a tribute and give a 
 pleasure to a citizen of the republic of letters, not to 
 irritate a landowner. I did not think a trumpery title 
 and a patch of ground could fetter a mind that had com¬ 
 muned with Nature and busied itself with causes and 
 beginnings. My mistake was that of ignorance. Since 
 
THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 43 
 
 the Duke of Argyll has publicly called attention to it, I 
 thus publicly apologize. 
 
 The Duke declares it has not been his aim to argue. 
 This is clear. I wish it were as clear it had not been his 
 aim to misrepresent. He seems to have written for those 
 who have never read the books he criticizes. But as those 
 who have done so constitute a very respectable part of 
 the reading world, I can leave his misrepresentations to 
 take care of themselves, confident that the incredible 
 absurdity he attributes to my reasonings will be seen, by 
 whoever reads my books, to belong really to the Duke’s 
 distortions. In what I have here to say I prefer to meet 
 him upon his own ground and to hold to the main ques¬ 
 tion* I accept the “ reduction to iniquity.” 
 
 Strangely enough, the Duke expresses distrust of the 
 very tribunal to which he appeals. “ It is a fact,” he tells 
 us, “that none of us should ever forget, that the moral 
 faculties do not as certainly revolt against iniquity as the 
 reasoning faculties do against absurdity.” If that be the 
 case, why, then, may I a^k, is the Duke’s whole article 
 addressed to the moral faculties ? Why does he talk about 
 right and wrong, about justice and injustice, about honor 
 and dishonor; about my “ immoral doctrines ” and “ prof¬ 
 ligate conclusions,” “the unutterable meanness of the 
 gigantic villainy” I advocate? why style me “such a 
 Preacher of Unrighteousness as the world has never seen,” 
 and so on? If the Duke will permit me I will tell him, 
 for in all probability he does not know—he himself, to 
 paraphrase his own words, being a good example of how 
 men who sometimes set up as philosophers and deny laws 
 
 * It is unnecessary for me to say anything of India further than 
 to remark that the essence of nationalization of land is not in the 
 collection of rent by government, but in its utilization for the benefit 
 of the people. Nor on the subject of public debts is it worth while 
 here to add anything to what I have said in “Social Problems.” 
 
44 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 of the human mind are themselves unconsciously subject 
 to those very laws. The Duke appeals to moral percep¬ 
 tions for the same reason that impels all men, good or 
 bad, learned or simple, to appeal to moral perceptions 
 whene ver they become warm in argument; and this reason 
 is, the instinctive feeling that the moral sense is higher 
 and truer than the intellectual sense; that the moral 
 faculties do more certainly revolt against iniquity than 
 the intellectual faculties against absurdity. The Duke 
 appeals to the moral sense, because he instinctively feels 
 that with all men its decisions have the highest sanction • 
 and if he afterward seeks to weaken its authority, it is 
 because this very moral sense whispers to him that his 
 case is not a good one. 
 
 My opinion as to the relative superiority of the moral 
 and intellectual perceptions is the reverse of that stated 
 by the Duke. It seems to me certain that the moral facul¬ 
 ties constitute a truer guide than the intellectual faculties, 
 and that what, in reality, we should never forget, is not 
 that the moral faculties are untrustworthy, but that those 
 faculties may be dulled by refusal to heed them, and 
 distorted by the promptings of selfishness. So true, so 
 ineradicable is the moral sense, that where selfishness or 
 passion would outrage it, the intellectual faculties are 
 always called upon to supply excuse. No unjust war was 
 ever begun without some pretense of asserting right or 
 redressing wrong, or, despite themselves, of doing some 
 good to the conquered. No petty thief but makes for 
 himself some justification. It is doubtful if any deliberate 
 wrong is ever committed, it is certain no wrongful course 
 of action is ever continued, without the framing of some 
 theory which may dull or placate the moral sense. 
 
 And while as to things apprehended solely by the intel¬ 
 lectual faculties the greatest diversities of perception have 
 obtained and still obtain among men, and those percep- 
 
THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 45 
 
 tions constantly change with the growth of knowledge, 
 there is a striking consensus of moral perceptions. In 
 all stages of social development, and under all forms of 
 religion, no matter how distorted by selfish motives and 
 intellectual perversions, truth, justice, and benevolence 
 have ever been esteemed, and all our intellectual progress 
 has given us no higher moral ideals than have obtained 
 among primitive peoples. The very distortions of the 
 moral sense, the apparent differences in the moral stan¬ 
 dards of different times and peoples, do but show essential 
 unity. Wherever moral perceptions have differed or do 
 differ the disturbance may be traced to causes which, 
 originating in selfishness and perpetuated by intellectual 
 perversions, have distorted or dulled the moral faculty. 
 It seems to me that the Creator, whom both the Duke 
 of Argyll and myself recognize behind physical and mental 
 laws, has not left us to grope our way in darkness, but 
 has, indeed, given us a light by which our steps may be 
 safely guided—a compass by which, in all degrees of 
 intellectual development, the way to the highest good 
 may be surely traced. But just as the compass by which 
 the mariner steers his course over the trackless sea in the 
 blackest night, may be disturbed by other attractions, 
 may be misread or clogged, so is it with the moral sense. 
 This evidently is not a world in which men must be 
 either wise or good, but a world in which they may bring 
 about good or evil as they use the faculties given them. 
 
 I speak of this because the recognition of the supremacy 
 and certainty of the moral faculties seems to me to throw 
 light upon problems otherwise dark, rather than because 
 it is necessary here, since I admit even more unreservedly 
 than the Duke the competence of the tribunal before 
 which he cites me. I am willing to submit every question 
 of political economy to the test of ethics. So far as I can 
 see there is no social law which does not conform to moral 
 
46 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 law, and no social question which cannot be determined 
 more quickly and certainly by appeal to moral perceptions 
 than by appeal to intellectual perceptions. Nor can there 
 be any dispute between us as to the issue to be joined. 
 He charges me with advocating violation of the moral law 
 in proposing robbery. I agree that robbery is a violation 
 of the moral law, and is therefore, without further inquiry, 
 to be condemned. 
 
 As to what constitutes robbery, it is, we will both agree, 
 the taking or withholding from another of that which 
 rightfully belongs to him. That- which rightfully belongs 
 to him, be it observed, not that which legally belongs to 
 him. As to what extent human law may create rights is 
 beside this discussion, for what I propose is to change, 
 not to violate human law. Such change the Duke declares 
 would be unrighteous. He thus appeals to that moral law 
 which is before and above all human laws, and by which 
 all human laws are to be judged. Let me insist upon this 
 point. Landholders must elect to try their case either by 
 human law or by moral law. If they say that land is 
 rightfully property because made so by human law, they 
 cannot charge those who would change that law with 
 advocating robbery. But if they charge that such change 
 in human law would be robbery, then they must show 
 that land is rightfully property irrespective of human law. 
 
 For land is not of that species of things to which the 
 presumption of rightful property attaches. This does 
 attach to things that are properly termed wealth, and that 
 are the produce of labor. Such things, in their beginning, 
 must have an owner, as they originate in human exertion, 
 and the right of property which attaches to them springs 
 from the manifest natural right of every individual to 
 himself and to the benefit of his own exertions. This is 
 the moral basis of property, which makes certain things 
 rightfully property totally irrespective of human law. 
 
THE “KEDUCTION TO INIQUITY/’ 
 
 47 
 
 The Eighth Commandment does not derive its validity 
 from human enactment. It is written upon the facts of 
 nature and self-evident to the perceptions of men. If 
 there were hut two men in the world, the fish which either 
 of them took from the sea, the beast which he captured 
 in the chase, the fruit which he gathered, or the hut which 
 he erected, would be his rightful property, which the other 
 could not take from him without violation of the moral 
 law. But how could either of them claim the wrnrld as 
 his rightful property? Or if they agreed to divide the 
 world between them, what moral right could their compact 
 give as against the next man who came into the world? 
 
 It is needless, however, to insist that property in land 
 rests only on human enactment, which may, at any time, 
 be changed without violation of moral law. No one seri¬ 
 ously asserts any other derivation. It is sometimes said 
 that property in land is derived from appropriation. But 
 those who say this do not really mean it. Appropriation 
 can give no right. The man who raises a cupful of water 
 from a river, acquires a right to that cupful, and no one 
 may rightfully snatch it from his hand; but this right is 
 derived from labor, not from appropriation. How could 
 he acquire a right to the river, by merely appropriating _ 
 it? Columbus did not dream of appropriating the New 
 World to himself and his heirs, and w r ould have been 
 deemed a lunatic had he done so. Nations and princes 
 divided America between them, but by “ right of strength.” 
 This, and this alone, it is that gives any validity to appro¬ 
 priation. And this, evidently, is what they really mean 
 who talk of the right given by appropriation. 
 
 This “ right of conquest,” this power of the strong, is 
 the only basis of property in land to which the Duke ven¬ 
 tures to refer. He does so in asking whether the exclusive 
 right of ownership to the territory of California, which, 
 according to him, I attribute to the existing people of 
 
48 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 California, does not rest upon conquest, and “ if so, may 
 it not be as rightfully acquired by any who are strong 
 enough to seize it?” To this I reply in the affirmative. 
 If exclusive ownership is conferred by conquest, then, not 
 merely, as the Duke says, has it u been open to every con¬ 
 quering army and every occupying host in all ages and 
 in all countries of the world to establish a similar owner¬ 
 ship ; ” but it is now open, and whenever the masses of 
 Scotland, who have the power, choose to take from the 
 Duke the estates he now holds, he cannot, if this be the 
 basis of his claim, consistently complain. 
 
 But I have never admitted that conquest or any other 
 exertion of force can give right. Nor have I ever asserted, 
 but on the contrary have expressly denied, that the present 
 population of California, or any other country, have any 
 exclusive right of ownership in the soil, or can in any 
 way acquire such a right. I hold that the present, the 
 past, or the future population of California, or of any 
 other country, have not, have not had, and cannot have, 
 any right save to the use of the soil, and that as to this 
 their rights are equal. I hold with Thomas Jefferson, 
 that u the earth belongs in usufruct to the living, and that 
 the dead have no power or right over it.” I hold that the 
 land was not created for one generation to dispose of, but 
 as a dwelling-place for all generations; that the men of 
 the present are not bound by any grants of land the men 
 of the past may have made, and cannot grant away the 
 rights of the men of the future. I hold that if all the 
 people of California, or any other country, were to unite 
 in any disposition of the land which ignored the equal 
 right of one of their number, they would be doing a 
 wrong j and that even if they could grant away their own 
 rights, they are powerless to impair the natural rights of 
 their children. And it is for this reason that I hold that 
 the titles to the ownership of land which the government 
 
THE “ REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 49 
 
 of the United States is now granting are of no greater 
 moral validity than the land titles of the British Isles, 
 which rest historically upon the forcible spoliation of the 
 masses. 
 
 How ownership of land was acquired in the past can 
 have no bearing upon the question of how we should treat 
 land now j yet the inquiry is interesting, as showing the 
 nature of the institution. The Duke of Argyll has written 
 a great deal about the rights of landowners, but has never, 
 I think, told us anything of the historical derivation of 
 these rights. He has spoken of his own estates, but has 
 nowhere told us how they came to be his estates. This, 
 I know, is a delicate question, and on that account I will 
 not press it. But while a man ought not to be taunted 
 with the sins of his ancestors, neither ought he to profit 
 by them. And the general fact is, that the exclusive 
 ownership of land has everywhere had its beginnings in 
 force and fraud, in selfish greed and unscrupulous cun¬ 
 ning. It originated, as all evil institutions originate, in 
 the bad passions of men, not in their perceptions of what 
 is right or their experience of what is wise. u Human 
 laws,” the Duke tells us, u are evolved out of human 
 instincts, and in direct proportion as the accepted ideas 
 on which they rest are really universal, in that same pro¬ 
 portion have they a claim to be regarded as really natural, 
 and as the legitimate expression of fundamental truths.” 
 If he would thus found on the wide-spread existence of 
 exclusive property in land an argument for its righteous¬ 
 ness, what, may I ask him, will he say to the much stronger 
 argument that might thus be made for the righteousness 
 of polygamy or chattel slavery ? But it is a fact, of which 
 I need hardly more than remind him, though less well- 
 informed people may be ignorant of it, that the treatment 
 of land as individual property is comparatively recent, 
 and by at least nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every 
 
50 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 thousand of those who have lived on this world, has never 
 been dreamed of. It is only within the last two centuries 
 that it has, by the abolition of feudal tenures, and the 
 suppression of tribal customs, fully obtained among our 
 own people. In fact, even among us it has hardly yet 
 reached full development. For not only are we still 
 spreading over land yet unreduced to individual owner¬ 
 ship, but in the fragments of common rights which yet 
 remain in Great Britain, as well as in law T s and customs, 
 are there survivals of the older system. The first and 
 universal perception of mankind is that declared by the 
 American Indian Chief, Black Hawk: “ The Great Spirit 
 has told me that land is not to be made property like 
 other property. The earth is our mother! ” And this 
 primitive perception of the right of all men to the use of 
 the soil from which all must live, has never been obscured 
 save by a long course of usurpation and oppression. 
 
 But it is needless for me to discuss such questions with 
 the Duke. There is higher ground on which we may meet. 
 He believes in an intelligent Creator; he sees in Nature 
 contrivance and intent; he realizes that it is only by con¬ 
 forming his actions to universal law that man can master 
 his conditions and fulfil his destiny. 
 
 Let me, then, ask the Duke to look around him in the 
 richest country of the world, where art, science, and the 
 power that comes from the utilization of physical laws have 
 been carried to the highest point yet attained, and note 
 how few of this population can avail themselves fully of 
 the advantages of civilization. Among the masses the 
 struggle for existence is so intense that the Duke himself 
 declares it necessary by law to restrain parents from 
 working their children to disease and death ! 
 
 Let him consider the conditions of life involved in such 
 facts as this—conditions, alas, obvious on every side, and 
 
THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 51 
 
 then ask himself whether this is in accordance with the 
 intent of Nature? 
 
 The Duke of Argyll has explained to me in his u Reign 
 of Law” with what nice adaptations the feathers on a 
 bird’s wing are designed to give it the power of flight; he 
 has told me that the claw on the wing of a bat is intended 
 for it to climb by. Will he let me ask him to look in the 
 same way at the human beings around him? Consider, 
 O Duke! the little children growing up in city slums, 
 toiling in mines, working in noisome rooms; the young 
 girls chained to machinery all day or walking the streets 
 by night; the women bending over forges in the Black 
 Country or turned into beasts of burden in the Scottish 
 Highlands; the men who all life long must spend life’s 
 energies in the effort to maintain life! Consider them 
 as you have considered the bat and the bird. If the hook 
 of the bat be intended to climb by and the wing of the 
 bird be intended to fly by, with what intent have human 
 creatures been given capabilities of body and mind which 
 under conditions that exist in such countries as Great 
 Britain only a few of them can use and enjoy ? 
 
 Thev who see in Nature no evidences of conscious, 
 planning intelligence may think that all this is as it must 
 be; but who that recognizes in his works an infinitely 
 wise Creator can for a moment hesitate to infer that the 
 wide difference between obvious intent and actual accom¬ 
 plishment is due, not to the clash of natural laws, but to 
 our ignoring them ? Nor need we go far to confirm this 
 inference. The moment we consider in the largest way 
 what kind of an animal man is, we see in the most important 
 of social adjustments a violation of Nature’s intent sufficient 
 to account for want and misery and aborted development. 
 
 Given a ship sent to sea with abundant provisions for 
 all her company. What must happen if some of that 
 
52 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 company take possession of the provisions and deny to 
 the rest any share ? 
 
 Given a world so made and ordered that intelligent 
 beings placed upon it may draw from its substance an 
 abundant supply for all physical needs. Must there not 
 be want and misery in such a world if some of those 
 beings make its surface and substance their exclusive 
 property and deny the right of the others to its use ? Here, 
 as on any other world we can conceive of, two and two 
 make four, and when all is taken from anything nothing 
 remains. What we see clearly would happen on any other 
 world, does happen on this. 
 
 The Duke sees intent in Nature. So do I. That which 
 conforms to this intent is natural, wise, and righteous. 
 That which contravenes it is unnatural, foolish, and iniqui¬ 
 tous. In this we agree. Let us then bring to this test 
 the institution which I arraign and he defends. 
 
 Place, stripped of clothes, a landowner’s baby among 
 a dozen workhouse babies, and who that you call in can 
 tell the one from the others? Is the human law which 
 declares the one born to the possession of a hundred thou¬ 
 sand acres of land, while the others have no right to a 
 single square inch, conformable to the intent of Nature or 
 not? Is it, judged by this appeal, na ural or unnatural, 
 wise or foolish, righteous or iniquitous ? Put the bodies 
 of a duke and a peasant on a dissecting-table, and bring, 
 if you can, the surgeon who, by laying bare the brain or 
 examining the viscera, can tell which is duke and which 
 is peasant ? Are not both land animals of the same kind, 
 with like organs and like needs? Is it not evidently the 
 intent of Nature that both shall live on land and use land 
 in the same way and to the same degree? Is there not, 
 therefore, a violation of the intent of Nature in human 
 laws which give to one more land than he can possibly 
 use, and deny any land to the other ? 
 
THE ‘‘REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 53 
 
 Let me ask the Duke to consider, from the point of 
 view of an observer of Nature, a landless man—a being 
 fitted in all his parts and powers for the use of land, 
 compelled by all his needs to the use of land, and yet 
 denied all right to land. Is he not as unnatural as a bird 
 without air, a fish without water? And can anything 
 more clearly violate the intent of Nature than the human 
 laws which produce such anomalies ? 
 
 I call upon the Duke to observe that what Nature 
 teaches us is not merely that men were equally intended 
 to live on land, and to use land, and therefore had origi¬ 
 nally equal rights to land, but that they are noiv equally 
 intended to live on and use land, and, therefore, that 
 present rights to land are equal. It is said that fish 
 deprived of light will, in the course of generations, lose 
 their eyes, and, within certain narrow limits, it is certain 
 that Nature does conform some of her living creatures to 
 conditions imposed by man. In such cases the intent of 
 Nature may be said to have conformed to that of man, or 
 rather to embrace that of man. But there is no such con¬ 
 forming in this case. The intent of Nature, that all human 
 beings should use land, is as clearly seen in the children 
 born to-day as it could have been seen in any past genera¬ 
 tion. How foolish, then, are those who say that although 
 the right to land was originally equal, this equality of 
 right has been lost by the action or sufferance of inter¬ 
 mediate generations! How illogical those who declare 
 that, while it would be just to assert this equality of right 
 in the laws of a new country where people are now coming 
 to live, it would be unjust to conform to it the laws of a 
 country where people long have lived ! Has Nature any¬ 
 where or in anything shown any disposition to conform 
 to what we call vested interests? Does the child born 
 in an old country differ from the child born in a new 
 country ? 
 
54 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 Moral right and wrong, the Duke must agree with me, 
 are not matters of precedent. The repetition of a wrong 
 may dull the moral sense, hut will not make it right. A 
 robbery is no less a robbery the thousand-millionth time 
 it is committed than it was the first time. This they forgot 
 who declaring the slave-trade piracy still legalized the 
 enslavement of those already enslaved. This they forget 
 who admitting the equality of natural rights to the soil 
 declare that it would be unjust now to assert them. For, 
 as the keeping of a man in slavery is as much a violation 
 of natural right as the seizure of his remote ancestor, so 
 is the robbery involved in the present denial of natural 
 rights to the soil as much a robbery as was the first act 
 of fraud or force which violated those rights. Those who 
 say it would be unjust for the people to resume their 
 natural rights in the land without compensating present 
 holders, confound right and wrong as flagrantly as did 
 they who held it a crime in the slave to run away without 
 first paying his owner his market value. They have never 
 formed a clear idea of what property in land means. It 
 means not merely a continuous exclusion of some people 
 from the element which it is plainly the intent of Nature 
 that all should enjoy, but it involves a continuous confis¬ 
 cation of labor and the results of labor. The Duke of 
 Argyll has, we say, a large income drawn from land. But 
 is this income really drawn from land? Were there no 
 men on his land what income could the Duke get from it, 
 save such as his own hands produced? Precisely as if 
 drawn from slaves, this income represents an appropria¬ 
 tion of the earnings of labor. The effect of permitting 
 the Duke to treat this land as his property, is to make so 
 many other Scotsmen, in whole or in part, his serfs—to 
 compel them to labor for him without pay, or to enable 
 him to take from them their earnings without return. 
 Surely, if the Duke will look at the matter in this way, he 
 
THE “ REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 55 
 
 must see that the iniquity is not in abolishing an institu¬ 
 tion which permits one man to plunder others, but in con¬ 
 tinuing it. He must see that any claim of landowners to 
 compensation is not a claim to payment for what they 
 have previously taken, but to payment for what they 
 might yet take, precisely as would be the claim of the 
 slaveholder—the true character of which appears in the 
 fact that he would demand more compensation for a strong 
 slave, out of whom he might yet get much work, than for 
 a decrepit one, out of whom he had already forced nearly 
 all the labor he could yield. 
 
 In assuming that denial of the justice of property in 
 land is the prelude to an attack upon all rights of property, 
 the Duke ignores the essential distinction between land 
 and things rightfully property. The things which con¬ 
 stitute wealth, or capital (which is wealth used in produc¬ 
 tion), and to which the right of property justly attaches, 
 are produced by human exertion. Their substance is 
 matter, which existed before man, and which man can 
 neither create nor destroy; but their essence—that which 
 gives them the character of wealth—is labor 'mpressed 
 upon or modifying the conditions of matter. Their exis¬ 
 tence is due to the physical exertion of man and, like his 
 physical frame, they tend constantly to return again to 
 Nature’s reservoirs of matter and force. Land, on the 
 contrary, is that part of the external universe on which 
 and from which alone man can live; that reservoir of 
 matter and force on which he must draw for all his needs. 
 Its existence is not due to man, but is referable only to 
 that Power from which man himself proceeds. It con¬ 
 tinues while he comes and goes, and will continue, so far 
 as we can see, after he and his works shall disappear. 
 Both species of things have value, but the value of the 
 one species depends upon the amount of labor required 
 for their production; the value of the other upon the 
 
56 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 power which its reduction to ownership gives of com¬ 
 manding labor or the results of labor without paying any 
 equivalent. The recognition of the right of property in 
 wealth, or things produced by labor, is thus but a recog¬ 
 nition of the right of each human being to himself and 
 to the results of his own exertions ; but the recognition of 
 a similar right of property in land is necessarily the 
 impairment and denial of this true right of property. 
 
 Turn from principles to facts. Whether as to national 
 strength or national character, whether as to the number 
 of people or as to their physical and moral health, whether 
 as to the production of wealth or as to its equitable dis¬ 
 tribution, the fruits of the primary injustice involved in 
 making the land, on which and from which a whole people 
 must live, the property of but a portion of their number, 
 are everywhere evil and nothing but evil. 
 
 If this seems to any too strong a statement, it is only 
 because they associate individual ownership of land with 
 permanence of possession and security of improvements. 
 These are necessary to the proper use of land, but so far 
 from being dependent upon individual ownership of land, 
 they can be secured without it in greater degree than 
 with it. This will be evident upon reflection. That the 
 existing system does not secure permanence of possession 
 and security of improvements in anything like the degree 
 necessary to the best use of land, is obvious everywhere, 
 but especiafly obvious in Great Britain, where the owners 
 of land and the users of land are for the most part distinct 
 persons. In many cases the users of land have no security 
 from year to year, a logical development of individual 
 ownership in land so flagrantly unjust to the user and so 
 manifestly detrimental to the community, that in Ireland, 
 where this system most largely prevailed, it has been 
 deemed necessary for the State to interfere in the most 
 arbitrary manner. In other cases, where land is let for 
 
THE “ REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 57 
 
 years, the user is often hampered with restrictions that 
 prevent improvement and interfere with use, and at the 
 expiration of the lease he is not merely deprived of his 
 improvements, but is frequently subjected to a blackmail 
 calculated upon the inconvenience and loss which removal 
 would cost him. Wherever I have been in Great Britain, 
 from Land’s End to John O’Groat’s, and from Liverpool 
 to Hull, I have heard of improvements prevented and 
 production curtailed from this cause—in instances which 
 run from the prevention of the building of an outhouse, 
 the painting of a dwelling, the enlargement of a chapel, 
 the widening of a street, or the excavation of a dock, to 
 the shutting up of a mine, the demolition of a village, the 
 tearing up of a railway track, or the turning of land from 
 the support of men to the breeding of wild beasts. I 
 could cite case after case, each typical of a class, but it 
 is unnecessary. How largely use and improvement are 
 restricted and prevented by private ownership of land 
 may be appreciated only by a few, but specific cases are 
 known to all. How insecurity of improvement and pos¬ 
 session prevents the proper maintenance of dwellings in 
 the cities, how it hampers the farmer, how it fills the 
 shopkeeper with dread as the expiration of his lease draws 
 nigh, have been, to some extent at least, brought out by 
 recent discussions, and in all these directions propositions 
 are being made for State interference more or less violent, 
 arbitrary, and destructive of the sound principle that men 
 should be left free to manage their own property as they 
 deem best. 
 
 Does not all this interference and demand for interfer¬ 
 ence show that private property in land does not produce 
 good results, that it does not give the necessary perma¬ 
 nence of possession and security of improvements? Is 
 not an institution that needs such tinkering fundamentally 
 wrong? That property in land must have different treat- 
 
58 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 ment from other property, all, or nearly all, are now 
 agreed. Does not this prove that land ought not to be 
 made individual property at all; that to treat it as indi¬ 
 vidual property is to weaken and endanger the true rights 
 of property ? 
 
 The Duke of Argyll asserts that in the United States 
 we have made land private property because we have 
 found it necessary to secure settlement and improvement. 
 Nothing could be further from the truth. The Duke 
 might as well urge that our protective tariff is a proof of 
 the necessity of “ protection.” We have made land private 
 property because we are but transplanted Europeans, 
 wedded to custom, and have followed it in this matter 
 more readily, because in a new country the evils that at 
 length spring from private property in land are less obvi¬ 
 ous, while a much larger portion of the people seemingly 
 profit by it—those on the ground gaining at the expense 
 of those who come afterward. But so far from this 
 treatment of land in the United States having promoted 
 settlement and reclamation, the very reverse is true. 
 What it has promoted is the scattering of population in 
 the country and its undue concentration in cities, to the 
 disadvantage of production and the lessening of comfort. 
 It has forced into the wilderness families for whom there 
 was plenty of room in well-settled neighborhoods, and 
 raised tenement-houses amid vacant lots, led to waste of 
 labor and capital in roads and railways not realty needed, 
 locked up natural opportunities that otherwise would have 
 been improved, made tramps and idlers of men who, had 
 they found it in time, would gladly have been at work, 
 and given to our agriculture a character that is rapidly 
 and steadily decreasing the productiveness of the soil. 
 
 As to political corruption in the United States, of which 
 I have spoken in “ Social Problems,” and to which the 
 Duke refers, it springs, as I have shown in that book, not 
 
THE “ REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 59 
 
 from excess but from deficiency of democracy, and mainly 
 from our failure to recognize the equality of natural rights 
 as well as of political rights. In comparing the two coun¬ 
 tries, it may be well to note that the exposure of abuses 
 is quicker and sharper in the United States than in Eng¬ 
 land, and that to some extent abuses which in the one 
 country appear in naked deformity, are in the other 
 hidden by the ivy of custom and respectability. But be 
 this as it may, the reforms I propose, instead of adding 
 to corruptive forces, would destroy prolific sources of cor¬ 
 ruption. Our “ protective ” tariff, our excise taxes, and 
 demoralizing system of local taxation, would, in their 
 direct and indirect effects, corrupt any government, even 
 if not aided by the corrupting effects of the grabbing for 
 public lands. But the first step I propose would sweep 
 away these corruptive influences, and it is to governments 
 thus reformed, in a state of society in which the reckless 
 struggle for wealth would be lessened by the elimination 
 of the fear of want, that I would give, not the manage¬ 
 ment of land or the direction of enterprise, but the 
 administration of the funds arising from the appropria¬ 
 tion of economic rent. 
 
 The Duke styles me a Pessimist. But, however pessi¬ 
 mistic I may be as to present social tendencies, I have a 
 firm faith in human nature. I am convinced that the 
 attainment of pure government is merely a matter of 
 conforming social institutions to moral law. If we do 
 this, there is, to my mind, no reason why in the proper 
 sphere of public administration we should not find men 
 as honest and as faithful as when acting in private capa¬ 
 cities. 
 
 But to return to the “ reduction to iniquity.” Test the 
 institution of private property in land by its fruits in any 
 country where it exists. Take Scotland. What, there, 
 are its results"? That wild beasts have supplanted human 
 
60 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 beings; that glens which once sent forth their thousand 
 fighting men are now tenanted by a conple of game- 
 keepers ; that there is destitution and degradation that 
 would shame savages; that little children are stunted and 
 starved for want of proper nourishment 5 that women are 
 compelled to do the work of animals; that young girls 
 who ought to be fitting themselves for wifehood and 
 motherhood are held to the monotonous toil of factories, 
 while others, whose fate is sadder still, prowl the streets; 
 that while a few Scotsmen have castles and palaces, more 
 than a third of Scottish families live in one room each, 
 and more than two-thirds in not more than two rooms 
 each; that thousands of acres are kept as playgrounds 
 for strangers, while the masses have not enough of their 
 native soil to grow a flower, are shut out even from moor 
 and mountain; dare not take a trout from a loch or a 
 salmon from the sea! 
 
 If the Duke thinks all classes have gained by the advance 
 in civilization, let him go into the huts of the Highlands. 
 There he may find countrymen of his, men and women 
 the equals in natural ability and in moral character of any 
 peer or peeress in the land, to whom the advance of our 
 wondrous age has brought no gain. He may find them 
 tilling the ground with the crooked spade, cutting grain 
 with the sickle, threshing it with the flail, winnowing it 
 by tossing it in the air, grinding it as their forefathers 
 did a thousand years ago. He may see spinning-wheel 
 and distaff yet in use, and the smoke from the fire in the 
 center of the hut ascending as it can through the thatch, 
 that the precious heat, which costs so much labor to pro¬ 
 cure, may be economized to the utmost. These human 
 beings are in natural parts and powers just such human 
 beings as may be met at a royal levee, at a gathering of 
 scientists, or inventors, or captains of industry. That 
 they so live and so work, is not because of their stupidity, 
 
THE “ REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 61 
 
 but because of their poverty —the direct and indisputable 
 result of the denial of their natural rights. They have 
 not merely been prevented from participating in the 
 u general advance/’ but are positively worse off than were 
 their ancestors before commerce had penetrated the High¬ 
 lands or the modern era of labor-saving inventions had 
 begun. They have been driven from the good land to the 
 poor land. While their rents have been increased, their 
 holdings have been diminished, and their pasturage cut 
 off. Where they once had beasts, they cannot now eat a 
 chicken or keep a donkey, and their women must do work 
 once done by animals. With the same thoughtful atten¬ 
 tion he has given to u the way of an eagle in the air,” let 
 the Duke consider a sight he must have seen many times 
 —a Scottish woman toiling uphill with a load of manure 
 on her back. Then let him apply the u reduction to 
 iniquity.” 
 
 Let the Duke not be content with feasting his eyes 
 upon those comfortable houses of the large farmers which 
 so excite his admiration. Let him visit the bothies in 
 which farm-servants are herded together like cattle, and 
 learn, as he may learn, that the lot of the Scottish farm- 
 servant—a lot from which no industry or thrift can release 
 him—is to die in the workhouse or in the receipt of a 
 parish dole if he be so unfortunate as to outlive his ability 
 to work. Or let him visit those poor broken-down crea¬ 
 tures who, enduring everything rather than accept the 
 humiliation of the workhouse, are eking out their last 
 days upon a few shillings from the parish, supplemented 
 by the charity of people nearly as poor as themselves. 
 Let him consider them, and if he has imagination enough, 
 put himself in their place. Then let him try the “reduc¬ 
 tion to iniquity.” 
 
 Let the Duke go to Glasgow, the metropolis of Scotland, 
 where, in underground cellars and miserable rooms, he will 
 
62 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 find crowded together families who (some of them, lest 
 they might offend the deer) have been driven from their 
 native soil into the great city to compete with each other 
 for employment at any price, to have their children 
 debauched by daily contact with all that is vile. Let him 
 some Saturday evening leave the districts where the richer 
 classes live, wander for a while through the streets ten¬ 
 anted by working-people, and note the stunted forms, the 
 pinched features. Vice, drunkenness, the recklessness 
 that comes when hope goes, he will see too. How should 
 not such conditions produce such effects? But he will 
 also see, if he chooses to look, hard, brave, stubborn 
 struggling—the workman, who, do his best, cannot find 
 steady employment; the breadwinner stricken with illness; 
 the widow straining to keep her children from the work- 
 house. Let the Duke observe and reflect upon these 
 things, and then apply the “ reduction to iniquity.” 
 
 Or, let him go to Edinburgh, flie u modern Athens,” of 
 which Scotsmen speak with pride, and in buildings from 
 whose roofs a bowman might strike the spires of twenty 
 churches, he will find human beings living as he would not 
 keep his meanest dog. Let him toil up the stairs of one 
 of those monstrous buildings, let him enter one of those 
 “ dark houses,” let him close the door, and in the blackness 
 think what life must be in such a place. Then let him try 
 the “reduction to iniquity.” And if he go to that good 
 charity (but, alas, how futile is Charity without Justice!) 
 where little children are kept while their mothers are at 
 work, and children are fed who would otherwise go hungry, 
 he may see infants whose limbs are shrunken from want 
 of nourishment. Perhaps they may tell him, as they told 
 me, of that little girl, barefooted, ragged, and hungry, 
 who, when they gave her bread, raised her eyes and 
 clasped her hands, and thanked our Father in Heaven 
 for his bounty to her. They who told me that never 
 
THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 63 
 
 dreamed, I think, of its terrible meaning. But I ask the 
 Duke of Argyll, did that little child, thankful for that 
 poor dole, get what our Father provided for her ? Is he 
 so niggard? If not, what is it, who is it, that stands 
 between such children and our Father’s bounty ? If it be 
 an institution, is it not our duty to God and to our neigh¬ 
 bor to rest not till we destroy it ? If it be a man, were it 
 not better for him that a millstone were hanged about his 
 neck and he were cast into the depths of the sea ? 
 
 There can be no question of overpopulation—no pre¬ 
 tense that Nature has brought more men into being than 
 she has made provision for. Scotland surely is not over- 
 populated. Much land is unused ; much land is devoted 
 to lower uses, such as the breeding of game and the 
 raising of cattle, that might be devoted to higher uses; 
 there are mineral resources untouched; the wealth drawn 
 from the sea is but a small part of what might be drawn. 
 But it is idle to argue this point. Neither in Scotland, 
 nor in any other country, can any excess of population 
 over the power of Nature to provide for them be shown. 
 The poverty so painful in Scotland is manifestly no more 
 due to overpopulation than the crowding of two-thirds of 
 the families into houses of one or two rooms is due to 
 want of space to build houses upon. And just as the 
 crowding of people into insufficient lodgings is directly 
 due to institutions which permit men to hold vacant land 
 needed for buildings until they can force a monopoly price 
 from those wishing to build, so is the poverty of the 
 masses due to the fact that they are in like manner shut 
 out from the opportunities Nature has provided for the 
 employment of their labor in the satisfaction of their 
 wants. 
 
 Take the Island of Skye as illustrating on a small scale 
 the cause of poverty throughout Scotland. The people of 
 Skye are poor—very poor. Is it because there are too 
 
64 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 many of them? An explanation lies nearer—an explana¬ 
 tion which would account for poverty no matter how 
 small the population. If there were but one man in Skye, 
 and if all that he produced, save enough to give him a 
 bare living, were periodically taken from him and carried 
 off, he would necessarily be poor. That is the condition 
 of the people of Skye. With a population of some seven¬ 
 teen thousand there are, if my memory serves me, twenty- 
 four landowners. The few proprietors who live upon the 
 island, though they do nothing to produce wealth, have 
 fine houses, and live luxuriously, while the greater por¬ 
 tion of the rents are carried off to be spent abroad. It is 
 not merely that there is thus a constant drain upon the 
 wealth produced; but that the power of producing wealth 
 is enormously lessened. As the people are deprived of 
 the power to accumulate capital, production is carried on 
 in the most primitive style, and at the greatest disadvan¬ 
 tage. 
 
 If there are really too many people in Scotland, why 
 not have the landlords emigrate? They are not merely 
 best fitted to emigrate, but would give the greatest relief. 
 They consume most, waste most, carry off most, while they 
 produce least. As landlords, in fact, they produce nothing. 
 They merely consume and destroy. Economically con¬ 
 sidered, they have the same effect upon production as 
 bands of robbers or pirate fleets. To national wealth they 
 are as weevils in the grain, as rats in the storehouse, as 
 ferrets in the poultry-yard. 
 
 The Duke of Argyll complains of what he calls my 
 “ assumption that owners of land are not producers, and 
 that rent does not represent, or represents in a very minor 
 degree, the interest of capital.” The Duke will justify his 
 complaint if he will show how the owning of land can 
 produce anything. Failing in this, he must admit that 
 though the same person may be a laborer, capitalist, and 
 
THE “SEDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 65 
 
 landowner, the owner of land, as an owner of land, is not 
 a producer. And surely he knows that the term “rent” 
 as used in political economy, and as I use it in the books 
 he criticizes, never represents the interest on capital, but 
 refers alone to the sum paid for the use of the inherent 
 capabilities of the soil. 
 
 As illustrating the usefulness of landlords, the Duke 
 says: 
 
 My own experience now extends over a period of the best part of 
 forty years. During that time I have built more than fifty home¬ 
 steads complete for man and beast; I Ijave drained and reclaimed 
 many hundreds, and inclosed some thousands, of acres. In this sense 
 I have “added house to house and field to field,” not—as pulpit 
 orators have assumed in similar cases—that I might “dwell alone in 
 the land,” but that the cultivating class might live more comfortably, 
 and with better appliances for increasing the produce of the soil. 
 
 And again he says that during the last four years he 
 has spent on one property £40,000 in the improvement of 
 the soil. 
 
 I fear that in Scotland the Duke of Argyll has been 
 “hiding his light under a bushel,” for his version of the 
 way in which he has “ added house to house and field to 
 field” differs much from that which common Scotsmen 
 give. But this is a matter into, which I do not wish to 
 enter. What I would like to ask the Duke is, how he 
 built the fifty homesteads and reclaimed the thousands of 
 acres? Not with his own hands, of course; but with his 
 money. Where, then, did he get that money? Was it 
 not taken as rent from the cultivators of the soil? And 
 might not they, had it been left to them, have devoted it 
 to the building of homesteads and the improvement of the 
 soil as well as he? Suppose the Duke spends on such 
 improvements all he draws in rent, minus what it costs 
 him to live, is not the cost of his living so much waste so 
 far as the improvement of the land is concerned ? Would 
 
66 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 there not be a considerably greater fund to devote to this 
 purpose if the Duke got no rent, and had to work for a 
 living ? 
 
 But all Scottish landholders are not even such improvers 
 as the Duke. There are landlords who spend their incomes 
 in racing, in profligacy, in doing things which when not 
 injurious are quite as useless to man or beast as the 
 works of that English Duke, recently dead, who spent 
 millions in burrowing underground like a mole. What 
 the Scottish landlords call their “ improvements ” have, 
 for the most part, consisted in building castles, laying out 
 pleasure-grounds, raising rents, and evicting their kins¬ 
 men. But the encouragement given to agriculture, by 
 even such improving owners as the Duke of Argyll, is very 
 much like the encouragement given to traffic by the Duke 
 of Bedford, who keeps two or three old men and women 
 to open and shut gates he has erected across the streets 
 of London. That much the greater part of the incomes 
 drawn by landlords is as completely lost for all productive 
 purposes as though it were thrown into the sea, there can 
 be no doubt. But that even the small part which is 
 devoted to reproductive improvement is largely wasted, 
 the Duke of Argyll himself clearly shows in stating, what 
 I have learned from other sources, that the large outlays 
 of the great landholders yield little interest, and in many 
 cases no interest at all. Clearly, the stock of wealth would 
 have been much greater had this capital been left in the 
 hands of the cultivators, who, in most cases, suffer from 
 lack of capital, and in many cases have to pay the most 
 usurious interest. 
 
 In fact, the plea of the landlords that they, as landlords, 
 assist in production, is very much like the plea of the 
 slaveholders that they gave a living to the slaves. And 
 I am convinced that if the Duke of Argyll will consider 
 the matter as a philosopher rather than as a landlord, he 
 
THE “ REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 67 
 
 will see the gross inconsistency between the views he 
 expresses as to negro slavery and the position he assumes 
 as to property in land. 
 
 In principle the two systems of appropriating the labor 
 of other men are essentially the same. Since it is from 
 land and on land that man mnst live, if he is to live at 
 all, a human being is as completely enslaved when the 
 land on which he must live is made the property of another 
 as when his own flesh and blood are made the property 
 of that other. And at least, after a certain point in social 
 development is reached, the slavery that results from 
 depriving men of all legal right to land is, for the very 
 reason that the relation between master and slave is not 
 so direct and obvious, more cruel and more demoralizing 
 than that which makes property of their bodies. 
 
 And turning to facts, the Duke must see, if he will look, 
 that the effects of the two systems are substantially the 
 same. He is, for instance, an hereditary legislator, with 
 power in making laws which other Scotsmen, who have 
 little or no voice in making laws, must obey under penalty 
 of being fined, imprisoned, or hanged. He has this power, 
 which is essentially that of the master to compel the 
 slave, not because any one thinks that Nature gives wisdom 
 and patriotism to eldest sons more than to younger sons, 
 or to some families more than to other families, but 
 because as the legal owner of a considerable part of Scot¬ 
 land, he is deemed to have greater rights in making laws 
 than other Scotsmen, who can live in their native land 
 only by paying some of the legal owners of Scotland for 
 the privilege. 
 
 That power over men arises from ownership of land as 
 well as from ownership of their bodies the Duke may see 
 in varied manifestations if he will look. The power of 
 the Scottish landlords over even the large farmers, and, in 
 the smaller towns, over even the well-to-do shopkeepers 
 
68 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 and professional men, is enormous. Even where it is the 
 custom to let on lease, and large capital is required, com¬ 
 petition, aided in many cases by the law of hypothec, 
 enables the landlord to exert a direct power over even the 
 large farmer. That many substantial farmers have been 
 driven from their homes and ruined because they voted 
 or were supposed to have voted against the wishes of their 
 landlords is well known. A man whose reputation was 
 that of the best farmer in Scotland # was driven from his 
 home in this way a few years since for having politically 
 offended his landlord. In Leeds (England) I was told of 
 a Scottish physician who died there lately. He had been 
 in comfortable practice in a village on the estate of a 
 Scottish duke. Because he voted for a Liberal candidate, 
 word was given by the landlord’s agent that he was no 
 longer to be employed, and as the people feared to disobey 
 the hint, he was obliged to leave. He came to Leeds, and 
 not succeeding in establishing himself, pined away, and 
 would have died in utter destitution but that some friends 
 he had made in Leeds wrote to the candidate for support¬ 
 ing whom he had been boycotted, who came to Leeds, 
 provided for his few days of life, and assumed the care of 
 his children. I mention to his honor the name of that 
 gentleman as it was given to me. It was Sir Sydney 
 Waterlow. 
 
 During a recent visit to the Highlands I was over and 
 over again told by well-to-do men that they did not dare 
 to let their opinions be known or to take any action the 
 landlords or their agents might dislike. In one townf 
 such men came to me by night and asked me to speak, 
 but telling me frankly that they did not dare to apply for 
 a hall, requested me to do that for myself, as I was beyond 
 
 * John Hope of Fenton Barns, 
 t Portree, Isle of Skye. 
 
THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 69 
 
 the tyranny they feared. If this be the condition of the 
 well-to-do, the condition of the crofters can be imagined. 
 One of them said to me, “We have feared the landlord 
 more than we have feared God Almighty j we have feared 
 the factor more than the landlord, and the ground officer 
 more than the factor.” But there is a class lower still 
 even than the crofters—the cotters—who, on forty-eight 
 hours’ notice, can be turned out of what by courtesy are 
 called their homes, and who are at the mercy of the large 
 farmers or tacksmen, who in turn fear the landlord or 
 agent. Take this class, or the class of farm-servants who 
 are kept in bothies. Can the Duke tell me of any Ameri¬ 
 can slaves who were lodged and fed as these white slaves 
 are lodged and fed, or who had less of all the comforts 
 and enjoyments of life? 
 
 The slaveholders of the South never, in any case that I 
 have heard of, interfered with the religion of the slaves, 
 and the Duke of Argyll will doubtless admit that this is 
 a power which one man ought not to have over another. 
 Yet he must know that at the disruption of the Scottish 
 Church, some forty years ago, Scottish proprietors not 
 merely evicted tenants who joined the Free Church (and 
 in many cases eviction meant ruin and death), but abso¬ 
 lutely refused sites for churches and even permission for 
 the people to stand upon the land and worship God 
 according to the dictates of their conscience. Hugh Miller 
 has told, in “ The Cruise of the Betsy,” how one minister, 
 denied permission to live on the land, had to make his 
 home on the sea in a small boat. Large congregations 
 had to worship on mountain roadsides without shelter 
 from storm and sleet, and even on the sea-shore, where 
 the tide flowed around their knees as they took the com¬ 
 munion. But perhaps the slavishness which has been 
 engendered in Scotland by land monopoly is not better 
 illustrated than in the case where, after keeping them off 
 
70 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 his land for more than six years, a Scottish duke allowed 
 a congregation the use of a gravel-pit for purposes of 
 worship, whereupon they sent him a resolution of thanks ! 
 
 In the large cities tyranny of this kind cannot, of course, 
 be exercised, but it is in the large cities that the slavery 
 resulting from the reduction of land to private ownership 
 assumes the darkest shades. Negro slavery had its hor¬ 
 rors, but they were not so many or so black as those 
 constantly occurring in such cities. Their own selfish 
 interests, if not their human sympathies or the restraint 
 of public opinion, would have prevented the owners of 
 negro slaves from lodging and feeding and working them 
 as many of the so-called free people in the centers of 
 civilization are lodged and fed and worked. 
 
 With all allowance for the prepossessions of a great 
 landlord, it is difficult to understand how the Duke of 
 Argyll can regard as an animating scene the history of 
 agricultural improvement in Scotland since 1745. From 
 the date mentioned, and the fact that he is a Highlander, 
 I presume that he refers mainly to the Highlands. But 
 as a parallel to calling this history “animating,” I can 
 think of nothing so close as the observation of an econo¬ 
 mist of the Duke’s school, who, in an account of a visit to 
 Scotland, a generation or so ago, spoke of the pleasure 
 with which, in a workhouse, he had seen “ both sexes and 
 all ages, even to infants of two and three years, earning 
 their living by picking oakum,” or as the expression of 
 pride with which a Polish noble, in the last century, 
 pointed out to an English visitor some miserable-looking 
 creatures who, he said, were samples of the serfs, any one 
 of whom he could kick as he pleased! 
 
 “Thousands and thousands of acres,” says the Duke, 
 “have been reclaimed from barren wastes; ignorance has 
 given place to science, and barbarous customs of imme¬ 
 morial strength have been replaced by habits of intelli- 
 
THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 71 
 
 gence and business.” This is one side of the picture, but 
 unfortunately there is another side—chieftains taking 
 advantage of the reverential affection of their clansmen, 
 and their ignorance of a foreign language and a foreign 
 law, to reduce those clansmen to a condition of virtual 
 slavery; to rob them of the land which by immemorial 
 custom they had enjoyed; to substitute for the mutual 
 tie that bound chief to vassal and vassal to chief, the cold 
 maxims of money-making greed; to drive them from their 
 homes that sheep might have place, or to hand them over 
 to the tender mercies of a great farmer. 
 
 “ There has been grown,” says the Duke, u more corn, 
 more potatoes, more turnips; there has been produced 
 more milk, more butter, more cheese, more beef, more 
 mutton, more pork, more fowls and eggs.” But what 
 becomes of them? The Duke must know that the ordi¬ 
 nary food of the common people is meal and potatoes; 
 that of these many do not get enough; that many would 
 starve outright if they were not kept alive by charity. 
 Even the wild meat which their fathers took freely, the 
 common people cannot now touch. A Highland poor-law 
 physician, whose district is on the estate of a prominent 
 member of the Liberal party, was telling me recently of 
 the miserable poverty of the people among whom his 
 official duties lie, and how insufficient and monotonous 
 food was beginning to produce among them diseases like 
 the pellagra in Italy. When I asked him if they could 
 not, despite the gamekeepers, take for themselves enough 
 fish and game to vary their diet, u They never think of it,” 
 he replied ; u they are too cowed. Why, the moment any 
 one of them was even suspected of cultivating a taste for 
 trout or grouse, he would be driven off the estate like a 
 mad dog.” 
 
 Besides the essays and journals referred to by the Duke 
 of Argyll, there is another publication, which any one 
 
72 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 wishing to be informed on the subject may read with 
 advantage, though not with pleasure. It is entitled 
 “ Highland Clearances,” and is published in Inverness by 
 A. McKenzie. There is nothing in savage life more cold¬ 
 bloodedly atrocious than the warfare here recorded as 
 carried on against the clansmen by those who were their 
 hereditary protectors. The burning of houses; the ejec¬ 
 tion of old and young 5 the tearing down of shelters put 
 up to shield women with child and tender infants from 
 the bitter night blast; the threats of similar treatment 
 against all who should give them hospitality; the forcing 
 of poor helpless creatures into emigrant ships which car¬ 
 ried them to strange lands and among a people of whose 
 tongue they were utterly ignorant, to die in many cases 
 like rotten sheep or to be reduced to utter degradation. 
 An animating scene truly! Great districts once peopled 
 with a race, rude it may be and slavish to their chiefs, but 
 still a race of manly virtues, brave, kind, and hospitable 
 —now tenanted only by sheep or cattle, by grouse or deer! 
 No one can read of the atrocities perpetrated upon the 
 Scottish people, during what is called u the improvement 
 of the Highlands,” without feeling something like utter 
 contempt for men who, lions abroad, were such sheep at 
 home that they suffered these outrages without striking 
 a blow, even if an ineffectual one. But the explanation 
 of this reveals a lower depth in the u reduction to iniquity.” 
 The reason of the tame submission of the Highland people 
 to outrages which should have nerved the most timid is 
 to be found in the prostitution of their religion. The 
 Highland people are a deeply religious people, and dur¬ 
 ing these evictions their preachers preached to them 
 that their trials were the visitations of the Almighty 
 and must be submitted to under the penalty of eternal 
 damnation! 
 
THE “REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.” 
 
 73 
 
 I met accidentally in Scotland, recently, a lady of the 
 small landlord class, and the conversation turned upon 
 the poverty of the Highland people. “ Yes, they are poor,” 
 she said, “ but they deserve to be poor; they are so dirty. 
 I have no sympathy with women who won’t keep their 
 houses neat and their children tidy.” 
 
 I suggested that neatness could hardly be expected from 
 women who every day had to trudge for miles with creels 
 of peat and seaweed on their backs. 
 
 “ Yes,” she said, “ they do have to work hard. But that 
 is not so sad as the hard lives of the horses. Did you 
 ever think of the horses? They have to work all their 
 lives—till they can’t w r ork any longer. It makes me sad 
 to think of it. There ought to be big farms where horses 
 should be turned out after they had worked some years, 
 so that they might have time to enjoy themselves before 
 they died.” 
 
 “But the people?” I interposed. “They, too, have to 
 work till they can’t work longer.” 
 
 “ Oh, yes! ” she replied, “ but the people have souls, and 
 even if they do have a hard time of it here, they will, if 
 they are good, go to heaven when they die, and be happy 
 hereafter. But the poor beasts have no souls, and if they 
 don’t enjoy themselves here, they have no chance of 
 enjoying themselves at all. It is too bad ! ” 
 
 The woman was in sober earnest. And I question if 
 she did not fairly represent much that has been taught in 
 Scotland as Christianity. But at last, thank God ! the day 
 is breaking, and the blasphemy that has been preached as 
 religion will not be heard much longer. The manifesto 
 of the Scottish Land Restoration League, calling upon the 
 Scottish people to bind themselves together in solemn 
 league and covenant for the extirpation of the sin and 
 shame of landlordism, is a lark’s note in the dawn. 
 
74 
 
 PROPERTY IN LAND. 
 
 As in Scotland so elsewhere. I have spoken particularly 
 of Scotland only because the Duke does so. But every¬ 
 where that our civilization extends the same primary 
 injustice is bearing the same evil fruits. And everywhere 
 the same spirit is rising, the same truth is beginning to 
 force its way. 
 
THE 
 
 CONDITION OF LABOR 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 BY HENRY GEORGE 
 
 WITH ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. ON 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR 
 
Copyright, 1891, by 
 Henry George 
 
THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 T O Pope Leo XIII. 
 
 Your Holiness : I have read with care your Encyc¬ 
 lical letter on the condition of labor, addressed, through 
 the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of 
 your faith, to the Christian World. 
 
 Since its most strikingly pronounced condemnations 
 are directed against a theory that we who hold it know to 
 be deserving of your support, I ask permission to lay 
 before your Holiness the grounds of our belief, and to set 
 forth some considerations that you have unfortunately 
 overlooked. The momentous seriousness of the facts you 
 refer to, the poverty, suffering and seething discontent 
 that pervade the Christian world, the danger that passion 
 may lead ignorance in a blind struggle against social con¬ 
 ditions rapidly becoming intolerable, are my justification. 
 
 I. 
 
 Our postulates are all stated or implied in your Encyc¬ 
 lical. They are the primary perceptions of human reason, 
 the fundamental teachings of the Christian faith: 
 
 We hold: That— 
 
 This world is the creation of God. 
 
4 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 The men brought into it for the brief period of their 
 earthly lives are the equal creatures of his bounty, the 
 equal subjects of his provident care. 
 
 By his constitution man is beset by physical wants, on 
 the satisfaction of which depend not only the maintenance 
 of his physical life but also the development of his intel¬ 
 lectual and spiritual life. 
 
 God has made the satisfaction of these wants dependent 
 on man’s own exertions, giving him the power and laying 
 on him the injunction to labor—a power that of itself 
 raises him far above the brute, since we may reverently 
 say that it enables him to become as it were a helper in 
 the creative work. 
 
 God has not put on man the task of making bricks 
 without straw. With the need for labor and the power 
 to labor he has also given to man the material for labor. 
 This material is land—man physically being a land animal, 
 who can live only on and from land, and can use other 
 elements, such as air, sunshine and water, only by the use 
 of land. 
 
 Being the equal creatures of the Creator, equally entitled 
 under his providence to live their lives and satisfy their 
 needs, men are equally entitled to the use of land, and 
 any adjustment that denies this equal use of land is 
 morally wrong. 
 
 As to the right of ownership, we hold: That- 
 
 Being created individuals, with individual wants and 
 powers, men are individually entitled (subject of course 
 to the moral obligations that arise from such relations as 
 that of the family) to the use of their own powers and 
 the enjoyment of the results. 
 
 There thus arises, anterior to human law, and deriving 
 its validity from the law of God, a right of private owner¬ 
 ship in things produced by labor—a right that the pos- 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 5 
 
 sessor may transfer, but of which to deprive him without 
 his will is theft. 
 
 This right of property, originating in the right of the 
 individual to himself, is the only full and complete right 
 of property. It attaches to things produced by labor, but 
 cannot attach to things created by God. 
 
 Thus, if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires a 
 right of property in that fish, which exclusive right he 
 may transfer by sale or gift. But he cannot obtain a 
 similar right of property in the ocean, so that he may sell 
 it or give it or forbid others to use it. 
 
 Or, if he set up a windmill he acquires a right of prop- 
 ertjr in the things such use of wind enables him to produce. 
 But he cannot claim a right of property in the wind itself, 
 so that he may sell it or forbid others to use it. 
 
 Or, if he cultivate grain he acquires a right of property 
 in the grain his labor brings forth. But he cannot obtain 
 a similar right of property in the sun which ripened it or 
 the soil on which it grew. For these things are of the 
 continuing gifts of God to all generations of men, which 
 all may use, but none may claim as his alone. 
 
 To attach to things created by God the same right of 
 private ownership that justly attaches to things produced 
 by labor is to impair and deny the true rights of property. 
 For a man who out of the proceeds of his labor is obliged 
 to pay another man for the use of ocean or air or sunshine 
 or soil, all of which are to men involved in the single term 
 land, is in this deprived of his rightful property and thus 
 robbed. 
 
 As to the use of land, we hold: That— 
 
 While the right of ownership that justly attaches to 
 things produced by labor cannot attach to land, there 
 may attach to land a right of possession. As your Holi¬ 
 ness says, u God has not granted the earth to mankind in 
 
6 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 general in the sense that all without distinction can deal 
 with it as they please/’ and regulations necessary for its 
 best use may be fixed by human laws. But such regula¬ 
 tions must conform to the moral law—must secure to all 
 equal participation in the advantages of God’s general 
 bounty. The principle is the same as where a human 
 father leaves property equally to a number of children. 
 Some of the things thus left may be incapable of common 
 use or of specific division. Such things may properly be 
 assigned to some of the children, but only under con¬ 
 dition that the equality of benefit among them all be 
 preserved. 
 
 In the rudest social state, while industry consists in 
 hunting, fishing, and gathering the spontaneous fruits of 
 the earth, private possession of land is not necessary. 
 But as men begin to cultivate the ground and expend 
 their labor in permanent works, private possession of the 
 land on which labor is thus expended is needed to secure 
 the right of property in the products of labor. For who 
 would sow if not assured of the exclusive possession 
 needed to enable him to reap? who would attach costly 
 works to the soil without such exclusive possession of the 
 soil as would enable him to secure the benefit ? 
 
 This right of private possession in things created by 
 God is however very different from the right of private 
 ownership in things produced by labor. The one is 
 limited, the other unlimited, save in cases when the 
 dictate of self-preservation terminates all other rights. 
 The purpose of the one, the exclusive possession of land, 
 is merely to secure the other, the exclusive ownership of 
 the products of labor; and it can never rightfully be 
 carried so far as to impair or deny this. While any one 
 may hold exclusive possession of land so far as it does 
 not interfere with the equal rights of others, he can 
 rightfully hold it no further. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 7 
 
 Thus Cain and Abel, were there only two men on 
 earth, might by agreement divide the earth between 
 them. Under this compact each might claim exclusive 
 right to his" share as against the other. But neither 
 could rightfully continue such claim against the next 
 man born. For since no one comes into the world with¬ 
 out God’s permission, his presence attests his equal right 
 to the use of God’s bounty. For them to refuse him any 
 use of the earth which they had divided between them 
 would therefore be for them to commit murder. And 
 for them to refuse him any use of the earth, unless by 
 laboring for them or by giving them part of the products 
 of his labor he bought it of them, would be for them to 
 commit theft. 
 
 God’s laws do not change. Though their applications 
 may alter with altering conditions, the same principles 
 of right and wrong that hold when men are few and 
 industry is rude also hold amid teeming populations and 
 complex industries. In our cities of millions and our 
 states of scores of millions, in a civilization where the 
 division of labor has gone so far that large numbers are 
 hardly conscious that they are land-users, it still remains 
 true that we are all land animals and can live only on 
 land, and that land is God’s bounty to all, of which no 
 one can be deprived without being murdered, and for 
 which no one can be compelled to pay another without 
 being robbed. But even in a state of society where the 
 elaboration of industry and the increase of permanent 
 improvements have made the need for private possession 
 of land wide-spread, there is no difficulty in conforming 
 individual possession with the equal right to land. For 
 as soon as any piece of land will yield to the possessor a 
 larger return than is had by similar labor on other land 
 a value attaches to it which is shown when it is sold or 
 
8 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 rented. Thus, the value of the land itself, irrespective 
 of the value of any improvements in or on it, always 
 indicates the precise value of the benefit to which all are 
 entitled in its use, as distinguished from the value which, 
 as producer or successor of a producer, belongs to the 
 possessor in individual right. 
 
 To combine the advantages of private possession with 
 the justice of common ownership it is only necessary 
 therefore to take for common uses what value attaches 
 to land irrespective of any exertion of labor on it. The 
 principle is the same as in the case referred to, where a 
 human father leaves equally to his children things not 
 susceptible of specific division or common use. In that 
 case such things would be sold or rented and the value 
 equally applied. 
 
 It is on this common-sense principle that we, who 
 term ourselves single-tax men, would have the commu¬ 
 nity act. 
 
 We do not propose to assert equal rights to land by 
 keeping land common, letting any one use any part of it 
 at any time. We do not propose the task, impossible in 
 the present state of society, of dividing land in equal 
 shares; still less the yet more impossible task of keeping 
 it so divided. 
 
 We propose—leaving land in the private possession of 
 individuals, with full liberty on their part to give, sell 
 or bequeath it—simply to levy on it for public uses a 
 tax that shall equal the annual value of the land itself, 
 irrespective of the use made of it or the improvements 
 on it. And since this would provide amply for the need 
 of public revenues, we would accompany this tax on land 
 values with the repeal of all taxes now levied on the 
 products and processes of industry—which taxes, since 
 they take from the earnings of labor, we hold to be 
 infringements of the right of property. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 9 
 
 This we propose, not as a cunning device of human 
 ingenuity, but as a conforming of human regulations to 
 the will of God. 
 
 God cannot contradict himself nor impose on his crea¬ 
 tures laws that clash. 
 
 If it be God’s command to men that they should not 
 steal— that is to say, that they should respect the right 
 of property which each one has in the fruits of his labor; 
 
 And if he be also the Father of all men, who in his 
 common bounty has intended all to have equal opportu¬ 
 nities for sharing; 
 
 Then, in any possible stage of civilization, however 
 elaborate, there must be some way in which the exclusive 
 right to the products of industry may be reconciled with 
 the equal right to land. 
 
 If the Almighty be consistent with himself, it cannot 
 be, as say those socialists referred to by you, that in 
 order to secure the equal participation of men in the 
 opportunities of life and labor we must ignore the right 
 of private property. Nor yet can it be, as you yourself 
 in the Encyclical seem to argue, that to secure the right 
 of private property we must ignore the equality of right 
 in the opportunities of life and labor. To say the one 
 thing or the other is equally to deny the harmony of 
 God’s laws. 
 
 But, the private possession of land, subject to the 
 payment to the community of the value of any special 
 advantage thus given to the individual, satisfies both 
 laws, securing to all equal participation in the bounty of 
 the Creator and to each the full ownership of the prod¬ 
 ucts of his labor. 
 
 Nor do we hesitate to say that this way of securing 
 the equal right to the bounty of the Creator and the 
 exclusive right to the products of labor is the way 
 
10 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 intended by God for raising public revenues. For we 
 are not atheists, who deny God; nor semi-atheists, who 
 deny that he has any concern in politics and legislation. 
 
 It is true as you say—a salutary truth too often for¬ 
 gotten—that “man is older than the state, and he holds 
 the right of providing for the life of his body prior to 
 the formation of any state.” Yet, as yon too perceive, it 
 is also true that the state is in the divinely appointed 
 order. For He who foresaw all things and provided for 
 all things, foresaw and provided that with the increase 
 of population and the development of industry the 
 organization of human society into states or govern¬ 
 ments would become both expedient and necessary. 
 
 No sooner does the state arise than, as we all know, it 
 needs revenues. This need for revenues is small at first, 
 while population is sparse, industry rude and the func¬ 
 tions of the state few and simple. But wdth growth of 
 population and advance of civilization the functions of the 
 state increase and larger and larger revenues are needed. 
 
 Now, He that made the world and placed man in it, 
 He that pre-ordained civilization as the means whereby 
 man might rise to higher powers and become more and 
 more conscious of the works of his Creator, must have 
 foreseen this increasing need for state revenues and have 
 made provision for it. That is to say: The increasing 
 need for public revenues with social advance, being a 
 natural, God-ordained need, there must be a right way 
 of raising them—some way that we can truly say is the 
 way intended by God. It is clear that this right way of 
 raising public revenues must accord with the moral law. 
 
 Hence : 
 
 It must not take from individuals what rightfully 
 belongs to individuals. 
 
 It must not give some an advantage over others, as by 
 increasing the prices of what some have to sell and 
 others must buy. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 11 
 
 It must not lead men into temptation, by requiring 
 trivial oaths, by making it profitable to lie, to swear 
 falsely, to bribe or to take bribes. 
 
 It must not confuse the distinctions of right and 
 wrong, and weaken the sanctions of religion and the 
 state by creating crimes that are not sins, and punishing 
 men for doing what in itself they have an undoubted 
 right to do. 
 
 It must not repress industry. It must not check com¬ 
 merce. It must not punish thrift. It must offer no 
 impediment to the largest production and the fairest 
 division of wealth. 
 
 Let me ask your Holiness to consider the taxes on the 
 processes and products of industry by which through the 
 civilized world public revenues are collected—the octroi 
 duties that surround Italian cities with barriers; the 
 monstrous customs duties that hamper intercourse 
 between so-called Christian states; the taxes on occupa¬ 
 tions, on earnings, on investments, on the building of 
 houses, on the cultivation of fields, on industry and thrift 
 in all forms. Can these be the ways God has intended 
 that governments should raise the means they need? 
 Have any of them the characteristics indispensable in 
 any plan we can deem a right one ? 
 
 All these taxes violate the moral law. They take by 
 force what belongs to the individual alone; they give to 
 the unscrupulous an advantage over the scrupulous; 
 they have the effect, nay are largely intended, to increase 
 the price of what some have to sell and others must buy; 
 they corrupt government; they make oaths a mockery; 
 they shackle commerce; they fine industry and thrift; 
 they lessen the wealth that men might enjoy, and enrich 
 some by impoverishing others. 
 
 Yet what most strikingly shows how opposed to Chris¬ 
 tianity is this system of raising public revenues is its 
 influence on thought. 
 
12 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 Christianity teaches ns that all men are brethren ; that 
 their true interests are harmonious, not antagonistic. It 
 gives us, as the golden rule of life, that we should do to 
 others as we would have others do to us. But out of the 
 system of taxing the products and processes of labor, 
 and out of its effects in increasing the price of what 
 some have to sell and others must buy, has grown the 
 theory of “protection/’ which denies this gospel, which 
 holds Christ ignorant of political economy and proclaims 
 laws of national well-being utterly at variance with his 
 teaching. This theory sanctities national hatreds; it 
 inculcates a universal war of hostile tariffs; it teaches 
 peoples that their prosperity lies in imposing on the 
 productions of other peoples restrictions they do not 
 wish imposed on their own; and instead of the Christian 
 doctrine of man’s brotherhood it makes injury of for¬ 
 eigners a civic virtue. 
 
 “ By their fruits ye shall know them.” Can anything 
 more clearly show that to tax the products and processes 
 of industry is not the way God intended public revenues 
 to be raised ? 
 
 But to consider what we propose—the raising of public 
 revenues by a single tax on the value of land irrespective 
 of improvements—is to see that in all respects this does 
 conform to the moral law. 
 
 Let me ask your Holiness to keep in mind that the 
 value we propose to tax, the value of land irrespective of 
 improvements, does not come from any exertion of labor 
 or investment of capital on or in it—the values produced 
 in this way being values of improvement which we 
 would exempt. The value of land irrespective of 
 improvement is the value that attaches to land by reason 
 of increasing population and social progress. This is a 
 value that always goes to the owner as owner, and never 
 does and never can go to the user; for if the user be a 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 13 
 
 different person from the owner he must always pay the 
 owner for it in rent or in purchase-money; while if the 
 user he also the owner, it is as owner, not as user, that 
 he receives it, and by selling- or renting the land he can, 
 as owner, continue to receive it after he ceases to be a 
 user. 
 
 Thus, taxes on land irrespective of improvement can¬ 
 not lessen the rewards of industry, nor add to prices,* nor 
 in any way take from the individual what belongs to the 
 individual. They can take only the value that attaches 
 to land by the growth of the community, and which 
 therefore belongs to the community as a whole. 
 
 To take land values for the state, abolishing all taxes 
 on the products of labor, would therefore leave to the 
 
 * As to this point it may be well to add that all economists are 
 agreed that taxes on land values irrespective of improvement or use 
 —or what in the terminology of political economy is styled rent, a 
 term distinguished from the ordinary use of the word rent by being 
 applied solely to payments for the use of land itself—must be paid 
 by the owner and cannot be shifted by him on the user. To explain 
 in another way the reason given in the text: Price is not determined 
 by the will of the seller or the will of the buyer, but by the equation 
 of demand and supply, and therefore as to things constantly demanded 
 and constantly produced rests at a point determined by the cost of 
 production—whatever tends to increase the cost of bringing fresh 
 quantities of such articles to the consumer increasing price by check¬ 
 ing supply, and whatever tends to reduce such cost decreasing price 
 by increasing supply. Thus taxes .on wheat or tobacco or cloth add 
 to the price that the consumer must pay, and thus the cheapening 
 in the cost of producing steel which improved processes have made 
 in recent years has greatly reduced the price of steel. But land has 
 no cost of production, since it is created by God, not produced by 
 man. Its price therefore is fixed—1 (monopoly rent), where land is 
 held in close monopoly, by what the owners can extract from the 
 users under penalty of deprivation and consequently of starvation, 
 and amounts to all that common labor can earn on it beyond what is 
 necessary to life ; 2 (economic rent proper), where there is no special 
 monopoly, by what the particular laud will yield to common labor 
 
14 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 laborer the full produce of labor; to the individual all 
 that rightfully belongs to the individual. It would 
 impose no burden on industry, no check on commerce, 
 no punishment on thrift; it would secure the largest 
 production and the fairest distribution of wealth, by 
 leaving men free to produce and to exchange as they 
 please, without any artificial enhancement of prices; and 
 by taking for public purposes a value that cannot be 
 carried off, that caunot be hidden, that of all values is 
 most easily ascertained and most certainly and cheaply 
 collected, it would enormously lessen the number of 
 officials, dispense with oaths, do away with temptations 
 to bribery and evasion, and abolish man-made crimes in 
 themselves innocent. 
 
 over and above what may be had by like expenditure and exertion 
 on land having no special advantage and for which no rent is paid; 
 and, 3 (speculative rent, which is a species of monopoly rent, telling 
 particularly in selling price), by the expectation of future increase 
 of value from social growth and improvement, which expectation 
 causing landowners to withhold land at present prices has the same 
 effect as combination. 
 
 Taxes on land values or economic rent can therefore never be 
 shifted by the landowner to the land-user, since they in no wise 
 increase the demand for land or enable landowners to check supply 
 by withholding land from use. Where rent depends on mere monopo¬ 
 lization, a case I mention because rent may in this way be demanded 
 for the use of land even before economic or natural rent arises, the 
 taking by taxation of what the landowners were able to extort from 
 labor could not enable them to extort any more, since laborers, if 
 not left enough to live on, will die. So, in the case of economic rent 
 proper, to take from the landowners the premiums they receive, 
 would in no way increase the superiority of their land and the demand 
 for it. While, so far as price is affected by speculative rent, to compel 
 the landowners to pay taxes on the value of land whether they were 
 getting any income from it or not, would make it more difficult for 
 them to withhold land from use; and to tax the full value would not 
 merely destroy the power but the desire to do so. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 15 
 
 But, further: That God has intended the state to 
 obtain the revenues it needs by the taxation of land 
 values is shown by the same order and degree of evi¬ 
 dence that shows that God has intended the milk of the 
 mother for the nourishment of the babe. 
 
 See how close is the analogy. In that primitive condi¬ 
 tion ere the need for the state arises there are no land 
 values. The products of labor have value, but in the 
 sparsity of population no value as yet attaches to land 
 itself. But as increasing density of population and 
 increasing elaboration of industry necessitate the organi¬ 
 zation of the state, with its need for revenues, value 
 begins to attach to land. As population still increases 
 and industry grow r s more elaborate, so the needs for 
 public revenues increase. And at the same time and 
 from the same causes land values increase. The connec¬ 
 tion is invariable. The value of things produced by 
 labor tends to decline with social development, since the 
 larger scale of production and the improvement of pro¬ 
 cesses tend steadilv to reduce their cost. But the value 
 
 «/ 
 
 of land on which population centers goes up and up. 
 Take Rome or Paris or London or New York or Mel¬ 
 bourne. Consider the enormous value of land in such 
 cities as compared with the value of land in sparsely 
 settled parts of the same countries. To what is this due ? 
 Is it not due to the density and activity of the popula¬ 
 tions of those cities—to the very causes that require 
 great public expenditure for streets, drains, public build¬ 
 ings, and all the many things needed for the health, 
 convenience and safety of such great cities? See how 
 with the growth of such cities the one thing that steadily 
 increases in value is land; how the opening of roads, the 
 building of railways, the making of any public improve¬ 
 ment, adds to the value of land. Is it not clear that here 
 
16 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 is a natural law—that is to say a tendency willed by the 
 Creator? Can it mean anything else than that He who 
 ordained the state with its needs has in the values which 
 attach to land provided the means to meet those needs ? 
 
 That it does mean this and nothing else is confirmed if 
 we look deeper still, and inquire not merely as to the 
 intent, but as to the purpose of the intent. If we do so 
 we may see in this natural law by which land values 
 increase with the growth of society not only such a per¬ 
 fectly adapted provision for the needs of society as 
 gratifies our intellectual perceptions by showing us the 
 wisdom of the Creator, but a purpose with regard to the 
 individual that gratifies our moral perceptions by open¬ 
 ing to us a glimpse of his beneficence. 
 
 Consider: Here is a natural law by which as society 
 advances the one thing that increases in value is land—a 
 natural law by virtue of which all growth of population, 
 all advance of the arts, all general improvements of 
 whatever kind, add to a fund that both the commands of 
 justice and the dictates of expediency prompt us to take 
 for the common uses of society. Now, since increase in 
 the fund available for the common uses of society is 
 increase in the gain that goes equally to each member of 
 society, is it not clear that the law by which land values 
 increase with social advance while the value of the prod¬ 
 ucts of labor does not increase, tends with the advance of 
 civilization to make the share that goes equally to each 
 member of society more and more important as compared 
 with what goes to him from his individual earnings, and 
 thus to make the advance of civilization lessen relatively 
 the differences that in a ruder social state must exist 
 between the strong and the weak, the fortunate and the 
 unfortunate ? Does it not show the purpose of the Creator 
 to be that the advance of man in civilization should be 
 
17 
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 \ 
 
 an advance not merely to larger powers bnt to a greater 
 and greater equality, instead of what we, by our ignoring 
 of his intent, are making it, an advance toward a’more 
 and more monstrous inequality ? 
 
 That the value attaching to land with social growth is 
 intended for social needs is shown by the final proof. 
 God is indeed a jealous God in the sense that nothing 
 but injury and disaster can attend the effort of men to 
 do things other than in the way he has intended; in the 
 sense that where the blessings he proffers to men are 
 refused or misused they turn to evils that scourge us. 
 And just as for the mother to withhold the provision 
 that fills her breast with the birth of the child is to 
 endanger physical health, so for society to refuse to take 
 for social uses the provision intended for them is to 
 breed social disease. 
 
 For refusal to take for public purposes the increasing 
 values that attach to land with social growth is to neces¬ 
 sitate the getting of public revenues by taxes that lessen 
 production, distort distribution and corrupt society. It 
 is to leave some to take what justly belongs to all 5 it is 
 to forego the only means by which it is possible in an 
 advanced civilization to combine the security of posses¬ 
 sion thrt is necessary to improvement with the equality 
 of natural opportunity that is the most important of all 
 natural rights. It is thus at the basis of all social life 
 to set up an unjust inequality between man and man, 
 compelling some to pay others for the privilege of living, 
 for the chance of working, for the advantages of civiliza¬ 
 tion, for the gifts of their God. But it is even more 
 than this. The very robbery that the masses of men 
 thus suffer gives rise in advancing communities to a new 
 robbery. For the value that with the increase of popula¬ 
 tion and social advance attaches to land being suffered 
 
18 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 to go to individuals who have secured ownership of the 
 landj it prompts to a forestalling of and speculation in 
 land wherever there is any prospect of advancing popula¬ 
 tion or of coming improvement, thus producing an arti¬ 
 ficial scarcity of the natural elements of life and labor, 
 and a strangulation of production that shows itself in 
 recurring spasms of industrial depression as disastrous 
 to the world as destructive wars. It is this that is 
 driving men from the old countries to the new countries, 
 only to bring there the same curses. It is this that 
 causes our material advance not merely to fail to improve 
 the condition of the mere worker, but to make the condi¬ 
 tion of large classes positively worse. It is this that in 
 our richest Christian countries is giving us a large pop¬ 
 ulation whose lives are harder, more hopeless, more 
 degraded than those of the veriest savages. It is this 
 that leads so many men to think that God is a bungler 
 and is constantly bringing more people into his world 
 than he has made provision for; or that there is no God, 
 and that belief in him is a superstition which the facts of 
 life and the advance of science are dispelling. 
 
 The darkness in light, the weakness in strength, the 
 poverty amid wealth, the seething discontent foreboding 
 civil strife, that characterize our civilization of to-day, 
 are the natural, the inevitable results of our rejection of 
 God’s beneficence, of our ignoring of his intent. Were 
 we on the other hand to follow his clear, simple rule of 
 right, leaving scrupulously to the individual all that 
 individual labor produces, and taking for the community 
 the value that attaches to land by the growth of the com- 
 munity itself, not merely could evil modes of raising 
 public revenues be dispensed with, but all men would be 
 placed on an equal level of opportunity with regard to 
 the bounty of their Creator, on an equal level of oppor¬ 
 tunity to exert their labor and to enjoy its fruits. And 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 19 
 
 then, without drastic or restrictive measures the fore¬ 
 stalling of laud would cease. For then the possession of 
 land would mean only security for the permanence of its 
 use, and there would be no object for any one to get land 
 or to keep land except for use; nor would his possession 
 of better land than others had confer any unjust advan¬ 
 tage on him, or unjust deprivation on them, since the 
 equivalent of the advantage would be taken by the state 
 for the benefit of all. 
 
 The Right Reverend Dr. Thomas Nulty, Bishop of 
 Meath, who sees all this as clearly as we do, in pointing 
 out to the clergy and laity of his diocese* the design of 
 Divine Providence that the rent of land should be taken 
 for the community, says: 
 
 I think, therefore, that I may fairly infer, on the strength of 
 authority as well as of reason, that the people are and always must 
 be the real owners of the land of their country. This great social 
 fact appears to me to be of incalculable importance, and it is fortu¬ 
 nate, indeed, that on the strictest principles of justice it is not clouded 
 even by a shadow of uncertainty or doubt. There is, moreover, a 
 charm and a peculiar beauty in the clearness with which it reveals 
 the wisdom and the benevolence of the designs of Providence in the 
 admirable provision he has made for the wants and the necessities 
 of that state of social existence of which he is author, and in which 
 the very instincts of nature tell us we are to spend our lives. A 
 vast public property, a great national fund, has been placed under 
 the dominion and at the disposal of the nation to supply itself abun¬ 
 dantly with resources necessary to liquidate the expenses of its 
 government, the administration of its laws and the education of its 
 youth, and to enable it to provide for the suitable sustentation and 
 support of its criminal and pauper population. One of the most 
 interesting peculiarities of this property is that its value is never 
 stationary; it is constantly progressive and increasing in a direct 
 ratio to the growth of the population, and the very causes that 
 increase and multiply the demands made on it increase proportion¬ 
 ately its ability to meet them. 
 
 * Letter addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of 
 Meath, Ireland, April 2, 1881. 
 
20 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 There is, indeed, as Bishop Nulty says, a peculiar 
 beauty in the clearness with which the wisdom and benev¬ 
 olence of Providence are revealed in this great social 
 fact, the provision made for the common needs of society 
 in what economists call the law of rent. Of all the evi¬ 
 dence that natural religion gives, it is this that most 
 clearly shows the existence of a beneficent God, and most 
 conclusively silences the doubts that in our daj^s lead so 
 many to materialism. 
 
 For in this beautiful provision made by natural law for 
 the social needs of civilization we see that God has 
 intended civilization; that all our discoveries and inven¬ 
 tions do not and cannot outrun his forethought, and that 
 steam, electricity and labor-saving appliances only make 
 the great moral laws clearer and more important. In 
 the growth of this great fund, increasing with social 
 advance—a fund that accrues from the growth of the 
 community and belongs therefore to the community—we 
 see not only that there is no need for the taxes that 
 lessen wealth, that engender corruption, that promote 
 •inequality and teach men to deny the gospel; but that 
 to take this fund for the purpose for which it was evi¬ 
 dently intended would in the highest civilization secure 
 to all the equal enjoyment of God’s bounty, the abundant 
 opportunity to satisfy their wants, and would provide 
 amply for every legitimate need of the state. We see 
 that God in his dealings with men has not been a 
 bungler or a niggard; that he has not brought too many 
 men into the world; that he has not neglected abun¬ 
 dantly to supply them; that he has not intended that 
 bitter competition of the masses for a mere animal 
 existence and that monstrous aggregation of wealth 
 which characterize our civilization; but that these evils 
 which lead so many to say there is no God, or yet more 
 impiously to say that they are of God’s ordering, are due 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 21 
 
 to our denial of liis moral law. We see that the law of 
 justice, the law of the Golden Rule, is not a mere counsel 
 of perfection, but indeed the law of social life. We see 
 that if we were only to observe it there would be work 
 for all, leisure for all, abundance for all; and that civili¬ 
 zation would tend to give to the poorest not only neces¬ 
 saries, but all comforts and reasonable luxuries as well. 
 We see that Christ was not a mere dreamer when he told 
 men that if they would seek the kingdom of God and its 
 right-doing they might no more worry about material 
 things than do the lilies of the field about their raiment ; 
 but that he was only declaring what political economy in 
 the light of modern discovery shows to be a sober truth. 
 
 Your Holiness, even to see this is deep and lasting joy. 
 For it is to see for one’s self that there is a God who lives 
 and reigns, and that he is a God of justice and love—Our 
 Father who art in Heaven. It is to open a rift of sun¬ 
 light through the clouds of our darker questionings, and 
 to make the faith that trusts where it cannot see a living 
 thing. 
 
 II. 
 
 Your Holiness will see from the explanation I have 
 given that the reform we propose, like all true reforms, 
 has both an ethical and an economic side. By ignoring 
 the ethical side, and pushing our proposal merely as a 
 reform of taxation, we could avoid the objections that 
 arise from confounding ownership with possession and 
 attributing to private property in land that security of 
 use and improvement that can be had even better without 
 it. All that we seek practically is the legal abolition, as 
 fast as possible, of taxes on the products and processes 
 of labor, and the consequent concentration of taxation 
 
22 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 on land values irrespective of improvements. To put our 
 proposals in this way would be to urge them merely as a 
 matter of wise public expediency. 
 
 There are indeed many single-tax men who do put our 
 proposals in this way; who seeing the beauty of our 
 plan from a fiscal standpoint do not concern themselves 
 further. But to those who think as I do, the ethical is 
 the more important side. Not only do we not wish to 
 evade the question of private property in land, but to us 
 it seems that the beneficent and far-reaching revolution 
 we aim at is too great a thing to be accomplished by 
 “ intelligent self-interest/ 7 and can be carried by nothing 
 less than the religious conscience. 
 
 Hence we earnestly seek the judgment of religion. 
 This is the tribunal of which your Holiness as the head 
 of the largest body of Christians is the most august 
 representative. 
 
 It therefore behooves us to examine the reasons you 
 urge in support of private property in land—if they be 
 sound to accept them, and if they be not sound respect¬ 
 fully to point out to you wherein is their error. 
 
 To your proposition that “ Our first and most funda¬ 
 mental principle when we undertake to alleviate the con¬ 
 dition of the masses must be the inviolability of private 
 property” we would joyfully agree if we could only 
 understand you to have in mind the moral element, and 
 to mean rightful private property, as when you speak 
 of marriage as ordained by God’s authority we may 
 understand an implied exclusion of improper marriages. 
 Unfortunately, however, other expressions show that you 
 mean private property in general and have expressly 
 in mind private property in land. This confusion of 
 thought, this non-distribution of terms, runs through 
 your whole argument, leading you to conclusions so 
 unwarranted by your premises as to be utterly repugnant 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 23 
 
 to them, as when from the moral sanction of private 
 property in the things produced by labor you infer some¬ 
 thing entirely different and utterly opposed, a similar 
 right of property in the land created by God. 
 
 Private property is not of one species, and moral sanc¬ 
 tion can no more be asserted universally of it than of 
 marriage. That proper marriage conforms to the law of 
 God does not justify the polygamic or polyandric or 
 incestuous marriages that are in some countries permitted 
 by the civil law. And as there may be immoral marriage 
 so may there be immoral private property. Private prop¬ 
 erty is that which may be held in ownership by an indi¬ 
 vidual, or that which may be held in ownership by an 
 individual with the sanction of the state. The mere 
 lawyer, the mere servant of the state, may rest here, 
 refusing to distinguish between what the state holds 
 equally lawful. Your Holiness, however, is not a servant 
 of the state, but a servant of God, a guardian of morals. 
 You know, as said by St. Thomas of Aquin, that— 
 
 Human law is law only in virtue of its accordance with right 
 reason and it is thus manifest that it flows from the eternal law. 
 And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust 
 law. In such case it is not law at all , but rather a species of violence. 
 
 Thus, that any species of property is permitted by the 
 state does not of itself give it moral sanction. The state 
 has often made things property that are not justly 
 property, but involve violence and robbery. For 
 instance, the things of religion, the dignity and authority 
 of offices of the church, the power of administering her 
 sacraments and controlling her temporalities, have often 
 by profligate princes been given as salable property to 
 courtiers and concubines. At this very day in England 
 an atheist or a heathen may buy in open market, and 
 hold as legal property, to be sold, given or bequeathed 
 
24 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 as he pleases, the power of appointing to the cure of 
 souls, and the value of these legal rights of presentation 
 is said to be no less than £17,000,000. 
 
 Or again: Slaves were universally treated as property 
 by the customs and laws of the classical nations, and 
 were so acknowledged in Europe long after the accep¬ 
 tance of Christianity. At the beginning of this century 
 there was no Christian nation that did not, in her col¬ 
 onies at least, recognize property in slaves, and slave- 
 ships crossed the seas under Christian flags. In the 
 United States, little more than thirty years ago, to buy a 
 man gave the same legal ownership as to buy a horse, 
 and in Mohammedan countries law and custom yet make 
 the slave the property of his captor or purchaser. 
 
 Yet your Holiness, one of the glories of whose pontifi¬ 
 cate is the attempt to break up slavery in its last strong¬ 
 holds, will not contend that the moral sanction that 
 attaches to property in things produced by labor can, or 
 ever could, apply to property in slaves. 
 
 Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of 
 the inclusive term “property’ 7 or “private’ 7 property, 
 of which in morals nothing can be either affirmed or 
 denied, makes your meaning, if we take isolated sen¬ 
 tences, in many places ambiguous. But reading it as a 
 whole, there can be no doubt of your intention that 
 private property in land shall be understood when you 
 speak merely of private property. With this interpreta¬ 
 tion, I find that the reasons you urge for private property 
 in land are eight. Let us consider them in order of pres¬ 
 entation. You urge: 
 
 1. That what is bought with rightful property is rightful 
 property. (5.)* 
 
 * To facilitate references the paragraphs of the Encyclical are 
 indicated by number. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 25 
 
 Clearly, purchase and sale cannot give, but can only 
 transfer ownership. Property that in itself has no moral 
 sanction does not obtain moral sanction by passing from 
 seller to buyer. 
 
 If right reason does not make the slave the property 
 of the slave-hunter it does not make him the property 
 of the slave-buyer. Yet your reasoning as to private 
 property in land would as well justify property in slaves. 
 To show this it is only needful to change in your argu¬ 
 ment the word land to the word slave. It would then 
 read : 
 
 It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative 
 labor, the very reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, 
 and to hold it as his own private x>ossession. 
 
 If one man hires out to another his strength or his industry, he does 
 this for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for food 
 and living; he thereby expressly proposes to acquire a full and legal 
 right, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of that 
 remuneration as he pleases. 
 
 Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and invests his savings, 
 for greater security, in a slave, the slave in such a case is only his 
 wages in another form ; and consequent ly, a working-man’s slave thus 
 purchased should be as completely at his own disposal as the wages 
 he receives for his labor. 
 
 Nor in turning your argument for private property in 
 land into an argument for private property in men am I 
 doing a new thing. In my own country, in my own time, 
 this very argument, that purchase gave ownership, was 
 the common defense of slavery. It was made by states¬ 
 men, by jurists, by clergymen, by bishops; it was 
 accepted over the whole country by the great mass of 
 the people. By it was justified the separation of wives 
 from husbands, of children from parents, the compelling 
 of labor, the appropriation of its fruits, the buying and 
 selling of Christians by Christians. In language almost 
 identical with yours it was asked, “Here is a poor man 
 
26 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 who has worked hard, lived sparingly, and invested his 
 savings in a few slaves. Would you rob him of his 
 earnings by liberating those slaves ? ” Or it was said: 
 “Here is a poor widow; all her husband has been able 
 to leave her is a few negroes, the earnings of his hard 
 toil. Would you rob the widow and the orphan by 
 freeing these negroes ? 77 And because of this perversion 
 of reason, this confounding of unjust property rights 
 with just property rights, this acceptance of man’s law 
 as though it were God’s law, there came on our nation a 
 judgment of fire and blood. 
 
 The error of our people in thinking that what in itself 
 was not rightfully property could become rightful prop¬ 
 erty by purchase and sale is the same error into which 
 your Holiness falls. It is not merely formally the same; 
 it is essentially the same. Private property in land, no 
 less than private property in slaves, is a violation of the 
 true rights of property. They are different forms of the 
 same robbery; twin devices by which the perverted 
 ingenuity of man has sought to enable the strong and 
 the cunning to escape God’s requirement of labor by 
 forcing it on others. 
 
 What difference does it make whether I merely own 
 the land on which another man must live or own the 
 man himself? Am I not in the one case as much his 
 master as in the other? Can I not compel him to work 
 for me ? Can I not take to myself as much of the fruits 
 of his labor; as fully dictate his actions? Have I not 
 over him the power of life and death ? For to deprive a 
 man of land is as certainly to kill him as to deprive him 
 of blood by opening his veins, or of air by tightening a 
 halter around his neck. 
 
 The essence of slavery is in empowering one man to 
 obtain the labor of another without recompense. Private 
 property in land does this as fully as chattel slavery. 
 
. OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 27 
 
 The slave-owner must leave to the slave enough of his 
 earnings to enable him to live. Are there not in so- 
 called free countries great bodies of working-men who 
 get no more? How much more of the fruits of their 
 toil do the agricultural laborers of Italy and England get 
 than did the slaves of our Southern States? Did not 
 private property in land permit the landowner of Europe 
 in ruder times to demand the jus primes noctis f Does 
 not the same last outrage exist to-day in diffused form 
 in the immorality born of monstrous wealth on the one 
 hand and ghastly poverty on the other ? 
 
 In what did the slavery of Russia consist but in giving 
 to the master land on which the serf was forced to live ? 
 When an Ivan or a Catherine enriched their favorites 
 with the labor of others they did not give men, they gave 
 land. And when the appropriation of land has gone so 
 far that no free land remains to which the landless man 
 may turn, then without further violence the more insidi¬ 
 ous form of labor robbery involved in private property 
 in land takes the place of chattel slavery, because more 
 economical and convenient. For under it the slave does 
 not have to be caught or held, or to be fed when not 
 needed. He comes of himself, begging the privilege of 
 serving, and when no longer wanted can be discharged. 
 The lash is unnecessary; hunger is as efficacious. This 
 is why the Norman conquerors of England and the Eng¬ 
 lish conquerors of Ireland did not divide up the people, 
 but divided the land. This is why European slave-ships 
 took their cargoes to the New World, not to Europe. 
 
 Slavery is not yet abolished. Though in all Christian 
 countries its ruder form has now gone, it still exists in 
 the heart of our civilization in more insidious form, and 
 is increasing. There is work to be done for the glory of 
 God and the liberty of man by other soldiers of the cross 
 than those warrior monks whom, with the blessing of 
 
28 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 your Holiness, Cardinal Lavigerie is sending into the 
 Sahara. Yet, your Encyclical employs in defense of one 
 form of slavery the same fallacies that the apologists for 
 chattel slavery used in defense of the other! 
 
 The Arabs are not wanting in acumen. Your Encyc¬ 
 lical reaches far. What shall your warrior monks say, if 
 when at the muzzle of their rifles they demand of some 
 Arab slave-merchant his miserable caravan, he shall 
 declare that he bought them with his savings, and pro¬ 
 ducing a copy of your Encyclical, shall prove by your 
 reasoning that his slaves are consequently “ only his wages 
 in another form/’ and ask if they who bear your blessing 
 and own your authority propose to u deprive him of the 
 liberty of disposing of his wages and thus of all hope 
 and possibility of increasing his stock and bettering his 
 condition in life’ 7 ? 
 
 2. That private property in land proceeds from man's gift 
 of reason. (6-7.) 
 
 In the second place your Holiness argues that man 
 possessing reason and forethought may not only acquire 
 ownership of the fruits of the earth, but also of the earth 
 itself, so that out of its products he may make provision 
 for the future. 
 
 Reason, with its attendant forethought, is indeed the 
 distinguishing attribute of man; that which raises him 
 above the brute, and shows, as the Scriptures declare, 
 that he is created in the likeness of God. And this gift 
 of reason does, as your Holiness points out, involve the 
 need and right of private property in whatever is pro¬ 
 duced by the exertion of reason and its attendant fore¬ 
 thought, as well as in what is produced by physical labor. 
 In truth, these elements of man’s production are insepa¬ 
 rable, and labor involves the use of reason. It is by his 
 reason that man differs from the animals in being a 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 29 
 
 producer, and in this sense a maker. Of themselves his 
 physical powers are slight, forming as it were hut the 
 connection by which the mind takes hold of material 
 things, so as to utilize to its will the matter and forces 
 of nature. It is mind, the intelligent reason, that is the 
 prime mover in labor, the essential agent in production. 
 
 The right of private ownership does therefore indis¬ 
 putably attach to things provided by man’s reason and 
 forethought. But it cannot attach to things provided by 
 the reason and forethought of God! 
 
 To illustrate: Let us suppose a company traveling 
 through the desert as the Israelites traveled from Egypt. 
 Such of them as had the forethought to provide them¬ 
 selves with vessels of water would acquire a just right 
 of property in the water so carried, and in the thirst of 
 the waterless desert those who had neglected to provide 
 themselves, though they might ask water from the provi¬ 
 dent in charity, could not demand it in right. For while 
 water itself is of the providence of God, the presence of 
 this water in such vessels, at such place, results from the 
 providence of the men who carried it. Thus they have 
 to it an exclusive right. 
 
 But suppose others use their forethought in pushing 
 ahead and appropriating the springs, refusing when their 
 fellows come up to let them drink of the water save as 
 they buy it of them. Would such forethought give any 
 right ? 
 
 Your Holiness, it is not the forethought of carrying 
 water wdiere it is needed, but the forethought of seizing 
 springs, that you seek to defend in defending the private 
 ownership of land! 
 
 Let me show this more fully, since it may be worth 
 while to meet those who say that if private property in 
 land be not just, then private property in the products 
 of labor is not just, as the material of these products is 
 
30 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 taken from land. It will be seen on consideration that 
 all of man’s production is analogous to such transporta¬ 
 tion of water as we have supposed. In growing grain, 
 or smelting metals, or building houses, or weaving cloth, 
 or doing any of the things that constitute producing, all 
 that man does is to change in place or form preexisting 
 matter. As a producer man is merely a changer, not a 
 creator; God alone creates. And since the changes in 
 which man’s production consists inhere in matter so long 
 as they persist, the right of private ownership attaches 
 the accident to the essence, and gives the right of owner¬ 
 ship in that natural material in which the labor of pro¬ 
 duction is embodied. Thus water, which in its original 
 form and place is the common gift of God to all men, 
 when drawn from its natural reservoir and brought into 
 the desert, passes rightfully into the ownership of the 
 individual who by changing its place has produced it there. 
 
 But such right of ownership is in reality a mere right 
 of temporary possession. For though man may take 
 material from the storehouse of nature and change it in 
 place or form to suit his desires, yet from the moment he 
 takes it, it tends back to that storehouse again. Wood 
 decays, iron rusts, stone disintegrates and is displaced, 
 while of more perishable products, some will last for only 
 a few months, others for only a few days, and some dis¬ 
 appear immediately on use. Though, so far as we can 
 see, matter is eternal and force forever persists; though 
 we can neither annihilate nor create the tiniest mote that 
 floats in a sunbeam or the faintest impulse that stirs a 
 leaf, yet in the ceaseless flux of nature, man’s work of 
 moving and combining constantly passes away. Thus 
 the recognition of the ownership of what natural material 
 is embodied in the products of man never constitutes 
 more than temporary possession—never interferes witji 
 the reservoir provided for all. As taking water from 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 31 
 
 one place and carrying it to another place by no means 
 lessens the store of water, since whether it is drunk or 
 spilled or left to evaporate, it must return again to the 
 natural reservoirs—so is it with all things on which man 
 in production can lay the impress of his labor. 
 
 Hence, when you say that man’s reason puts it within 
 his right to have in stable and permanent possession not 
 only things that perish in the using, but also those that 
 remain for use in the future, you are right in so far as 
 you may include such things as buildings, which with 
 repair will last for generations, with such things as food 
 or fire-wood, which are destroyed in the use. But when 
 you infer that man can have private ownership in those 
 permanent things of nature that are the reservoirs from 
 which all must draw, you are clearly wrong. Man may 
 indeed hold in private ownership the fruits of the earth 
 produced by his labor, since they lose in time the impress 
 of that labor, and pass again into the natural reservoirs 
 from which they were taken, and thus the ownership of 
 them by one works no injury to others. But he cannot 
 so own the earth itself, for that is the reservoir from 
 which must constantly be drawn not only the material with 
 which alone men can produce, but even their very bodies. 
 
 The conclusive reason why man cannot claim owner¬ 
 ship in the earth itself as he can in the fruits that lie by 
 labor brings forth from it, is in the facts stated by you 
 in the very next paragraph (7), when you truly say: 
 
 Man’s needs do not die out, but recur; satisfied to-day, they 
 demand new supplies to-morrow. Nature , therefore , owes to man a 
 storehouse that shall never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And 
 this he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth. 
 
 By man you mean all men. Can what nature owes to 
 all men be made the private property of some men, from 
 which they may debar all other men ? 
 
32 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 Let me dwell on the words of your Holiness, “Nature, 
 therefore, owes to man a storehouse that shall never fail.” 
 By Nature you mean God. Thus your thought, that in 
 creating us, God himself has incurred an obligation to 
 provide us with a storehouse that shall never fail, is the 
 same as is thus expressed and carried to its irresistible 
 conclusion by the Bishop of Meath: 
 
 • 
 
 God was perfectly free in the act by which He created us; but 
 having created us he bound himself by that act to provide us with 
 the means necessary for our subsistence. The land is the only source 
 of this kind now known to us. The land, therefore, of every country 
 is the common property of the people of that country, because its real 
 owner, the Creator who made it, has transferred it as a voluntary 
 gift to them. “ Terrain autem dedit filiis hominum.” Now, as every 
 individual in that country is a creature and child of God, and as all 
 his creatures are equal in his sight, any settlement of the land of a 
 country that would exclude the humblest man in that country from 
 his share of the common inheritance would be not only an injustice 
 and a wrong to that man, but, moreover, be an impious resistance 
 
 TO THE BENEVOLENT INTENTIONS OF HIS CREATOR. 
 
 3. That private property in land deprives no one of the use 
 of land. (8.) 
 
 Your own statement that land is the inexhaustible 
 storehouse that God owes to man must have aroused in 
 your Holiness’s mind an uneasy questioning of its appro¬ 
 priation as private property, for, as though to reassure 
 yourself, you proceed to argue that its ownership by 
 some will not injure others. You say in substance, that 
 even though divided among private owners the earth 
 does not cease to minister to the needs of all, since those 
 who do not possess the soil can by selling their labor 
 obtain in payment the produce of the land. 
 
 Suppose that to your Holiness as a judge of morals 
 one should put this case of conscience: 
 
 I am one of several children to whom our father left a field abun¬ 
 dant for our support. As he assigned no part of it to any one of us 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 33 
 
 in particular, leaving the limits of our separate possession to be fixed 
 by ourselves, I being the eldest took the whole field in exclusive 
 ownership. But in doing so I have not deprived my brothers of 
 their support from it, for I have let them work for me on it, paying 
 them from the produce as much wages as I would have had to pay 
 strangers. Is there any reason why my conscience should not be 
 clear? 
 
 What would be your answer? Would you not tell him 
 that he was in mortal sin, and that his excuse added to 
 his guilt? Would you not call on him to make restitu¬ 
 tion and to do penance ? 
 
 Or, suppose that as a temporal prince your Holiness 
 were ruler of a rainless land, such as Egypt, where there 
 were no springs or brooks, their want being supplied by 
 a bountiful river like the Nile. Supposing that having 
 sent a number of your subjects to make fruitful this 
 land, bidding them do justly and prosper, you were told 
 that some of them had set up a claim of ownership in 
 the river, refusing the others a drop of water, except as 
 they bought it of them; and that thus they had become 
 rich without work, while the others, though working 
 hard, were so impoverished by paying for water as to be 
 hardly able to exist ? 
 
 Would not your indignation wax hot when this was told ? 
 
 Suppose that then the river-owners should send to you 
 and thus excuse their action : 
 
 The river, though divided among private owners, ceases not 
 thereby to minister to the needs of all, for there is no one who drinks 
 who does not drink of the water of the river. Those who do not pos¬ 
 sess the water of the river contribute their labor to get it; so that it 
 may be truly said that all water is supplied either from one’s own 
 river, or from some laborious industry which is paid for either in the 
 water, or in that which is exchanged for the w^ater. 
 
 Would the indignation of your Holiness be abated? 
 Would it not wax fiercer yet for the insult to your intel¬ 
 ligence of this excuse ? 
 
34 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 I do not need more formally to show your Holiness 
 that between utterly depriving a man of God’s gifts and 
 depriving him of God’s gifts unless he will buy them, is 
 merely the difference between the robber who leaves his 
 victim to die and the robber who puts him to ransom. But I 
 would like to point out how your statement that u the earth, 
 though divided among private owners, ceases not thereby 
 to minister to the needs of all ” overlooks the largest facts. 
 
 From your palace of the Vatican the eye may rest on 
 the expanse of the Campagna, where the pious toil of 
 religious congregations and the efforts of the state are 
 only now beginning to make it possible for men to live. 
 Once that expanse was tilled by thriving husbandmen 
 and dotted with smiling hamlets. What for centuries 
 has condemned it to desertion? History tells us. It 
 was private property in land; the growth of the great 
 estates of which Pliny saw that ancient Italy was perish¬ 
 ing; the cause that, by bringing failure to the crop of 
 men, let in the Goths and Vandals, gave Roman Britain 
 to the worship of Odin and Thor, and in what were once 
 the rich and populous provinces of the East shivered the 
 thinned ranks and palsied arms of the legions on the 
 simitars of Mohammedan hordes, and in the sepulcher 
 of our Lord and in the Church of St. Sophia trampled 
 the cross to rear the crescent! 
 
 If you will go to Scotland, you may see great tracts 
 that under the Gaelic tenure, which recognized the right 
 of each to a foothold in the soil, bred sturdy men, but that 
 how, under the recognition of private property in land, are 
 given up to wild animals. If you go to Ireland, your Bish¬ 
 ops will show you, on lands where now only beasts graze, 
 the traces of hamlets that, when they were young priests, 
 were filled with honest, kindly, religious people.* 
 
 * Let any one who wishes visit this diocese and see with his own 
 eyes the vast and boundless extent of the fairest land in Europe 
 that has been ruthlessly depopulated since the commencement of the 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 35 
 
 If you will come to the United States, you will find in 
 a land wide enough and rich enough to support in com¬ 
 fort the whole population of Europe, the growth of a 
 sentiment that looks with evil eye on immigration, 
 because the artificial scarcity that results from private 
 property in land makes it seem as if there is not room 
 enough and work enough for those already here. 
 
 Or go to the Antipodes, and in Australia, as in Eng¬ 
 land, you may see that private property in land is oper¬ 
 ating to leave the land barren and to crowd the bulk of 
 the population into great cities. Go wherever you please 
 where the forces loosed by modern invention are begin¬ 
 ning to be felt and you may see that private property in 
 land is the curse, denounced by the prophet, that prompts 
 men to lay field to field till they “ alone dwell in the 
 midst of the earth.” 
 
 To the mere materialist this is sin and shame. Shall 
 we to whom this world is God’s world—we who hold that 
 man is called to this life only as a prelude to a higher 
 life—shall we defend it? 
 
 4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the 
 land itself. (9-10.) 
 
 Your Holiness next contends that industry expended 
 on land gives a right to ownership of the land, and that 
 the improvement of land creates benefits indistinguishable 
 and inseparable from the land itself. 
 
 This contention, if valid, could only justify the owner¬ 
 ship of land by those who expend industry on it. It 
 would not justify private property in land as it exists. 
 
 present century, and which is now abandoned to a loneliness and 
 solitude more depressing than that-of the prairie or the wilderness. 
 Thus has this land system actually exercised the power of life and 
 death on a vast scale, for which there is no parallel even in the dark 
 records of slavery.— Bishop Nutty’s Letter to the Clergy mid Laity of 
 the Diocese of Meath. — 
 
36 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 On the contrary, it would justify a gigantic no-rent 
 declaration that would take land from those who now 
 legally own it, the landlords, and turn it over to the 
 tenants and laborers. And if it also be that improve¬ 
 ments cannot be distinguished and separated from the 
 land itself, how could the landlords claim consideration 
 even for improvements they had made ? • 
 
 But your Holiness cannot mean what your words 
 imply. What you really mean, I take it, is that the 
 original justification and title of landownership is in the 
 expenditure of labor on it. But neither can this justify 
 private property in land as it exists. For is it not all but 
 universally true that existing land titles do not come 
 from use, but from force or fraud ? 
 
 Take Italy! Is it not true that the greater part of the 
 land of Italy is held by those who so far from ever having 
 expended industry on it have been mere appropriates of 
 the industry of those who have? Is this not also true 
 of Great Britain and of other countries? Even in the 
 United States, where the forces of concentration have 
 not yet had time fully to operate and there has been 
 some attempt to give land to users, it is probably true 
 to-day that the greater part of the land is held by those 
 who neither use it nor propose to use it themselves, but 
 merely hold it to compel others to pay them for permis¬ 
 sion to use it. 
 
 And if industry give ownership to land what are the 
 limits of this ownership? If a man may acquire the 
 ownership of several square miles of land by grazing 
 sheep on it, does this give to him and his heirs the 
 ownership of the same land when it is found to contain 
 rich mines, or when by the growth of population and the 
 progress of society it is needed for farming, for garden¬ 
 ing, for the close occupation of a great city? Is it on 
 the rights given by the industry of those who first used 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 37 
 
 it for grazing cows or growing potatoes that yon would 
 found the title to the land now covered by the city of New 
 York and having a value of thousands of millions of dollars ? 
 
 But your contention is not valid. Industry expended 
 on land gives ownership in the fruits of that industry, 
 but not in the land itself, just as industry expended on 
 the ocean would give a right of ownership to the fish 
 taken by it, but not a right of ownership in the ocean. 
 Nor yet is it true that private ownership of land is neces¬ 
 sary to secure the fruits of labor on land; nor does the 
 improvement of land create benefits indistinguishable 
 and inseparable from the land itself. That secure pos¬ 
 session is necessary to the use and improvement of land 
 I have already explained, but that ownership is not 
 necessary is shown by the fact that in all civilized coun¬ 
 tries land owned by one person is cultivated and 
 improved by other persons. Most of the cultivated land 
 in the British Islands, as in Italy and other countries, is 
 cultivated not by owners but by tenants. And so the 
 costliest buildings are erected by those who are not 
 owners of the land, but who have from the owner a mere 
 right of possession for a time on condition of certain 
 payments. Nearly the whole of London has been built 
 in this way, and in New York, Chicago, Denver, San 
 Francisco, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as in conti¬ 
 nental cities, the owners of many of the largest edifices 
 will be found to be different persons from the owners of 
 the ground. So far from the value of improvements 
 being inseparable from the value of land, it is in indi¬ 
 vidual transactions constantly separated. For instance, 
 one-half of the land on which the immense Grand Pacific 
 Hotel in Chicago stands was recently separately sold, 
 and in Ceylon it is a not infrequent occurrence for one 
 person to own a fruit-tree and another to own the ground 
 in which it is implanted. 
 
38 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether it 
 be clearing, plowing, manuring, cultivating, the digging 
 of cellars, the opening of wells or the building of houses, 
 that so long as its usefulness continues does not have a 
 value clearly distinguishable from the value of the land. 
 For land having such improvements will always sell or 
 rent for more than similar land without them. 
 
 If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what the 
 land irrespective of improvement would bring, it will 
 take the benefits of mere ownership, but will leave the 
 full benefits of use and improvement, which the prevail¬ 
 ing system does not do. And since the holder, who 
 would still in form continue to be the owner, could at 
 any time give or sell both possession and improvements, 
 subject to future assessment by the state on the value of 
 the land alone, he will be perfectly free to retain or dis¬ 
 pose of the full amount of property that the exertion of 
 his labor or the investment of his capital has attached to 
 or stored up in the land. 
 
 Thus, what we propose would secure, as it is impossible 
 in any other way to secure, what you properly say is just 
 and right—“that the results of labor should belong to 
 him who has labored.” But private property in land—to 
 allow the holder without adequate payment to the state 
 to take for himself the benefit of the value that attaches 
 to land with social growth and improvement—does take 
 the results of labor from him who has labored, does turn 
 over the fruits of one man’s labor to be enjoyed by 
 another. For labor, as the active factor, is the producer 
 of all wealth. Mere ownership produces nothing. A 
 man might own a world, but so sure is the decree that 
 “by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” that 
 without labor he could not get a meal or provide himself 
 a garment. Hence, when the owners of land, by virtue 
 of their ownership and without laboring themselves, get 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 39 
 
 the products of labor in abundance, these things must 
 come from the labor of others, must be the fruits of 
 others’ sweat, taken from those who have a right to them 
 and enjoyed by those who have no right to them. 
 
 The only utility of private ownership of land as distin¬ 
 guished from possession is the evil utility of giving to 
 the owner products of labor he does not earn. For until 
 land will yield to its owner some return beyond that of 
 the labor and capital he expends on it—that is to say, 
 until by sale or rental he can without expenditure of 
 labor obtain from it products of labor, ownership 
 amounts to no more than security of possession, and has 
 no value. Its importance and value begin only when, 
 either in the present or prospectively, it will yield a 
 revenue—that is to say, will enable the owner as owner 
 to obtain products of labor without exertion on his part, 
 and thus to enjoy the results of others’ labor. 
 
 What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery 
 involved in private property in land is that in the most 
 striking cases the robbery is not of individuals, but of 
 the community. For, as I have before explained, it is 
 impossible for rent in the economic sense—that value 
 which attaches to land by reason of social growth and 
 improvement—to go to the user. It can go only to the 
 owner or to the community. Thus those who pay enor¬ 
 mous rents for the use of land in such centers as London 
 or New York are not individually injured. Individually 
 they get a return for what they pay, and must feel that 
 they have no better right to the use of such peculiarly 
 advantageous localities without paying for it than have 
 thousands of others. And so, not thinking or not caring 
 for the interests of the community, they make no objec¬ 
 tion to the system. 
 
 It recently came to light in New York that a man hav¬ 
 ing no title whatever had been for years collecting rents 
 
40 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 on a piece of land that the growth of the city had made 
 very valuable. Those who paid these rents had never 
 stopped to ask whether he had any right to them. They 
 felt that they had no right to land that so many others 
 would like to have, without paying for it, and did not 
 think of, or did not care for, the rights of all. 
 
 5. That private property in land has the support of the 
 common opinion of mankind, and has conduced to peace and 
 tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned by Divine Law. (11.) 
 
 Even were it true that the common opinion of man¬ 
 kind has sanctioned private property in land, this would 
 no more prove its justice than the once universal practice 
 of the known world would have proved the justice of 
 slavery. 
 
 But it is not true. Examination will show that wher¬ 
 ever we can trace them the first perceptions of mankind 
 have always recognized the equality of right to land, and 
 that when individual possession became necessary to 
 secure the right of ownership in things produced by 
 labor some method of securing equality, sufficient in the 
 existing state of social development, was adopted. Thus, 
 among some peoples, land used for cultivation was peri¬ 
 odically divided, land used for pasturage and w r ood being 
 held in common. Among others, every family was per¬ 
 mitted to hold what land it needed for a dwelling and 
 for cultivation, but the moment that such use and culti¬ 
 vation stopped any one else could step in and take it on 
 like tenure. Of the same nature were the land laws of 
 the Mosaic code. The land, first fairly divided among 
 the people, was made inalienable by the provision of the 
 jubilee, under which, if sold, it reverted every fiftieth 
 year to the children of its original possessors. 
 
 Private property in land as we know it, the attaching 
 to land of the same right of ownership that justly 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 41 
 
 attaches to the products of labor, has never grown up 
 anywhere save by usurpation or force. Like slavery, it 
 is the result of war. It comes to us of the modern world 
 from your ancestors, the Romans, whose civilization it 
 corrupted and whose empire it destroyed. 
 
 It made with the freer spirit of the northern peoples 
 the combination of the feudal system, in which, though 
 subordination was substituted for equality, there was still 
 a rough recognition of the principle of common rights in 
 land. A fief was a trust, and to enjoyment was annexed 
 some obligation. The sovereign, the representative of 
 the whole people, was the only owner of land. Of him, 
 immediately or mediately, held tenants, whose possession 
 involved duties or payments, which, though rudely and 
 imperfectly, embodied the idea that we would carry out 
 in the single tax, of taking land values for public uses. 
 The crown lands maintained the sovereign and the civil 
 list; the church lands defrayed the cost of public worship 
 and instruction, of the relief of the sick, the destitute and 
 the wayworn • while the military tenures provided for 
 public defense and bore the costs of war. A fourth and 
 very large portion of the land remained in common, the 
 people of the neighborhood being free to pasture it, cut 
 wood on it, or put it to other common uses. 
 
 In this partial yet substantial recognition of common 
 rights to land is to be found the reason why, in a time 
 when the industrial arts were rude, wars frequent, and 
 the great discoveries and inventions of our time unthought 
 of, the condition of the laborer was devoid of that grind¬ 
 ing poverty which despite our marvelous advances now 
 exists. Speaking of England, the highest authority on 
 such subjects, the late Professor Thorold Rogers, declares 
 that in the thirteenth century there was no class so poor, 
 so helpless, so pressed and degraded as are millions of 
 Englishmen in our boasted nineteenth century; and that, 
 
42 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 save in times of actual famine, there was no laborer so 
 poor as to fear that his wife and children might come to 
 want even were he taken from them. Dark and rude in 
 many respects as they were, these were the times when 
 the cathedrals and churches and religious houses whose 
 ruins yet excite our admiration were built ; the times 
 when England had no national debt, no poor law, no 
 standing army, no hereditary paupers, no thousands and 
 thousands of human beings rising in the morning with¬ 
 out knowing where they might lay their heads at night. 
 
 With the decay of the feudal system, the system of 
 private property in land that had destroyed Rome was 
 extended. As to England, it may briefly be said that the 
 crown lands were for the most part given away to favor¬ 
 ites ; that the church lands were parceled among his 
 courtiers by Henry VIII., and in Scotland grasped by 
 the nobles; that the military dues were finally remitted 
 in the seventeenth century, and taxation on consumption 
 substituted; and that by a process beginning with the 
 Tudors and extending to our own time all but a mere 
 fraction of the commons were inclosed by the greater 
 landowners; while the same private ownership x of land 
 was extended over Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, 
 partly by the sword and partly by bribery of the chiefs. 
 Even the military dues, had they been commuted, not 
 remitted, would to-day have more than sufficed to pay all 
 public expenses without one penny of other taxation. 
 
 Of the New World, whose institutions but continue 
 those of Europe, it is only necessary to say that to the 
 parceling out of land in great tracts is due the backward¬ 
 ness and turbulence of Spanish America; that to the 
 large plantations of the Southern States of the Union 
 was due the persistence of slavery there, and that the 
 more northern settlements showed the earlier English 
 feeling, land being fairly well divided and the attempts 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 43 
 
 to establish manorial estates coming to little or nothing. 
 In this lies the secret of the more vigorous growth of 
 the Northern States. But the idea that land was to be 
 treated as private property had been thoroughly estab¬ 
 lished in English thought before the colonial period 
 ended, and it has been so treated by the United States 
 and by the several States. And though land was at first 
 sold cheaply, and then given to actual settlers, it was 
 also sold in large quantities to speculators, given away 
 in great tracts for railroads and other purposes, until 
 now the public domain of the United States, which a 
 generation ago seemed illimitable, has practically gone. 
 And this, as the experience of other countries shows, is 
 the natural result in a growing community of making 
 land private property. When the possession of land 
 means the gain of unearned w r ealth, the strong and 
 unscrupulous will secure it. But when, as we propose, 
 economic rent, the “unearned increment of wealth,” is 
 taken by the state for the use of the community, then 
 land will pass into the hands of users and remain there, 
 since no matter how great its value, its possession will be 
 profitable only to users. 
 
 As to private property in land having conduced to the 
 peace and tranquillity of human life, it is not necessary 
 more than to allude to the notorious fact that the struggle 
 for land has been the prolific source of wars and of lawsuits, 
 while it is the poverty engendered by private property in 
 land that makes the prison and the workhouse the un¬ 
 failing attributes of what we call Christian civilization. 
 
 Your Holiness intimates that the Divine Law gives its 
 sanction to the private ownership of land, quoting from 
 Deuteronomy, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors 
 wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his man-servant, 
 nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any¬ 
 thing which is his.” 
 
44 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 If, as your Holiness conveys, this inclusion of the 
 words, “ nor his field/ 7 is to be taken as sanctioning pri¬ 
 vate property in land as it exists to-day, then, but with 
 far greater force, must the words, “ his man-servant, nor 
 his maid-servant/ 7 be taken to sanction chattel slavery; 
 for it is evident from other provisions of the same code 
 that these terms referred both to bondsmen for a term of 
 years and to perpetual slaves. But the word “ field 77 
 involves the idea of use and improvement, to which the 
 right of possession and ownership does attach without 
 recognition of property in the land itself. And that this 
 reference to the “ field 77 is not a sanction of private prop¬ 
 erty in land as it exists to-day is proved by the fact that 
 the Mosaic code expressly denied such unciualified owner¬ 
 ship in land, and with the declaration, “the land also 
 shall not be sold forever, because it is mine, and you are 
 strangers and sojourners with me, 77 provided for its rever¬ 
 sion every fiftieth year; thus, in a way adapted to the 
 primitive industrial conditions of the time, securing to 
 all of the chosen people a foothold in the soil. 
 
 Nowhere in fact throughout the Scriptures can the 
 slightest justification be found for the attaching to land 
 of the same right of property that justly attaches to the 
 things produced by labor. Everywhere is it treated as 
 the free bounty of God, “the land which the Lord thy 
 God givetli thee. 77 
 
 6. That fathers should provide for their children and that 
 private property in land is necessary to enable them to do so. 
 
 (14-17.) 
 
 With all that your Holiness has to say of the sacred¬ 
 ness of the family relation we are in full accord. But 
 how the obligation of the father to the child can justify 
 private property in land we cannot see. You reason that 
 private property in land is necessary to the discharge of 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 45 
 
 the duty of the father, and is therefore requisite and 
 just, because— 
 
 It is a most sacred law of nature that a father must provide food 
 and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, 
 nature dictates that a man’s children, who carry on, as it were, and 
 continue his own personality, should be provided by him with all 
 that is needful to enable them honorably to keep themselves from 
 want and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in 
 no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of 
 profitable property, which he can transmit to his children by inheri¬ 
 tance. (14.) 
 
 Thanks to Him who has bound the generations of men 
 together by a provision that brings the tenderest love to 
 greet our entrance into the world and soothes our exit 
 with filial piety, it is both the duty and the joy of the 
 father to care for the child till its powers mature, and 
 afterwards in the natural order it becomes the duty and 
 privilege of the child to be the stay of the parent. This 
 is the natural reason for that relation of marriage, the 
 groundwork of the sweetest, tenderest and purest of 
 human joys, which the Catholic Church has guarded with 
 such unremitting vigilance. 
 
 We do, for a few years, need the providence of our 
 fathers after the flesh. But how small, how transient, 
 how narrow is this need, as compared with our constant 
 need for the providence of Him in whom we live, move 
 and have our being—Our Father who art in Heaven! 
 It is to him, “ the giver of every good and perfect gift/ 7 
 and not to our fathers after the flesh, that Christ taught 
 us to pray, “ Give us this day our daily bread. 77 And how 
 true it is that it is through him that the generations of 
 men exist! Let the mean temperature of the earth rise 
 or fall a few degrees, an amount as nothing compared 
 with differences produced in our laboratories, and man¬ 
 kind would disappear as ice disappears under a tropical 
 
46 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 sun, would fall as the leaves fall at the touch of frost. 
 Or, let for two or three seasons the earth refuse her in¬ 
 crease, and how many of our millions would remain alive ? 
 
 The duty of fathers to transmit to their children prof¬ 
 itable property that will enable them to keep themselves 
 from want and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal 
 life! What is not possible cannot be a duty. And how 
 is it possible for fathers to do that"? Your Holiness has 
 not considered how mankind really lives from hand to 
 mouth, getting each day its daily bread; how little one 
 generation does or can leave another. It is doubtful if 
 the wealth of the civilized world all told amounts to any¬ 
 thing like as much as one year’s labor, while it is certain 
 that if labor were to stop and men had to rely on exist¬ 
 ing accumulation, it would be only a few days ere in the 
 richest countries pestilence and famine would stalk. 
 
 The profitable property your Holiness refers to, is 
 private property in land. Now profitable land, as all 
 economists will agree, is land superior to the land that 
 the ordinary man can get. It is land that will yield an 
 income to the owner as owner, and therefore that will 
 permit the owner to appropriate the products of labor 
 without doing labor, its profitableness to the individual 
 involving the robbery of other individuals. It is there¬ 
 fore possible only for some fathers to leave their children 
 profitable land. What therefore your Holiness practi¬ 
 cally declares is, that it is the duty of all fathers to 
 struggle to leave their children what only the few pecu¬ 
 liarly strong, lucky or unscrupulous can leave; and that, 
 a something that involves the robbery of others—their 
 deprivation of the material gifts of God. 
 
 This anti-Christian doctrine has been long in practice 
 throughout the Christian world. What are its results ? 
 
 Are they not the very evils set forth in your Encyc¬ 
 lical? Are they not, so far from enabling men to keep 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 47 
 
 themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties of 
 this mortal life, to condemn the great masses of men to 
 want and misery that the natural conditions of our 
 mortal life do not entail j to want and misery deeper and 
 more wide-spread than exist among heathen savages? 
 Under the regime of private property in land and in the 
 richest countries not five per cent, of fathers are able at 
 their death to leave anything substantial to their chil¬ 
 dren, and probably a large majority do not leave enough 
 to bury them! Some few children are left by their 
 fathers richer than it is good for them to be, but the vast 
 majority not only are left nothing by their fathers, but 
 by the system that makes land private property are 
 deprived of the bounty of their Heavenly Father; are 
 compelled to sue others for permission to live and to 
 w r ork, and to toil all their lives for a pittance that often 
 does not enable them to escape starvation and pauperism. 
 
 What your Holiness is actually, though of course inad¬ 
 vertently, urging, is that earthly fathers should assume 
 the functions of the Heavenly Father. It is not the 
 business of one generation to provide the succeeding 
 generation “with all that is needful to enable them 
 honorably to keep themselves from want and misery.” 
 That is God’s business. We no more create our children 
 than we create our fathers. It is God who is the Creator 
 of each succeeding generation as fully as of the one that 
 preceded it. And, to recall your own w T ords (7), “Nature 
 [God], therefore, owes to man a storehouse that shall 
 never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this 
 he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth.” 
 What you are now assuming is, that it is the duty of 
 men to provide for the wants of their children by appro¬ 
 priating this storehouse and depriving other men’s chil¬ 
 dren of the unfailing supply that God has provided 
 for all. 
 
48 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 The duty of the father to the child—the duty possible 
 to all fathers! Is it not so to conduct himself, so to 
 nurture and teach it, that it shall come to manhood with 
 a sound body, well-developed mind, habits of virtue, piety 
 and industry, and in a state of society that shall give it 
 and all others free access to the bounty of God, the 
 providence of the All-Father? 
 
 In doing this the father would be doing more to secure 
 his children from want and misery than is possible now 
 to the richest of fathers—as much more as the provi¬ 
 dence of God surpasses that of man. For the justice of 
 God laughs at the efforts of men to circumvent it; and 
 the subtle law that binds humanity together poisons the 
 rich in the sufferings of the poor. Even the few who 
 are able in the general struggle to leave their children 
 wealth that they fondly think will keep them from want 
 
 and miserv' in the uncertainties of this mortal life—do 
 
 «/ 
 
 they succeed? Does experience show that it is a benefit 
 to a child to place him above his fellows and enable him 
 to think God’s law of labor is not for him ? Is not such 
 wealth oftener a curse than a blessing, and does not its 
 expectation often destroy filial love and bring dissensions 
 and heartburnings into families? And how far and how 
 long are even the richest and strongest able to exempt 
 their children from the common lot? Nothing is more 
 certain than that the blood of the masters of the world 
 flows to-day in lazzaroni and that the descendants of 
 kings and princes tenant slums and workhouses. 
 
 But in the state of society we strive for, where the 
 monopoly and waste of God’s bounty would be done 
 away with and the fruits of labor would go to the 
 laborer, it would be within the ability of all to make 
 more than a comfortable living with reasonable labor. 
 And for those who might be crippled or incapacitated, or 
 deprived of their natural protectors and breadwinners, 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 49 
 
 the most ample provision could be made out of that great 
 and increasing fund with which God in his law of rent 
 has provided society—not as a matter of niggardly and 
 degrading alms, but as a matter of right, as the assur¬ 
 ance which in a Christian state society owes to all its 
 members. 
 
 Thus it is that the duty of the father, the obligation 
 to the child, instead of giving any support to private 
 property in land, utterly condemns it, urging us by the 
 most powerful considerations to abolish it in the simple 
 and efficacious way of the single tax. 
 
 This duty of the father, this obligation to children, is 
 not confined to those who have actually children of their 
 own, but rests on all of us who have come to the powers 
 and responsibilities of manhood. 
 
 For did not Christ set a little child in the midst of the 
 disciples, saying to them that the angels of such little 
 ones always behold the face of his Father; saying to 
 them that it were better for a man to hang a millstone 
 about his neck and plunge into the uttermost depths of 
 the sea than to injure such a little one ? 
 
 And what to-day is the result of private property in 
 land in the richest of so-called Christian countries? Is 
 it not that young people fear to marry; that married 
 people fear to have children; that children are driven 
 out of life from sheer want of proper nourishment and 
 care, or compelled to toil when they ought to be at school 
 or at play; that great numbers of those who attain rnatu- 
 ritv enter it with under-nourished bodies, overstrained 
 nerves, undeveloped minds—under conditions that fore¬ 
 doom them, not merely to suffering, but to crime; that 
 fit them in advance for the prison and the brothel? 
 
 If your Holiness will consider these things we are con¬ 
 fident that instead of defending private property in land 
 you will condemn it with anathema! 
 
50 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 7. That the private ownership of land stimulates industry , 
 
 increases wealth , and attaches men to the soil and to their 
 
 ' * 
 
 country. (51.) 
 
 Tlie idea, as expressed by Arthur Young, that “the 
 magic of property turns barren sands to gold” springs 
 from the confusion of ownership with possession, of 
 which I have before spoken, that attributes to private 
 property in land what is due to security of the products 
 of labor. It is needless for me again to point out that 
 the change we propose, the taxation for public uses of 
 land values, or economic rent, and the abolition of other 
 taxes, would give to the user of land far greater security 
 for the fruits of his labor than the present system and far 
 greater permanence of possession. Nor is it necessary 
 further to show how it would give homes to those w r ho 
 are now homeless and bind men to their country. For 
 under it every one who wanted a piece of land for a 
 home or for productive use could get it without purchase 
 price and hold it even without tax, since the tax we pro¬ 
 pose would not fall on all land, nor even on all land in 
 use, but only on land better than the poorest land in use, 
 and is in reality not a tax at all, but merely a return to 
 the state for the use of a valuable privilege. And even 
 those who from circumstances or occupation did not 
 wish to make permanent use of land would still .have an 
 equal interest with all others in the land of their country 
 and in the general prosperity. 
 
 But I should like your Holiness to consider how utterly 
 unnatural is the condition of the masses in the richest 
 and most progressive of Christian countries ; how large 
 bodies of them live in habitations in which a rich man 
 would not ask his dog to dwell; how the great majority 
 have no homes' from which they are not liable on the 
 slightest misfortune to be evicted; how numbers have 
 no homes at all, but must seek what shelter chance or 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 51 
 
 charity offers. I should like to ask your Holiness to 
 consider how the great majority of men in such countries 
 have no interest whatever in what they are taught to call 
 their native land, for which they are told that on occa¬ 
 sions it is their duty to fight or to die. What right, for 
 instance, have the majority of your countrymen in the 
 land of their birth f Can they live in Italy outside of a 
 prison or a poorhouse except as they buy the privilege 
 from some of the exclusive t)wners of Italy ? Cannot an 
 Englishman, an American, an Arab or a Japanese do as 
 much? May not what was said centuries ago by Tibe¬ 
 rius Gracchus be said to-day: u Men of Rome! you are 
 called the lords of the world , yet have no right to a square 
 foot of its soil! The wild beasts have their dens , but the 
 soldiers of Italy have only water and air! ” 
 
 What is true of Italy is true of the civilized world—is 
 becoming increasingly true. It is the inevitable effect 
 as civilization progresses of private property in land. 
 
 8. That the right to possess private property in land is 
 from nature , not from man ; that the state has no right to 
 abolish it , and that to tahe the value of landownership in 
 taxation would be unjust and cruel to the private owner. (51.) 
 
 This, like much else that your Holiness says, is masked 
 in the use of the indefinite terms “private property” and 
 u private owner ”—a want of precision in the use of words 
 that has doubtless aided in the confusion of your own 
 thought. But the context leaves no doubt that by pri¬ 
 vate property you mean private property in land, and by 
 private owner, the private owner of land. 
 
 The contention, thus made, that private property in 
 land is from nature, not from man, has no other basis 
 than the confounding of ownership with possession and 
 the ascription to property in land of what belongs to its 
 contradictory, property in the proceeds of labor. You 
 
52 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 do not attempt to show for it any other basis, nor has 
 any one else ever attempted to do so. That private prop¬ 
 erty in the products of labor is from nature is clear, for 
 nature gives such things to labor and to labor alone. Of 
 every article of this kind, we know that it came into 
 being as nature’s response to the exertion of an individ¬ 
 ual man or of individual men—given by nature directly 
 and exclusively to him or to them. Thus there inheres 
 in such things a right of private property, which origi¬ 
 nates from and goes back to the source of ownership, the 
 maker of the tiling. This right is anterior to the state 
 and superior to its enactments, so that, as we hold, it is 
 a violation of natural right and an injustice to the private 
 owner for the state to tax the processes and products of 
 labor. They do not belong to Cassar. They are things 
 that God, of whom nature is but an expression, gives to 
 those who apply for them in the way he has appointed— 
 by labor. 
 
 But who will dare trace the individual ownership of 
 land to any grant from the Maker of land ? What does 
 nature give to such ownership ? how does she in any way 
 recognize it? Will any one show from difference of 
 form or feature, of stature or complexion, from dissec¬ 
 tion of their bodies or analysis of their powers and needs, 
 that one man was intended by nature to own land and 
 another to live on it as ljis tenant ? That which derives 
 its existence from man and passes away like him, which 
 is indeed but the evanescent expression of his labor, man 
 may hold and transfer as the exclusive property of the 
 individual; but how can such individual ownership 
 attach to land, which existed before man was, and which 
 continues to exist while the generations of men come and 
 go—the unfailing storehouse that the Creator gives to 
 man for “the daily supply of his daily wants”? 
 
 Clearly, the private ownership of land is from., the 
 state, not from nature. Thus, not merely can no objec- 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 53 
 
 tion be made on the score of morals when it is proposed 
 that the state shall abolish it altogether, but insomuch 
 as it is a violation of natural right, its existence involving 
 a gross injustice on the part of the state, an u impious 
 violation of the benevolent intention of the Creator,” it 
 is a moral duty that the state so abolish it. 
 
 So far from there being anything unjust in taking the 
 full value of landownership for the use of the community, 
 the real injustice is in leaving it in private hands—an 
 injustice that amounts to robbery and murder. 
 
 And when your Holiness shall see this I have no fear 
 that you will listen for one moment to the impudent plea 
 that before the community can take what God intended 
 it to take—before men who have been disinherited of 
 their natural rights can be restored to them, the present 
 owners of land shall first be compensated. 
 
 For not only will you see that the single tax will directly 
 and largely benefit small landowners, whose interests as 
 laborers and capitalists are much greater than their inter¬ 
 ests as landowners, and that though the great landowners 
 —or rather the propertied class in general among whom 
 the profits of landownership are really divided through 
 mortgages, rent-charges, etc.—would relatively lose, they 
 too would be absolute gainers in the increased prosperity 
 and improved morals; but more quickly, more strongly, 
 more peremptorily than from any calculation of gains or 
 losses would your duty as a man, your faith as a Chris¬ 
 tian, forbid you to listen for one moment to any such 
 paltering with right and wrong. 
 
 Where the state takes some land for public uses it is 
 only just that those whose land is taken should be com¬ 
 pensated, otherwise some landowners would be treated 
 more harshly than others. But where, by a measure 
 affecting all alike, rent is appropriated for the benefit of 
 all, there can be no claim to compensation. Compensa¬ 
 tion in such case would be a continuance of the same 
 
54 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 injustice in another form—the giving to landowners in 
 the shape of interest of what they before got as rent. 
 Your Holiness knows that justice and injustice are not 
 thus to be juggled with, and when you fully realize that 
 land is really the storehouse that God owes to all his 
 children, you will no more listen to any demand for 
 compensation for restoring it to them than Moses would 
 have listened to a demand that Pharaoh should be com¬ 
 pensated before letting the children of Israel go. 
 
 Compensated for what ? For giving up what has been 
 unjustly taken? The demand of landowners for com¬ 
 pensation is not that. We do not seek to spoil the 
 Egyptians. We do not ask that what has been unjustly 
 taken from laborers shall be restored. We are willing 
 that bygones should be bygones and to leave dead 
 wrongs to bury their dead. We propose to let those 
 who by the past appropriation of land values have taken 
 the fruits of labor to retain what they have thus got. 
 We merely propose that for the future such robbery of 
 labor shall cease—that for the future, not for the past, 
 landholders shall pay to the community the rent that to 
 the community is justly due. 
 
 III. 
 
 I have said enough to show your Holiness the injustice 
 into which you fall in classing us, who in seeking virtu¬ 
 ally to abolish private property in land seek more fully 
 to secure the true rights of property, with those whom 
 you speak of as socialists, who wish to make all property 
 common. But you also do injustice to the socialists. 
 
 There are many, it is true, who feeling bitterly the 
 monstrous wrongs of the present distribution of wealth 
 are animated only by a blind hatred of the rich and a 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 55 
 
 fierce desire to destroy existing social adjustments. This 
 class is indeed only less dangerous than those who pro¬ 
 claim that no social improvement is needed or is possible. 
 But it is not fair to confound with them those who, 
 however mistakenly, propose definite schemes of remedy. 
 
 The socialists, as I understand them, and as the term 
 has come to apply to anything like a definite theory and 
 not to be vaguely and improperly used to include all who 
 desire social improvement, do not, as you imply, seek the 
 abolition of all private property. Those who do this are 
 properly called communists. What the socialists seek is 
 the state assumption of capital (in which they vaguely 
 and erroneously include land), or more properly speak¬ 
 ing, of large capitals, and state management and direction 
 of at least the larger operations of industry. In this 
 way they hope to abolish interest, which they regard 
 as a wrong and an evil; to do away with the gains of 
 exchangers, speculators, contractors and middlemen, 
 which they regard as waste; to do away with the wage 
 system and secure general cooperation; and to prevent 
 competition, which they deem the fundamental cause of 
 the impoverishment of labor. The more moderate of 
 them, without going so far, go in the same direction, and 
 seek some remedy or palliation of the worst forms of 
 poverty by government regulation. The essential char¬ 
 acter of socialism is that it looks to the extension of the 
 functions of the state for the remedy of social evils; 
 that it would substitute regulation and direction for com¬ 
 petition ; and intelligent control by organized society for 
 the free play of individual desire and effort. 
 
 Though not usually classed as socialists, both the 
 trades-unionists and the protectionists have the same 
 essential character. The trades-unionists seek the 
 increase of wages, the reduction of working-hours and 
 the general improvement in the condition of wage- 
 
56 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 workers, by organizing them into guilds or associations 
 which shall fix the rates at which they will sell their 
 labor; shall deal as one body with employers in case of 
 dispute; shall use on occasion their necessary weapon, 
 the strike; and shall accumulate funds for such purposes 
 and for the purpose of assisting members when on a 
 strike, or (sometimes) when out of employment. The 
 protectionists seek by governmental prohibitions or taxes 
 on imports to regulate the industry and control the 
 exchanges of each country, so as, they imagine, to diver¬ 
 sify home industries and prevent the competition of 
 people of other countries. 
 
 At the opposite extreme are the anarchists, a term 
 which, though frequently applied to mere violent destruc- 
 tionists, refers also to those who, seeing the many evils 
 of too much government, regard government in itself as 
 evil, and believe that in the absence of coercive power 
 the mutual interests of men would secure voluntarily 
 what cooperation is needed. 
 
 Differing from all these are those for whom I would 
 speak. Believing that the rights of true property are 
 sacred, we would regard forcible communism as robbery 
 that would bring destruction. But we would not be dis¬ 
 posed to deny that voluntary communism might be the 
 highest possible state of which men can conceive. Nor 
 do we say that it cannot be possible for mankind to 
 attain it, since among the early Christians and among 
 the religious orders of the Catholic Church we have 
 examples of communistic societies on a small scale. St. 
 Peter and St. Paul, St. Thomas of Aquin and Fra Angel¬ 
 ico, the illustrious orders of the Carmelites and Francis¬ 
 cans, the Jesuits, whose heroism carried the cross among 
 the most savage tribes of American forests, the societies 
 that wherever your communion is known have deemed 
 no work of mercy too dangerous or too repellent—were 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 57 
 
 or are communists. Knowing these things we cannot 
 take it on ourselves to say that a social condition may 
 not be possible in which an all-embracing love shall have 
 taken the place of all other motives. But we see that 
 communism is only possible where there exists a general 
 and intense religious faith, and we see that such a state 
 can be reached only through a state of justice. For 
 before a man can be a saint he must first be an honest 
 man. 
 
 With both anarchists and socialists, we, who for want 
 of a better term have come to call ourselves single-tax 
 men, fundamentally differ. We regard them as erring 
 in opposite directions—the one in ignoring the social 
 nature of man, the other in ignoring his individual 
 nature. While we see that man is primarily an individ¬ 
 ual, and that nothing but evil has come or can come 
 from the interference by the state with things that belong 
 to individual action, we also see that he is a social being, 
 or, as Aristotle called him, a political animal, and that 
 the state is requisite to social advance, having an indis¬ 
 pensable place in the natural order. Looking on the 
 bodily organism as the analogue of the social organism, 
 and on the proper functions of the state as akin to those 
 that in the human organism are discharged by the con¬ 
 scious intelligence, while the play of individual impulse 
 and interest performs functions akin to those discharged 
 in the bodily organism by the unconscious instincts and 
 involuntary motions, the anarchists seem to us like men 
 who would try to get along without heads and the social¬ 
 ists like men who would try to rule the wonderfully 
 complex and delicate internal relations of their frames 
 by conscious will. 
 
 The philosophical anarchists of whom I speak are few 
 in number, and of little practical importance. It is with 
 socialism in its various phases that we have to do battle. 
 
58 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 With the socialists we have some points of agreement, 
 for we recognize fully the social nature of man and 
 believe that all monopolies should be held and governed 
 by the state. In these, and in directions where the 
 general health, knowledge, comfort and convenience 
 might be improved, we, too, would extend the functions 
 of the state. 
 
 But it seems to us the vice of socialism in all its 
 degrees is its want of radicalism, of going to the root. 
 It takes its theories from those who have sought to jus¬ 
 tify the impoverishment of the masses, and its advocates 
 generally teach the preposterous and degrading doctrine 
 that slavery was the first condition of labor. It assumes 
 that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the natural 
 law, and seeks to abolish wages; it assumes that the 
 natural result of competition is to grind down workers, 
 and seeks to abolish competition by restrictions, prohibi¬ 
 tions and extensions of governing power. Thus mistak¬ 
 ing effects for causes, and childishly blaming the stone 
 for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving for remedies 
 that when not worse are futile. Associated though it is 
 in many places with democratic aspiration, yet its essence 
 is the same delusion to which the children of Israel 
 yielded when against the protest of their prophet they 
 insisted on a* king; the delusion that has everywhere 
 corrupted democracies and enthroned tyrants — that 
 power over the people can be used for the benefit of the 
 people j that there may be devised machinery that through 
 human agencies will secure for the management of indi¬ 
 vidual affairs more wisdom and more virtue than the 
 people themselves possess. 
 
 This superficiality and this tendency may be seen in all 
 the phases of socialism. 
 
 Take, for instance, protectionism. What support it 
 has, beyond the mere selfish desire of sellers to compel 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 59 
 
 buyers to pay them more than their goods are worth, 
 springs from such superficial ideas as that production, 
 not consumption, is the end of effort; that money is 
 more valuable than money’s-worth, and to sell more prof¬ 
 itable than to buy; and above all from a desire to limit 
 competition, springing from an unanalyzing recognition 
 of the phenomena that necessarily follow when men who 
 have the need to labor are deprived by monopoly of 
 access to the natural and indispensable element of all 
 labor. Its methods involve the idea that governments 
 can more wisely direct the expenditure of labor and the 
 investment of capital than can laborers and capitalists, 
 and that the men who control governments will use this 
 power for the general good and not in their own inter¬ 
 ests. They tend to multiply officials, restrict liberty, 
 invent crimes. They promote perjuiy, fraud and corrup¬ 
 tion. And they would, were the theory carried to its 
 logical conclusion, destroy civilization and reduce man¬ 
 kind to savagery. 
 
 Take trades-unionism. While within narrow lines 
 trades-unionism promotes the idea of the mutuality of 
 interests, and often helps to raise courage and further 
 political education, and while it has enabled limited 
 bodies of working-men to improve somewhat their con¬ 
 dition, and gain, as it were, breathing-space, yet it takes 
 no note of the general causes that determine the condi¬ 
 tions of labor, and strives for the elevation of only a 
 small part of the great body by means that cannot help 
 the rest. Aiming at the restriction of competition—the 
 limitation of the right to labor, its methods are like those 
 of an army, which even in a righteous cause are subver¬ 
 sive of liberty and liable to abuse, while its weapon, the 
 strike, is destructive in its nature, both to combatants 
 and non-combatants, being a form of passive war. To 
 apply the principle of trades-unions to all industry, as 
 
60 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 some dream of doing, would be to enthrall men in a caste 
 system. 
 
 Or take even such moderate measures as the limitation 
 of working-hours and of the labor of women and chil¬ 
 dren. They are superficial in looking no further than to 
 the eagerness of men and women and little children to 
 work unduly, and in proposing forcibly to restrain over¬ 
 work while utterly ignoring its cause—the sting of 
 poverty that forces human beings to it. And the 
 methods by which these restraints must be enforced, 
 multiply officials, interfere with personal liberty, tend to 
 corruption, and are liable to abuse. 
 
 As for thoroughgoing socialism, which is the more to 
 be honored as having the courage of its convictions, it 
 would carry these vices to full expression. Jumping to 
 conclusions without effort to discover causes, it fails to 
 see that oppression does not come from the nature of 
 capital, but from the wrong that robs labor of capital by 
 divorcing it from land, and that creates a fictitious capi¬ 
 tal that is really capitalized monopoly. It fails to see 
 that it would be impossible for capital to oppress labor 
 were labor free to the natural material of production; 
 that the wage system in itself springs from mutual con¬ 
 venience, being a form of cooperation in which one of 
 the parties prefers a certain to a contingent result; and 
 that what it calls the “iron law of wages” is not the 
 natural law of wages, but only the law of wages in that 
 unnatural condition in which men are made helpless by 
 being deprived of the materials for life and work. It 
 fails to see that what it mistakes for the evils of competi¬ 
 tion are really the evils of restricted competition—are 
 due to a one-sided competition to which men are forced 
 when deprived of land. While its methods, the organiza¬ 
 tion of men into industrial armies, the direction and 
 control of all production and exchange by governmental 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 61 
 
 or semi-governmental bureaus, would, if carried to full 
 expression, mean Egyptian despotism. 
 
 We differ from the socialists in our diagnosis of the 
 evil and we differ from them as to remedies. We have 
 no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden 
 of labor; we look on interest in itself as natural and 
 just; we would set no limit to accumulation, nor impose 
 on the rich any burden that is not equally placed on the 
 poor; we see no evil in competition, but deem unre¬ 
 stricted competition to be as necessary to the health of 
 the industrial and social organism as the free circulation 
 of the blood is to the health of the bodily organism—to 
 be the agency whereby the fullest cooperation is to be 
 secured. We would simply take for the community what 
 belongs to the community, the value that attaches to 
 land by the growth of the community; leave sacredly to 
 * tliQ individual all that belongs to the individual; and, 
 treating necessary monopolies as functions of the state, 
 abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those re¬ 
 quired for public health, safety, morals and convenience. 
 
 But the fundamental difference—the difference I ask 
 your Holiness specially to note, is in this: socialism in 
 all its phases looks on the evils of our civilization as 
 springing from the inadequacy or inharmony of natural 
 relations, which must be artificially organized or 
 improved. In its idea there devolves on the state the 
 necessity of intelligently organizing the industrial rela¬ 
 tions of men; the construction, as it were, of a great 
 machine whose complicated parts shall properly work 
 together under the direction of human intelligence. This 
 is the reason why socialism tends toward atheism. 
 Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural law, 
 it fails to recognize God. 
 
 On the other hand, we who call ourselves single-tax 
 men (a name which expresses merely our practical prop- 
 
G2 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 ositions) see in the social and industrial relations of 
 men not a machine which requires construction, but an 
 organism which needs only to be suffered to grow. We 
 see in the natural social and industrial laws such har¬ 
 mony as we see in the adjustments of the human body, 
 and that as far transcends the power of man’s intelli¬ 
 gence to order and direct as it is beyond man’s intelli¬ 
 gence to order and direct the vital movements of his 
 frame. We see in these social and industrial laws so 
 close a relation to the moral law as must spring from the 
 same Authorship, and that proves the moral law to be 
 the sure guide of man where his intelligence would 
 wander and go astray. Thus, to us, all that is needed to 
 remedy the evils of our time is to do justice and give 
 freedom. This is the reason why our beliefs tend 
 toward, nay are indeed the only beliefs consistent with 
 a firm and reverent faith in God, and with the recogni- * 
 tion of his law as the supreme law which men must 
 follow if they would secure prosperity and avoid destruc¬ 
 tion. This is the reason why to us political economy 
 only serves to show the depth of wisdom in the simple 
 truths which common people heard gladly from the lips 
 of Him of whom it was said with wonder, u Is not this 
 the Carpenter of Nazareth ?” 
 
 And it is because that in what we propose—the secur¬ 
 ing to all men of equal natural opportunities for the 
 exercise of their powers and the removal of all legal 
 restriction on the legitimate exercise of those powers— 
 we see the conformation of human law to the moral law, 
 that we hold with confidence that this is not merely the 
 sufficient remedy for all the evils you so strikingly 
 portray, but that it is the only possible remedy. 
 
 Nor is there any other. The organization of man is 
 such, his relations to the world in which he is placed are 
 such—that is to say, the immutable laws of God are such. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 63 
 
 that it is beyond the power of human ingenuity to devise 
 any way by which the evils born of the injustice that robs 
 men of their birthright can be removed otherwise than 
 by doing justice, by opening to all the bounty that God 
 has provided for all. 
 
 Since man can live only on land and from land, since 
 land is the reservoir of matter and force from which 
 man’s body itself is taken, and on which he must draw 
 for all that he can produce, does it not irresistibly follow 
 that to give the land in ownership to some men and to 
 deny to others all right to it is to divide mankind into 
 the rich and the poor, the privileged and the helpless? 
 Does it not follow that those who have no rights to the 
 use of land can live only by selling their power to labor 
 to those who own the land? Does it not follow that 
 what the socialists call “ the iron law of wages,” what the 
 political economists term “the tendency of wages to a 
 minimum,” must take from the landless masses—the 
 mere laborers, who of themselves have no power to use 
 their labor—all the benefits of any possible advance or 
 improvement that does not alter this unjust division of 
 land ? For having no power to employ themselves, they 
 must, either as labor-sellers or as land-renters, compete 
 with one another for permission to labor. This competi¬ 
 tion with one another of men shut out from God’s inex¬ 
 haustible storehouse has no limit but starvation, and 
 must ultimately force wages to their lowest point, the 
 point at which life can just be maintained and reproduc¬ 
 tion carried on. 
 
 This is not to say that all wages must fall to this point, 
 but that the wages of that necessarily largest stratum of 
 laborers who have only ordinary knowledge, skill and 
 aptitude must so fall. The wages of special classes, who 
 are fenced off from the pressure of competition by pecu¬ 
 liar knowledge, skill or other causes, may remain above 
 
64 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 that ordinary level. Thus, where the ability to read and 
 write is rare its possession enables a man to obtain 
 higher wages than the ordinary laborer. But as the 
 diffusion of education makes the ability to read and 
 write general this advantage is lost. So when a vocation 
 requires special training or skill, or is made difficult of 
 access by artificial restrictions, the checking of competi¬ 
 tion tends to keep wages in it at a higher level. But as 
 the progress of invention dispenses with peculiar skill, 
 or artificial restrictions are broken down, these higher 
 wages sink to the ordinary level. And so, it is only so 
 long as they are special that such qualities as industry, 
 prudence and thrift can enable the ordinary laborer to 
 maintain a condition above that which gives a mere liv¬ 
 ing. Where they become general, the law of competition 
 must reduce the earnings or savings of such qualities to 
 the general level—which, land being monopolized and 
 labor helpless, can be only that at which the next lowest 
 point is the cessation of life. 
 
 Or, to state the same thing in another way: Land 
 being necessary to life and labor, its owners will be able, 
 in return for permission to use it, to obtain from mere 
 laborers all that labor can produce, save enough to enable 
 such of them to maintain life as are wanted by the land- 
 owners and their dependents. 
 
 Thus, where private property in land has divided 
 society into a landowning class and a landless class, 
 there is no possible invention or improvement, whether 
 it be industrial, social or moral, which, so long as it does 
 not affect the ownership of land, can prevent poverty or 
 relieve the general conditions of mere laborers. For 
 whether the effect of any invention or improvement be 
 to increase what labor can produce or to decrease what 
 is required to support the laborer, it can, so soon as it 
 becomes general, result only in increasing the income of 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 65 
 
 the owners of land, without at all benefiting the mere 
 laborers. In no event can those possessed of the mere 
 ordinary power to labor, a power utterly useless without 
 the means necessary to labor, keep more of their earnings 
 than enough to enable them to live. 
 
 How true this is we may see in the facts of to-day. In 
 our own time invention and discovery have enormously 
 increased the productive power of labor, and at the same 
 time greatly reduced the cost of many things necessary 
 to the support of the laborer. Have these improvements 
 anywhere raised the earnings of the mere laborer ? 
 Have not their benefits mainly gone to the owners of 
 land—enormously increased land values? 
 
 I say mainly, for some part of the benefit has gone to 
 the cost of monstrous standing armies and warlike prep¬ 
 arations ; to the payment of interest on great public 
 debts ; and, largely disguised as interest on fictitious 
 capital, to the owners of monopolies other than that of 
 land. But improvements that would do away with these 
 wastes would not benefit labor; they would simply 
 increase the profits of landowners. Were standing 
 armies and all their incidents abolished, were all monop¬ 
 olies other than that of land done away with, were 
 governments to become models of economy, were the 
 profits of speculators, of middlemen, of all sorts of 
 exchangers saved, were every one to become so strictly 
 honest that no policemen, no courts, no prisons, no pre¬ 
 cautions against dishonesty would be needed—the result 
 would not differ from that which has followed the 
 increase of productive power. 
 
 Nay, would not these very blessings bring starvation 
 to many of those who now manage to live? Is it not 
 true that if there were proposed to-day, what all Chris¬ 
 tian men ought to pray for, the complete disbandment of 
 all the armies of Europe, the greatest fears would be 
 
66 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 aroused for the consequences of throwing on the labor- 
 market so many unemployed laborers ? 
 
 The explanation of this and of similar paradoxes that 
 in our time perplex on every side may be easily seen. 
 The effect of all inventions and improvements that 
 increase productive power, that save waste and econo¬ 
 mize effort, is to lessen the labor required for a given 
 result, and thus to save labor, so that we speak of them 
 as labor-saving inventions or improvements. Now, in a 
 natural state of society where the rights of all to the use 
 of the earth are acknowledged, labor-saving improve¬ 
 ments might go to the very utmost that can be imagined 
 without lessening the demand for men, since in such 
 natural conditions the demand for men lies in their own 
 enjoyment of life and the strong instincts that the 
 Creator has implanted in the human breast. But in 
 that unnatural state of society where the masses of men 
 are disinherited of all but the power to labor when 
 opportunity to labor is given them by others, there the 
 demand for them becomes simply the demand for their 
 services by those who hold this opportunity, and man 
 himself becomes a commodity. Hence, although the 
 natural effect of labor-saving improvement is to increase 
 wages, yet in the unnatural condition w r hich private 
 ownership of the land begets, the effect, even of such 
 moral improvements as the disbandment of armies and 
 the saving of the labor that vice entails, is, by lessening 
 the commercial demand, to lower wages and reduce mere 
 laborers to starvation or pauperism. If labor-saving 
 inventions and improvements could be carried to the 
 very abolition of the necessity for labor, what would be 
 the result? Would it mot be that landowners could then 
 get all the wealth that the land was capable of produc¬ 
 ing, and would have no need at all for laborers, who 
 must then either starve or live as pensioners on the 
 bounty of the landowners? 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 67 
 
 Thus, so long as private property in land continues— 
 so long as some men are treated as owners of the earth 
 and other men can live on it only by their sufferance— 
 human wisdom can devise no means by which the evils 
 of our present condition may be avoided. 
 
 Nor yet could the wisdom of God. 
 
 By the light of that right reason of which St. Thomas 
 speaks we may see that even he, the Almighty, so long as his 
 laws remain what they are, could do nothing to prevent 
 poverty and starvation "while property in land continues. 
 
 How could he? Should he infuse new vigor into the 
 sunlight, new virtue into the air, new fertility into the 
 soil, would not all this new bounty go to the owners of 
 the land, and work not benefit, but rather injury, to 
 mere laborers? Should he open the minds of men to the 
 possibilities of new substances, new adjustments, new 
 powers, could this do any more to relieve poverty than 
 steam, electricity and all the numberless discoveries and 
 inventions of our time have done? Or, if he were to 
 send down from the heavens above or cause to gush up 
 from the subterranean depths, food, clothing, all the 
 things that satisfy man’s material desires, to whom under 
 our laws would all these belong ? So far from benefiting 
 man, would not this increase and extension of his bounty 
 prove but a curse, enabling the privileged class more 
 riotously to roll in wealth, and bringing the disinherited 
 class to more wide-spread starvation or pauperism ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Believing that the social question is at bottom a reli¬ 
 gious question, we deem it of happy augury to the world 
 that in vour Encyclical the most influential of all reli- 
 gious teachers has directed attention to the condition of 
 
 labor. 
 
68 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 But while we appreciate the many wholesome truths 
 you utter, while we feel, as all must feel, that you are 
 animated by a desire to help the suffering and oppressed, 
 and to put an end to any idea that the church is divorced 
 from the aspiration for liberty and progress, yet it is 
 painfully obvious to us that one fatal assumption hides 
 from you the cause of the evils you see, and makes it 
 impossible for you to propose any adequate remedy. 
 This assumption is, that private property in land is of 
 the same nature and has the same sanctions as private 
 property in things produced by labor. In spite of its 
 undeniable truths and its benevolent spirit, your Encyc¬ 
 lical shows you to be involved in such difficulties as a 
 physician called to examine one suffering from disease of 
 the stomach would meet should he begin with a refusal 
 to consider the stomach. 
 
 Prevented by this assumption from seeing the true 
 cause, the only causes you find it possible to assign for 
 the growth of misery and wretchedness are the destruc¬ 
 tion of working-men’s guilds in the last century, the 
 repudiation in public institutions and laws of the ancient 
 religion, rapacious usury, the custom of working by 
 contract, and the concentration of trade. 
 
 Such diagnosis is manifestly inadequate to account for 
 evils that are alike felt in Catholic countries, in Protestant 
 countries, in countries that adhere to the Greek com¬ 
 munion and in countries where no religion is professed 
 by the state; that are alike felt in old countries and in 
 new countries; where industry is simple and where it is 
 most elaborate; and amid all varieties of industrial cus¬ 
 toms and relations. 
 
 But the real cause will be clear if you will consider 
 that since labor must find its workshop and reservoir in 
 land, the labor question is but another name for the land 
 question, and will reexamine your assumption that pri¬ 
 vate property in land is necessary and right. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 69 
 
 See how fully adequate is the cause I have pointed out. 
 The most important of all the material relations of man 
 is his relation to the planet he inhabits, and hence, the 
 u impious resistance to the benevolent intentions of his 
 Creator,” which, as Bishop Nulty says, is involved in 
 private property in land, must produce evils wherever it 
 exists. But by virtue of the law, “ unto whom much is 
 given, from him much is required,” the very progress of 
 civilization makes the evils produced by private property 
 in land more wide-spread and intense. 
 
 What is producing throughout the civilized world that 
 condition of things you rightly describe as intolerable is 
 not this and that local error or minor mistake. It is 
 nothing less than the progress of civilization itself; 
 nothing less than the intellectual advance and the mate¬ 
 rial growth in which our century has been so preeminent, 
 acting in a state of society based on private property in 
 land; nothing less than the new gifts that in our time 
 God has been showering on man, but which are being 
 turned into scourges by man’s “ impious resistance to the 
 benevolent intentions of his Creator.” 
 
 The discoveries of science, the gains of invention, have 
 given to us in this wonderful century more than has been 
 given to men in any time before; and, in a degree so 
 rapidly accelerating as to suggest geometrical progres¬ 
 sion, are placing in our hands new material powers. But 
 with the benefit comes the obligation. In a civilization 
 beginning to pulse with steam and electricity, where the 
 sun paints pictures and the phonograph stores speech, it 
 will not do to be merely as just as were our fathers. 
 Intellectual advance and material advance require corre¬ 
 sponding moral advance. Knowledge and power are 
 neither good nor evil. They are not ends but means— 
 evolving forces that if not controlled in orderly relations 
 must take disorderly and destructive forms. The deep¬ 
 ening pain, the increasing perplexity, the growing dis- 
 
70 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 content for which, as you truly say, some remedy must be 
 found and quickly found , mean nothing less than that 
 forces of destruction swifter and more terrible than 
 those that have shattered every preceding civilization are 
 already menacing ours—that if it does not quickly rise 
 to a higher moral level j if it does not become in deed as 
 in word a Christian civilization, on the wall of its 
 splendor must flame the doom of Babylon: “ Thou art 
 weighed in the balance and found wanting! ” 
 
 One false assumption prevents you from seeing the 
 real cause and true significance of the facts that have 
 prompted your Encyclical. And it fatally fetters you 
 when you seek a remedy. 
 
 You state that you approach the subject with confi¬ 
 dence, yet in .all that greater part of the Encyclical 
 (19-67) devoted to the remedy, while there is an abun¬ 
 dance of moral reflections and injunctions, excellent in 
 themselves but dead and meaningless as you apply them, 
 the only definite practical proposals for the improvement 
 of the condition of labor are: 
 
 1. That the state should step in to prevent overwork, 
 to restrict the employment of women and children, to 
 secure in workshops conditions not unfavorable to health 
 and morals, and, at least where there is danger of in¬ 
 sufficient wages provoking strikes, to regulate wages 
 (39-40). 
 
 2. That it should encourage the acquisition of property 
 (in land) by working-men (50-51). 
 
 3. That working-men’s associations should be formed 
 (52-67). 
 
 These remedies so far as they go are socialistic, and 
 though the Encyclical is not without recognition of the 
 individual character of man and of the priority of the 
 individual and the family to the state, yet the whole 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 71 
 
 tendency and spirit of its remedial suggestions lean 
 unmistakably to socialism—extremely moderate socialism 
 it is true; socialism hampered and emasculated by a 
 supreme respect for private possessions; yet socialism 
 still. But, although you frequently use the ambiguous 
 term u private property ” when the context shows that you 
 have in mind private property in land, the one thing clear 
 on the surface and becoming clearer still with examina¬ 
 tion is that you insist that whatever else may be done, the 
 private ownership of land shall be left untouched. 
 
 I have already referred generally to the defects that 
 attach to all socialistic remedies for the evil condition of 
 labor, but respect for your Holiness dictates that I 
 should speak specifically, even though briefly, of the 
 remedies proposed or suggested by you. 
 
 Of these, the widest and strongest are that the state 
 should restrict the hours of labor, the employment of 
 women and children, the unsanitary conditions of work¬ 
 shops, etc. Yet how little may in this way be accomplished. 
 
 A strong, absolute ruler might hope by such regula¬ 
 tions to alleviate the conditions of chattel slaves. But 
 the tendency of our times is toward democracy, and 
 democratic states are necessarily weaker in paternalism, 
 while in the industrial slavery, growing out of private 
 ownership of land, that prevails in Christendom to-day, 
 it is not the master who forces the slave to labor, but the 
 slave who urges the master to let him labor. Thus the 
 greatest difficulty in enforcing such regulations comes 
 from those whom they are intended to benefit. It is not, 
 for instance, the masters who make it difficult to enforce 
 restrictions on child labor in factories, but the mothers, 
 who, prompted by poverty, misrepresent the ages of 
 their children even to the masters, and teach the children 
 to misrepresent. 
 
72 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR, 
 
 But while in large factories and mines regulations as 
 to hours, ages, etc., though subject to evasion and offer¬ 
 ing opportunities for extortion and corruption, may be to 
 some extent enforced, how can they have any effect in 
 those far wider branches of industry where the laborer 
 works for himself or for small employers? 
 
 All such remedies are of the nature of the remedy for 
 overcrowding that is generally prescribed with them— 
 the restriction under penalty of the number who may 
 occupy a room and the demolition of unsanitary build¬ 
 ings. Since these measures have no tendency to increase 
 house accommodation or to augment ability to pay for 
 it, the overcrowding that is forced back in some places 
 goes on in other places and to a worse degree. All such 
 remedies begin at the wrong end. They are like putting 
 on brake and bit to hold in quietness horses that are 
 being lashed into frenzy; they are like trying to stop a 
 locomotive b}^ holding its wheels instead of shutting off 
 steam; like attempting to cure smallpox by driving back 
 its pustules. Men do not overwork themselves because 
 they like it; it is not in the nature of the mother’s heart 
 to send children to work when they ought to be at play; 
 it is not of choice that laborers will work under danger¬ 
 ous and unsanitary conditions. These things, like over¬ 
 crowding, come from the sting of poverty. And so long 
 as the poverty of which they are the expression is left 
 untouched, restrictions such as you indorse can have 
 only partial and evanescent results. The cause remain¬ 
 ing, repression in one place can only bring out its effects 
 in other places, and the task you assign to the state is 
 as hopeless as to ask it to lower the level of the ocean by 
 bailing out the sea. 
 
 Nor can the state cure poverty by regulating wages. 
 It is as much beyond the power of the state to regulate 
 wages as it is to regulate the rates of interest. Usury 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 73 
 
 laws have been tried again and again, but the only effect 
 they have ever had has been to increase what the poorer 
 borrowers must pay, and for the same reasons that all 
 attempts to lower by regulation the price of goods have 
 always resulted merely in increasing them. The general 
 rate of wages is fixed by the ease or difficulty with which 
 labor can obtain access to land, ranging from the full 
 earnings of labor, where land is free, to the least on 
 which laborers can live and reproduce, where land is 
 fully monopolized. Thus, where it has been compara¬ 
 tively easy for laborers to get land, as in the United 
 States and in Australasia, wages have been higher than 
 in Europe and it has been impossible to get European 
 laborers to w T ork there for wages that they would gladly 
 accept at home; while as monopolization goes on under 
 the influence of private property in land, wages tend to 
 fall, and the social conditions of Europe to appear. 
 Thus, under the partial yet substantial recognition of 
 common rights to land, of which I have spoken, the 
 many attempts of the British Parliament to reduce wages 
 by regulation failed utterly. And so, w T hen the institu¬ 
 tion of private property in land had done its work in 
 England, all attempts of Parliament to raise wages 
 proved unavailing. In the beginning of this century it 
 was even attempted to increase the earnings of labor¬ 
 ers by grants in aid of wages. But the only result 
 was to lower commensurately what wages employers 
 paid. 
 
 The state could maintain wages above the tendency 
 of the market (for as I have shown labor deprived of 
 land becomes a commodity), only by offering employment 
 to all who wish it; or by lending its sanction to strikes 
 and supporting them with its funds. Thus it is, that the 
 thoroughgoing socialists who want the state to take all 
 industry into its hands are much more logical than those 
 
74 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 timid socialists who propose that the state should regulate 
 private industry—but only a little. 
 
 The same hopelessness attends your suggestion that 
 working-people should be encouraged by the state in 
 obtaining a share of the land. It is evident that by this 
 you mean that, as is now being attempted in Ireland, the 
 state shall buy out large landowners in favor of small 
 ones, establishing what are known as peasant proprietors. 
 Supposing that this can be done even to a considerable 
 extent, what will be accomplished save to substitute a 
 larger privileged class for a smaller privileged class? 
 What will be done for the still larger class that must 
 remain, the laborers of the agricultural districts, the 
 workmen of the towns, the proletarians of the cities ? Is 
 it not true, as Professor De Laveleye says, that in such 
 countries as Belgium, where peasant proprietary exists, 
 the tenants, for there still exist tenants, are rack-rented 
 with a mercilessness unknown in Ireland ? Is it not true 
 that in such countries as Belgium the condition of the 
 mere laborer is even worse than it is in Great Britain, 
 where large ownerships obtain ? And if the state 
 attempts to buy up land for peasant proprietors will not 
 the effect be, what is seen to-day in Ireland, to increase 
 the market value of land and thus make it more difficult 
 for those not so favored, and for those who will come 
 after, to get land? How, moreover, on the principle 
 which you declare (36), that “to the state the interests 
 of all are equal, whether high or low,” will you justify 
 state aid to one man to buy a bit of land without also 
 insisting on state aid to another man to buy a donkey, to 
 another to buy a shop, to another to buy the tools and 
 materials of a trade—state aid in short to everybody who 
 may be able to make good use of it or thinks that he 
 could? And are you not thus landed in communism — 
 not the communism of the early Christians and of the 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 75 
 
 religious orders, but communism that uses the coercive 
 power of the state to take rightful property by force from 
 those who have, to give to those who have not ? For the 
 state has no purse of Fortunatus; the state cannot repeat 
 the miracle of the loaves and fishes; all that the state 
 can give, it must get by some form or other of the taxing 
 power. And whether it gives or lends money, or gives 
 or lends credit, it cannot give to those who have not, 
 without taking from those who have. 
 
 But aside from all this, any scheme of dividing up 
 land while maintaining private property in land is futile. 
 Small holdings cannot coexist with the treatment of 
 land as private property where civilization is materially 
 advancing and wealth augments. We may see this in 
 the economic tendencies that in ancient times were the 
 main cause that transformed world-conquering Italy 
 from a land of small farms to a land of great estates. 
 We may see it in the fact that while two centuries ago 
 the majority of English farmers were owners of the land 
 they tilled, tenancy has been for a long time the all but 
 universal condition of the English farmer. And now the 
 mighty forces of steam and electricity have come to urge 
 concentration. It is in the United States that we may 
 see on the largest scale how their power is operating to 
 turn a nation of landowners into a nation of tenants. 
 The principle is clear and irresistible. Material progress 
 makes land more valuable, and when this increasing 
 value is left to private owners land must pass from the 
 ownership of the poor into the ownership of the rich, 
 just as diamonds so pass when poor men find them. 
 What the British government is attempting in Ireland is 
 to build snow-houses in the Arabian desert! to plant 
 bananas in Labrador! 
 
 There is one way, and only one way, in which working- 
 people in our civilization may be secured a share in the 
 land of their country, and that is the way that we pro- 
 
76 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 pose—the taking of the profits of landownership for the 
 community. 
 
 As to working-men’s associations, what your Holiness 
 seems to contemplate is the formation and encourage¬ 
 ment of societies akin to the Catholic sodalities, and to 
 the friendly and beneficial societies, like the Odd Fellows, 
 which have had a large extension in English-speaking 
 countries. Such associations m^y promote fraternity, 
 extend social intercourse and provide assurance in case 
 of sickness or death, but if they go no further they are 
 powerless to affect wages even among their members. 
 As to trades-unions proper, it is hard to define your posi¬ 
 tion, which is, perhaps, best stated as one of warm appro¬ 
 bation provided that they do not go too far. For while 
 you object to strikes $ while you reprehend societies that 
 “ do their best to get into their hands the whole field of 
 labor and to force working-men either to join them or 
 to starvej ” while you discountenance the coercing of 
 employers and seem to think that arbitration might take 
 the place of strikes 5 yet you use expressions and assert 
 principles that are all that the trades-unionist would ask, 
 not merely to justify the strike and the boycott, but even 
 the use of violence where only violence would suffice. 
 For you speak of the insufficient wages of workmen as 
 due to the greed of rich employers; you assume the moral 
 right of the workman to obtain employment from others 
 at wages greater than those others are willing freely to give; 
 and you deny the right of any one to work for such wages 
 as he pleases, in such a way as to lead Mr. Stead, in so 
 widely read a journal as the Review of Reviews, approvingly 
 to declare that you regard “ blacklegging,” i.e., the work¬ 
 ing for less than union wages, as a crime. 
 
 To men conscious of bitter injustice, to men steeped in 
 poverty yet mocked by flaunting wealth, such words 
 mean more than I can think you realize. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 77 
 
 When fire shall be cool and ice be warm, when armies 
 shall throw away lead and iron, to try conclusions by the 
 pelting of rose-leaves, such labor associations as you are 
 thinking of may be possible. But not till then. For 
 labor associations can do nothing to raise wages but by 
 force. It may be force applied passively, or force applied 
 actively, or force held in reserve, but it must be force. 
 They must coerce or hold the power to coerce employers; 
 they must coerce those among their own members dis¬ 
 posed to straggle; they must do their best to get into 
 their hands the whole field of labor they seek to occupy 
 and to force other working-men either to join them or 
 to starve. Those who tell you of trades-unions bent on 
 raising wages by moral suasion alone are like those who 
 would tell you of tigers that live on oranges. 
 
 The condition of the masses to-day is that of men 
 pressed together in a hall where ingress is open and more 
 are constantly coming, but where the doors for egress 
 are closed. If forbidden to relieve the general pressure 
 by throwing open those doors, whose bars and bolts are 
 private property in land, they can only mitigate the pres¬ 
 sure on themselves by forcing back others, and the 
 weakest must be driven to the wall. This is the way of 
 labor-unions and trade-guilds. Even those amiable 
 societies that you recommend would in their efforts to 
 find employment for their own members necessarily 
 displace others. 
 
 For even the philanthropy which, recognizing the evil 
 of trying to help labor by alms, seeks to help men to 
 help themselves by finding them work, becomes aggressive 
 in the blind and bitter struggle that private property in 
 land entails, and in helping one set of men injures others. 
 Thus, to minimize the bitter complaints of taking work 
 from others and lessening the wages of others in provid¬ 
 ing their own beneficiaries with work and wages, benevo¬ 
 lent societies are forced to devices akin to the digging of 
 
78 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 holes and filling them up again. Our American societies 
 feel this difficulty, General Booth encounters it in Eng¬ 
 land, and the Catholic societies which your Holiness 
 recommends must find it, when they are formed. 
 
 Your Holiness knows of, and I am sure honors, the 
 princely generosity of Baron Hirsch toward his suffering 
 coreligionists. But, as I write, the New York news¬ 
 papers contain accounts of an immense meeting held in 
 Cooper Union, in this city, on the evening of Friday, 
 September 4, in which a number of Hebrew trades-unions 
 protested in the strongest manner against the loss of 
 work and reduction of wages that are being effected by 
 Baron Hirsch’s generosity in bringing their own coun¬ 
 trymen here and teaching them to work. The resolution 
 unanimously adopted at this great meeting thus con¬ 
 cludes : 
 
 We now demand of Baron Hirsch himself that he release ns from 
 his “ charity ” and take back the millions, which, instead of a bless¬ 
 ing, have proved a curse and a source of misery. 
 
 Nor does this show that the members of these Hebrew 
 labor-unions — who are themselves immigrants of the 
 same class as those Baron Hirsch is striving to help, for 
 in the next generation they lose with us their distinctive¬ 
 ness—are a whit less generous than other men. 
 
 Labor associations of the nature of trade-guilds or 
 unions are necessarily selfish • by the law of their being 
 they must fight for their own hand, regardless of who is 
 hurt; they ignore and must ignore the teaching of Christ 
 that we should do to others as we would have them do to 
 us, which a true political economy shows is the only way 
 to the full emancipation of the masses. They must do 
 their best to starve workmen who do not join them, they 
 must by all means in their power force back the u black¬ 
 leg”—as the soldier in battle must shoot down his 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 79 
 
 mother's son if in the opposing ranks. And who is the 
 blackleg! A fellow-creature seeking work —a fellow- 
 creature in all probability more pressed and starved than 
 those who so bitterly denounce him, and often with the 
 hungry pleading faces of wdfe and child behind him. 
 
 And, in so far as they succeed, what is it that trade- 
 guilds and unions do but to impose more restrictions on 
 natural rights; to create u trusts " in labor; to add to 
 privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes; and 
 to press the weaker closer to the wall ? 
 
 I speak without prejudice against trades-unions, of 
 which for years I was an active member. And in point¬ 
 ing out to your Holiness that their principle is selfish and 
 incapable of large and permanent benefits, and that their 
 methods violate natural rights and work hardship and 
 injustice, I am only saying to you what, both in my 
 books and bv word of mouth, I have said over and over 
 again to them. Nor is what I say capable of dispute. 
 Intelligent trades-unionists know it, and the less intelli¬ 
 gent vaguely feel it. And even those of the classes of 
 wealth and leisure who, as if to head off the demand for 
 natural rights, are preaching trades-unionism to working¬ 
 men, must needs admit it. 
 
 Your Holiness wfill remember the great London dock 
 strike of two years ago, which, with that of other influ¬ 
 ential men, received the moral support of that Prince of 
 the Church whom we of the English speech hold higher 
 and dearer than any prelate has been held by us since 
 the blood of Thomas a Becket stained the Canterbury 
 altar. 
 
 In a volume called “ The Story of the Dockers' Strike," 
 written by Messrs. H. Llewellyn Smith and Vaughan 
 Nash, with an introduction by Sydney Buxton, M.P., 
 which advocates trades-unionism as the solution of the 
 labor question, and of which a large number were sent 
 
80 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 to Australia as a sort of official recognition of the gener¬ 
 ous aid received from there by the strikers, I find in the 
 summing up, on pages 164-165, the following: 
 
 If the settlement lasts, work at the docks will be more regular, 
 better paid, and carried on under better conditions than ever before. 
 All this will be an unqualified gain to those who get the benefit from 
 it. But another result will undoubtedly be to contract the field of 
 employ ment and lessen the number of those for whom work can be found. 
 The lower-class casual will, in the end, find his position more pre¬ 
 carious than ever before, in proportion to the increased regularity 
 of work which the “ fitter ” of the laborers will secure. The effect 
 of the organization of dock labor, as of all classes of labor, will be 
 to squeeze out the residuum. The loafer, the cadger, the failure in 
 the industrial race—the members of “Class B” of Mr. Charles 
 Booth’s hierarchy of social classes—will be no gainers by the change, 
 but will rather find another door closed against them, and this in many 
 cases the last door to employment. 
 
 I am far from wishing that your Holiness should join 
 in that pharisaical denunciation of trades-unions common 
 among those who, while quick to point out the injustice 
 of trades-unions in denying to others the equal right to 
 work, are themselves supporters of that more primary 
 injustice that denies the equal right to the standing-place 
 and natural material necessary to work. What I wish 
 to point out is that trades-unionism, while it may be a 
 partial palliative, is not a remedy; that it has not that 
 moral character which could alone justify one in the 
 position of your Holiness in urging it as good in itself. 
 Yet, so long as you insist on private property in land 
 what better can you do ? 
 
 Y. 
 
 In the beginning of the Encyclical you declare that 
 the responsibility of the apostolical office urges your 
 Holiness to treat the question of the condition of labor 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 81 
 
 “ expressly and at length in order that there may be no 
 mistake as to the principles which truth and justice dic¬ 
 tate for its settlement.’ 7 But, blinded by one false 
 assumption, you do not see even fundamentals. 
 
 You assume that the labor question is a question 
 between wage-workers and their employers. But work¬ 
 ing for wages is not the primary or exclusive occupation 
 of labor. Primarily men work for themselves without 
 the intervention of an employer. * And the primary 
 source of wages is in the earnings of labor, the man who 
 works for himself and consumes his own products receiv¬ 
 ing his wages in the fruits of his labor. Are not fisher¬ 
 men, boatmen, cab-drivers, peddlers, working farmers— 
 all, in short, of the many workers who get their wages 
 directly by the sale of their services or products without 
 the medium of an employer, as much laborers as those who 
 work for the specific wages of an employer? In your 
 consideration of remedies you do not seem even to have 
 thought of them. Yet in reality the laborers who work 
 for themselves are the first to be considered, since what 
 men will be willing to accept from employers depends 
 manifestly on what they can get by working for themselves. 
 
 You assume that all employers are rich men, who 
 might raise wages much higher were they not so grasp¬ 
 ing. But is it not the fact that the great majority of 
 employers are in reality as much pressed by competition 
 as their workmen, many of them constantly on the verge 
 of failure ? Such employers could not possibly raise the 
 wages they pay, however they might wish to, unless all 
 others were compelled to do so. 
 
 You assume that there are in the natural order two 
 classes, the rich and the poor, and that laborers naturally 
 belong to the poor. 
 
 It is true as you say that there are differences in capa¬ 
 city, in diligence, in health and in strength, that may 
 
82 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 produce differences in fortune. These, however, are not 
 the differences that divide men into rich and poor. The 
 natural differences in powers and aptitudes are certainly 
 not greater than are natural differences in stature. But 
 while it is only by selecting giants and dwarfs that we 
 can find men twice as tall as others, yet in the difference 
 between rich and poor that exists to-day we find some 
 men richer than other men by the thousandfold and the 
 millionfold. 
 
 Nowhere do these differences between wealth and 
 poverty coincide with differences in individual powers 
 and aptitudes. The real difference between rich and 
 poor is the difference between those who hold the toll- 
 gates and those who pay toll; between tribute-receivers 
 and tribute-yielders. 
 
 In what way does nature justify such a difference? 
 In the numberless varieties of animated nature we find 
 some species that are evidently intended to live on other 
 species. But their relations are always marked by 
 unmistakable differences in size, shape or organs. To 
 man has been given dominion over all the other living 
 things that tenant the earth. But is not this mastery 
 indicated even in externals, so that no one can fail on 
 sight to distinguish between a man and one of the 
 inferior animals? Our American apologists for slavery 
 % used to contend that the black skin and woolly hair of 
 the negro indicated the intent of nature that the black 
 should serve the white; but the difference that you 
 assume to be natural is between men of the same race. 
 What difference does nature show between such men as 
 would indicate her intent that one should live idly yet be 
 rich, and the other should work hard yet be poor? If I 
 could bring you from the United States a man who has 
 $200,000,000, and one who is glad to work for a few 
 dollars a week, and place them side by side in your ante¬ 
 chamber, would you be able to tell which was which, 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 83 
 
 even were you to call in the most skilled anatomist? 
 Is it not clear that God in no way countenances or con¬ 
 dones the division of rich and poor that exists to-day, or 
 in any way permits it, except as having given them free 
 will he permits men to choose either good or evil, and to 
 avoid heaven if they prefer hell. For is it not clear that 
 the division of men into the classes rich and poor has 
 invariably its origin in force and fraud; invariably 
 involves violation of the moral law; and is really a 
 division into those who get the profits of robbery and 
 those who are robbed; those who hold in exclusive pos¬ 
 session what God made for all, and those who are de¬ 
 prived of his bounty ? Did not Christ in all his utterances 
 and parables show that the gross difference between rich 
 and poor is opposed to Goffs law? Would he have con¬ 
 demned the rich so strongly as he did, if the class dis¬ 
 tinction between rich and poor did not involve injustice 
 —was not opposed to Goffs intent? 
 
 It seems to us that your Holiness misses its real signif¬ 
 icance in intimating that Christ, in becoming the son of 
 a carpenter and himself working as a carpenter, showed 
 merely that “there is nothing to be ashamed of in seek¬ 
 ing one’s bread by labor.” To say that is almost like 
 saying that by not robbing people he showed that there 
 is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty. If you will 
 consider how true in any large view is the classification 
 of all men into working-men, beggar-men and thieves, 
 you will see that it was morally impossible that Christ 
 during his stay on earth should have been anything else 
 than a working-man, since he who came to fulfil the law 
 must by deed as well as word obey God’s law of labor. 
 
 See how fully and how beautifully Christ’s life on 
 earth illustrated this law. Entering our earthly life in 
 the weakness of infancy, as it is appointed that all should 
 enter it, he lovingly took what in the natural order is 
 lovingly rendered, the sustenance, secured by labor, that 
 
84 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 one generation owes to its immediate successors. Arrived 
 at maturity, he earned his own subsistence by that com¬ 
 mon labor in which the majority of men must and do 
 earn it. Then passing to a higher—to the very highest 
 —sphere of labor, he earned his subsistence by the teach¬ 
 ing of moral and spiritual truths, receiving its material 
 wages in the love-offerings of grateful hearers, and not 
 refusing the costly spikenard with which Mary anointed 
 his feet. So, when he chose his disciples, he did not go 
 to landowners or other monopolists who live on the labor 
 of others, but to common laboring-men. And when he 
 called them to a higher sphere of labor and sent them 
 out to teach moral and spiritual truths, he told them to 
 take, without condescension on the one hand or sense of 
 degradation on the other, the loving return for such 
 labor, saying to them that u the laborer is worthy of his 
 hire,” thus showing, what we hold, that all labor does not 
 consist in what is called manual labor, but that whoever 
 helps to add to the material, intellectual, moral or spirit¬ 
 ual fullness of life is also a laborer.* 
 
 * Nor should it "be forgotten that the investigator, the philosopher, 
 the teacher, the artist, the poet, the priest, though not engaged in 
 the production of wealth, are not only engaged in the production of 
 utilities and satisfactions to which the production of wealth is only 
 a means, hut by acquiring and diffusing knowledge, stimulating 
 mental powers and elevating the moral sense, may greatly increase 
 the ability to produce wealth. For man does not live by bread 
 alone. . . . He who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the 
 aggregate of enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human know¬ 
 ledge, or gives to human life higher elevation or greater fullness—he 
 is, in the large meaning of the words, a “producer,” a “working¬ 
 man,” a “laborer,” and is honestly earning honest wages. But he 
 who without doing aught to make mankind richer, wiser, better, 
 happier, lives on the toil of others—he, no matter by what name of 
 honor he may be called, or how lustily the priests of Mammon may 
 swing their censers before him, is in the last analysis but a beggar- 
 man or a thief .—Protection or Free Trade, pp. 74-75. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 85 
 
 In assuming that laborers, even ordinary manual 
 laborers, are naturally poor, you ignore the fact that 
 labor is the producer of wealth, and attribute to the 
 natural law of the Creator an injustice that comes from 
 man’s impious violation of his benevolent intention. In 
 the rudest stage of the arts it is possible, where justice 
 prevails, for all well men to earn a living. With the 
 labor-saving appliances of our time, it should be possible 
 for all to earn much more. And so, in saying that 
 poverty is no disgrace, you convey an unreasonable 
 implication. For poverty ought to be a disgrace, since 
 in a condition of social justice, it would, where unsought 
 from religious motives or unimposed by unavoidable 
 misfortune, imply recklessness or laziness. 
 
 The sympathy of your Holiness seems exclusively 
 directed to the poor, the workers. Ought this to be so? 
 Are not the rich, the idlers, to be pitied also ? By the 
 word of the gospel it is the rich rather than the poor 
 who call for pity, for the presumption is that they will 
 share the fate of Dives. And to any one who believes in 
 a future life the condition of him who wakes to find his 
 cherished millions left behind must seem pitiful. But 
 even in this life, how really pitiable are the rich. The 
 evil is not in wealth in itself—in its command over mate¬ 
 rial things ; it is in the possession of wealth while others 
 are steeped in poverty; in being raised above touch with 
 the life of humanity, from its work and its struggles, its 
 hopes and its fears, and above all, from the love that 
 sweetens life, and the kindly sympathies and generous 
 acts that strengthen faith in man and trust in God. 
 Consider how the rich see the meaner side of human 
 nature; how they are surrounded by flatterers and 
 sycophants; how they find ready instruments not only 
 to gratify vicious impulses, but to prompt and stimulate 
 
86 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 them; how they must constantly be on guard lest they 
 be swindled; how often they must suspect an ulterior 
 motive behind kindly deed or friendly word; how if they 
 try to be generous they are beset by shameless beggars 
 and scheming impostors; how often the family affections 
 are chilled for them, and their deaths anticipated with 
 the ill-concealed joy of expectant possession. The worst 
 evil of poverty is not in the want of material things, but 
 in the stunting and distortion of the higher qualities. 
 So, though in another way, the possession of unearned 
 wealth likewise stunts and distorts what is noblest in 
 man. 
 
 God’s commands cannot be evaded with impunity. If 
 it be God’s command that men shall earn their bread by 
 labor, the idle rich must suffer. And they do. See the 
 utter vacancy of the lives of those who live for pleasure; 
 see the loathsome vices bred in a class who surrounded 
 by poverty are sated with wealth. See that terrible 
 punishment of ennui , of which the poor know so little 
 that they cannot understand it; see the pessimism that 
 grows among the wealthy classes—that shuts out God, 
 that despises men, that deems existence in itself an evil, 
 and fearing death yet longs for annihilation. 
 
 When Christ told the rich young man who sought him 
 to sell all he had and to give it to the poor, he was not 
 thinking of the poor, but of the young man. And I 
 doubt not that among the rich, and especially among the 
 self-made rich, there are many who at times at least feel 
 keenly the folly of their riches and fear for the dangers 
 and temptations to which these expose their children. 
 But the strength of long habit, the prompting of pride, 
 the excitement of making and holding what have become 
 for them the counters in a game of cards, the family 
 expectations that have assumed the character of rights, 
 and the real difficulty they find in making any good use 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 87 
 
 of their wealth, bind them to their burden, like a weary 
 donkey to his pack, till they stumble on the precipice 
 that bounds this life. 
 
 Men who are sure of getting food when they shall need 
 it eat only what appetite dictates. But with the sparse 
 tribes who exist on the verge of the habitable globe life 
 is either a famine or a feast. Enduring hunger for days, 
 the fear of it prompts them to gorge like anacondas 
 when successful in their quest of game. And so, what 
 gives wealth its curse is what drives men to seek it, what 
 makes it so envied and admired—the fear of want. As 
 the unduly rich are the corollary of the unduly poor, so 
 is the soul-destroying quality of riches but the reflex of 
 the want that embrutes and degrades. The real evil lies 
 in the injustice from which unnatural possession and 
 unnatural deprivation both spring. 
 
 But this injustice can hardly be charged on individuals 
 or classes. The existence of private property in land is 
 a great social wrong from which society at large suffers, 
 and of which the very rich and the very poor are alike 
 victims, though at the opposite extremes. Seeing this, it 
 seems to us like a violation of Christian charity to speak 
 of the rich as though they individually were responsible 
 for the sufferings of the poor. Yet, while you do this, 
 you insist that the cause of monstrous wealth and 
 degrading poverty shall not be touched. Here is a man 
 with a disfiguring and dangerous excrescence. One 
 physician would kindly, gently, but firmly remove it. 
 Another insists that it shall not be removed, but at the 
 same time holds up the poor victim to hatred and ridi¬ 
 cule. Which is right ? 
 
 In seeking to restore all men to their equal and natural 
 rights we do not seek the benefit of any class, but of all. 
 For we both know b}^ faith and see by fact that injustice 
 can profit no one and that justice must benefit all. 
 
88 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 Nor do we seek any “ futile and ridiculous equality.” 
 We recognize, with you, that there must always be differ¬ 
 ences and inequalities. In so far as these are in con¬ 
 formity with the moral law, in so far as they do not 
 violate the command, “ Thou shalt not steal,” we are con¬ 
 tent. We do not seek to better God’s work; we seek 
 only to do his will. The equality we would bring about 
 is not the equality of fortune, but the equality of natural 
 opportunity; the equality that reason and religion alike 
 proclaim—the equality in usufruct of all his children to 
 the bounty of Our Father who art in Heaven. 
 
 And in taking for the uses of society what we clearly 
 see is the great fund intended for society in the divine 
 order, we would not levy the slightest tax on the posses¬ 
 sors of wealth, no matter how rich they might be. Not 
 only do we deem such taxes a violation of the right of 
 property, but we see that by virtue of beautiful adapta¬ 
 tions in the economic laws of the Creator, it is impossible 
 for any one honestly to acquire wealth, without at the 
 same time adding to the wealth of the world. 
 
 To persist in a wrong, to refuse to undo it, is always 
 to become involved in other wrongs. Those who defend 
 private property in land, and thereby deny the first and 
 most important of all human rights, the equal right to 
 the material substratum of life, are compelled to one of 
 two courses. Either they must, as do those whose gospel 
 is “Devil take the hindermost,” deny the equal right to 
 life, and by some theory like that to which the English 
 clergyman Malthus has given his name, assert that 
 nature (they do not venture to say God) brings into the 
 world more men than there is provision for; or, they 
 must, as do the socialists, assert as rights what in thern- 
 > selves are wrongs. 
 
 Your Holiness in the Encyclical gives an example of 
 this. Denying the equality of right to the material basis 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 89 
 
 of life, and yet conscious that there is a right to live, yon 
 assert the right of laborers to employment and their 
 right to receive from their employers a certain indefinite 
 wage. No such rights exist. No one has a right to 
 demand employment of another, or to demand higher 
 wages than the other is willing to give, or in any way to 
 put pressure on another to make him raise such wages 
 against his will. There can be no better moral justifica¬ 
 tion for such demands on employers by working-men 
 than there would be for employers demanding that 
 working-men shall be compelled to work for them when 
 they do not want to and to accept wages lower than they 
 are willing to take. Any seeming justification springs 
 from a prior wrong, the denial to working-men of their 
 natural rights, and can in the last analysis rest only on 
 that supreme dictate of self-preservation that under 
 extraordinary circumstances makes pardonable what in 
 itself is theft, or sacrilege or even murder. 
 
 A fugitive slave with the bloodhounds of his pursuers 
 baying at his heels would in true Christian morals be 
 held blameless if he seized the first horse he came across, 
 even though to take it he had to knock down the rider. 
 But this is not to justify horse-stealing as an ordinary 
 means of traveling. 
 
 When his disciples were hungry Christ permitted them 
 to pluck corn on the Sabbath day. But he never denied 
 the sanctity of the Sabbath by asserting that it was under 
 ordinary circumstances a proper time to gather corn. 
 
 He justified David, who when pressed by hunger com¬ 
 mitted what ordinarily would be sacrilege, by taking 
 from the temple the loaves of proposition. But in this 
 he was far from saying that the robbing of temples was 
 a proper way of getting a living. 
 
 In the Encyclical however you commend the appli¬ 
 cation to the ordinary relations of life, under normal 
 conditions, of principles that in ethics are only to be 
 
90 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 tolerated under extraordinary conditions. You are driven 
 to this assertion of false rights by your denial of true 
 rights. The natural right which each man has is not 
 that of demanding employment or wages from another 
 man; but that of employing himself—that of applying 
 by his own labor to the inexhaustible storehouse which 
 the Creator has in the land provided for all men. Were 
 that storehouse open, as by the single tax we would open 
 it, the natural demand for labor would keep pace with 
 the supply, the man who sold labor and the man who 
 bought it would become free exchangers for mutual 
 advantage, and all cause for dispute between workman 
 and employer would be gone. For then, all being free to 
 employ themselves, the mere opportunity to labor would 
 cease to seem a boon $ and since no one would work for 
 another for less, all things considered, than he could earn 
 by working for himself, wages would necessarily rise to 
 their full value, and the relations of workman and em¬ 
 ployer be regulated by mutual interest and convenience. 
 
 This is the only way in which they can be satisfactorily 
 regulated. 
 
 Your Holiness seems to assume that there is some just 
 rate of wages that employers ought to be willing to pay 
 and that laborers should be content to receive, and to 
 imagine that if this were secured there would be an end 
 of strife. This rate you evidently think of as that which 
 will give working-men a frugal living, and perhaps 
 enable them by hard work and strict economy to lay by 
 a little something. 
 
 But how can a just rate of wages be fixed without the 
 u higgling of the market ’ 7 any more than the just price 
 of corn or pigs or ships or paintings can be so fixed? 
 And would not arbitrary regulation in the one case as in 
 the other check that interplay that most effectively pro¬ 
 motes the economical adjustment of productive forces? 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 91 
 
 Why should buyers of labor, any more than buyers of 
 commodities, be called on to pay higher prices than in a 
 free market they are compelled to pay ? Why should the 
 sellers of labor be content with anything less than in a 
 free market they can obtain ? Why should working-men 
 be content with frugal fare when the world is so rich? 
 Why should they be satisfied with a lifetime of toil and 
 stinting, when the world is so beautiful? Why should 
 not they also desire to gratify the higher instincts, the 
 finer tastes? Why should they be forever content to 
 travel in the steerage when others find the cabin more 
 enjoyable ? 
 
 Nor will they. The ferment of our time does not arise 
 merely from the fact that working-men find it harder to 
 live on the same scale of comfort. It is also and perhaps 
 still more largely due to the increase of their desires with 
 an improved scale of comfort. This increase of desire 
 must continue. For working-men are men. And man 
 is the unsatisfied animal. 
 
 He is not an ox, of whom it may be said, so much 
 grass, so much grain, so much water, and a little salt, 
 and he will be content. On the contrary, the more he 
 gets the more he craves. When he has enough food 
 then he wants better food. When he gets a shelter then 
 he wants a more commodious and tasty one. When his 
 animal needs are satisfied then mental and spiritual 
 desires arise. 
 
 This restless discontent is of the nature of man—of 
 that nobler nature that raises him above the animals by 
 so immeasurable a gulf, and shows him to be indeed 
 created in the likeness of God. It is not to be quarreled 
 with, for it is the motor of all progress. It is this that 
 has raised St. Peter’s dome and on dull, dead canvas 
 made the angelic face of the Madonna to glow; it is this 
 that has weighed suns and analyzed stars, and opened 
 
92 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 page after page of the wonderful works of creative 
 intelligence; it is this that has narrowed the Atlantic to 
 an ocean ferry and trained the lightning to carry our 
 messages to the remotest lands; it is this that is opening 
 to ns possibilities beside which all that onr modern 
 civilization has as yet accomplished seem small. Nor can 
 it be repressed save by degrading and embrnting men; 
 by reducing Europe to Asia. 
 
 Hence, short of what wages may be earned when all 
 restrictions on labor are removed and access to natural 
 opportunities on equal terms secured to all, it is impos¬ 
 sible to fix any rate of wages that will be deemed just, or 
 any rate of wages that can prevent working-men striving 
 to get more. So far from it making working-men more 
 contented to improve their condition a little, it is certain 
 to make them more discontented. 
 
 Nor are you asking justice when yon ask employers to 
 pay their working-men more than they are compelled to 
 pay—more than they could get others to do the work for. 
 You are asking charity. For the surplus that the rich 
 employer thus gives is not in reality wages, it is essen¬ 
 tially alms. 
 
 In speaking of the practical measures for the improve¬ 
 ment of the condition of labor which your Holiness sug¬ 
 gests, I have not mentioned what you place much stress 
 upon—charity. But there is nothing practical in such 
 recommendations as a cure for poverty, nor will any one so 
 consider them. If it were possible for the giving of alms to 
 abolish poverty there would be no poverty in Christendom. 
 
 Charity is indeed a noble and beautiful virtue, grateful 
 to man and approved by God. But charity must be built 
 on justice. It cannot supersede justice. 
 
 What is wrong with the condition of labor through 
 the Christian world is that labor is robbed. And while 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 93 
 
 you justify the continuance of that robbery it is idle to 
 urge charity. To do so—to commend charity as a sub¬ 
 stitute for justice, is indeed something akin in essence to 
 those heresies, condemned by your predecessors, that 
 taught that the gospel had superseded the law, and that 
 the love of G-od exempted men from moral obligations. 
 
 All that charity can do where injustice exists is here 
 and there to mollify somewhat the effects of injustice. 
 It cannot cure them. Nor is even what little it can do to 
 mollify the effects of injustice without evil. For what 
 may be called the superimposed, and in this sense, sec¬ 
 ondary virtues, work evil where the fundamental or 
 primary virtues are absent. Thus sobriety is a virtue 
 and diligence is a virtue. But a sober and diligent thief 
 is all the more dangerous. Thus patience is a virtue. 
 But patience under -wrong is the condoning of wrong. 
 Thus it is a virtue to seek knowledge and to endeavor 
 to cultivate the mental powers. But the wicked man 
 becomes more capable of evil by reason of his intelli¬ 
 gence. Devils we always think of as intelligent. 
 
 And thus that pseudo-charity that discards and denies 
 justice works evil. On the one side, it demoralizes its 
 recipients, outraging that human dignity which as you 
 saj r u God himself treats with reverence/’ and turning 
 into beggars and paupers men who to become self-sup¬ 
 porting, self-respecting citizens need only the restitution 
 of what God has given them. On the other side, it acts 
 as an anodyne to the consciences of those who are living 
 on the robbery of their fellows, and fosters that moral 
 delusion and spiritual pride that Christ doubtless had in 
 mind when he said it was easier for a camel to pass 
 through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter 
 the Kingdom of Heaven. For it leads men steeped in 
 injustice, and using their money and their influence to 
 bolster up injustice, to think that in giving alms they 
 
94 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 are doing something more than their duty toward man 
 and deserve to be very well thought of by God, and in a 
 vague way to attribute to their own goodness what really 
 belongs to God’s goodness. For consider: Who is the 
 All-Provider ? Who is it that as you say, “ owes to man 
 a storehouse that shall never fail,” and which “he finds 
 only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth.” Is it 
 not God? And when, therefore, men, deprived of the 
 bounty of their God, are made dependent on the bounty 
 of their fellow-creatures, are not these creatures, as it 
 were, put in the place of God, to take credit to them¬ 
 selves for paying obligations that you yourself say God 
 owes ? 
 
 But worse perhaps than all else is the way in which 
 this substituting of vague injunctions to charity for the 
 clear-cut demands of justice opens an easy means for the 
 professed teachers of the Christian religion of all branches 
 and communions to placate Mammon while persuading 
 themselves that they are serving God. Had the English 
 clergy not subordinated the teaching of justice to the 
 teaching of charity—to go no further in illustrating a 
 principle of which the whole history of Christendom 
 from Constantine’s time to our own is witness — the 
 Tudor tyranny would never have arisen, and the separa¬ 
 tion of the church been averted; had the clergy of 
 France never substituted charity for justice, the mon¬ 
 strous iniquities of the ancient regime would never have 
 brought the horrors of the Great Revolution; and in my 
 own country had those who should have preached justice 
 not satisfied themselves with preaching kindness, chattel 
 slavery could never have demanded the holocaust of our 
 civil war. 
 
 No, your Holiness; as faith without works is dead, as 
 men cannot give to God his due while denying to their 
 fellows the rights he gave them, so charity unsupported 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 95 
 
 by justice can do nothing to solve the problem of the 
 existing condition of labor. Though the rich were to 
 “bestow all their goods to feed the poor and give their 
 bodies to be burned,” poverty would continue while 
 property in land continues. 
 
 Take the case of the rich man to-day who is honestly 
 desirous of devoting his wealth to the improvement of 
 the condition of labor. What can he do ? 
 
 Bestow his wealth on those who need it? He may 
 help some who deserve it, but will not improve general 
 conditions. And against the good he may do will be the 
 danger of doing harm. 
 
 Build churches ? Under the shadow of churches 
 poverty festers and the vice that is born of it breeds. 
 
 • Build schools and colleges? Save as it may lead men 
 to see the iniquity of private property in land, increased 
 education can effect nothing for mere laborers, for as 
 education is diffused the wages of education sink. 
 
 Establish hospitals ? Why, already it seems to laborers 
 that there are too many seeking work, and to save and 
 prolong life is to add to the pressure. 
 
 Build model tenements? Unless he cheapens house 
 accommodations he but drives further the class he would 
 benefit, and as he cheapens house accommodations he 
 brings more to seek employment and cheapens wages. 
 
 Institute laboratories, scientific schools, workshops for 
 physical experiments? He but stimulates invention and 
 discovery, the very forces that, acting on a society based 
 on private property in land, are crushing labor as between 
 the upper and the nether millstone. 
 
 Promote emigration from places where wages are low 
 to places where they are somewhat higher? If he does, 
 even those whom he at first helps to emigrate will soon 
 turn on him to demand that such emigration shall be 
 stopped as reducing their wages. 
 
96 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 Give away what land he may have, or refuse to take 
 rent for it, or let it at lower rents than the market price ? 
 He will simply make new landowners or partial land- 
 owners; he may make some individuals the richer, but 
 he will do nothing to improve the general condition of 
 labor. 
 
 Or, bethinking himself of those public-spirited citizens 
 of classic times who spent great sums in improving their 
 native cities, shall he try to beautify the city of his birth 
 or adoption ? Let him widen and straighten narrow and 
 crooked streets, let him build parks and erect fountains, 
 let him open tramways and bring in railroads, or in any 
 way make beautiful and attractive his chosen city, and 
 what will be the result? Must it not be that those who 
 appropriate God’s bounty will take his also ? Will it not 
 be that the value of land will go up, and that the net 
 result of his benefactions will be an increase of rents 
 and a bounty to landowners? Why, even the mere 
 announcement that he is going to do such things will 
 start speculation and send up the value of land by leaps 
 and bounds. 
 
 What, then, can the rich man do to improve the condi¬ 
 tion of labor ? 
 
 He can do nothing at all except to use his strength for 
 the abolition of the great primary wrong that robs men 
 of their birthright. The justice of God laughs at the 
 attempts of men to substitute anything else for it. 
 
 • 
 
 If when in speaking of the practical measures your 
 Holiness proposes, I did not note the moral injunctions 
 that the Encyclical contains, it is not because we do not 
 think morality practical. On the contrary it seems to 
 us that in the teachings of morality is to be found the 
 highest practicality, and that the question, What is wise? 
 may always safely be subordinated to the question, What 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 97 
 
 is right ? But your Holiness in the Encyclical expressly 
 deprives the moral truths you state of all real bearing on 
 the condition of labor, just as the American people, by 
 their legalization of chattel slavery, used to deprive of all 
 practical meaning the declaration they deem their funda¬ 
 mental charter, and were accustomed to read solemnly 
 on every national anniversary. That declaration asserts 
 that “We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all 
 men are created equal • that they are endowed by their 
 Creator with certain unalienable rights 5 that among these 
 are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But what 
 did this truth, mean on the lips of men who asserted that 
 one man was the rightful property of another man who 
 had bought him; who asserted that the slave was robbing 
 the master in running away, and that the man or the 
 woman who helped the fug'tive to escape, or even gave 
 him a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, was an acces¬ 
 sory to theft, on whose head the penalties of the state 
 should be visited ? 
 
 Consider the moral teachings of the Encyclical: 
 
 You tell us that God owes to man an inexhaustible 
 storehouse which he finds only in the land. Yet you 
 support a system that denies to the great majority of 
 men all right of recourse to this storehouse. 
 
 You tell us that the necessity of labor is a consequence 
 of original sin. Yet you support a system that exempts 
 a privileged class from the necessity for labor and enables 
 them to shift their share and much more than their share 
 of labor on others. 
 
 You tell us that God has not created us for the perish¬ 
 able and transitory things of earth, but has given us this 
 world as a place of exile and not as our true country. 
 Yet you tell us that some of the exiles have the exclusive 
 right of ownership in this place of common exile, so that 
 they may compel their fellow-exiles to pay them for 
 
98 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 sojourning here, and that this exclusive ownership they 
 may transfer to other exiles yet to come, with the same 
 right of excluding their fellows. 
 
 You tell us that virtue is the common inheritance of 
 all ; that all men are children of God the common Father; 
 that all have the same last end ; that all are redeemed by 
 Jesus Christ; that the blessings of nature and the gifts 
 of grace belong in common to all, and that to all except 
 the unworthy is promised the inheritance of the King¬ 
 dom of Heaven ! Yet in all this and through all this you 
 insist as a moral duty on the maintenance of a system 
 that makes the reservoir of all God’s material bounties 
 and blessings to man the exclusive property of a few of 
 their number—you give us equal rights in heaven, but 
 deny us equal rights on earth ! 
 
 It was said of a famous decision of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States made just before the civil war, in a 
 fugitive-slave case, that “it gave the law to the North 
 and the nigger to the South.” It is thus that your 
 Encyclical gives the gospel to laborers and the earth to 
 the landlords. Is it really to be wondered at that there 
 are those who sneeringly say, u The priests are ready 
 enough to give the poor an equal share in all that is out 
 of sight, but they take precious good care that the rich 
 shall keep a tight grip on all that is within sight ” ? 
 
 Herein is the reason why the working masses all over 
 the world are turning away from organized religion. 
 
 And why should they not? What is the office of reli¬ 
 gion if not to point out the principles that ought to 
 govern the conduct of men toward each other; to furnish 
 a clear, decisive rule of right which shall guide men in 
 all the relations of life—in the workshop, in the mart, in 
 the forum and in the senate, as well as in the church; to 
 supply, as it were, a compass by which amid the blasts of 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 99 
 
 passion, the aberrations of greed and the delusions of a 
 short-sighted expediency men may safely steer? What 
 is the use of a religion that stands palsied and paltering 
 in the face of the most momentous problems ? What is 
 the use of a religion that whatever it may promise for 
 the next world can do nothing to prevent injustice in 
 this ? Early Christianity was not such a religion, else it 
 would never have encountered the Roman persecutions; 
 else it would never have swept the Roman world. The 
 skeptical masters of Rome, tolerant of all gods, careless 
 of what they deemed vulgar superstitions, were keenly 
 sensitive to a doctrine based on equal rights; they feared 
 instinctively a religion that inspired slave and proletarian 
 with a new hope; that took for its central figure a cruci¬ 
 fied carpenter; that taught the equal Fatherhood of God 
 and the ^equal brotherhood of men; that looked for the 
 speedy reign of justice, and that prayed, 11 Thy Kingdom 
 come on Earth ! ” 
 
 To-day, the same perceptions, the same aspirations, 
 exist among the masses. Man is, as he has been called, 
 a religious animal, and can never quite rid himself of the 
 feeling that there is some moral. government of the 
 world, some eternal distinction between wrong and 
 right; can never quite abandon the yearning for a reign 
 of righteousness. And to-day, men who, as they think, 
 have cast off all belief in religion, will tell you, even 
 though they know not what it is, that with regard to the 
 condition of labor something is wrong! If theology be, as 
 St. Thomas of Aquin held it, the sum and focus of the 
 sciences, is it not the business of religion to say clearly 
 and fearlessly what that wrong is? It was by a deep 
 impulse that of old when threatened and perplexed by 
 general disaster men came to the oracles to ask, In what 
 have we offended the gods? To-day, menaced by grow¬ 
 ing evils that threaten the very existence of society, men, 
 
100 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 conscious that something is wrong , are putting the same 
 question to the ministers of religion. What is the 
 answer they get? Alas, with few exceptions, it is as 
 vague, as inadequate, as the answers that used to come 
 from heathen oracles. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the masses of men are losing 
 faith ? 
 
 Let me again state the case that your Encyclical presents: 
 
 What is that condition of labor which as you truly say 
 is u the question of the hour/ 7 and “ fills every mind with 
 painful apprehension 77 ? Reduced to its lowest expres¬ 
 sion it is the poverty of men willing to work. And what 
 is the lowest expression of this phrase? It is that they 
 lack bread—for in that one word we most concisely and 
 strongly express all the manifold material satisfactions 
 needed by humanity, the absence of which constitutes 
 poverty. 
 
 Now what is the prayer of Christendom—the universal 
 prayer; the prayer that goes up daily and hourly wher¬ 
 ever the name of Christ is honored; that ascends from 
 your Holiness at the high altar of St. Peter’s, and that is 
 repeated by the youngest child that the poorest Christian 
 mother lias taught to lisp a request to her Father in 
 Heaven ? It is, “ Give us this day our daily bread ! 77 
 
 Yet where this prayer goes up, daily and hourly, men 
 lack bread. Is it not the business of religion to say why ? 
 If it cannot do so, shall not scoffers mock its ministers 
 as Elias mocked the prophets of Baal, saying, “ Cry with 
 a louder voice, for he is a god; and perhaps he is talking, 
 or is in an inn, or on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep, 
 and must be awaked! 77 What answer can those min¬ 
 isters give? Either there is no God, or he is asleep, or 
 else he does give men their daily bread, and it is in some 
 way intercepted. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 101 
 
 Here is the answer, the only true answer: If men lack 
 bread it is not that God has not done his part in pro¬ 
 viding it. If men willing to labor are cursed with pov¬ 
 erty, it is not that the storehouse that God owes men has 
 failed j that the daily supply he has promised for the 
 daily wants of his children is not here in abundance. It 
 is, that impiously violating the benevolent intentions of 
 their Creator, men have made land private property, and 
 thus given into the exclusive ownership of the few the 
 provision that a bountiful Father has made for all. 
 
 Any other answer than that, no matter how it may be 
 shrouded in the mere forms of religion, is practically an 
 atheistical answer. 
 
 I have written this letter not alone for your Holiness, 
 but for all whom I may hope it to reach. But in sending 
 it to you personally, and in advance of publication, I 
 trust that it may be by you personally read and weighed. 
 In setting forth the grounds of our belief and in pointing 
 out considerations which it seems to us you have unfor¬ 
 tunately overlooked, I have written frankly, as was my 
 duty on a matter of such momentous importance, and as 
 I am sure you would have me write. But I trust I have 
 done so without offense. For your office I have pro¬ 
 found respect, for yourself personally the highest esteem. 
 And while the views I have opposed seem to us erroneous 
 and dangerous, we do not wish to be understood as in 
 the slightest degree questioning either your sincerity or 
 intelligence in adopting them. For they are views all 
 but universally held by the professed religious teachers 
 of Christendom, in all communions and creeds, and that 
 have received the sanction of those looked to as the wise 
 and learned. Under the conditions that have surrounded 
 you, and under the pressure of so many high duties and 
 
102 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 responsibilities, culminating in those of your present 
 exalted position, it is not to be expected that you should 
 have hitherto thought to question them. But I trust 
 that the considerations herein set forth may induce you 
 to do so, and even if the burdens and cares that beset 
 you shall now make impossible the careful consideration 
 that should precede expression by one in your responsible 
 position I trust that what I have written may not be 
 without use to others. 
 
 And, as I have said, we are deeply grateful for your 
 Encyclical. It is much that by so conspicuously calling 
 attention to the condition of labor, you have recalled the 
 fact forgotten by so many that the social evils and 
 problems of our time directly and pressingly concern the 
 church. It is much that you should thus have placed 
 the stamp of your disapproval on that impious doctrine 
 which directly and by implication has been so long and 
 so widely preached in the name of Christianity, that the 
 sufferings of the poor are due to mysterious decrees of 
 Providence which men may lament but cannot alter. 
 Your Encyclical will be seen by those who carefully 
 analyze it to be directed not against socialism, which in 
 moderate form you favor, but against what we in the 
 United States call the single tax. Yet we have no solici¬ 
 tude for the truth save that it shall be brought into dis¬ 
 cussion, and we recognize in your Holiness’s Encyclical 
 a most efficient means of promoting discussion, and of 
 promoting discussion along the lines that we deem of the 
 greatest importance—the lines of morality and religion. 
 In this you deserve the gratitude of all who would follow 
 truth, for it is of the nature of truth always to prevail 
 over error where discussion goes on. 
 
 And the truth for which we stand has now made such 
 progress in the minds of men that it must be heard; that 
 it can never be stifled; that it must go on conquering 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 103 
 
 and to conquer. Far-off Australia leads the van, and 
 has already taken the first steps toward the single tax. 
 In Great Britain, in the United States, and in Canada, 
 the question is on the verge of practical politics and soon 
 will be the burning issue of the time. Continental 
 Europe cannot long linger behind. Faster than ever 
 the world is moving. 
 
 Forty years ago slavery seemed stronger in the United 
 States than ever before, and the market price of slaves— 
 both working slaves and breeding slaves—was higher 
 than it had ever been before, for the title of the owner 
 seemed growing more secure. In the shadow of the Hall 
 where the equal rights of man had been solemnly pro¬ 
 claimed, the manacled fugitive was dragged back to 
 bondage, and on what to American tradition was our 
 Marathon of freedom, the slave-master boasted that he 
 would yet call the roll of his chattels. 
 
 Yet forty years ago, though the party that was to 
 place Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential chair had not 
 been formed, and nearly a decade was yet to pass ere the 
 signal-gun was to ring out, slavery, as we may now see, 
 was doomed. 
 
 To-day a wider, deeper, more beneficent revolution is 
 brooding, not over one country, but over the world. 
 Goffs truth impels it, and forces mightier than he has 
 ever before given to man urge it on. It is no more in 
 the power of vested wrongs to stay it than it is in man’s 
 power to stay the sun. The stars in their courses fight 
 against Sisera, and in the ferment of to-day, to him 
 who hath ears to hear, the doom of industrial slavery is 
 sealed. 
 
 Where shall the dignitaries of the church be in the 
 struggle that is coming, nay that is already here? On 
 the side of justice and liberty, or on the side of wrong 
 and slavery? with the delivered when the timbrels shall 
 
104 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 sound again, or with the chariots and the horsemen that 
 again shall be engulfed in the sea ? 
 
 As to the masses, there is little fear where they wdll be. 
 Already, among those who hold it with religious fervor, 
 the single tax counts great numbers of Catholics, many 
 priests, secular and regular, and at least some bishops, 
 while there is no communion or denomination of the 
 many into which English-speaking Christians are divided 
 where its advocates are not to be found. 
 
 Last Sunday evening in the New York church that of 
 all churches in the world is most richly endowed, I saw 
 the cross carried through its aisles by a hundred choris¬ 
 ters, and heard a priest of that English branch of the 
 church that three hundred years since was separated 
 from your obedience, declare to a great congregation 
 that the labor question was at bottom a religious ques¬ 
 tion ; that it could only be settled on the basis of moral 
 right; that the first and clearest of rights is the equal 
 right to the use of the physical basis of all life; and that 
 no human titles could set aside God’s gift of the land to 
 all men. 
 
 And as the cross moved by, and the choristers sang, 
 
 Raise ye the Christian’s war-cry— 
 
 The Cross of Christ the Lord ! 
 
 men to whom it was a new thing bowed their heads, and 
 in hearts long steeled against the church, as the willing 
 handmaid of oppression, rose the “ God wills it! ” of the 
 grandest and mightiest of crusades. 
 
 Servant of the Servants of God! I call you by the 
 strongest and sweetest of your titles. In your hands 
 more than in those of any living man lies the power to 
 say the word and make the sign that shall end an unnat¬ 
 ural divorce, and marry again to religion all that is pure 
 and high in social aspiration. 
 
OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 105 
 
 t 
 
 Wishing for your Holiness the cliiefest of all blessings, 
 that you may know the truth and be freed by the truth j 
 wishing for you the days and the strength that may 
 enable you by the great service you may render to 
 humanity to make your pontificate through all coming 
 time most glorious 5 and with the profound respect due 
 to your personal character and to your exalted office, I am, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Henry George. 
 
 New York, September 11, 1891. 
 

I 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER 
 
 OF 
 
 POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 ON 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR 
 
 OFFICIAL TRANSLATION 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 T O our Venerable Brethren , all Patriarchs, Primates, 
 Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World, in 
 grace and communion with the Apostolic See, Pope Leo XIII. 
 
 Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic 
 
 Benediction. 
 
 1. It is not surprising that the spirit of revolutionary 
 change, which has so long been predominant in the 
 nations of the world, should have passed beyond politics 
 and made its influence felt in the cognate field of prac¬ 
 tical economy. The elements of a conflict are unmis¬ 
 takable : the growth of industry, and the surprising 
 discoveries of science; the changed relations of masters 
 and workmen; the enormous fortunes of individuals, and 
 the poverty of the masses; the increased self-reliance 
 and the closer mutual combination of the working popu¬ 
 lation ; and, finally, a general moral deterioration. The 
 momentous seriousness of the present state of things 
 just now fills every mind with painful apprehension; 
 wise men discuss it; practical men propose schemes; 
 popular meetings, legislatures, and sovereign princes, all 
 are occupied with it—and there is nothing which lias a 
 deeper hold on public attention, 
 
110 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 2. Therefore, Venerable Brethren, as on former occa¬ 
 sions, when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, 
 We have addressed you in the interest of the Church and 
 of the commonweal, and have issued Letters on Political 
 Power, on Human Liberty, on the Christian Constitution 
 of the State, and on similar subjects, so now We have 
 thought it useful to speak on the Condition of Labor. 
 It is a matter on which We have touched once or twice 
 already. But in this Letter the responsibility of the 
 Apostolic office urges Us to treat the question expressly 
 and at length, in order that there may be no mistake as 
 to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its 
 settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it free 
 from danger. It'is not easy to define the relative rights 
 and the mutual duties of the wealthy and of the poor, of 
 capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that 
 crafty agitators constantly make use of these disputes 
 to pervert men’s judgments and to stir up the people to 
 sedition. 
 
 3. But all agree, and there can be no question what¬ 
 ever, that some remedy must be found, and quickly 
 found, for the misery and wretchedness which press so 
 heavily at this moment on the large majority of the very 
 poor. The ancient workmen’s Guilds were destroyed in 
 the last century, and no other organization took their 
 place. Public institutions and the laws have repudiated 
 the ancient religion. Hence by degrees it has come to 
 pass that Working-Men have been given over, isolated 
 and defenseless, to the callousness of employers, and the 
 greed of unrestrained competition. The evil has been 
 increased by rapacious Usury, which, although more than 
 once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a 
 different form but with the same guilt, still practised by 
 avaricious and grasping men. And to this must be 
 added the custom of working by contract, and the con- 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 Ill 
 
 centration of so many branches of trade in the hands of a 
 few individuals, so that a small number of very rich men 
 have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke 
 little better than slavery itself. 
 
 4. To remedy these evils the Socialists , working on the 
 poor man’s envy of the rich, endeavor to destroy private 
 property, and maintain that individual possessions should 
 become the common property of all, to be administered 
 by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that, 
 by thus transferring property from private persons to 
 the community, the present evil state of things will be 
 set to rights, because each citizen will then have his 
 equal share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their 
 proposals are so clearly futile for all practical purposes, 
 that if they were carried out the working-man himself 
 would be among the first to suffer. Moreover they are 
 emphatically unjust, because they would rob the lawful 
 possessor, bring the State into a sphere that is not its 
 own, and cause complete confusion in the community. 
 
 5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages 
 in remunerative labor, the very reason and motive of his 
 work is to obtain property, and to hold it as his own 
 private possession. If one man hires out to another his 
 strength or his industry, he does this for the purpose of 
 receiving in return what is necessary for food and living; 
 he thereby expressly proposes to acquire a full and real 
 right, not only to the remuneration, but also to the dis¬ 
 posal of that remuneration as he pleases. Thus, if he 
 lives sparingly, saves money, and invests his savings, for 
 greater security, in land, the land in such a case is only 
 his wages in another form; and consequently, a working¬ 
 man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely 
 at his own disposal as the wages he receives for his labor. 
 But it is precisely in this power of disposal that owner¬ 
 ship consists, whether the property be land or movable 
 
112 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 goods. The Socialists , therefore, in endeavoring to 
 transfer the possessions of individuals to the community, 
 strike at the interests of every wage-earner, for they 
 deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and 
 , thus of all hope and possibility of increasing his stock 
 and of bettering his condition in life. 
 
 6 . What is of still greater importance, however, is that 
 the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. 
 For every man has by nature the right to possess 
 property as his own. This is one of the chief points of 
 distinction between man and the animal creation. For 
 the brute has no power of self-direction, but is governed 
 by two chief instincts, which keep his powers alert, move 
 him to use his strength, and determine him to action 
 without the power of choice. These instincts are self- 
 preservation and the propagation of the species. Both 
 can attain their purpose by means of things which are 
 close at hand 5 beyond their surroundings the brute crea¬ 
 tion cannot go, for they are moved to action by sensi¬ 
 bility alone, and by the things which sense perceives. 
 But with man it is different indeed. He possesses, on 
 the one hand, the full perfection of animal nature, and 
 therefore he enjoys, at least as inuch as the rest of the 
 animal race, the fruition of the things of the body. But 
 animality, however perfect, is far from being the whole 
 of humanity, and is indeed humanity’s humble handmaid, 
 made to serve and obey. It is the mind, or the reason, 
 which is the chief thing in us who are human beings; it 
 is this which makes a human being human, and distin¬ 
 guishes him essentially and completely from the brute. 
 And on this account—viz., that man alone among animals 
 possesses reason—it must be within his right to have 
 things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as 
 other living beings have them, but in stable and perma¬ 
 nent possession; he must have not only things which 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 113 
 
 perish, in the using, hut also those which, though used, 
 remain for use in the future. 
 
 7. This becomes still more clearly evident if we con¬ 
 sider man’s nature a little more deeply. For man, 
 comprehending by the power of liis reason things innu¬ 
 merable, and joining the future with the present—being, 
 moreover, the master of his own acts—governs himself 
 by the foresight of his counsel, under the eternal law and 
 the power of God, Whose Providence governs all things; 
 wherefore it is in his power to exercise his choice not 
 only on things which regard his present welfare, but also 
 on those which will be for his advantage in time to come. 
 Hence man not only can possess the fruits of the earth, 
 but also the earth itself; for of the products of the earth 
 he can make provision for the future. Man’s needs do 
 not die out, but recur; satisfied to-day, they demand new 
 supplies to-morroAV. Nature, therefore, OAves to man a 
 storehouse that shall never fail, the daily supply of his 
 daily wants. And this he finds only in the inexhaustible 
 fertility of the earth. 
 
 8. Nor must we, at this stage, have recourse to the 
 State. Man is older than the State; and he holds the 
 right of providing for the life of his body prior to the 
 formation of any State. And to say that God has given 
 the earth to the use and enjoyment of the universal 
 human race is not to deny that there can be private 
 property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in 
 general; not in the sense that all Avithout distinction can 
 deal with it as they please, but rather that no part of it 
 has been assigned to any one in particular, and that the 
 limits of pri\ r ate possession have been left to be fixed by 
 man’s own industry and the Iuavs of individual peoples. 
 Moreover the earth, though divided among private 
 OAvners, ceases not therebv to minister to the needs of 
 all; for there is no one w T ho does not live on what the 
 
114 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 land brings forth. Those who do not possess the soil, 
 contribute their labor j so that it may be truly said that 
 all human subsistence is derived either from labor on 
 one’s own land, or from some laborious industry which 
 is paid for either in the produce of the land itself or in 
 that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth. 
 
 9. Here, again, we have another proof that private 
 ownership is according to nature’s law. For that which 
 is required for the preservation of life, and for life’s well¬ 
 being, is produced in great abundance by the earth, but 
 not until man has brought it into cultivation and lavished 
 upon it his care and skill. Now, when man thus spends 
 the industry of his mind and the strength of his body in 
 procuring the fruits of nature, by that act he makes his 
 own that portion of nature’s field which he cultivates— 
 that portion on which he leaves, as it were, the impress 
 of his own personality; and it cannot but be just that he 
 should possess that portion as his own, and should have 
 a right to keep it without molestation. 
 
 10. ^ These arguments are so strong and convincing 
 that it seems surprising that certain obsolete opinions 
 should now be revived in opposition to what is here laid 
 down. We are told that it is right for private persons 
 to have the use of the soil and the fruits of their land, 
 but that it is unjust for any one to possess as owner 
 either the land on which he has built or the estate which 
 he has cultivated. But those who assert this do not 
 perceive that they are robbing man of what his own 
 labor has produced. For the soil which is tilled and cul¬ 
 tivated with toil and skill utterly changes its condition; 
 it was wild before, it is now fruitful; it was barren, and 
 now it brings forth in abundance. That which has thus 
 altered and improved it becomes so truly part of itself as 
 to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable 
 from it. Is it just that the fruit of a man’s sweat and 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 115 
 
 labor should be enjoyed by another? As effects follow 
 their cause, so it is just and right that the results of labor 
 should belong to him who has labored. 
 
 11. With reason, therefore, the common opinion of 
 mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have 
 maintained the opposite view, has found in the study of 
 nature, and in the law of Nature herself, the foundation 
 of the division of property, and has consecrated by the 
 practice of all ages the principle of private ownership, 
 as being preeminently in conformity with human nature, 
 and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to 
 the peace and tranquillity of human life. The same 
 principle is confirmed and enforced by the civil laws— 
 laws which, as long as they are just, derive their binding 
 force from the law of nature. The authority of the 
 Divine Law adds its sanction, forbidding us in the gravest 
 terms even to covet that which is another’s: — Thou shalt 
 not covet thy neighbor’s wife; nor his house, nor his field, nor 
 his man-servant , nor his maid-servant , nor his ox , nor his 
 ass, nor anything which is his * 
 
 12. The rights here spoken of, belonging to each indi¬ 
 vidual man, are seen in a much stronger light if they are 
 considered in relation to man’s social and domestic obli¬ 
 gations. 
 
 13. In choosing a state of life, it is indisputable that 
 all are at full liberty either to follow the counsel of Jesus 
 Christ as to the virginity, or to enter into the bonds of 
 marriage. No human law can abolish the natural and 
 primitive right of marriage, or in any way limit the chief 
 and principal purpose of marriage, ordained by God’s 
 authority from the beginning: Increase and multiply.] 
 Thus we have the Family; the “society” of a man’s own 
 household; a society limited indeed in numbers, but a 
 
 * Deuteronomy v. 21. 
 
 t Genesis i. 28. 
 
116 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 true “ society,” anterior to every kind of State or nation, 
 with rights and duties of its own, totally independent of 
 the commonwealth. 
 
 14. That right of property, therefore, which has been 
 proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must 
 also belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family; 
 nay, such a person must possess this right so much the 
 more clearly in proportion as his position multiplies his 
 duties. For it is a most sacred law of nature that a 
 father must provide food and all necessaries for those 
 whom he has begotten; and, similarly, nature dictates 
 that a man’s children, who carry on, as it were, and con¬ 
 tinue his own personality, should be provided by him 
 with all that is needful to enable them honorably to keep 
 themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties of 
 this mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father 
 effect this except by the ownership of profitable property, 
 which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. A 
 family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true 
 society, governed by a power within itself, that is to say 
 by the father. Wherefore, provided the limits be not 
 transgressed which are prescribed by the very purposes 
 for which it exists, the Family has at least equal rights 
 with the State in the choice and pursuit of those 
 things which are needful to its preservation and its just 
 liberty. 
 
 15. We say, at least equal rights; for since the domes¬ 
 tic household is anterior both in idea and in fact to the 
 gathering of men into a commonwealth, the former must 
 necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to 
 those of the latter, and which rest more immediately on 
 nature. If the citizens of a State—that is to say, the 
 Families—on entering into association and fellowship, 
 experienced at the hands of the State hindrance instead 
 of help, and found their rights attacked instead of being 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 117 
 
 protected, such association were rather to be repudiated 
 than sought after. 
 
 16. The idea, then, that the civil government should, 
 at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade the family 
 and the household, is a great and pernicious mistake. 
 True, if a family finds itself in great difficulty, utterly 
 friendless, and without prospect of help, it is right that 
 extreme necessity be met by public aid; for each family 
 is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if 
 within the walls of the household there occur grave dis¬ 
 turbance of mutual rights, the public power must inter¬ 
 fere to force each party to give the other what is due 5 
 for this is not to rob citizens of their rights, but justly 
 and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But 
 the rulers of the State must go no further: nature bids 
 them stop here. Paternal authority can neither be abol¬ 
 ished by the State, nor absorbed; for it has the same 
 source as human life itself. “ The child belongs to the 
 father,” and is, as it were, the continuation of the father’s 
 personality; and, to speak with strictness, the child takes 
 its place in civil society not in its own right, but in its 
 quality as a member of the family in which it is begotten. 
 And it is for the very reason that “the child belongs to 
 the father” that, as St. Thomas of Aquin says, “before it 
 attains the use of free will, it is in the power and care of 
 its parents.”* The Socialists, therefore, in setting aside 
 the parent and introducing the providence of the State, 
 act against natural justice, and threaten the very existence 
 
 of familv life. 
 
 %/ 
 
 17. And such interference is not only unjust, but it is 
 quite certain to harass and disturb all classes of citizens 
 and to subject them to odious and intolerable slavery. 
 It would open the door to envy, to evil speaking, and to 
 
 * St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, 2a 2ee Q. x. Art. 12. 
 
118 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 quarreling; the sources of wealth would themselves run 
 dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his 
 talents or his industry; and that ideal equality of which 
 so much is said would in reality be the leveling down of 
 all to the same condition of misery and dishonor. 
 
 18. Thus it is clear that the main tenet of Socialism , 
 the community of goods, must be utterly rejected; for 
 it would injure those whom it is intended to benefit, it 
 would be contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and 
 it would introduce confusion and disorder into the com¬ 
 monwealth. Our first and most fundamental principle, 
 therefore, when we undertake to alleviate the condition 
 of the masses, must be the inviolability of private prop¬ 
 erty. This laid down, We go on to show where We must 
 find the remedy that We seek. 
 
 19. We approach the subject with confidence, and in 
 the exercise of the rights which belong to Us. For no 
 practical solution of this question will ever be found 
 without the assistance of Religion and of the Church. It 
 is We who are the chief guardian of Religion and the 
 chief dispenser of what belongs to the Church, and We 
 must not by silence neglect the duty which lies upon Us. 
 Doubtless this most serious question demands the atten¬ 
 tion and the efforts of others besides Ourselves—of the 
 rulers of States, of employers of labor, of the wealthy, 
 and of the working population themselves for whom We 
 plead. , But We affirm without hesitation, that all the 
 striving of men will be vain if they leave out the Church. 
 It is the Church that proclaims from the Gospel those 
 teachings by which the conflict can be put an end to, or 
 at the least made far less bitter; the Church uses its 
 efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by 
 its precepts the life and conduct of men; the Church 
 improves and ameliorates the condition of the working- 
 man by numerous useful organizations; does its best to 
 
ENCYCLICAL. LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 119 
 
 enlist the services of all ranks in discussing and endea¬ 
 voring to meet, in the most practical way, the claims of 
 the working-classes; and acts on the decided view that 
 for these purposes recourse should be had, in due mea¬ 
 sure and degree, to the help of the law and of State 
 authority. 
 
 20. Let it be laid down, in the first place, that human¬ 
 ity must remain as it is. It is impossible to reduce 
 human society to a level. The Socialists may do their 
 utmost, but all striving against nature is vain. There 
 naturally exist among mankind innumerable differences 
 of the most important kind; people differ in capability, 
 in diligence, in health, and in strength; and unequal 
 fortune is a necessary result of inequality in condition. 
 Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either 
 to individuals or to the community; social and public life 
 can only go on by the help of various kinds of capacity 
 and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, 
 chooses the part which peculiarly suits his case. As 
 regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the 
 state of innocence , he would not have been wholly unoccu¬ 
 pied; but that which would then have been his free 
 choice and his delight, became afterwards compulsory, 
 and the painful expiation of his sin. Cursed be the earth 
 in thy work ; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of 
 thy life * In like manner, the other pains and hardships 
 of life will have no end or cessation on this earth; for 
 the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and 
 they must be with man as long as life lasts. To suffer 
 and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let men 
 try as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever 
 succeed in banishing from human life the ills and 
 troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend 
 
 
 Genesis iii. 17. 
 
120 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 differently—who hold out to a hard-pressed people free¬ 
 dom from pain and trouble, undisturbed repose, and 
 constant enjoyment—they cheat the people and impose 
 upon them, and their lying promises will only make the 
 evil worse than before. There is nothing more useful 
 than to look at the world as it really is—and at the same 
 time to look elsewhere for a remedy to its troubles. 
 
 21. The great mistake that is made in the matter now 
 under consideration is to possess one’s self of the idea 
 that class is naturally hostile to class; that rich and poor 
 are intended by nature to live at war with one another. 
 So irrational and so false is this view, that the exact 
 contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the 
 human body is the result of the disposition of the mem¬ 
 bers of the body, so in a State it is ordained by nature 
 that these two classes should exist in harmony and agree¬ 
 ment, and should, as it were, fit into one another, so as 
 to maintain the equilibrium of the body politic. Each 
 requires the other; capital cannot do without labor, nor 
 labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in 
 pleasantness and good order; perpetual conflict neces¬ 
 sarily produces confusion and outrage. Now, in pre¬ 
 venting such strife as this, and in making it impossible* 
 the efficacy of Christianity is marvelous and manifold. 
 First of all, there is nothing more powerful than Religion 
 (of which the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in 
 drawing rich and poor together, by reminding each class 
 of its duties to the other, and especially of the duties of 
 justice. Thus Religion teaches the laboring-man and the 
 workman to carry out honestly and well all equitable 
 agreements freely made; never to injure capital, or to 
 outrage the person of an employer; never to employ 
 violence in representing his own cause, or to engage in 
 riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of 
 evil principles, who work upon the people with artful 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 121 
 
 promises, and raise foolish hopes which usually end in 
 disaster and in repentance when too late. Religion 
 teaches the rich man and the employer that their work¬ 
 people are not their slaves 5 that they must respect in 
 every man his dignity as a man and as a Christian; that 
 labor is nothing to be ashamed of, if we listen to right 
 reason and to Christian philosophy, but is an honorable 
 employment, enabling a man to sustain his life in an 
 upright and creditable way; and that it is shameful and 
 inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or 
 to look upon them merely as so much muscle or physical 
 power. Thus, again, Religion teaches that, as among the 
 workman’s concerns are Religion herself and things 
 spiritual and mental, the employer is bound to see that 
 he has time for the duties of piety; that he be not 
 exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occa¬ 
 sions ; and that he be not led away to neglect his home 
 and family or to squander his wages. Then, again, the 
 employer must never tax his work-people bejmnd their 
 strength, nor employ them in work unsuited to their sex 
 or age. His great and principal obligation is to give to 
 every one that which is just. Doubtless before we can 
 decide whether wages are adequate, many things have to 
 be considered; but rich men and masters should remem¬ 
 ber this—that to exercise pressure for the sake of gain 
 upon the indigent and the destitute, and to make one’s 
 profit out of the need of another is condemned by all 
 laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages 
 that are his due is a crime which cries to the avenging 
 anger of Heaven. Behold , the hire of the laborers . 
 which by fraud hath been hept bach by you, crieth; and the 
 cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sab- 
 aoth * Finally, the rich must religiously refrain from 
 
 * 
 
 St. James v. 4. 
 
122 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 t 
 
 cutting down the workman’s earnings, either by force, by 
 fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with the more reason 
 because the poor man is weak and unprotected, and 
 because his slender means should be sacred in proportion 
 to their scantiness. 
 
 22. Were these prospects carefully obeyed and fol¬ 
 lowed, would not strife die out and cease ? 
 
 23. But the Church, with Jesus Christ for its Master 
 and Guide, aims higher still. It lays down precepts yet 
 more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendli¬ 
 ness and good understanding. The things of this earth 
 cannot be understood or valued rightly without taking 
 into consideration the life to come, the life that will last 
 forever. Exclude the idea of futurity, and the very 
 notion of what is good and right would perish ; nay, the 
 whole system of the universe would become a dark and 
 unfathomable mystery. The great truth which we learn 
 from Nature herself is also the grand Christian dogma 
 on which Religion rests as on its base—that when we 
 have done with this present life then shall we really 
 begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable 
 and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly 
 and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place 
 of exile, and not as our true country. Money, and the 
 other things which men call good and desirable—we may 
 have them in abundance, or we may want them alto¬ 
 gether ; as far as eternal happiness is concerned, it is no 
 matter; the only thing that is important is to use them 
 aright. Jesus Christ, when He redeemed us with plentiful 
 redemption , took not away the pains and sorrows which 
 in such large proportion make up the texture of our 
 mortal life; He transformed them into motives of virtue 
 and occasions of merit; and no man can hope for eternal 
 reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints 
 of his Saviour. If we suffer ivith Him, ive shall also reign 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 123 
 
 with Him* His labors and His sufferings, accepted by 
 His own free will, have marvelously sweetened all suffer¬ 
 ing and all labor. And not only by His example, but by 
 His grace and by the hope of everlasting recompense, He 
 has made pain and grief more easy to endure j for that 
 which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, 
 worheth for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight 
 of glory.\ 
 
 24. Therefore those whom fortune favors are warned 
 that freedom from sorrow and abundance of earthly 
 riches are no guaranty of the beatitude that shall never 
 end, but rather the contrary;! that the rich should 
 tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ—threatenings 
 so strange in the mouth of Our Lord 5 § and that a most 
 strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for 
 all that we possess. The chiefest and most excellent rule 
 for the right use of money is one which the heathen 
 philosophers indicated, but which the Church has traced 
 out clearly, and has not only made known to men’s 
 minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on 
 the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the 
 possession of money, and another to have a right to use 
 money as one pleases. Private ownership, as we have 
 seen, is the natural right of man; and to exercise that 
 right, especially as members of society, is not only 
 lawful, but absolutely necessary. It is lawful, says St. 
 Thomas of Aquin, for a man to hold private property ; and 
 it is also necessary for the carrying on of human life. || But 
 if the question be asked, How must one’s possessions be 
 used ? the Church replies without hesitation in the words 
 of the same holy Doctor: Man should not consider his out- 
 
 * 2 Timothy ii. 12. t 2 Corinthians iv. 17. 
 
 t St. Matthew xix. 23, 24. $ St. Luke vi. 24, 25. 
 
 || 2a 2 sb Q. lxvi. Art. 2. 
 
124 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 ward possessions as Ms own, but as common to all, so as to 
 share them without difficulty when others are in need. 
 Whence the Apostle saith, Command the rich of this world 
 ... to give with ease, to communicate* True, no one is 
 commanded to distribute to others that which is required 
 for his own necessities and those of his household; nor 
 even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up 
 becomingly his condition in life; for no one ought to live 
 unbecomingly .f But when necessity has been supplied, 
 and one’s position fairly considered, it is a duty to give 
 to the indigent out of that which is over. That which 
 remaineth, give alms.% It is a duty, not of justice (except 
 in extreme cases), but of Christian charity—a duty which 
 is not enforced by human law. But the laws and judg¬ 
 ments of men must give place to the laws and judgments 
 of Christ the true God, Who in many ways urges on His 
 followers the practice of almsgiving— It is more blessed to 
 give than to receive ;§ and Who will count a kindness done 
 or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself— as 
 long as you did it to one of My least brethren, you did it to 
 Me. || Thus, to sum up what has been said: Whoever has 
 received from the Divine bounty a large share of bless¬ 
 ings, whether they be external and corporeal or gifts of 
 the mind, has received them for the purpose of using 
 them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the 
 same time, that he may employ them, as the minister of 
 God’s Providence, for the benefit of others. He that hath 
 a talent, says St. Gregory the Great, let him see that he 
 hide it not; he that hath abundance , let him arouse himself 
 to mercy and generosity ; he that hath art and skill, let him do 
 his best to share the use and utility thereof with his neighbor .fi 
 
 * 2a 2ae Q. lxv. Art. 2. t Ibid. Q. xxxii. Art. 6. 
 
 t St. Luke xi. 41. § Acts xx. 35. || St. Matthew xxv. 40. 
 
 St. Gregory the Great, Horn. ix. in Evangel, n. 7. 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 125 
 
 25. As for those who do not possess the gifts of for¬ 
 tune, they are taught by the Church that, in God’s sight, 
 poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be 
 ashamed of in seeking one’s bread by labor. This is 
 strengthened by what we see in Christ Himself, Who 
 whereas He teas rich, for our sakes became poor; * and Who, 
 being the Son of God, and God Himself, chose to seem 
 and to be considered the son of a carpenter—nay, did 
 not disdain to spend a great part of His life as a car¬ 
 penter Himself. Is not this the carpenter , the Son of 
 Mary f t From the contemplation of this Divine example 
 it is easy to understand that the true dignity and excel¬ 
 lence of man lies in his moral, qualities, that is, in virtue ; 
 that virtue is the common inheritance of all, equally 
 within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and 
 that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be fol¬ 
 lowed by the rewards of everlasting happiness. Nay, 
 God Himself seems to incline more to those who suffer 
 evil; for Jesus Christ calls the poor blessed ;f He lov¬ 
 ingly invites those in labor and grief to come to Him for 
 solace ;§ and He displays the tenderest charity to the 
 lowly and the oppressed. These reflections cannot fail 
 to keep down the pride of those who are well off, and to 
 cheer the spirit of the afflicted; to incline the former to 
 generosity and the latter to tranquil resignation. Thus 
 the separation which pride would make tends to disap¬ 
 pear, nor will it be difficult to make rich and poor join 
 hands in friendly concord. 
 
 26. But, if Christian precepts prevail, the two classes 
 will not only be united in the bonds of friendship but 
 also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand 
 
 * 2 Corinthians viii. 9. t St. Mark vi. 3. 
 
 $ St. Matthew v. 3 : “Blessed are the poor in spirit” 
 
 § Ibid. xi. 28: “ Come to Me, all you that labor and are burdened, 
 and 1 will refresh you.” 
 
126 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 and feel that all men are the children of the common 
 Father, that is, of God; that all have the same last end, 
 which is God Himself, Who alone can make either men 
 or angels absolutely and perfectly happy $ that all and 
 each are redeemed by Jesus Christ and raised to the 
 dignity of children of God, and are thus united in bro¬ 
 therly ties both with each other and with Jesus Christ, 
 the first-born, among many brethren; that the blessings of 
 nature and the gifts of grace belong in common to the 
 whole human race, and that to all, except to those that 
 are unworthy, is promised the inheritance of the King¬ 
 dom of Heaven. If sons, heirs also ; heirs indeed of God, 
 and co-heirs of Christ* 
 
 27. Such is the scheme of duties and of rights which is 
 put forth to the world by the Gospel. Would it not 
 seem that strife must quickly cease were society pene¬ 
 trated with ideas like these? 
 
 28. But the Church, not content with pointing out the 
 remedy, also applies it. For the Church does its utmost 
 to teach and to train men, and to educate them; and by 
 means of its Bishops and Clergy it diffuses its salutary 
 teachings far and wide. It strives to influence the mind 
 and heart so that all may willingly yield themselves to 
 be formed and guided by the commandments-of God. It 
 is precisely in this fundamental and principal matter, 
 on which everything depends, that the Church has a 
 power peculiar to itself. The agencies which it employs 
 are given it for the very purpose of reaching the hearts 
 of men, by Jesus Christ Himself, and derive their effi¬ 
 ciency from God. They alone can touch the innermost 
 heart and conscience, and bring men to act from a motive 
 of duty, to resist their passions and appetites, to love 
 God and their fellow-men with a love that is unique and 
 
 * 
 
 Romans viii. 17. 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 127 
 
 supreme, and courageously to break down every barrier 
 which stands in the way of a virtuous life. 
 
 29. On this subject We need only recall for one 
 moment the examples written down in history. Of these 
 things there cannot be the shadow of doubt; for instance, 
 that civil society was renovated in every part by the 
 teachings of Christianity; that in the strength of that 
 renewal the human race was lifted up to better things— 
 nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to 
 so. excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been 
 known before, or will come to pass in the ages that have 
 yet to be. Of this beneficent transformation Jesus 
 Christ was at once the first cause and the final purpose; 
 as from Him all came, so to Him all was to be referred. 
 For when, by the light of the Gospel message, the human 
 race came to know the grand mystery of the Incarnation 
 of the Word and the redemption of man, the life of Jesus 
 Christ, God and Man, penetrated every race and nation, 
 and impregnated them with His faith, His precepts, and 
 His laws. And if Society is to be cured now, in no 
 other way can it be cured but by a return to the Chris¬ 
 tian life and Christian institutions. When a society is 
 perishing, the true advice to give to those who would 
 restore it is, to recall it to the principles from which it 
 sprang; for the purpose and perfection of an association 
 is to aim at and to attain that for which it was formed; 
 and its operation should be put in motion and inspired 
 by the end and object which originally gave it its being. 
 So that to fall away from its primal constitution is 
 disease; to go back to it is recovery. And this may be 
 asserted with the utmost truth both of the State in 
 general and of that body of its citizens—by far the 
 greater number—who sustain life by labor. 
 
 30. Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of 
 the Church is so occupied with the spiritual concerns of 
 
128 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 its children as to neglect their interests temporal and 
 earthly. Its desire is that the poor, for example, should 
 rise above poverty and wretchedness, and should better 
 their condition in life; and for this it strives. By the 
 very fact that it calls men to virtue and forms them to 
 its practice, it promotes this in no slight degree. Chris¬ 
 tian morality, when it is adequately and completely prac¬ 
 tised, conduces of itself to temporal prosperity, for it 
 merits the blessing of that God Who is the source of all 
 blessings; it powerfully restrains the lust of possession 
 and the lust of pleasure—twin plagues, which too often 
 make a man without self-restraint miserable in the midst 
 of abundance ; # it makes men supply by economy for the 
 want of means, teaching them to be content with frugal 
 living, and keeping them out of the reach of those vices 
 which eat up not merely small incomes, but large for¬ 
 tunes, and dissipate many a goodly inheritance. 
 
 31. Moreover, the Church intervenes directly in the 
 interest of the poor, by setting on foot and keeping up 
 many things which it sees to be efficacious in the relief 
 of poverty. Here again it has always succeeded so well 
 that it has even extorted the praise of its enemies. Such 
 was the ardor of brotherly love among the earliest Chris¬ 
 tians that numbers of those who were better off deprived 
 themselves of their possessions in order to relieve their 
 brethren; whence neither was the/re any one needy among 
 them .f To the order of Deacons, instituted for that very 
 purpose, was committed by the Apostles the charge of 
 the daily distributions; and the Apostle Paul, though 
 burdened with the solicitude of all the churches, hesitated 
 not to undertake laborious journeys in order to carry the 
 alms of the faithful to the poorer Christians. Tertullian 
 
 * “ The root of all evils is cupidity.”—1 Tim. vi. 10. 
 t Acts iv. 34. 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 129 
 
 calls these contributions, given voluntarily by Christians 
 in their assemblies, deposits of piety; because, to cite his 
 words, they were employed in feeding the needy , in burying 
 them , in the support of boys and girls destitute of means and 
 deprived of their parents , in the care of the aged and in the 
 relief of the shipwrecked .* 
 
 32. Thus by degrees came into existence the patrimony 
 which the Church has guarded with religious care as the 
 inheritance of the poor. Nay, to spare them the shame 
 of begging, the common Mother of rich and poor has 
 exerted herself to gather together funds for the support 
 of the needy. The Church has stirred up everywhere 
 the heroism of charity, and has established Congrega¬ 
 tions of Religious and many other useful institutions for 
 help and mercy, so that there might be hardly any kind 
 of suffering which was not visited and relieved. At the 
 present day there are many who, like the heathen of old, 
 blame and condemn the Church for this beautiful char¬ 
 ity. They would substitute in its place a system of 
 State-organized relief. But no human methods will 
 ever supply for the devotion and self-sacrifice of Chris¬ 
 tian charity. Charity, as a virtue, belongs to the Church; 
 for it is no virtue unless it is drawn from the Sacred 
 Heart of Jesus Christ; and he who turns his back on the 
 Church cannot be near to Christ. 
 
 33. It cannot, however, be doubted that to attain the 
 purpose of which We treat, not only the Church, but all 
 human means must conspire. All who are concerned in 
 the matter must be of one mind and must act together. It 
 is in this, as in the Providence which governs the world; 
 results do not happen save where all the causes cooperate. 
 
 34. Let us now, therefore, inquire what part the State 
 should play in the work of remedy and relief. 
 
 * Apologia Secunda, xxxix. 
 
130 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 35. By the State We here understand, not the partic¬ 
 ular form of government which prevails in this or that 
 nation, but the State as rightly understood; that is to 
 say, any government conformable in its institutions to 
 right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of the 
 Divine wisdom which We have expounded in the Encyc¬ 
 lical on the Christian Constitution of the State. The 
 first duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be 
 to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general 
 character and administration of the commonwealth, shall 
 be such as to produce of themselves public well-being 
 and private prosperity. This is the proper office of wise 
 statesmanship and the work of the heads of the State. 
 Now, a State chiefly prospers and flourishes by morality, 
 by well-regulated family life, by respect for religion and 
 justice, by the moderation and equal distribution of 
 public burdens, by the progress of the arts and of trade, 
 by the abundant yield of the land—by everything which 
 makes the citizens better and happier. Here, then, it is 
 in the power of a ruler to benefit every order of the 
 State, and amongst the rest to promote in the highest 
 degree the interests of the poor; and this by virtue of 
 his office, and without being exposed to any suspicion -of 
 undue interference—for it is the province of the common¬ 
 wealth to consult for the common good. And the more 
 that is done for the working population by the general 
 laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek 
 for particular means to relieve them. 
 
 36. There is another and a deeper consideration which 
 must not be lost sight of. To the State the interests of 
 all are equal, whether high or low. The poor are mem¬ 
 bers of the national community equally with the rich; 
 they are real component parts, living parts, which make 
 up, through the family, the living body; and it need 
 hardly be said that they are by far the majority. It 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 131 
 
 would be irrational to neglect one portion of the citizens 
 and to favor another; and therefore the public adminis¬ 
 tration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare 
 and the comfort of the working-people, or else that law 
 of justice will be violated which ordains that each shall 
 have his due. To cite the wise words of St. Thomas of 
 Aquin: As the part and the whole are in a certain sense 
 identical , the part map in some sense claim what belongs to 
 the whole* Among the many and grave duties of rulers 
 who would do their best for the people, the first and 
 chief is to-act with strict justice—with that justice which 
 is called in the Schools distributive— toward each and 
 every class. 
 
 37. But although all citizens, without exception, can 
 and ought to contribute to that common good in which 
 individuals share so profitably to themselves, yet it is not 
 to be supposed that all can contribute in the same way 
 and to the same extent. No matter what changes may 
 be made in forms of government, there will always be 
 differences and inequalities of condition in the State: 
 Society cannot exist or be conceived without them. 
 Some there must be who dedicate themselves to the work 
 of the commonwealth, who make the laws, who administer 
 justice, whose advice and authority govern the nation in 
 times of peace, and defend it in war. Such men clearly 
 occupy the foremost place in the State, and should be 
 held in the foremost estimation, for their work touches 
 most nearly and effectively the general interests of the 
 community. Those who labor at a trade or calling do 
 not promote the general welfare in such a fashion as 
 this; but they do in the most important way benefit the 
 nation, though less directly. We have insisted that, 
 since it is the end of Society to make men better, the 
 
 * 2a 2se Q. lxi. Art. 1 ad 2. 
 
132 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 chief good that Society can be possessed of is Virtue. 
 Nevertheless, in all well-constituted States it is a by no 
 means unimportant matter to provide those bodily and 
 external commodities, the use of which is necessary to virtu¬ 
 ous action * And in the provision of material well-being, 
 the labor of the poor—the exercise of their skill and the 
 employment of their strength in the culture of the land 
 and the workshops of trade—is most efficacious and alto¬ 
 gether indispensable. Indeed, their cooperation in this 
 respect is so important that it may be truly said that it 
 is only by the labor of the working-man that States grow 
 rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of 
 the poorer population be carefully watched over by the 
 Administration, so that they who contribute so largely 
 to the advantage of the community may themselves share 
 in the benefits they create—that being housed, clothed, 
 and enabled to support life, they may find their existence 
 less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever 
 shall appear to be conducive to the well-being of those 
 who work should receive favorable consideration. Let it 
 not be feared that solicitude of this kind will injure any 
 interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of 
 all; for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to 
 secure from misery those on whom it so largely depends. 
 
 38. We have said that the State must not absorb the 
 individual or the family; both should be allowed free 
 and untrammeled action as far as is consistent with the 
 common good and the interest of others. Nevertheless, 
 rulers should anxiously safeguard the community and all 
 its parts; the community, because the conservation of 
 the community is so emphatically the business of the 
 supreme power that the safety of the commonwealth is 
 not only the first law, but it is a Government’s whole 
 
 * St. Thomas of Aquin, Dc Regimme Principium , I. cap. 15. 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 133 
 
 reason of existence; and the parts, because both philoso¬ 
 phy and the Gospel agree in laying down that the object 
 of the administration of the State should be, not the 
 advantage of the ruler but the benefit of those over 
 whom he rules. The gift of authority is from God, and 
 is, as it were, a participation of the highest of all sover¬ 
 eignties 5 and it should be exercised as the power of God 
 is exercised—with a fatherly solicitude which not only 
 guides the whole, but reaches to details as well. 
 
 39. Whenever the general interest of any particular 
 class suffers, or is threatened with, evils which can in no 
 other way be met, the public authority must step in to 
 meet them. Now, among the interests of the public, as 
 of private individuals, are these: that peace and good 
 order should be maintained; that family life should be 
 carried on in accordance with God’s laws and those of 
 nature; that Religion should be reverenced and obeyed; 
 that a high standard of morality should prevail in public 
 and private life; that sanctity of justice should be 
 respected, and that no one should injure another with 
 impunity; that the members of the commonwealth 
 should grow up to man’s estate strong and robust, and 
 capable, if need be, of guarding and defending their 
 country. If by a strike, or other combination of work¬ 
 men, there should be imminent danger of disturbance to 
 the public peace; or if circumstances w T ere such that 
 among the laboring population the ties of family life 
 were relaxed; if Religion were found to suffer through 
 the workmen not having time and opportunity to prac¬ 
 tise it; if in workshops and factories there were danger 
 to morals through the mixing of the sexes or from any 
 occasion of evil; or if employers laid burdens upon the 
 workmen which were unjust, or degraded them with 
 conditions that were repugnant to their dignity as 
 human beings; finally, if health were endangered by 
 
134 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 excessive labor, or by work unsuited to sex or age—in 
 these cases, there can be no question that, within certain 
 limits, it would be right to call in the help and authority 
 of the law. The limits must be determined by the nature 
 of the occasion which calls for the law’s interference— 
 the principle being this, that the law must not undertake 
 more, or go further, than is required for the remedy of 
 the evil or the removal of the danger. 
 
 40. Rights must be religiously respected wherever they 
 are found j and it is the duty of the public authority to 
 prevent and punish injury, and to protect each one in 
 the possession of his own. Still, when there is question 
 of protecting the rights of individuals, the poor and help¬ 
 less have a claim to special consideration. The richer 
 population have many ways of protecting themselves, 
 and stand less in need of help from the State; those who 
 are badly off have no resources of their own to fall back 
 upon, and must chiefly rely upon the assistance of the 
 State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, who 
 are undoubtedly among the weak and necessitous, should 
 be specially cared for and protected by the common¬ 
 wealth. 
 
 41. Here, however, it will be advisable to advert 
 expressly to one or two of the more important details. 
 It must be borne in mind that the chief thing to be 
 secured is the safeguarding, by legal enactment and 
 policy, of private property. Most of all is it essential in 
 these times of covetous greed, to keep the multitude 
 within the line of duty ; for if all may justly strive to 
 better their condition, yet neither justice nor the common 
 good allows any one to seize that which belongs to 
 another, or, under the pretext of futile and ridiculous 
 equality, to lay hands on other people’s fortunes. It is 
 most true that by far the larger part of the people who 
 work prefer to improve themselves by honest labor 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 135 
 
 rather than by doing wrong to others. But there are 
 not a few who are imbued with bad principles and are 
 anxious for. revolutionary change, and whose great pur¬ 
 pose it is to stir up tumult and bring about a policy of 
 violence. The authority of the State should intervene to 
 put restraint upon these disturbers, to save the workmen 
 from their seditious arts, and to protect lawful owners 
 from spoliation. 
 
 42. When work-people have recourse to a strike, it is 
 frequently because the hours of labor are too long, or the 
 work too hard, or because they consider their wages 
 insufficient. The grave inconvenience of this not uncom¬ 
 mon occurrence should be obviated by public remedial 
 measures ; for such paralysis of labor not only affects the 
 masters and their work-people, but is extremely injurious 
 to trade, and to the general interests of the public; 
 moreover, on such occasions, violence and disorder are 
 generally not far off, and thus it frequently happens that 
 the public peace is threatened. The laws should be 
 beforehand, and prevent these troubles from arising- 
 they should lend their influence and authority to the 
 removal in good time of the causes which lead to conflicts 
 between masters and those whom they employ. 
 
 43. But if the owners of property must be made 
 secure, the Workman, too, has property and possessions 
 in which he must be protected; and, first of all, there are 
 his spiritual and mental interests. Life on earth, how¬ 
 ever good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose 
 for which man is created; it is only the way and the 
 means to that attainment of truth, and that practice of 
 goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. It is 
 the soul which is made after the image and likeness of 
 God; it is in the soul that sovereignty resides, in virtue 
 of which man is commanded to rule the creatures below 
 him, and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit 
 
I 
 
 136 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 and advantage. Fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over 
 the fishes of the sea , and the fowls of the air , and all living 
 creatures which move upon the earth * In this respect all 
 men are equal; there is no difference between rich and 
 poor, master and servant, ruler and ruled, for the same is 
 lord over all.] No man may outrage with impunity that 
 human dignity which God Himself treats with reverence , 
 nor stand in the way of that higher life which is the prep¬ 
 aration for the eternal life of Heaven. Nay, more; a 
 man has here no power over himself. To consent to any 
 treatment which is calculated to defeat the end and pur¬ 
 pose of his being is beyond his right; he cannot give up 
 his soul to servitude ; for it is not man’s own rights which 
 are here in question, but the rights of God, most sacred 
 and inviolable. 
 
 44. From this follows the obligation of the cessation 
 of work and labor on Sundays and certain festivals. 
 This rest from labor is not to be understood as mere idle¬ 
 ness; much less must it be an occasion of spending 
 money and of vicious excess, as many would desire it to 
 be; but it should be rest from labor consecrated by reli¬ 
 gion. Repose united with religious observance disposes 
 man to forget for a while the business of this daily life, 
 and to turn his thoughts to heavenly things and to the 
 worship which he so strictly owes to the Eternal Deity. 
 It is this, above all, which is the reason and motive of 
 the Sunday rest; a rest sanctioned by God’s great law of 
 the ancient covenant, Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath 
 Dayf and taught to the world by His own mysterious 
 “rest” after the creation of man; He rested on the seventh 
 day from all His work which He had done.§ 
 
 45. If we turn now to things exterior and corporeal, 
 
 * Genesis i. 28. 
 J Exodus xx. 8. 
 
 t Romans x. 12. 
 § Genesis ii. 2. 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 137 
 
 the first concern of all is to save the poor workers from 
 the cruelty of grasping speculators, who use human 
 beings as mere instruments for making money. It is 
 neither justice nor humanity so to grind men down with 
 excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out 
 their bodies. Man’s powers, like his general nature, are 
 limited, and beyond these limits he cannot go. His 
 strength is developed and increased by use and exercise, 
 but only on condition of due intermission and proper 
 rest. Daily labor, therefore, must be so regulated that 
 it may not be protracted during longer hours than 
 strength admits. How many and how long the intervals 
 of rest should be, will depend on the nature of the work, 
 on circumstances of time and place, and on the health 
 and strength of the workman. Those who labor in 
 mines and quarries, and in work within the bowels of 
 the earth, should have shorter hours in proportion as 
 their labor is more severe and more trying to health. 
 Then, again, the season of the year must be taken into 
 account; for not unfrequently a kind of labor is easy at 
 one time which at another is intolerable or very difficult. 
 Finally, work which is suitable for a strong man cannot 
 reasonably be required from a woman or a child. And, 
 in regard to children, great care should be taken not to 
 place them in workshops and factories until their bodies 
 and minds are sufficiently mature. For just as rough 
 weather destroys the buds of Spring, so too early an 
 experience of fife’s hard work blights the young promise 
 of a child’s powers, and makes any real education impos¬ 
 sible. Women, again, are not suited to certain trades; 
 for a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it 
 is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her 
 modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children 
 and the well-being of the family. As a general principle 
 it may be laid down that a workman ought to have 
 
138 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 leisure and rest in proportion to the wear and tear of his 
 strength j for the waste of strength must be repaired by 
 the cessation of work. 
 
 46. In all agreements between masters and work-people 
 there is always the condition, expressed or understood, 
 that there be allowed proper rest for soul and body. To 
 agree in any other sense would be against what is right 
 and just; for it can never be right or just to require on 
 the one side, or to promise on the other, the giving up of 
 those duties which a man owes to his G-od and to himself. 
 
 47. We now approach a subject of very great impor¬ 
 tance, and one on which, if extremes are to be avoided, 
 right ideas are absolutely necessary. Wages, we are 
 told, are fixed by free consent; and, therefore, the 
 employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done 
 his part and is not called upon for anything further. 
 The only way, it is said, in which injustice could happen 
 would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the 
 wages, or the workman would not complete the work 
 undertaken; when this happens the State should inter¬ 
 vene, to see that each obtains his own—but not under 
 any other circumstances. 
 
 48. This mode of reasoning is by no means convincing 
 to a fair-minded man, for there are important considera¬ 
 tions which it leaves out of view altogether. To labor is 
 to exert one’s self for the sake of procuring what is neces¬ 
 sary for the purposes of life, and most of all for self-pres¬ 
 ervation. In the sweat of thy brow thou slialt eat bread * 
 Therefore a man’s labor has two notes or characters. 
 First of all, it is personal , for the exertion of individual 
 power belongs to the individual who puts it forth, 
 employing this power for that personal profit for which 
 it was given. Secondly, man’s labor is necessary , for 
 
 * 
 
 Genesis iii. 19. 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 139 
 
 without the results of labor a man cannot live j and self- 
 conservation is a law of Nature, which it is wrong to 
 disobey. Now, if we were to consider labor merely so 
 far as it is personal , doubtless it would be within the 
 workman’s right to accept any rate of wages whatever • 
 for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so he is 
 free to accept a small remuneration or even none at all. 
 But this is a mere abstract supposition $ the labor of the 
 working-man is not only his personal attribute, but it is 
 necessary ; and this makes all the difference. The preser¬ 
 vation of life is the bounden duty of each and all, and to 
 fail therein is a crime. It follows that each one has a 
 right to procure what is required in order to live, and 
 the poor can procure it in no other way than by work 
 and wages. 
 
 49. Let it be granted then that, as a rule, workman 
 and employer should make free agreements, and in partic¬ 
 ular should freely agree as to wages; nevertheless, there 
 is a dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient 
 than any bargain between man and man, that the remu¬ 
 neration must be enough to support the wage-earner in 
 reasonable and frugal comfort. If through necessity or 
 fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder condi¬ 
 tions because an employer or a contractor will give him 
 no better, he is the victim of force and injustice. In 
 these and similar questions, however — such as, for 
 example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sani¬ 
 tary precautions to be observed in factories and work¬ 
 shops, etc.—in order to supersede undue interference on 
 the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, 
 and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse 
 be had to Societies or Boards such as We shall mention 
 presently, or to some other method of safeguarding the 
 interests of wage-earners; the State to be asked for 
 approval and protection. 
 
140 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 50. If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him 
 to maintain himself, his wife, and his children in reason¬ 
 able comfort, he will not find it difficult, if he is a sensible 
 man, to study economy; and he will not fail, by cutting 
 down expenses, to put by a little property; nature and 
 reason would urge him to this. We have seen that this 
 great Labor question cannot be solved except by assum¬ 
 ing as a principle that private ownership must be held 
 sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor 
 ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many of 
 the people as possible to become owners. 
 
 51. Many excellent results will follow from this; and 
 first of all, property will certainly become more equitably 
 divided. For the effect of civil change and revolution 
 has been to divide society into two widely differing 
 castes. On the one side there is the party which holds 
 the power because it holds the wealth; which has in its 
 grasp all labor and all trade, which manipulates for its 
 own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of 
 supply, and which is powerfully represented in the coun¬ 
 cils of the State itself. On the other side there is the 
 needy and powerless multitude, sore and suffering, and 
 always ready for disturbance. If working-people can be 
 encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the 
 land, the result will be that the gulf between vast wealth 
 and deep poverty will be bridged over, and the two 
 orders will be brought nearer together. Another conse¬ 
 quence will be the greater abundance of the fruits of the 
 earth. Men alwaj^s work harder and more readily when 
 they work on that which is their own; nay, they learn to 
 love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of 
 their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of 
 good things for themselves and those that are dear to 
 them. It is evident how such a spirit of willing labor 
 would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 141 
 
 of the community. And a third advantage would arise 
 from this: men would cling to the country in which they 
 were born; for no one would exchange his country for 
 a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of liv¬ 
 ing a tolerable and happy life. These three important 
 benefits, however, can only be expected on the condition 
 that a man’s means be not drained and exhausted by 
 excessive taxation. The right to possess private property 
 is from nature, not from man • and the State has only 
 the right to regulate its use in the interests of the public 
 good, but by no means to abolish it altogether. The 
 State is therefore unjust and cruel if, in the name of 
 taxation, it deprives the private owner of more than is 
 just. 
 
 52. In the last place—employers and workmen may 
 themselves effect much in the matter of which We treat, 
 by means of those institutions and organizations which 
 afford opportune assistance to those in need, and which 
 draw the two orders more closely together. Among 
 these may be enumerated: Societies for mutual help; 
 various foundations established by private persons for 
 providing for the workman, and for his widow or his 
 orphans, in sudden calamity, in sickness, and in the 
 event of death; and what are called u patronages” or 
 institutions for the care of boys and girls, for young 
 people and also for those of more mature age. 
 
 53. The most important of all are Workmen’s Asso¬ 
 ciations ; for these virtually include all the rest. History 
 attests what excellent results were effected by the Artifi¬ 
 cers’ Guilds of a former day. They were the means not 
 only of many advantages to the workmen, but in no 
 small degree of the advancement of art, as numerous 
 monuments remain to prove. Such associations should 
 be adapted to the requirements of the age in which we 
 live—an age of greater instruction, of different customs, 
 
142 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 and of more numerous requirements in daily life. It is 
 gratifying to know that there are actually in existence 
 not a few Societies of this nature, consisting either of 
 workmen alone or of workmen and employers together; 
 but it were greatly to be desired that they should mul¬ 
 tiply and become more effective. We have spoken of 
 them more than once; but it will be well to explain here 
 how much they are needed, to show that they exist by 
 their own right, and to enter into their organization and 
 their work. 
 
 54. The experience of his own weakness urges man to 
 call in help from without. We read in the pages of Holy 
 Writ: It is letter that two should he together than one ; for 
 they have the advantage of their society. If one fall he shall 
 be supported by the other. Woe to him that is alone, for 
 when he falletli he hath none to lift him up* And further: 
 A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city .f 
 It is this natural impulse which unites men in civil 
 society; and it is this also which makes them band 
 themselves together in associations of citizen with citizen; 
 associations which, it is true, cannot be called societies 
 in the complete sense of the word, but which are societies 
 nevertheless. 
 
 55. These lesser societies and the society which consti¬ 
 tutes the State differ in many things, because their imme¬ 
 diate purpose and end is different. Civil society exists 
 for the common good, and therefore is concerned with 
 the interests of all in general, and with individual inter¬ 
 ests in their due place aW proportion. Hence it is called 
 public society, because by its means, as St. Thomas of 
 Aquin says, Men communicate with one another in the 
 setting up of a commonwealth.\ But the societies which 
 are formed in the bosom of the State are called private, 
 
 * Ecclesiastes iv. 9, 10. t Proverbs xviii. 19. 
 
 t Contra impugnantcs Dei cultum et religioncm , Cap. II. 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 143 
 
 and justly so, because their immediate purpose is the 
 private advantage of the associates. Now a private 
 society , says St. Thomas again, is one which is formed for 
 the purpose of carrying out private business ; as when two or 
 three enter into a partnership ivith the view of trading in 
 conjunction * Particular societies, then, although they 
 exist within the State, and are each a part of the State, 
 nevertheless cannot be prohibited by the State absolutely 
 and as such. For to enter into u society ” of this kind is 
 the natural right of man j and the State must protect 
 natural rights, not destroy them 5 and if it forbids its 
 citizens to form associations, it contradicts the very prin¬ 
 ciple of its own existence; for both they and it exist in 
 virtue of the same principle, viz., the natural propensity 
 of man to live in society. 
 
 56. There are times, no doubt, when it is right that 
 the law should interfere to prevent association • as when 
 men join together for purposes which are evidently bad, 
 unjust, or dangerous to the State. In such cases the 
 public authority may justly forbid the formation of asso¬ 
 ciations, and may dissolve them when they already exist. 
 But every precaution should be taken not to violate the 
 rights of individuals and not to make unreasonable regu¬ 
 lations under the pretense of public benefit. For laws 
 oidy bind when they are in accordance with right reason, 
 and therefore with the eternal law of God.f 
 
 57. And here we are reminded of the Confraternities, 
 Societies, and Religious Orders, which have arisen by the 
 Church’s authority and the piety of the Christian people. 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
 t “Human law is law only in virtue of its accordance ivith right 
 reason: and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And 
 in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in 
 such case it is not law at all, but rather a species of violence.”— St. 
 Thomas of Aquin, Summa Theologica, la 2ae Q. xciii. Art. 3. 
 
144 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 The annals of every nation down to our own times testify 
 to what they have done for the human race. It is indis¬ 
 putable, on grounds of reason alone, that such associa¬ 
 tions, being perfectly blameless in their objects, have the 
 sanction of the law of nature. On their religious side 
 they rightly claim to be responsible to the Church alone. 
 The administrators of the State, therefore, have no rights 
 over them, nor can they claim any share in their manage¬ 
 ment; on the contrary, it is the State’s duty to respect 
 and cherish them, and, if necessary, to defend them from 
 attack. It is notorious that a very different course has 
 been followed, more especially in our own times. In 
 many places the State has laid violent hands on these 
 communities, and committed manifold injustice against 
 them $ it has placed them under the civil law, taken away 
 their rights as corporate bodies, and robbed them of their 
 property. In such property the Church had her rights, 
 each member of the body had his or her rights, and there 
 were also the rights of those who had founded or 
 endowed them for a definite purpose, and of those for 
 whose benefit and assistance they existed. Wherefore 
 We cannot refrain from complaining of such spoliation 
 as unjust and fraught with evil results; and with the 
 more reason because, at the very time when the law pro¬ 
 claims that association is free to all, We see that Catholic 
 societies, however peaceable and useful, are hindered in 
 every way, whilst the utmost freedom is given to men 
 whose objects are at once hurtful to Religion and dan¬ 
 gerous to the State. 
 
 58. Associations of every kind, and especially those of 
 working-men, are now far more common than formerly. 
 In regard to many of these there is no need at present to 
 inquire whence they spring, what are their objects, or 
 what means they use. But there is a good deal of evi¬ 
 dence which goes to prove that many of these societies 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 145 
 
 are in the hands of invisible leaders, and are managed on 
 principles far from compatible with Christianity and the 
 public well-being; and that they do their best to get into 
 their hands the whole field of labor and to force workmen 
 either to join them or to starve. Under these circum¬ 
 stances Christian workmen must do one of two things: 
 either join Associations in which their religion will be 
 exposed to peril, or form associations among themselves 
 —unite their forces and courageously shake off the yoke 
 of an unjust and intolerable oppression. No one who 
 does not wish to expose man’s chief good to extreme 
 danger will hesitate to say that the second alternative 
 must by all means be adopted. 
 
 59. Those Catholics are worthy of all praise—and 
 there are not a few—who, understanding what the times 
 require, have, by various enterprises and experiments, 
 endeavored to better the condition of the working-people 
 without any sacrifice of principle. They have taken up 
 the cause of the working-man, and have striven to make 
 both families and individuals better off; to infuse the 
 spirit of justice into the mutual relations of employer 
 and employed; to keep before the eyes of both classes 
 the precepts of duty and the laws of the Gospel—that 
 Gospel which, by inculcating self-restraint, keeps men 
 within the bounds of moderation, and tends to establish 
 harmony among the divergent interests and various 
 classes which compose the State. It is with such ends 
 in view that We see men of eminence meeting together 
 for discussion, for the promotion of united action, and 
 for practical work. Others, again, strive to unite work¬ 
 ing-people of various kinds into associations, help them 
 with their advice and their means, and enable them to 
 obtain honest and profitable work. The Bishops, on 
 their part, bestow their ready good will and support; 
 and with their approval and guidance many members of 
 
146 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 the clergy, both secular and regular, labor assiduously 
 on behalf of the spiritual and mental interests of the 
 members of Associations. And there are not wanting 
 Catholics possessed of affluence who have, as it were, cast 
 in their lot with the wage-earners, and who have spent 
 large sums in founding and widely spreading Benefit and 
 Insurance Societies; by means of which the working-man 
 may without difficulty acquire by his labor not only 
 many present advantages, but also the certainty of 
 honorable support in time to come. How much this 
 multiplied and earnest activity has benefited the com¬ 
 munity at large is too well known to require Us to dwell 
 upon it. We find in it the grounds of the most cheering 
 hope for the future; provided that the Associations We 
 have described continue to grow and spread, and are well 
 and wisely administered. Let the State watch over these 
 Societies of citizens united together in the exercise of 
 their right; but let it not thrust itself into their peculiar 
 concerns and their organization; for things move and live 
 by the soul within them, and they may be killed by the 
 grasp of a hand from without. 
 
 60. In order that an Association may be carried on 
 with unity of purpose and harmony of action, its organi¬ 
 zation and government must be firm and wise. All such 
 Societies, being free to exist, have the further right to 
 adopt such rules and organization as may best conduce 
 to the attainment of their objects. We do not deem it 
 possible to enter into definite details on the subject of 
 organization: this must depend on national character, on 
 practice and experience, on the nature and scope of the 
 work to be done, on the magnitude of the various trades 
 and emploj^ments, and on other circumstances of fact 
 and of time—all of which must be carefully weighed. 
 
 61. Speaking summarily, we may lay it down as a 
 general and perpetual law, that Workmen's Associations 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 147 
 
 should be so organized and governed as to furnish the 
 best and most suitable means for attaining what is aimed 
 at, that is to say, for helping each individual member to 
 better his condition to the utmost in body, mind, and 
 property. It is clear that they must pay special and 
 principal attention to piety and morality, and that their 
 internal discipline must be directed precisely by these 
 considerations; otherwise they entirely lose their special 
 character, and come to be very little better than those 
 Societies which take no account of Religion at all. What 
 advantage can it be to a Workman to obtain by means 
 of a Society all that he requires, and to endanger his 
 soul for want of spiritual food ? What doth it profit a 
 man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own 
 soul?* This, as Our Lord teaches, is the note or char¬ 
 acter that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen. 
 After all these things do the heathens seek. . . . Seek ye 
 first the Kingdom of God and His justice , and all these 
 things shall be added unto you.] Let our associations, 
 then, look first and before all to God; let religious 
 instruction have therein a foremost place, each one being 
 carefully taught what is his duty to God, what to believe, 
 what to hope for, and how to work out his salvation; 
 and let all be warned and fortified with especial solicitude 
 against wrong opinions and false teaching. Let the 
 working-man be urged and led to the worship of God, to 
 the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, 
 to the sanctification of Sundays and festivals. Let him 
 learn to reverence and love Holv Church, the common 
 Mother of us all; and so to obey the precepts and to 
 frequent the Sacraments of the Church, those Sacra¬ 
 ments being the means ordained by God for obtaining 
 forgiveness of sin and for leading a holy life. 
 
 * 
 
 St. Matthew xvi. 26. 
 
 t St. Matthew vi. 32, 33. 
 
148 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 62. The foundations of the organization being laid in 
 Religion, We next go on to determine the relations of the 
 members one to another, in order that they may live 
 together in concord and go on prosperously and success¬ 
 fully. The offices and charges of the Society should be 
 . distributed for the good of the Society itself, and in such 
 manner that difference in degree or position should not 
 interfere with unanimity and good will. Office-bearers 
 should be appointed with prudence and discretion, and 
 each one’s charge should be carefully marked out; thus 
 no member will suffer wrong. Let the common funds 
 be administered with the strictest honesty, in such way 
 that a member receive assistance in proportion to his 
 necessities. The rights and duties of employers should 
 be the subject of careful consideration as compared with 
 the rights and duties of the employed. If it should 
 happen that either a master or a workman deemed 
 himself injured, nothing would be more desirable than 
 that there should be a committee composed of honest and 
 capable men of the Association itself, whose duty it 
 should be, by the laws of the Association, to decide the 
 dispute. Among the purposes of a Society should be to 
 try to arrange for a continuous supply of work at all 
 times and seasons; and to create a fund from which the 
 members may be helped in their necessities, not only in 
 cases of accident, but also in sickness, old age, and mis¬ 
 fortune. 
 
 63. Such rules and regulations, if obeyed willingly by 
 all, will sufficiently insure the well-being of poor people; 
 whilst such mutual Associations among Catholics are 
 certain to be productive, in no small degree, of prosper¬ 
 ity to the State. It is not rash to conjecture the future 
 from the past. Age gives way to age, but the events of 
 one century are wonderfully like those of another; for 
 they are directed by the Providence of God, Who over- 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 149 
 
 rules the course of history in accordance with His pur¬ 
 poses in creating the race of man. We are told that it 
 was cast as a reproach on the Christians of the early 
 ages of the Church, that the greater number of them had 
 to live by begging or by labor. Yet, destitute as they 
 were of wealth and influence, they ended by winning 
 over to their side the favor of the rich and the good will 
 of the powerful. They showed themselves industrious, 
 laborious, and peaceful, men of justice, and, above all, 
 men of brotherly love. In the presence of such a life 
 and such an example prejudice disappeared, the tongue 
 of malevolence was silenced, and the lying traditions of 
 ancient superstition yielded little by little to Christian 
 truth. 
 
 64. At this moment the condition of the working popu¬ 
 lation is the question of the hour; and nothing can be of 
 higher interest to all classes of the State than that it 
 should be rightly and reasonably decided. But it will 
 be easy for Christian working-men to decide it right if 
 they form Associations, choose wise guides, and follow 
 the same path which with so much advantage to them¬ 
 selves and the commonwealth was trod by their fathers 
 before them. Prejudice, it is true, is mighty, and so is 
 the love of money; but if the sense of what is just and 
 right be not destroyed by depravity of heart, their 
 fellow-citizens are sure to be won over to a kindly feeling 
 toward men whom they see to be so industrious and so 
 modest, who so unmistakably prefer honest}^ to lucre, 
 and the sacredness of duty to all other considerations. 
 
 65. And another great advantage would result from 
 the state of things We are describing: there would be so 
 much more hope and possibility of recalling to a sense 
 of their duty those working-men who have either given 
 up their faith altogether, or whose lives are at variance 
 with its precepts. These men, in most cases, feel that 
 
150 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 they have been fooled by empty promises and deceived 
 by false appearances. They cannot but perceive that 
 their grasping employers too often treat them with the 
 greatest inhumanity and hardly care for them beyond 
 the profit their labor brings; and if they belong to an 
 Association, it is probably one in which there exists, in 
 place of charity and love, that intestine strife which 
 always accompanies nnresigned and irreligious poverty. 
 Broken in spirit and worn down in body, how many of 
 them would gladly free themselves from this galling 
 slavery! But human respect, or the dread of starvation, 
 makes them afraid to take the step. To such as these 
 Catholic Associations are of incalculable service, helping 
 them out of their difficulties, inviting them to companion¬ 
 ship, and receiving the repentant to a shelter in which 
 they may securely trust. 
 
 66 . We have now laid before you, Venerable Brethren, 
 
 who are the persons, and what are the means, by which 
 
 this most difficult question must be solved. Every one 
 
 must put his hand to the work which falls to his share, 
 
 and that at once and immediately, lest the evil which is 
 
 already so great may by delay become absolutely beyond 
 
 remedv. Those who rule the State must use the law and 
 «/ 
 
 the institutions of the country; masters and rich men 
 must remember their duty; the poor whose interests are 
 at stake, must make every lawful and proper effort; and 
 since Religion alone, as We said at the beginning, can 
 destroy the evil at its root, all men must be persuaded 
 that the primary thing needful is to return to real Chris¬ 
 tianity, in the absence of which all the plans and devices 
 of the wisest will be of little avail. 
 
 67. As far as regards the Church, its assistance will 
 never be wanting, be the time or the occasion what it 
 may; and it will intervene with the greater effect in 
 proportion as its liberty of action is the more unfettered : 
 
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 151 
 
 let this be carefully noted by those whose office it is to 
 provide for the public welfare. Every minister of holy 
 Religion must throw into the conflict all the energy of 
 his mind and all the strength of his endurance; with 
 your authority, Venerable Brethren, and by your 
 example, they must never cease to urge upon all men of 
 every class, upon the high as well as the lowly, the 
 Gospel doctrines of Christian life; by every means in 
 their power they must strive for the good of the people; 
 and above all they must earnestly cherish in themselves, 
 and try to arouse in others, Charity, the mistress and 
 queen of virtues. For the happy results we all long for 
 must be chiefly brought about by the plenteous outpour¬ 
 ing of Charity; of that true Christian Charity which is 
 the fulfilling of the whole Gospel law, which is always 
 ready to sacrifice itself for others’ sake, and which is 
 man’s surest antidote against worldly pride and immoder¬ 
 ate love of self; that Charity whose office is described 
 and whose Godlike features are drawn by the Apostle St. 
 Paul in these words: Charity is patient, is hind . . . 
 seeheth not her own . . . suffereth all things . . . endureth 
 all things * ^ 
 
 68 . On each one of you, Venerable Brethren, and on 
 vour Clergy and people, as an earnest of God’s mercy and 
 a mark of Our affection, We lovingly in the Lord bestow 
 the Apostolic Benediction. 
 
 Given at St. Peter’s, in Rome, the fifteenth day of May, 
 1891, the fourteenth year of Our Pontificate. 
 

 
 
 

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