Class 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSlir 
 
(H) 
 
 I(esress aii Slavery 
 
 VS. 
 
 progress and poyerty. 
 
 BY Tvl. C. BRIGGS. 
 
 The Single-Tax Theory Shown to be Unjust, 
 Impracticable, and Absurd. 
 
 
 Printed by Hunt & Eaton, 150 Fifth Ave., New York. 
 
Regress and Slavery 
 
 vs. 
 
 "Progress AND Poverty" 
 
 By M. C. BRIGGS 
 
 THE8INGLE-TAXTHE0RYSH0WN TO BE UNJUST, 
 IMPRACTICABLE, AND ABSURD 
 
 ( ' 'H! 8 1891' V> ' 
 
 NEW YORK -^ ^-^n.'V ^^- 
 
 PRINTED BY HUNT & EATON 
 150 Fifth Avenue 
 i8gi 
 
^'^,p 
 
 Copyright, 1891, by 
 
 M. c. BRiaas, 
 
 Petaluma, Cal. 
 
REGRESS AND SLAVERY 
 
 VS. 
 
 " PROGRESS AND POVERTY." 
 
 FIRST PAPER. 
 
 A BAD book by a bad man is bad. A bad 
 t"ok by c* good man is very bad. The known 
 virtues of the author yield sanction and sup- 
 port to his errors. 
 
 A good man may write a bad book because 
 of unconscious bias, or a tangential impulse 
 thrown into his early life, or the lack of special 
 knowledge lying outside of his large general 
 intelligence, in which case his mistakes are 
 dangerously commended by his own known 
 information and integrity. Goethe says, 
 " Nothing is more terrible than active igno- 
 rance." Had he added amiable and ^if the 
 reader can pardon the surface contradiction) 
 
4 Regress and Slavery 
 
 intelligent ignorance, the sentence would have 
 been philosophically complete. 
 
 Mr. Henry George has given to the world a 
 work entitled Progress and Poverty, It is 
 honest, labored, earnest, fallacious, audacious, 
 able in its way, impracticable, misleading, mis- 
 chievous. Hundreds have read it, and thou- 
 sands from them catch and echo fragments 
 and fancies, often to the detriment of the au- 
 thor, and always to the damagement of truth. 
 With perfect respect for the writer, I propose 
 to review the book, putting facts into the wit- 
 ness-box and trying the case before the court 
 of common sense. Facta sunt potentiora ver- 
 bis. 
 
 Progress creates new wants. New wants in- 
 duce new industries and new methods of old 
 industries. 
 
 That growth of science, art, invention, en- 
 lightenment, and civil order which we fondly 
 call progressive civilization, by adding effi- 
 ciency to labor and offering new opportunities 
 and incentives to invention, constantly de- 
 ranges existing relations and necessitates 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 5 
 
 redistribution of workers with hand and 
 brain. 
 
 Thus greatly improved agricultural and 
 mechanical machinery enables one to do to- 
 day as much as ten or twenty did in the 
 yesterdays. Consequently, nine or nineteen 
 are thrown out of employment, and the rela- 
 tive number of tillers of the soil or toilers in 
 the shop is correspondingly lessened. Many 
 of us not yet bowed with the weight of incum- 
 bent years recall those simpler times when a 
 large proportion of our people were small farm- 
 ers, and the hoe and the single plow, the hand- 
 rake and the sickle, the cradle and the mower's 
 scythe furnished food for man and beast. In 
 these better days farming, though not exempt 
 from the sweat of labor, is well-nigh exalted to 
 a fine art. But what is to be done with the 
 released hands ? 
 
 Wives and daughters younger than Sojourner 
 Truth remember when their grandmothers and 
 mothers seeded the cotton, carded and spun 
 the wool, drew flaxen threads from the whir- 
 ring wheel, and stitched home-made garments 
 
6 Regress and Slavery 
 
 for rosy girls and boys. These homely pur- 
 suits have given place to machinery and the 
 skill of experts. But where shall scope be 
 found for the disengaged ? 
 
 The tallow-dip yields to oil, oil to gas, and 
 gas to lightning ; naked floors hide their rude 
 simplicity under tapestry fit for kings, and the 
 honest old wash-tub surrenders at discretion 
 to an upstart laundry which returns your 
 soiled linen, washed, dried, and ironed in 
 thirteen minutes by the watch. The ox-cart 
 creaks no more, and the old-time stage-coach 
 stares abashed at the thundering trains which 
 run without weariness and puff without faint- 
 ing. The telegraph distances sunlight, and 
 men whisper their love by telephone to ears 
 half a thousand miles away. If life be meas- 
 ured by what is put into it, there are men living 
 this blessed morning a thousand years older 
 than Methuselah would have been if he had 
 haunted this mundane orb nine hundred and 
 sixty-nine years longer. 
 
 All these beneficent changes, each in its own 
 order and degree, bring temporary confusion. 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 7 
 
 They disturb the industrial balance and cause 
 class to jostle class, and make men think 
 themselves victims of human injustice when 
 they are only subjects of irrepealable and 
 uplifting law. 
 
 It is thus that progress works revolutions 
 which leave in their wake considerable numbers 
 of unemployed, bewildered, discouraged, and 
 possibly embittered men, who lend open ears 
 to the glib self-styled reformers, too often 
 without discriminating between the authentic 
 and the spurious. To this list of worthy per- 
 sons must be added far less deserving classes, 
 such as the supine and thriftless, the indifferent 
 and dishonest, the thousands impoverished by 
 their own vices, the alarming influx into our 
 cities of a low class of foreigners, Utopian 
 dreamers, impracticable sporadists to whom 
 every thing old is evil, political bummers, and 
 the general riffraff whose lives run all to ears 
 and stomach. Altogether they present a 
 formidable array, ever eager to hear of a patent 
 remedy for their ills, the more gorgeously 
 unreasonable the better. 
 
8 Regress and Slavery 
 
 To this immense miscellany of humanity 
 some recent authors have addressed them- 
 selves with flattering success. To the religiously 
 unsettled Robert Elsmere offers 
 
 " A balm for every wound, 
 A cordial for [their] fears." 
 
 To the industrially unsettled Bellamy's thin 
 but glittering dream and Henry George 's /V^^- 
 ress and Poverty are as water to a thirsty soul. 
 Let honesty shield me from suspicion of un- 
 amiability when I aver that the lucrative wel- 
 come given to these three most fallacious books 
 of the day is startling proof of the enfeeble- 
 ment of popular reason by the avalanche of 
 gushy, illogical, unphilosophical, half-lunatic 
 literature which stocks our public libraries and 
 burdens the center-tables of our homes. 
 
 Time is too valuable to be expended upon 
 the ideal commonwealths of earlier dates, such 
 as Plato's Republic, Moore's Utopia, Bacon's 
 New Altantis,^.nd Campanella's Civitas Solis. 
 Nor is it worth while to linger upon that 
 brilliant phantasmagoria, Looking Backward, 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 9 
 
 Progress and Poverty is an earnest work, written 
 by an honest man with serious intent. To that, 
 therefore, as containing all the tangible reasons 
 and no reasons of the wide and wild specula- 
 tion, this review will be confined. 
 
 Mr. George makes much account of certain 
 nice definitions, with respect to which he rather 
 boastfully differs from other writers on polit- 
 ical economy, such as the difference between 
 capital and wealth, paper money and wealth, 
 paper money and capital, capital and land, 
 interest and revenue, the exact meaning of 
 wages, the law of wages, wages and interest, 
 the source of wages, etc., etc. These defini- 
 tftns and distinctions are doubtless interesting 
 to verbalistic political economists, but, practi- 
 cally, most of them are of no more value to 
 economic life than an assumed difference be- 
 tween sunshine and sunbeams, air and atmos- 
 phere, water and protoxide of hydrogen. The 
 actual affairs of life move on as regularly and 
 lawfully without as with them, as is abundantly 
 proved by the fact that ninety-nine hundredths 
 of the best practical political economists know 
 
10 Regress and Slavery 
 
 nothing of the refined technics of the book. I 
 infer that Mr. George himself attaches no im- 
 portance to his improved terminology outside 
 of its imagined bearing upon the main idea. 
 His revised terms are expletives used to help 
 us up to the single-tax theory, which is the 
 soul and substance of the entire work. If the 
 book fails to bring its readers to an acceptance 
 of that theory he will regard it as a failure in- 
 deed. I shall be pardoned, therefore, if, like a 
 Yankee, I take a short cut and go directly to 
 the theory of exclusive land taxation, which 
 is the apple of his eye. If that can be shown 
 to be unjust, impracticable, and absurd, it would 
 be superfluous to examine in detail the argti- 
 ment by which it is supported. Robert Hall 
 said, ^' One need not eat a whole flitch of bacon 
 to learn whether it is tainted." 
 
vs. " Progress -AND Poverty." n 
 
 SECOND PAPER. 
 
 It is no more than just that one who ad- 
 vances a theory should be permitted to state it 
 for himself. After rejecting all the cures for 
 life's ills heretofore propounded Mr. George 
 gives what he confidently names " The True 
 Remedy." Beginning with the oft-repeated 
 proposition that " land is the source of all 
 wealth " (p. 45), and assuming that industrial 
 depressions, financial crises, poverty, igno- 
 rance, anarchy, degradation, vice, and crime 
 all result primarily, chiefly, and necessarily 
 from private ownership of land, he proceeds to 
 say the following things : 
 
 Page 295 : " We have traced the unequal 
 distribution of wealth, which is the curse and 
 menace of modern civilization, to the institu- 
 tion of private property in land. We have 
 seen that as long as this institution exists no 
 increase of productive power can permanently 
 
12 Regress and Slavery 
 
 benefit the masses, but, on the contrary, must 
 tend still further to depress their condition. 
 We have examined all the remedies short of 
 the abolition of private property in land 
 which are currently relied on or proposed 
 for the relief of poverty and the better dis- 
 tribution of wealth, and have found them all 
 inefficacious or impracticable. . . . To extir- 
 pate poverty, to make wages what justice 
 commands they should be — the full earnings 
 of the laborer — we must therefore substitute 
 for the individual ownership of land a com- 
 mon ownership. Nothing else will go to the 
 cause of the evil; in nothing else is there the 
 slightest hope. This, then, is the remedy for 
 the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth 
 apparent in modern civilization and for all 
 the evils which flow from it. We must make 
 land common property T 
 
 Page 303 : " Whatever may be said for the 
 institution of private property in land, it is 
 therefore plain that it cannot be defended on 
 the score of justice." 
 
 Page 321 : " Private ownership of land is the 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 13 
 
 nether millstone. Material progress is the 
 upper millstone. Between them, with an 
 increasing pressure, the working classes are 
 being ground." 
 
 Page 304: ''There is on earth no power 
 which can rightfully make a grant of private 
 ownership in land. . . . Let the parchments 
 be ever so many, or possession ever so long, 
 nature and justice can recognize no right in 
 one man to the possession and enjoyment of 
 land that is not equally the right of all his 
 fellows." 
 
 Page 305 : " The wide-spreading social evils 
 which every-where oppress men amid advanc- 
 ing civilization spring from a great primary 
 wrong — the appropriation, as the exclusive 
 property of some men, of the land on which 
 and from which all must live. From this 
 fundamental injustice flow all the injustices 
 which distort and endanger modern develop- 
 ment, which condemn the producer of wealth 
 to poverty and pamper the non-producer in 
 luxury, which rear the tenement-house with 
 the palace, plant the brothel behind the 
 
14 Regress and Slavery 
 
 church, and compel us to build prisons as we 
 open new schools." 
 
 Pages 307, 308: "To improvements such 
 an original title can be shown ; but it is a title 
 only to the improvements, and not to the land 
 itself. If I clear a forest, drain a swamp, or 
 fill a morass, all I can justly claim is the value 
 given by these exertions. They give me no 
 right to the land itself, no claim other than to 
 my equal share with every other member of 
 the community in the value which is added to 
 it by the growth of the community. But it 
 will be said there are improvements which 
 in time become indistinguishable from the 
 land itself. Very well ; then the title to the 
 improvements becomes blended with the title 
 to the land ; the individual right is lost in the 
 common right. . . . Thu^ the value of land 
 expresses in exact and tangible form the right 
 of the community in land held by an indi- 
 vidual ; and rent expresses the exact amount 
 which the individual should pay to the com- 
 munity to satisfy the equal rights of all other 
 members of the community. Thus if we con- 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 15 
 
 cede to priority of possession the undisturbed 
 use of land, confiscating rent for the benefit 
 of the community, we reconcile the fixity of 
 tenure which is necessary for improvement 
 with a full and complete recognition of the 
 equal rights of all to the use of land." 
 
 Mr. George claims that the government 
 might rightly and righteously assume title to 
 all land without a thought of compensating 
 those who have purchased it from that same 
 government. In opposing the plan of com- 
 pensation advocated by Herbert Spencer and 
 John Stuart Mill he delivers himself with 
 refreshing freedom. Thus on pages 326-328, 
 *' By the time the people of any such country 
 as England or the United States are suffi- 
 ciently aroused to the injustice and disad- 
 vantages of individual ownership of land to 
 induce them to attempt its nationalization, 
 they will be sufficiently aroused to nationalize 
 it in a much more direct and easy way than 
 by purchase. They will not trouble them- 
 selves about compensating the proprietors of 
 land. ... If the land of any country belongs 
 
1 6 Regress and Slavery 
 
 to the people of that country, what right, in 
 morality and justice, have the individuals 
 called land-owners to the rent ? . . . Why not 
 make short work of the matter anyhow?" 
 
 Mr. George shows occasional symptoms of a 
 fear that the " shock " of so unique a revolution 
 might prove inconveniently severe. Read him 
 on pages 362-364: 
 
 " We have weighed every objection, and 
 seen that neither on the ground of equity nor 
 expediency is there any thing to deter us 
 from making the land common property by 
 confiscation. But the question of method re- 
 mains. We should satisfy the laws of justice, 
 we should meet all economic requirements by 
 at one stroke abolishing all private titles, de- 
 claring all land public property, and letting it 
 out to the highest bidder in lots to suit, under 
 such conditions as would sacredly guard the 
 private right to improvements. . . . But such 
 a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not seem 
 to me the best. Or, rather, I propose to 
 accomplish the same thing in a simpler, easier, 
 and quieter way than that of formally confis- 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 17 
 
 eating all the land and formally letting it out 
 to the highest bidder. To do that would 
 involve a needless shock to present customs 
 and habits of thought, which is to be avoided. 
 To do that would involve a needless exten- 
 sion of governmental machinery, which is to 
 be avoided. ... I do not propose either to 
 purchase or to confiscate private property in 
 land. The first would be unjust, the second 
 needless. Let the individuals who now hold 
 it still retain, if they want to, possession of 
 what they are pleased to call their land. Let 
 them continue to call it their land. Let them 
 buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. 
 We may safely leave them the shell if we take 
 ^ the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate the 
 land ; it is only necessary to confiscate rent. . . . 
 We already take some rent in taxation. We 
 have only to make some changes in our mode 
 of taxation to take it all. What I therefore 
 propose is the simple yet sovereign remedy, 
 which is to raise wages, increase the earnings 
 of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish pov- 
 erty, give lucrative employment to whoever 
 2 
 
1 8 Regress and Slavery 
 
 wishes it, afford free scope to human powers, 
 lessen crime, elevate morals and taste and 
 intelligence, purify government, and carry civ- 
 ilization to yet nobler heights, is — to appro- 
 priate rent by taxation. In this way the State 
 may become the universal landlord without 
 calling herself so, and without assuming a sin- 
 gle new function. In form the ownership of 
 land would remain as now. No owner of land 
 need be dispossessed, and no restriction need 
 be placed upon the amount of land any one 
 could hold. For rent being taken by the 
 State in taxes, land, no matter in whose name 
 it stood, would be really common property, 
 and every member of the community would 
 participate in the advantages of its ownership. 
 Now, as the taxation of rent or land values 
 must necessarily be increased just as we abol- 
 ish other taxes, we may put the proposition 
 into practical form by proposing to abolish all 
 taxes save that upon land^ 
 
 Such is the theory of the '' single tax." 
 The State must own the land, the land must 
 pay its full rental value in taxes to the '^ com- 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 19 
 
 munity" or ''the State," all other forms of 
 wealth to remain forever untaxed. 
 
 If the gifted author would kindly tell us 
 whom this majestic " we " represents — what 
 parties are comprehended under that capa- 
 cious pronoun which vaults li'ghtly over ob- 
 stacles which thinking men must see to be 
 insuperable under our form of government, and 
 deprecable and despicable under any form, he 
 would do us a kindness. Community, too, as 
 used by him, needs a severer definition. If 
 ** we " are to take the ''kernel," precisely 
 what members of the national family are to 
 enjoy that luxury ? The " we " that takes 
 some, and modestly proposes to take all, ought 
 to disclothe itself of all ambiguity, and give 
 the poor " hayseeds " a fair look at the mouth 
 which is to swallow them. 
 
 Soberly, so full a statement of the single-tax 
 fanc}^ has been given, first, that the author 
 may be justly dealt with ; second, that all 
 may know what it is ; third, that it may re- 
 fute itself. 
 
20 Regress and Slavery 
 
 THIRD PAPER. 
 
 In the problem under view there are so many 
 elements which, for the sake of such readers as 
 have not found special occasion to think on such 
 themes, it may be profitable to set in order. 
 
 I, One of the broad fallacies which under- 
 gird the scheme of Progress and Poverty is 
 the assumption that wealth inheres in and 
 springs spontaneously from the land. 
 
 There is no more wealth in land itself and 
 alone than in electricity, gravitation, or moon- 
 light. Wealth, in all its comforts, comple- 
 ments, and combinations, shapes and shades, 
 moods and tenses, is the product of thought- 
 directed energy. It is a product of mind. In 
 any and every sense above the nakedest ani- 
 mal existence, in regions where spontaneous 
 growths fill human stomachs — if even there an 
 exception should be conceded — wealth is the 
 product of thinking toilfully. 
 
vs. *' Progress and Poverty." 21 
 
 Thus two men enter alike on lands of equal 
 fertility, with equal strength and opportunities. 
 One grows rich and influential ; the other re- 
 mains as poor as the turkey which tradition 
 declares followed Job through his fallen fort- 
 unes. Stanley traversed millions of acres of 
 land as fat as Eden, clothed with forests of 
 valuable timber, beautified by crystal streams, 
 in sight of mountains rich in minerals, yet 
 trodden for indefinite ages by naked and com- 
 fortless savages. Digger Indians owned the 
 rivers and mountains of California long enough 
 before keener eyes detected the witching glit- 
 ter that set the world agog. The rich and the 
 poor, the thrifty and the thriftless, the moral 
 and the impure, the noble and the ignoble, are 
 found side by side among owners and tillers 
 of the soil. 
 
 2. The book appears to ignore the vital sim- 
 ilarity in fundamental conditions between the 
 products of commerce and mechanical skill and 
 the fruits of agricultural and horticultural toil. 
 
 Two young men set out in life together. 
 One chooses mechanics and the other takes 
 
22 Regress and Slavery 
 
 to farm life. If one lounges idly in his shop, 
 and the other will not plow by reason of the 
 cold, both will beg in harvest and have noth- 
 ing. But let the one improve his skill and 
 ply his tools, and the other clear, fence, under- 
 drain, plow, sow, reap, and, by exchanges 
 mutually profitable, both will have bread 
 enough and to spare. Where lies the funda- 
 mental difference between them, as to the 
 rightfulness of private ownership ? One builds 
 a shop and makes tables, say. Practically the 
 trade is of no value without the shop, the shop 
 is of no value without material and tools, the 
 tools and material are of no value without in- 
 dustrial use. The other buys honest acres 
 from " the State," erects buildings, constructs 
 fences, purchases implements. Practically the 
 land is valueless without fences and buildings, 
 fences and buildings are valueless without im- 
 plements, implements are valueless without 
 industrial use. Which of the two has the su- 
 perior right to the safety and satisfaction of 
 private ownership ? The results in both cases 
 are products of thoughtful industry. 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 23 
 
 *^ No, no," says Progress and Poverty. " The 
 mechanic makes his wealth ; the farmer's 
 grows.'' Did the mechanic make the timber 
 and the iron, and the marble and the brass, 
 and the glue-stock and the coal ? " No, but 
 he adapted the material to convenient uses." 
 Exactly ; and how came -the farmer's crops ? 
 Did they grow up some dark morn like Topsy, 
 all of themselves ? Which employed most and 
 hardest toil? Between the two the farmer 
 has had more work and more care. Is it, 
 then, in their mutual dependency to be a com- 
 mon ownership throughout? " O, never," 
 says Progress and Poverty. " The farmer has no 
 right or partnership interest in the mechanic's 
 shop and tools and tables; but the mechanic 
 has as much and as many rights in the farm- 
 er's farm as the farmer himself has." 
 
 But the improvements belong to the farmer. 
 The building, the hedges, the subsoiling, the 
 under-drainage, the cellars, the wells, the or- 
 chards, the vineyards, the asparagus-beds, the 
 seeded timothy meadows and wide clover 
 fields belong to John the farmer, and Jim the 
 
24 Regress and Slavery 
 
 mechanic is so far shut out by undisputed 
 private ownership. 
 
 Wrong again. If " there are improvements 
 which in time become indistinguishable (or in- 
 separable) from the land, . . . then the title 
 to the improvements becomes blended with the 
 title to the land ; the individual right is lost in 
 the common right." And John, after his years of 
 hard labor and weary waiting, must try to con- 
 sole himself with the reflection that he and 
 the laziest tramp alike have a sixty-five mill- 
 ionth interest in the '' common ownership " of 
 that farm and its " indistinguishable '' improve- 
 ments. He will surely be content with that ! 
 - Mr. George would urge that the justice of 
 this one-sided arrangement arises from the 
 fact that it is the growth of community that 
 adds value to land, whether the land be used 
 to supply the sumptuary market or for city 
 lots ; and therefore the community has a right 
 to the increase of value dependent on the 
 growth of population. 
 
 But is land the only thing the value of which 
 is enhanced by the increase of inhabitants ? 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 25 
 
 Let us see. A man builds a store, shop, mill, 
 elevator, railroad, theater, school-house, upon 
 an uninhabited plain. What is the value of 
 these products of labor? They are worthless. 
 The land, being less destructible and more 
 capable of yielding food to the owner, is less 
 dependent than other species of property upon 
 community. Indeed, the great increase of 
 value of land in a populous city results from 
 the fact that population so greatly enhances 
 the value of stores, offices, shops, mills, banks, 
 theaters, etc., erected upon it. The land 
 shares but moderately and by consequence in 
 the greatly improved opportunities brought to 
 commerce, manufacture, exchange, and art, by 
 large and contiguous numbers of patrons. So 
 great are these advantages to multiform enter- 
 prises that men find it more profitable to rent 
 the land than to purchase it, as capital brings 
 quicker and larger returns invested in trade 
 than in the ground on which the palaces of 
 trade stand. A lot on Broadway, New York, 
 is worth three thousand dollars a front foot, 
 and rents for fifty thousand a year ; but an 
 
26 Regress and Slavery 
 
 eight-story building on it accommodates a 
 
 / business which yields an income of a million 
 a year. Where then is the justice of taxing 
 the landlord to pay for governmental protec- 
 tion and opportunities to enrich the lessee? 
 And where is the equity of wresting from 
 the lot-owner the full rental value while the 
 
 ' man who grows rich upon it pays nothing?; 
 Thus the unlucky owner is robbed both of 
 ownership and of rent, and left with only 
 the care of an estate, which he must manage 
 without so much as the compensation of a 
 
 , hireling. 
 
 \ '' But you do not get the whole case," says 
 Progress mtd Poverty. "Let the individuals 
 who hold it still retain, if they want to, pos- 
 session of what they are pleased to call their 
 land. Let them buy and sell and bequeath 
 and devise it," and of course cultivate and use 
 it in their own way. 
 
 What now ! Has the snake swallowed it- 
 self? Has the prudence which seeks to avoid 
 ** shocks " taken the spinal marrow out of 
 the ''True Remedy?" If no limit is to be 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 27 
 
 set to the area which one may hold, and the 
 holder may buy, sell, bequeath, and devise, 
 where is the relief to the laboring classes? 
 Tax the holder the full rental value, and you 
 force upon him the strongest motive to cut 
 down the wages of his hired help. Either he 
 must be content to toil for a mere and pre- 
 carious living — precarious because of the un- 
 certainty of seasons, crops, and markets — or 
 abandon the land to the grasp and greed of a 
 robber government, or reduce the expense of 
 production to the lowest possible figure. Thus 
 the *' True Remedy " reaches a lame and im- 
 potent conclusion which retains all the possible 
 evils of private ownership, with a greatly ag- 
 gravated incentive to oppress the hireling in 
 his wages. How such an arrangement is to 
 " increase wages, extirpate pauperism, abolish 
 poverty, lessen crime, elevate morals, purify 
 government, and carry civilization to yet no- 
 bler heights," is one of the puzzles which must 
 be relegated to minds of abnormal cast. To 
 carry such a scheme into effect it would be 
 necessary to extend the functions of the con- 
 
28 Regress and Slavery 
 
 templated paternal government to all the mi- 
 nutiae of tillage and land management, and 
 appoint a supervising and enforcing func- 
 tionary for every hundred or two of hus- 
 bandmen. 
 
vs. '* Progress and Poverty." 29 
 
 FOURTH PAPER. 
 
 3. In advocating his scheme of exclusive 
 land taxation Mr. George appears strangely in- 
 cognizant of the ground-reasons by which taxa- 
 tion must be justified. To maintain order, 
 protect the individual in his person, pursuits, 
 and possessions, and provide public institu- 
 tions for the general good are the objects of 
 government and the prime conditions of pro- 
 gressive civilization. To maintain government 
 for such ends all right-minded citizens are 
 willing to be equitably taxed. They regard 
 money paid in reasonable taxes as a wise and 
 profitable investment. Even a bad govern- 
 ment is better than none, and a good one is a 
 priceless boon to all who live peacefully under 
 its sway. And when a government provides 
 in its structural plan peaceable remedies, such 
 as free speech, a free press, a free forum, a 
 free pulpit, and a free ballot, for real or fancied 
 
30 Regress and Slavery 
 
 evils, an attempt at violent and treasonable 
 overthrow is beyond the reach of possible ex- 
 tenuation. To tax a people in a just way for 
 the maintenance of a just and wholesome rep- 
 resentative government is a policy so obviously 
 wise and necessary that dissidents imperil their 
 reputation for candor and common sense by de- 
 claiming against it. But the tax must be levied 
 upon all who need protection. The land- 
 owner needs it to guarantee and defend his 
 title and assure him the peaceable enjoyment 
 of the fruits of his toil. Very quickly does 
 feeble and capricious government show itself 
 in neglected, half-tilled, and abandoned farms. 
 In parts of Central America I have seen miles 
 on miles of abandoned ranches. There are the 
 cactus hedges, the long avenues of stately 
 flowering trees, and the hacienda buildings 
 in various stages of decay, where the soil 
 is exhaustlessly fertile and the fructifying 
 sun quickens every seed committed to the 
 ground. Bad government is the explana- 
 tion. The people are thriftless because un- 
 confident. Enterprise is discouraged, and 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 31 
 
 uncertainty hangs like a pall upon the spirits 
 of men. 
 
 But if the land-owner needs the strong arm 
 of the State, the merchant, the manufacturer, 
 the banker, the ship-master need it still more. 
 Mr. George will not consent to call bonds and 
 greenbacks capital; but, name as you will, 
 they shrink to nothingness under a constantly 
 alarming prospect of revolution. Had our 
 " erring brothers '* of the South achieved a 
 final triumph our bonds would have been as 
 worthless as Confederate notes are to-day. 
 And all other kinds of wealth and capital 
 shrink and shrivel under the same law. Why 
 then should the land-owner pay for the pro- 
 tection of the ship-master, merchant, manu- 
 facturer, broker, bond-holder? Even-handed 
 justice requires that all who are assured by 
 and dependent on civil stability and protection 
 should help to pay for them. 
 
 Land-owners are at this date bending under 
 burdens which threaten to crush them. Agri- 
 culture is depressed. Owners of city lots — 
 less affected than tillers — in our new cities are 
 
32 Regress and Slavery 
 
 struggling under heavy taxes for improve- 
 ments. The single-tax scheme would leave 
 them all helplessly and hopelessly poor. Land- 
 ownership or occupancy would be shunned as 
 an irritating and profitless thing. All other 
 ventures and investments would be crowded 
 to suffocation. Production would fall below 
 the demands of consumption, and starvation 
 look in at all doors, unless government should 
 be clothed with power to compel a sufficient 
 number, like serfs of the soil, to plow and 
 sow that non-producers might eat and live. 
 
 If the needs of individual life and private 
 business justify general taxation there are 
 public institutions, such as common schools, 
 highways, bridges, court-houses, asylums, 
 which are of contingent interest to every 
 member of the body politic, and yet can be 
 supported only by governmental outlay of funds 
 supplied by taxation. Interests so common 
 imply a common obligation. The amount 
 levied under a fair system to support a good 
 government is inconsiderable compared with 
 the advantages it affords. 
 
vs. *' PPxOgress and Poverty." 33 
 
 4, Progress and Poverty wholly ignores a 
 most important and beneficent fact in the in- 
 dustrial problem, namely, That the causes 
 which lesse7t the relative demand for hands in 
 one industry are features of a wide general 
 sweep of progress which creates new industries 
 faster than the old are overstocked or supplanted. 
 
 Thus, if petroleum displaces whale-oil, the 
 petroleum industry needs more men than are 
 dismissed from the whalers. If gas dims the 
 light of petroleum, it also offers employment 
 compensative of the loss in the superseded 
 work. Electricity in its turn supersedes gas, 
 and thousands find use for themselves in that 
 ever-growing necessity of economic life. In- 
 creasing wealth opens doors of profitable op- 
 portunity for improved architecture and dec- 
 orative art. A log-cabin for the pioneer could 
 be built by five men in a day or two. The 
 affluent " settler " moves out of the log-house 
 into a building which requires ten men for 
 ten months in the building, and possibly as 
 many more to furnish and decorate. Afflu- 
 ence and taste must needs be gratified with 
 
34 Regress and Slavery 
 
 paintings, statuary, and music, and the ground, 
 erst adorned with corn and cabbages, now 
 blushes with every shape and shade of beauty 
 under the gardener's skill. These are a few near- 
 at-hand samples of an evolution which is leaving 
 some old occupations to history and scaring 
 men with visions of starvation. Yet as one door 
 is shut another and wider opens. There is 
 always work enough for the earnest, the skilled, 
 and the faithful. Labor leagues, which hand- 
 icap the skilled and conscientious with the 
 embarrassing weight of the unskilled, unconsci- 
 entious, and dissipated, embarrass the situation, 
 and time is needed to adjust the new conditions 
 and correlations of the economic trend ; but the 
 law holds that authentic progress creates more 
 de^nand than it extinguishes. Who sighs for a 
 return to the sickle and hoe, the hand-rake and 
 flail, the distaff and spinning-wheel, the ox-cart 
 and stage-coach ? If there are any outside the 
 lunatic asylum who would annihilate the fruits 
 of inventive genius and relegate to desuetude 
 the splendid tokens of material advancement, 
 let them speak, for them only have I offended. 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 35 
 
 FIFTH PAPER. 
 
 5. The choice of occupations is voluntary ^ and 
 regulated by adaptation^ taste ^ occasion^ and pros- 
 pective profits. 
 
 Progress and Poverty appears to assume that 
 men are forced into uncomfortable and un- 
 profitable employments by the fact that they 
 have not access to land. As to this country, 
 the assumption is gratuitous and grossly un- 
 true. Our cities are thronged — I was near 
 saying infested — with youths from country 
 homes who seek more genteel and lucrative 
 occupations than farming. The professions 
 are crowded for similar reasons. It is purely 
 a matter of choice. Not a few who are able 
 to command means prefer to invest them in 
 merchandise, manufactures, stocks, ships, or 
 inventions, rather than in land. The slow 
 gains and callous hands of tillage fail to capti- 
 vate the youthful fancy ; nor are city lots sure 
 
36 Regress and Slavery 
 
 enough of rapid appreciation to encourage out- 
 lay in that direction. Thousands in the south- 
 ern counties of CaHfornia are learning the 
 bitter lesson that land speculations and booms 
 are sometimes boomerangs. Many would 
 snatch eagerly at an opportunity to get back 
 half the cost of their bepraised acres. 
 
 Possibly a farmer may be found whose five 
 or more sons elect farming as their life-work ; 
 but such a case would be exceptional even in 
 the newer parts of the national domain. The 
 rule runs the other way. 
 
 6. Dissipation, ignorance, poverty, and vice 
 are not effects of the private owiterskip of land. 
 The opposite assumption, which runs through 
 and through Progress and Poverty, reverses the 
 verdict of history and audaciously belies candid 
 observation. The very reverse of the propo- 
 sition is so nakedly true that one wonders at 
 the fatuity which dares to call it in question. 
 
 I mean to say that dissipation, voluntary 
 ignorance, idleness, and vice prevent men from 
 owning land or prospering in any thing. Look 
 in at the doors of saloons, visit the resorts of 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 37 
 
 Sabbath-breakers, count the hangers about in 
 city and country-side, and see if you can make 
 yourself believe that these loafers and bummers, 
 these bloated and vicious, are all poor fellows 
 who, but for the fact that Smith and Brown 
 worked, saved, and bought land, would have 
 been as wise as sages and as virtuous as saints ! 
 The naked petitio of the book is entitled to 
 notice only because of its earnest, endless, and 
 audacious iteration. 
 
 If all the land were owned under the exclu- 
 sive tax-scheme the idle could rent it in par- 
 cels and be much better off than the owners, 
 for while, by Mr. George's plan, the full rental 
 value would go to the State, the owner, besides 
 getting nothing, would have the care and cost 
 of repairs and general management. 
 
 It is not true that in this country there is a 
 scarcity of land. 
 
 Improved hill farms in New Hampshire and 
 Vermont are selling for a fraction of the cost 
 of the improvements. 
 
 In 1886-88 the patents issued for govern- 
 ment lands averaged thirty thousand a year. 
 
38 Regress and Slavery 
 
 In 1889 more than seventy thousand were 
 issued, and the entries kept pace with the 
 patents. 
 
 Up to last June one half of the two Dakotas 
 was unentered. In several other States settle- 
 ments are outrunning government surveys. 
 
 In Idaho only about one seventh of the 
 State is surveyed. 
 
 Vast tracts are being purchased from the 
 Indians. 
 
 More than twenty million acres, forfeited by 
 railroad corporations, are suspended, and only 
 await congressional action to open them to 
 settlement. 
 
 There are so-called desert lands, only need- 
 ing practicable irrigation, enough in extent to 
 support the entire present population of our 
 country. 
 
 A large part of the land now under private 
 ownership is not utilized, and a very small part 
 of the cultivated tracts is brought up to its 
 highest capacity. 
 
 In the Southern and South-western States are 
 extensive and fertile areas held at low prices. 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 39 
 
 I confidently submit that such facts outweigh 
 the too hasty generalizations of the esteemed 
 author of Progress and Poverty. The resources 
 of the United States and Territories are ample 
 to feed, house, and clothe the entire present 
 population of the planet, and all the'Old World 
 countries have yet open space ; and South 
 America has immense stretches of fertile soil 
 in its virgin state eagerly inviting landless mill- 
 ions to come and till and eat. Mexico, our 
 next-door neighbor, is lonely for inhabitants 
 and offers millions of acres for a bagatelle. 
 
 Mr. George's stand-point appears always to 
 be within eye-shot of the landed estates of in- 
 sular and continental Europe, which were never 
 bought nor earned, but given by caprice to the 
 tools and favorites of royalty and preserved 
 intact by laws of primogeniture and entail. 
 True, that which was wrong at the beginning 
 cannot be made right by lapse of time. Yet 
 his patent remedy, with its fatal self-negation, 
 would afford no relief to the poor even there. 
 In this country conditions are wholly different. 
 Every acre has been bought of government, 
 
40 Regress and Slavery 
 
 earned by reclamation and other improvements, 
 or given in small tracts for military service. 
 Large estates, with no laws of primogeniture 
 and entail to preserve them, are broken up in 
 the second and third generation. The sons of 
 the rich become poor and the sons of the poor 
 rich. The wheel of fortune is evermore carry- 
 ing up and carrying down. 
 
 Even in the old and densely peopled divis- 
 ions of the earth there is room. I borrow 
 statistics from Progress and Poverty, sure that 
 the author will not dispute his own figures. 
 On page loi we have these figures: "Accord- 
 ing to the estimates of MM. Behm and Wagner 
 the population of India is but 132 to the square 
 mile, and that of China 119, whereas Saxony 
 has 442, England 422, the Netherlands 291, 
 Italy 234, and Japan 233. There are thus in 
 both countries [India and China] large areas 
 unused or not fully used ; but even in their 
 more densely populated districts there can be 
 no doubt that either could maintain a much 
 greater population in a much higher degree of 
 comfort, for in both countries is labor applied 
 
vs. '* Progress and Poverty." 41 
 
 to production in the rudest and most inefficient 
 way, and in both countries great natural re- 
 sources are wholly neglected." 
 
 One of the large islands of Japan is very 
 thinly inhabited. Africa, an old land, is still 
 virgin and offers immense opportunities to 
 enterprise and philanthropy. Stanley estimates 
 that every one of the seven millions of our 
 colored people could find a good-sized farm in 
 the wide, rich, well-watered, salubrious wilder- 
 ness which he traversed between the eastern 
 borders of the Congo Free State and the Albert 
 Nyanza. Frenchmen are now proving that 
 even Sahara can be made to blossom as the 
 rose. 
 
 Such facts as these, I again submit, ought to 
 relieve any sense of suffocation we may have 
 experienced from a fancied want of room. 
 Facts are stronger than fancies. 
 
42 Regress and Slavery 
 
 SIXTH PAPER. 
 
 7. Mr. George makes no account of the vital 
 hearing zvhich different types of government must 
 have on the practicability of stick a scheme as he 
 advocates. 
 
 In a severe analysis there are but three kinds 
 of government — namely, kinghood, priesthood, 
 and manhood. All shapes and shades between 
 are of the nature of varieties, not species. 
 Each type grows from some germinant idea, 
 some commanding seed-thought, and builds 
 about the central principle institutions suited 
 to its nature. Hence what is practicable under 
 one form may prove wholly impracticable and 
 disruptive under another. 
 
 The American government is of the manhood 
 sort. It is ''of the people, by the people, for 
 the people," All legislation, all exhibitions of 
 executive force, all armaments, are not for 
 the prince or the priest, but for the man. 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 43 
 
 Hence the wide distribution of the suffrage, 
 the freedom of press, pulpit, and forum, the 
 common-school provision for universal educa- 
 tion, the rule of majorities, and, in a word, the 
 impressive and unquestioned recognition of a 
 divine and universal endowment of " inalien- 
 able rights, among which are life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness." 
 
 "The State is all of us." The fundamental 
 government is all of us. Original power, under 
 God, lodges with the people. Functional gov- 
 ernment, consisting of presidents, congresses, 
 courts, constabulary, is a thing of convenience, 
 a medium through which the fundamental 
 government administers by the authority and 
 will of the people. It can never rise above the 
 source of its authority, nor for any considerable 
 length of time sink below it. The technical 
 government, therefore, in its structural plan 
 and actual working, is a true index of the 
 average intelligence and ethical stamina of the 
 millions. 
 
 Under such a system there must exist great 
 freedom of individual choice. Men choose 
 
44 Regress and Slavery 
 
 their callings, politics, and parties. They 
 cannot be assigned and classified, transferred 
 by sale or caprice of masterhood, located and 
 employed like serfs of the soil, or impressed 
 into service for wars of conquest, or shipped in 
 the national navy nolens volens. What, there- 
 fore, might be done in the way of raising discrim- 
 inating taxes under a tyranny can never be 
 accomplished here without revolution, blood- 
 shed, and the annihilation of the freedom in 
 which we glory. 
 
 There are governmental methods so narrow, 
 so personal, so absolute in the power of life and 
 death, as to suggest the possibility of the con- 
 tinued and adequate cultivation of the soil under 
 the single-tax idea. Mr. George (pages 368, 
 369) states very mixedly and with capricious 
 application a sound principle of governmental 
 economy. Speaking of production, he says: 
 *' This checking of production is, in a greater 
 or less degree, characteristic of most of the 
 taxes by which the revenues of modern govern- 
 ments are raised. All taxes upon manufactures, 
 all taxes upon commerce, all taxes upon capital. 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 45 
 
 all taxes upon improvements, are of this kind. 
 Their tendency is the same as that of Mo- 
 hammed All's tax on date-trees, though their 
 effect may not be so clearly seen. All such 
 taxes have a tendency to reduce production of 
 wealth, and should, therefore, never be resorted 
 to when it is possible to raise money by taxes 
 which do not check production." 
 
 More clearly stated and more justly applied, 
 the principle is this : Unequal and oppressive 
 taxation tends to diminish production, and, 
 especially with respect to useful and necessary 
 products, will never be resorted to by a wise 
 and just government. 
 
 Let us see how this principle applies to the 
 products which labor brings forth from the 
 soil. Here, again, I will consent to be indebted 
 to Mr. George for facts which refute his 
 favorite theory. Thus on pages 101-103 he 
 quotes with approval and comments with con- 
 fidence as follows: 
 
 " In India from time immemorial the work- 
 ing classes have been ground down by exac- 
 tions and oppressions into a condition of 
 
46 Regress and Slavery 
 
 hopeless and helpless degradation. For ages 
 and ages the cultivator of the soil has es- 
 teemed himself happy if, of his produce, 
 the extortion of the strong hand left him 
 enough to support life and furnish seed. 
 Capital could nowhere be safely accumulated 
 or to any considerable extent be used to assist 
 production. Is it not clear that this tyranny 
 and insecurity have produced the want and 
 starvation of India ; and not, as according to 
 Buckle, the pressure of population upon sub- 
 sistence that has produced the want, and the 
 want the tyranny? Says the Rev. William 
 Tennant, a chaplain in the service of the East 
 India Company, writing in 1796, two years be- 
 fore the publication of the Essay on Population : 
 ' When we reflect upon the great fertility of 
 Hindustan it is amazing to consider the fre- 
 quency of famine. It is evidently not owing 
 to any sterility of soil or climate ; the evil 
 must be traced to some political cause, and it 
 requires but little penetration to discover it in 
 the avarice and extortion of the various gov- 
 ernments. The great spur to industry, that 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty/* 47 
 
 of security, is taken away. Hence no man 
 raises more grain than is barely sufficient for 
 himself, and the first unfavorable season pro- 
 duces famine. The Mogul government at no 
 period offered full security to the prince, still 
 less to his vassals, and to the peasants the 
 most scanty protection of all. It was a con- 
 tinual tissue of violence and insurrection, 
 treachery and punishment, under which neither 
 commerce nor arts could prosper, nor agri- 
 culture assume the appearance of a system. . . . 
 The rents to government w^ere, and, where 
 natives rule, still are, levied twice a year by a 
 merciless banditti under the semblance of an 
 army, who wantonly destroy or carry off what- 
 ever part of the produce may satisfy their 
 caprice or satiate their avidity.' . . . 
 
 " To this merciless rapacity, which would 
 have produced want and famine were the pop- 
 ulation but one to a square mile, and the land 
 a garden of Eden, succeeded, in the first era of 
 British rule in India, as merciless a rapacity 
 backed by a far more irresistible power. . . . 
 
 " Upon horrors that Macaulay thus but 
 
48 Regress and Slavery 
 
 touches, the vivid eloquence of Burke throws a 
 stronger Hght : * Whole districts surrendered to 
 the unrestrained cupidity of the worst of human 
 kind, poverty-stricken peasants fiendishly tort- 
 ured to compel them to give up their little 
 hoards, and once populous tracts turned into 
 deserts.' " 
 
 On page 105 Mr. George ingenuously adds: 
 " In other parts [of India], where the rent is 
 still taken by the State in the shape of a land- 
 tax, assessments are so high, and taxes are col- 
 lected so relentlessly, as to drive the ryots 
 [farmers], who get but the most scanty living 
 in good seasons, into the claws of money- 
 lenders, who are, if possible, more rapacious 
 than the zemindars." 
 
 Again, pages 105, 106, Mr. George quotes 
 from Florence Nightingale : '^ The saddest 
 sight to be seen in the East — nay, probably in 
 the whole world — is the peasants of our East- 
 ern empire." And Mr. George adds: "She 
 goes on to show the cause of the terrible fam- 
 ines, in taxation which takes from the culti- 
 vators the very means of cultivation, and the 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 49 
 
 actual slavery to which the ryots are reduced as 
 the consequence of our laws, producing in the 
 most fertile country in the world a grinding, 
 chronic semi-starvation in many places where 
 what is called famine does not exist." 
 
 Page 380, from Mrs. Fawcett : '* In a great 
 part of India the land is owned by the govern- 
 ment, and therefore the land-tax is rent paid 
 directly to the State. The economic perfection 
 of this system of tenure may be readily per- 
 ceived." So we think ! and the more clearly 
 perceived the more intensely abhorred. 
 
 Thus, in zealously attacking the theory of 
 Malthus, Mr. George lays a perilous stock 
 of dynamite underneath his own. 
 
 It would be easy to add Burma and Daho- 
 mey and parts of Russia to India to darken the 
 picture of oppression and desolation wrought 
 by exclusive and excessive land-tax, where 
 nothing less than the life-and-death power 
 of rulers could compel the crushed peas- 
 ants to produce food enough for daily con- 
 sumption. The noblest and fundamental 
 industry on which prosperity and life itself 
 
50 Regress and Slavery 
 
 depend is thus crippled, discouraged, and put 
 to shame. 
 
 These gloomy pictures are but foreshadows 
 of facts under which the tillers of our own soil 
 would groan if power were given to the gov- 
 ernment to enforce the single-tax theory. 
 Happily such a power does not exist ; and 
 therefore such a theory can never take effect 
 till the freedom of our representative Republic 
 gives place to hereditary monarchy or oligarchy 
 clothed with the power of life and death. 
 Until then the " peasants " of America will 
 constitute a powerful part of the common- 
 wealth of freedom, and will neither clamor for 
 nor submit to unequal and unjust taxation. The 
 waves of Boston Harbor still taste of tea. 
 
vs. ''Progress and Poverty." 51 
 
 SEVENTH PAPER. 
 
 Mr. George proposes that land-owners shall 
 not only be taxed to defray the entire running 
 expenses of the government, but also to pro- 
 vide for immense outlays for improvements on 
 a scale of grandeur heretofore unknown. Thus 
 on page 365 : " It will be necessary, where 
 rent exceeds the present governmental rev- 
 enues, to commensurately increase the amount 
 demanded in taxation, and to continue this in- 
 crease as society progresses and rent advances." 
 
 Again, page 410: ''There would be a great 
 and increasing surplus revenue from the taxa- 
 tion of land values ; for material progress, 
 which would go on with greatly accelerated 
 rapidity, would tend constantly to increase 
 rent. This revenue arising from the common 
 property could be applied to the common 
 benefit, as were the revenues of Sparta. We 
 might not establish public tables — they would 
 
$2 Regress and Slavery 
 
 be unnecessary ; but we would establish pub- 
 lic baths, museums, libraries, gardens, lecture- 
 rooms, music and dancing halls, theaters, uni- 
 versities, technical schools, shooting-galleries, 
 playgrounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat, light, 
 and motive-power, as well as water, might be 
 conducted through our streets at public ex- 
 pense ; our roads be lined with fruit-trees ; 
 discoverers and inventors rewarded ; scientific 
 investigations supported, and in a thousand 
 ways the public revenues made to foster efforts 
 for the pubhc benefit." 
 
 There you have it in a nutshell. All capital, 
 commerce, banks, mills, manufactories, ships, 
 railroads, left untaxed. The vast majority 
 left scot-free of taxation and munificently sup- 
 plied with luxuries, all at the expense of the 
 land-owners, a minority, and, taken as a 
 whole, the hardest worked and poorest paid 
 and least benefited class in the body politic. 
 If that is justice give us tyranny. The 
 vast body of land sold by the State is owned 
 by small farmers, who are under such pressure 
 that Senator Stanford is now pressing upon] 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 53 
 
 Congress a measure of relief in the form of a 
 bill authorizing the government to loan them 
 money at two per cent., to release them fromj 
 the grasp of the Shylock capitalists whom Mrj 
 George would tenderly release from the bur-j 
 den of taxation. 
 
 Mr. George will find it easy to remind us 
 that the American government is not like the 
 misgovernments we were dwelling upon a 
 little ago, but hard enough to convince a 
 thinker that the difference is not fatally against 
 the practicability of his theory. American farm- 
 ers are not like the fellahs of Egypt, the serfs 
 of Russia, and the ryots of India. Nothing 
 less than a regression, intellectual, moral, gov- 
 ernmental, to the condition of power and slav- 
 ery prevalent in India under the rajahs, and 
 Burma under her merciless kings, could make 
 possible, on our soil, a policy of discriminative 
 injustice and class helotage long since out- 
 grown by most civilized and by all Christian 
 nations. 
 
 8. There is a fnarked peculiarity in our au- 
 thor s habit of thought. It is what the Ger- 
 
54 Regress and Slavery 
 
 mans call an intense mind. Collaterals and 
 sequences have no weight. Having espoused a 
 theory, every thing must give it right of way. 
 It becomes a^ sort of double-ender which runs 
 one way as well as another. This idiosyncrasy 
 crops out again and again. As a sample see 
 page 100. The theory of Malthus is under 
 fierce attack. Mr. George must prove that in- 
 crease of population does not diminish the 
 relative supply of sustenance, and this is one of 
 the ways he does it : " Increase of descendants 
 does not show increase of population. It 
 could only do this when the breeding was in 
 and in. Smith and his wife have a son and 
 daughter, who marry some one else's daughter 
 and son, and each have two children. Smith 
 and his wife would thus have four grandchil- 
 dren, but there would be in the one generation 
 no greater number than in the other — each 
 child would have four grandparents. And, 
 supposing this process to go on, the line of 
 descent might constantly spread out into hun- 
 dreds, thousands, millions, but in each genera- 
 tion of descendants there would be no more 
 
vs. ''Progress and Poverty." 55 
 
 individuals than in any previous generation of 
 ancestors." 
 
 The hypothesis — without stopping to inquire 
 about its pertinence — is novel and astounding. 
 If it is luminous to the reader I congratulate 
 him. Is there a law limiting the propagation 
 of the species to this two-and-two arrange- 
 ment? Suppose Smith's son and daughter 
 should have ten children each, how would the 
 figures stand? Henry Ward Beecher said it 
 interested him less to learn whether he de- 
 scended from an ape than to know how far he 
 had got from the ancestral starting-point. 
 The puzzle with me is to divine, on such a 
 genealogical basis, how we ever got so far from 
 Adam, and especially how there came to be 
 so many Smiths in the world. 
 
 The same habitude carries itself into a vari- 
 ety of cases. Collaterals are ignored, and the 
 good of whatever the author opposes is to him 
 an unknown quantity. He thinks he sees 
 clearly that land bought with capital should 
 be taxed, but capital derived from land should 
 be exempt ; that bonds or greenbacks loaned 
 
$6 Regress and Slavery 
 
 on interest should be exempt, but land bought 
 with bonds or greenbacks should be taxed to 
 the full amount of the rent it will bring ; that 
 tenement-houses, crops, banks, mills, should be 
 exempt, but the land on which the crops and 
 timber grew and the stone was quarried and 
 the iron mined should bear all the burdens of 
 government ; that a paralytic or a widow who 
 owns a little farm, the rent of which is his or 
 her only support, should turn all that rent into 
 the public treasury to pay for governmental 
 protection of palaces of luxury, marts of busi- 
 ness, public baths, theaters, playgrounds, 
 dance-halls, for landless millionaires and loaf- 
 ing tramps, mechanics, merchants, and dudes, 
 on whom no burden, not even a head-tax, is 
 to be laid. 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 57 
 
 EIGHTH PAPER. 
 
 A SIMILAR Ophthalmia shows itself in much 
 that is said about corporations, monopolies, 
 and protective duties. On pages 369, 370 we 
 learn that " there are also the onerous monop- 
 olies alluded to in Chapter IV of Book III, 
 which result from the aggregation of capital in 
 businesses w^hich are of the nature of monopo- 
 lies. But while it would be extremely diffi- 
 cult, if not altogether impossible, to lay taxes 
 by general law so that they would fall exclu- 
 sively on the returns of such monopoly, and 
 not become taxes on production and exchange, 
 it is much better that these monopolies should 
 be abolished. The reason that residents of 
 Nevada are compelled to pay as much freight 
 from the East as though their goods were 
 carried to San Francisco and back again is 
 that the authority which prevents extortion 
 on the part of a hack-driver is not exercised in 
 
58 Regress and Slavery 
 
 respect to a railroad company. It may be said 
 generally that businesses which are in their 
 nature monopolies are properly part of the 
 function of the State." 
 
 Again, with respect to the privileges granted 
 to corporations, Mr. George says on pages 173, 
 174: " It is a power of the same kind as that 
 which James granted to Buckingham, and it is 
 often exercised with as reckless a disregard, not 
 only of the industrial, but of the personal, rights 
 of individuals. A railroad approaches a small 
 town as a highwayman approaches his victim. 
 The threat that ' if you do not accede to our 
 terms we will leave your town two or three 
 miles to one side ' is as efficacious as a ' stand and 
 deliver,' when the threat of the railroad company 
 is not merely to deprive the town of the bene- 
 fits which the railroad might give ; it is to put 
 it in a far worse position than if no railroad 
 had been built. . . . And just as robbers unite 
 to plunder in concert and divide the spoil, so 
 do the trunk lines of railroads unite to raise 
 rates and pool their earnings, or the Pacific 
 roads form a combination with the Pacific Mail 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 59 
 
 Steamship Company by which toll-gates are 
 virtually established on land and ocean. And 
 just as Buckingham's creatures, under author- 
 ity of the gold-thread patent, searched private 
 houses and seized papers and persons for pur- 
 poses of lust and extortion, so does the great 
 telegraph company, which, by the power of 
 associated capital, deprives the people of the 
 United States of the full benefit of a beneficent 
 invention, tamper with correspondence and 
 crush out newspapers which offend it." Yet 
 this oppressive associated capital must remain 
 forever untaxed ! 
 
 Mr. George is as much displeased with cus- 
 toms and protection as with railroad and steam- 
 ship corporations. Strangely enough, he seems 
 to see that the farmer class, on whom and 
 other land-owners he proposes to lay the entire 
 pecuniary burdens of government, are cruelly 
 wronged by the encouragement given to home 
 manufactures by protection. 
 
 To all this it is just to answer: 
 
 I. Great enterprises demand co-operation 
 of forces and combinations of capital. These 
 
6o Regress and Slavery 
 
 are the "power," and all that is asked of gov- 
 ernment is liberty to exercise the power on 
 some portion of the public domain. Such hb- 
 erty granted to corporations does not constitute 
 them monopolies, unless others are " prohib- 
 ited under severe penalties," as in the case of 
 Buckingham's gold-thread monopoly, from 
 forming similar combinations for similar pur- 
 poses. The rights granted to corporations by 
 our government do not include such restric- 
 tions. A railroad, therefore, is no more a 
 monopoly than a turnpike. Government, in 
 any and every case, has power to fix the rate 
 of toll, the price of donated land, etc. On a 
 smaller scale, but on the same underlying prin- 
 ciple, the first blacksmith's shop or grist-mill 
 is a monopoly, by consequence of being first in 
 the field. 
 
 2. These improved mediums of transporta- 
 tion and commerce leave the old ways open to 
 all who prefer them. The impatient and com- 
 plaining are free to ship their goods around 
 the Horn, cross the plains on muleback, and 
 send their messages by mail as aforetime. 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 6i 
 
 3. The " robbery " of towns is not always 
 a stand-and-deliver process. More than once 
 I have known small towns to refuse or charge 
 exorbitantly for right of way, and then curse 
 the corporation roundly for running by on the 
 outside. As to freight charges, they are some- 
 times regulated by the labor and expense of 
 discharging. A man in Nevada, for instance, 
 sends East for a barrel of oatmeal from Akron, 
 a box of soap from Chicago, and a bundle of 
 buggy-spokes from Omaha, and can see no rea- 
 son why a train cannot stop in front of his little 
 way-side store, overhandle two or three car- 
 loads of freight and leave his packages, and 
 raves because they are carried on to the ter- 
 minus and sent back by return train with full 
 charges. There may have been real instances 
 of carelessness and injustice ; but many assumed 
 causes of complaint are unthoughtful and pee- 
 vish. The old ways are open to the complain- 
 ant in every case. 
 
 4. Rates of passage. It cost me four hun- 
 dred and twenty-five dollars and twenty-seven 
 days of seasickness to come to California. Yet 
 
62 Regress and Slavery 
 
 I accounted the Isthmus a great improvement 
 on the Cape Horn route and the plains. Now 
 we cross the plains in five days in an elegant 
 drawing-room on wheels, at a cost of a hun- 
 dred or so dollars. That I must pronounce a 
 still greater gain to both comfort and purse. 
 If any prefer the earlier way, it is a free 
 country. 
 
 5. I wish to communicate with New York 
 in an emergency. Valuable interests are at 
 stake. The mail will carry my message in a 
 week, the telegraph will send it in five minutes. 
 There is a gain of eighty-six hundred and thirty- 
 five minutes. It is optional with me to use the 
 one or the other. 
 
 '* But," it is urged, " the government ought 
 to own all these things, and then — " Then 
 what ? Would trains and steamships and tele- 
 graph run by magic if the government owned 
 them ? Comparison shows that governmental 
 management is more expensive than private, 
 as a rule, the world over. Then, too, there 
 would be no competition and no stimulus to 
 ^private enterprise to expedite business and 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 63 
 
 reduce rates. No short roads would be run for 
 convenience of localities, and endless local 
 jealousies would attend every line of national 
 improvement. 
 
 " But do you not see that land-owners are to 
 furnish funds for all these public conveniences ? " 
 So, so. And then the landless and the lazy may 
 ride, roll, travel, dispatch, dance, and bathe 
 twelve hours a day, and not a dime to pay ! 
 Will not that be glorious ? 
 
 6. It usually happens that private enter- 
 prise outruns official tardiness and red tape — 
 as in the case of the corporations denounced 
 by Mr. George — much to the advantage of the 
 commonwealth. Take the Union and Central 
 Pacific roads, constituting our transcontinental 
 line, as a sample, and reflect upon the circum- 
 stances under which it was built. It appeared 
 likely to prove a vital condition of national self- 
 protection. Indeed, it might prove so in any 
 crisis. But the government was not in a spirit 
 to inaugurate or a condition to prosecute such 
 a work, neither is there a shadow of probability 
 that it would have been as quickly or inexpen- 
 
64 Regress and Slavery 
 
 sively done, if done at all. It was undertaken 
 at great risk to its projectors, and prosecuted 
 with an energy scarcely paralleled in history. 
 Its projectors were not men of large wealth, 
 but of far-sightedness and indomitable cour- 
 age. It was to traverse wide unsettled regions 
 which had no appreciable value and could yield 
 no commerce except as the road might create 
 it, and was to surmount mountain chains which 
 would have terrified more timid natures. They 
 risked every thing, even life itself — as in a 
 notable instance in the career of Charles Crocker 
 — to do a work which assured and enriched the 
 nation far beyond its cost. Yet that it was 
 not and is not a monopoly is demonstrated by 
 the fact that competing lines already stretch 
 from ocean to ocean. 
 
vs, " Progress and Poverty." 65 
 
 NINTH PAPER. 
 
 7. The field was an open one. Mr. George 
 and I had as much right to build a road as 
 Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, and Hopkins. 
 And we had nearly as much money, for all 
 they had was a bagatelle compared with the 
 expense to be incurred. What we lacked was 
 foresight, faith, courage, and possibly clear- 
 sighted patriotism. It does not impress me 
 as generous or just to denounce them because 
 they outsaw and outgeneraled us. Courage 
 and faith were needed. I well remember when 
 groups of men used to stand on the streets in 
 Sacramento and laugh loud and long at *' the 
 blamed fools who thought they were going to 
 run a railroad over the tops of the Sierra 
 Nevada Mountains." 
 
 8. In a word, whatever evitable or inevita- 
 ble injury it may have wrought in exceptional 
 
 cases, it is only just to concede that the bene- 
 5 
 
66 Regress and Slavery 
 
 fits to the State by the railroad a thousand 
 times outweigh the real or imaginary harm. 
 And it is to be regretted that the loose and 
 reasonless clamor raised by pessimists and 
 demagogues, and echoed by the thriftless and 
 shallow-thinking, should be emboldened by the 
 one-sided and ejir cathedra pronouncements of 
 so able and influential a man as the author of 
 Progress and Poverty. Would the country or 
 one man in it be better off if the road had not 
 been built ? Take a case as a sample of the 
 prevalent ructation, and also of the injury 
 done to farmers by the road. In one of our 
 large valleys a not over thrifty farmer was 
 cursing the railroad corporation as a grinding 
 monopoly. A by-stander said : 
 
 "• I would not live under such tyranny. Sell 
 out and leave. What will you take for your 
 farm ? " 
 
 He must have thirty-five dollars an acre if 
 he sold, but he didn't care to sell. 
 
 *' What was your land worth before the rail- 
 road came ? " 
 
 *' Wal, about five dollars." 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 6/ 
 
 " That is one way the cruel road has crushed 
 you. Now, what else has it done ? The 
 guilty wretches of this heartless corporation 
 have killed your mules, haven't they ? " 
 
 Why, no, they hadn't. 
 
 " Well, they have burned your wagons ?" 
 
 No, of course they hadn't. 
 
 " Surely, now, they have torn up and de- 
 stroyed all your wagon roads ? " 
 
 Pshaw, no, they hadn't done any such 
 thing. 
 
 " Then I'll tell you what to do. Just load 
 your grain into your wagons and haul it to 
 market as you used to. And when you wish 
 to go to San Francisco saddle your horse — 
 don't count the horse or your own time any 
 thing — make the trip in five days, and pay 
 about three times as much as it costs you now 
 to get into a car at eleven o'clock P. M., go to 
 the city, transact your business, and get home 
 for tea next day, with lodging included in your 
 fare. True, it will not be nearly as cheap, 
 comfortable, and expeditious, but you will 
 show that you are a free American citizen and 
 
68 Regress and Slavery 
 
 don't propose to be crushed by the iron heel 
 of a soulless monopoly." 
 
 The man looked foolish, but I presume he is 
 still denouncing the wicked corporation as 
 often as any are lazy or sympathetic enough to 
 stop to listen. 
 
 9. Mr. George's resentment against the 
 policy of protection is as pronounced as against 
 railroads. He thinks he sees how small farm- 
 ers especially are robbed by the tariff which 
 encourages home manufacture. 
 
 Many thoughtful persons judge differently. 
 As a class small farmers are small purchasers 
 of foreign goods. It appears to many men of 
 sound mind that a hungry home market is 
 most stable and most profitable. It is cer- 
 tainly most convenient. Such a market results 
 from a balancing of industries under which 
 manufactories hold their place and rightful 
 share in the prevalent industrial economy, thus 
 bringing demand door to door with supply. 
 Many wise men think that national independ- 
 ence and readiness for emergencies depend on 
 national sufficiency of indigenous resources, 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 69 
 
 and that general thrift and prosperity result 
 from the harmony and interplay thus encour- 
 aged. 
 
 One who studies the destitution of the South 
 during the great civil war — a destitution at- 
 tributable to the lack of manufactories — will 
 learn a lesson from facts worth a thousand 
 theories. Possibly the devotees of free trade 
 may think, like Stephenson about the cow, that 
 if facts stand in the way of their favorite theory 
 it will be so much the worse for the facts ; but 
 it will not harm any of us to treat respectfully 
 the holders of opposite opinions. 
 
70 Regress and Slavery 
 
 TENTH PAPER. 
 
 " Progress and Poverty " ignores, or but 
 family hints at, the only remedy which can har- 
 monize distribution with want and siveep the 
 earth clear of injustice, greed, oppression, Jteglect, 
 and hunger. 
 
 To dream that certain legislative and eco- 
 nomic adjustments would rid the race of its 
 woes is but to dream. Such a fancy discredits 
 history and covers human nature with obliv- 
 iousness. Common ownership of land has been 
 tried and found wanting. It was tried in 
 Plymouth and failed. It was tried in Virginia 
 and failed. It was tried at New Harmony and 
 failed. It was tried at Mixville, N. Y., and 
 failed. It was tried at Brook Farm, under the 
 ( gifted Fourier, and failed. It is being tried 
 in the poor, dry-rot colony of Acraria and is a 
 failure. It has failed every-where. They soon 
 discovered that, as in Virginia, many " worked 
 
vs. ''Progress and Poverty." 71 
 
 lazily and ate industriously." Private owner- 
 ship was and is the lesson and the remedy 
 commended by experience. 
 
 A handful of Shakers, as at Harrodsburg, 
 Ky., holds itself together by religious bonds 
 and numerical insignificance, but the Friend 
 Quakers, for whom I ought to cherish a filial 
 reverence, are compelled to adhere to individ- 
 ual ownership. Just now a commanding con- 
 viction engages the public mind that land in 
 severalty — that is, private ownership — for the 
 Indians on reservations would be a marked im- 
 provement on the present policy. Such an 
 arrangement accords with sound philosophy 
 and the lessons of a world-wide experience. 
 
 To put land, mines, railroads, telegraphs, un- 
 der control of government would be a freak of 
 madness. What is our government? There 
 are four words which Mr. George has a habit 
 of using interchangeably. They are We, State, 
 Government, Community. '' We " have a right 
 to take all ; the " State" has a right to take 
 all; the "Government " has a right to take 
 all ; the " Community " has a right to take all. 
 
72 Regress and Slavery 
 
 Things equal to the same thing are equal to 
 one another. But what is this multinomen, 
 functionally considered? It is Smith, Brown, 
 Jones, O'Reilly, and Spookenstaver, who have 
 managed to get themselves elected to leg- 
 islative, judicial, and executive offices for a 
 term. That election does not confer infallibil- 
 ity is sadly demonstrated by the laws which 
 they make, amend, repeal, break, contradicto- 
 rily interpret, and capriciously enforce. Could 
 a body of men capable of repealing the Sunday 
 laws — the laborer's only legal defense against 
 the exactions of greed and the oppressions of 
 power — for the votes of the slums and the 
 prurience of partisan victory ; or such a legisla- 
 ture as our last in California, which appeared 
 to act the role of the false watchman within 
 opening the door for bigger thieves without 
 to reach the public treasury — could such a body, 
 I say, be intrusted with the immense power 
 and patronage for which Mr. George contends. 
 Doubtless many civil officers are able and 
 upright, but the mixture, the changeableness, 
 the partisan heat, and the irrepressible uncer- 
 
vs. '* Progress and Poverty." 73 
 
 tainty of politics are too great to leave room 
 for so egregious a confidence. 
 
 To seek intelligently for a cure we must first 
 know the cause of the disease. To ascribe vice, 
 poverty, degradation, and crime to private 
 ownership of land, we have seen, and may 
 every-where see, is naked and ludicrous as- 
 sumption. In the same social grade, the same 
 trade, the same place of residence, the same 
 environments, there are always found instances 
 of thrift and comfort side by side with squalor, 
 filth, and wretchedness. Even in London, 
 where poverty and vice are supposed to seethe 
 and swelter as almost nowhere else, the rule 
 holds that " every man is the architect of his 
 own fortune." I quote from one who knows as 
 well as any living man whereof he writes : 
 
 " I would not say hard words against poverty ; 
 wherever it comes it is bitter to all ; but you 
 will mark, as you notice carefully, that a few 
 are poor because of unavoidable circumstances. 
 A very large share of the poverty of London 
 is the sheer and clear result of profuseness, 
 want of forethought, idleness, and, worst of all, 
 
74 Regress and Slavery 
 
 drunkenness. Ah, that drunkenness ! that is 
 the master-evil. If drink could be got rid of 
 we might be sure of conquering the devil 
 himself. The drunkenness created by the in- 
 fernal liquor-dens which plague-spot the whole 
 of this huge city is appalling. No ; I did not 
 speak in haste or let slip a hasty word. Many 
 of the drink-houses are nothing less than infer- 
 nal. In some respects they are even worse, 
 for hell has its use as a divine protest against 
 sin ; but as for the gin-palace, there is nothing 
 to be said in its favor. The vices of the age 
 cause three fourths of its poverty. If you 
 could look at the houses to-night, the wretched 
 homes where women will tremble at the sound 
 of their husband's foot as he comes home, 
 where little children will crouch down with 
 fear upon their little beds of straw, because 
 the human brute, who calls himself ' a man * 
 will come reeling home from the palace where 
 he has been indulging his appetite — if you 
 could look at such a sight, and remember it 
 will be seen ten thousand times over to-night, 
 I think you would say, * God help us by all 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty/' 75 
 
 means to save some ! ' Since the great ax to lay 
 at the foot of this deadly upas-tree is the Gos- 
 pel of Christ, may God help us to hold that 
 ax there, and to work constantly with it, till 
 the huge trunk of the poison-tree begins to 
 rock to and fro, and we get it down, and Lon- 
 don is saved from wretchedness and misery 
 which now drip from every bough." 
 
 The fact that one man owns land does not 
 make another man drunken and devilish. Mr. 
 George's sovereign "remedy" is about as 
 pertinent as the sum of a budding genius in 
 the district school : " If a peck of 'beans cost 
 nine pence, how far is it around a tremendously 
 big brush-heap ? " If " the vices of the age 
 cause three fourths of the poverty " (and that 
 estimate is below the mark), strike at the 
 vices — drunkenness, gambling, the house of 
 the strange woman, " whose steps take hold 
 on hell." 
 
 We punish a man for being drunk. Pun- 
 ish the men who make him drunk as well. We 
 inflict heavy penalties upon one who burns 
 houses, sells tainted meat or impure milk, then 
 
'j6 Regress AND Slavery 
 
 license another to poison and despoil and turn 
 the homes of his patrons into hell-prisons where 
 the demonized *^ master " is police, judge, jury, 
 jailer, and executioner. And Mr. George pro- 
 poses to cure all this infernal array of deadly 
 blunders and dire distress with the single tax ! 
 Inconsequently enough, the able author of 
 Progress and Poverty constructs of the evasions, 
 concealments, and outright lying of possessors 
 of other kinds of wealth an argument for laying 
 the whole burden of government upon land- 
 owners. Thus on pages 374, 375 : " The gross 
 corruptions and fraud occasioned in the United 
 States by the whisky and tobacco taxes are 
 well known ; the constant undervaluations of 
 the custom-house, the ridiculous untruthful- 
 ness of income-tax returns, and the absolute 
 impossibility of getting any thing like a just 
 valuation of personal property are matters of 
 notoriety. . . . Taxes which lack the item of 
 certainty tell most fearfully upon morals. Our 
 revenue laws as a body might well be entitled, 
 * Acts to promote the corruption of public 
 officials, to suppress honesty and encourage 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 77 
 
 fraud, to set a premium upon perjury and the 
 subornation of perjury, and to divorce the 
 idea of law from the idea of justice.' . . . The 
 tax on land values, which is the least arbitrary 
 of taxes, possesses in the highest degree the 
 element of certainty. It may be assessed and 
 collected with a definiteness that partakes of 
 the immovable and unconcealable character of 
 the land itself. Taxes levied on land may be 
 collected to the last cent." 
 
 All which amounts to this : Five men are 
 individually in my debt. One has bonds, one 
 greenbacks, one a valuable patent-right, a 
 fourth a clipper-ship, and the fifth a farm. The 
 first conceals his bonds, the second belies his 
 greenbacks, the third's patent is unattachable, 
 the fourth sends his ship to Europe, the fifth — 
 unlucky fellow! — cannot pocket his farm or 
 falsify the county records ; so I demand that 
 he shall pay his own debt and the debts of the 
 four rascals who are cheating me out of my 
 honest dues. 
 
 One to five may not exactly state the rela- 
 tive number of land-owners as compared with 
 
78 Regress and Slavery 
 
 non-owners, but exactness is not necessary to 
 the point of the hypothesis. France has eight 
 millions, which I infer includes only actual 
 tillers of their own acres. These agriculturists 
 and horticulturists are the keystone of the 
 economic arch, the spinal column of the nation's 
 patriotic strength. It is true of every country 
 that the people attached to the soil by actual 
 ownership have the most stable patriotism. 
 Our population is flowing disproportionately 
 into the cities. Probably the incoming census 
 returns will show actual farmers in less propor- 
 tion than in France, for the reason that 
 machinery is more used here than there to 
 augment the productiveness of labor. Does 
 any man imagine that the eight millions, with 
 the added owners of city lots in France, could 
 be compelled, without bloody revolution, to 
 defray all the current expenses of the State 
 and provide luxuries for the miUions of non- 
 holding people ? Yet it would be far easier to 
 reach such a result there than here. 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 79 
 
 ELEVENTH PAPER. 
 
 Profit-sharing is a beneficent expedient 
 which philanthropic individuals here and there 
 are trying with success. Since 1878 a number 
 of firms have adopted it as a stroke at once of 
 poHcy and of justice ; among them the Pillsbury 
 flour-mills of Minneapolis, Wanamaker in 
 Philadelphia, the Century Magazine, the Staats- 
 Zeiticng, the Deering manufactory of agricult- 
 ural implements in Chicago, Lewis Miller & 
 Co., of Akron and Canton, O., and Proctor & 
 Gamble in Cincinnati. 
 
 For more than thirty years a few houses in 
 France, Sweden, and Germany have practiced 
 this method with much satisfaction to all par- 
 ties concerned. But profit-sharing must be 
 left to individual impulse and honor. It can- 
 not be governmentally instituted or enforced. 
 The general adoption of such a scheme can be 
 brought about only by some power that shall 
 
8o Regress and Slavery 
 
 profoundly influence individual life and char- 
 acter. 
 
 It must needs be such a power as changed 
 the imperious persecutor, Saul of Tarsus, into 
 a fervent, tireless, self-forgetting toiler for the 
 uplifting of the helpless, the hopeless, the 
 heathen; such a p"bwer as placed John New- 
 ton, the slave-merchant — "the man-stealer," 
 as he used to call himself — among the sleepless 
 haters of all oppression ; such a power as begot 
 in the hearts of the cannibals of Fiji a sym- 
 pathy so tender and a benevolence so uncal- 
 culating that nowhere in all the world are 
 shipwrecked sailors more bravely rescued or 
 kindly treated than on their coral-bound 
 coasts ; a power such as transformed bloody 
 John Adams and his fellow-mutineers of the 
 Bounty, with the wild women they picked up 
 on the islands, into a model community, or- 
 derly, chaste, unselfish, morally heroic, till 
 Pitcairn became one of the ethical light-houses 
 of the ocean. 
 
 If similar evolutions could every-where pre- 
 vail every man would be every man's brother. 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 8i 
 
 The astute would befriend the dull, the strong 
 the weak, the learned the illiterate, the well 
 th^ sick, the rich the poor, as no legislation or 
 tax scheme could ever make them do. Help 
 would be instant, hearty, ample. To make 
 such a condition actual the millions must be 
 brought up to the experience which the ten thou- 
 sands have exhibited. Enough have appeared, 
 as samples, amply to prove the attainableness 
 of so beneficent a spirit, so that the possibility 
 has passed beyond debate. It is a postulate 
 that the power which made new men of Saul, 
 Newton, Michael Varyana, and King Tom is 
 adequate to universal efficiency, if it could be 
 brought to bear. 
 
 It is both history and philosophy that the 
 ethical and spiritual forces which lift men the- 
 oretically and by conviction out of the deep 
 grooves of selfishness must arise from some 
 underlying religious faith. This ought not to 
 appear anomalous, for every civilization within 
 the reach of historic, traditional, and anti- 
 quarian research has rested on a substructure 
 of religion from which the moral element in 
 
82 Regress and Slavery 
 
 its laws, sentiments, and customs flowed. The 
 character of the civilization has been deter- 
 mined by the quality of the religious basis. 
 Hence a weak religious system has sustained a 
 dubious and unprogressive civilization ; and 
 whenever the progress of a people has ex- 
 hausted the ethical upflow stagnation or re- 
 trogression has followed. This has been true 
 of the old pagan civilizations for a thousand 
 years. A limitlessly progressive civilization 
 must be nourished by an undergirding religion 
 whose ethical supply can never be exhausted.' 
 
 But one such religion is known. But one 
 such is needed. The ripest fruit of the old 
 book religions is " the golden rule of Confu- 
 cius," which is negative, timid, selfish, and 
 provides only for the do-nothing side of our 
 life. A man may be the veriest churl, shutting 
 himself within himself, never doing a noble or 
 humane deed from the cradle to the cofifin, and 
 keep the Confucian rule. The positive doing 
 side it leaves wholly unfurnished. 
 
 An economy of instruction and uplifting suf- 
 ficient to harmonize liberality with need on a 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 83 
 
 universal scale must embrace these four partic- 
 ulars : 
 
 1. A correct theory of life. 
 
 2. An adequate motive power. 
 
 3. A reconstructive or regenerative power 
 strong enough to overcome natural inertia and 
 self-seeking. 
 
 4. The economy of life and provision of 
 power must be clearly set forth in available 
 form and diligently propagated by the recip- 
 ients of the resulting benefit. 
 
 I. There is such a theory of life, 
 
 John Adams and the mutineers learned, it 
 from an old book picked out of a seaman's 
 chest. The Fijians read it in the same book. 
 Thousands of thousands have gleaned the 
 lesson from the same source. To that book 
 we shall do well that we take heed as unto a 
 light that shineth in a dark place. It is not 
 the Shastras, the Zend Avesta, The Book of 
 Mormon^ nor The Light of Asia, The book 
 to which I allude is as perfectly suited to this 
 age as though intended for no other, and to 
 every man as thought studiously written for 
 
84 Regress and Slavery 
 
 him alone. The sage and the savage, the Ka- 
 fir and the Hottentot, the Bushman and the 
 " red-browed forest ranger," all find in this one 
 volume perfect portraitures, profound needs, 
 and adequate supplies. 
 
 Here are samples of the practical lessons of 
 the book — a few of its broad rules of life : The 
 end of the commandment is love. Let love 
 be without dissimulation. Love is the fulfill- 
 ing of the law. Love worketh no ill to his 
 neighbor, therefore it is the fulfilling of the law. 
 Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the 
 poor that are cast out to thy house. Visit the 
 Avidow and fatherless in their affliction. Devise 
 not evil against thy neighbor, nor take up a 
 reproach against him. That which is alto- 
 gether just shalt thou do. Thou shalt not de- 
 fraud thy neighbor. The wages of him that is 
 hired shall not abide with thee all night until 
 the morning. Do good to them that hate you. 
 If thine enemy hunger, feed him. If there be 
 any other commandment it is briefly compre- 
 hended in this, namely. Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself. Whatsoever ye would 
 
vs. '' Progress and Poverty." 85 
 
 that men should do to you, do ye even so to 
 them. 
 
 II. There is no adequate motivity, 
 I. The doctrine of immortality. We shall 
 meet again and remember. When James C. 
 Jones, the most accomplished governor that 
 ever honored Tennessee (and that is saying 
 much) went down from the little farm to 
 Pulaski in butternut-colored jeans some sons 
 of rich men sneered and pointed fingers. 
 They met him again when he held listening 
 thousands captivated, spell-bound by his won- 
 derful eloquence; and while rich and poor 
 pressed forward for the honor of taking his 
 hand the poor creatures remembered and 
 slunk away. There is mighty inspiration to 
 good and mighty restraint of evil in a belief in 
 immortality. A distinguished editor of a sec- 
 ular journal, still throned on the tripod, said 
 to the students of our university, '' You might 
 as well attempt to make a passion-flower out 
 of a cabbage-stalk as any thing grand and no- 
 ble out of men who have no faith in a future 
 life." 
 
86 Regress and Slavery 
 
 2. Brotherhood is another element in the tre- 
 mendous motive force. It is the special plead- 
 ing of prejudice, and not the dictum of a broad 
 and ripe anthropology, which denies that 
 " God hath made of one blood all nations of 
 men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.'* 
 " Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous." 
 "Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his 
 brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels 
 of compassion from him, how dwelleth the 
 love of God in him ? " ** Whosoever hateth his 
 brother is a murderer." Such are a few of the 
 fair inferences and incentives drawn from 
 brotherhood. 
 
 3. Gratitude and example. One of the world's 
 heroes, whose grand life and superb powers 
 were consecrated to the purest philanthropy, 
 who sacrificed fame and riches, and endured 
 hunger, stripes, shipwrecks, dungeons, and 
 death for the Master whom he served, left on 
 record this sufficient explanation : " The love 
 of Christ constraineth us; because we thus 
 judge, that if one died for all, then were all 
 dead : and that he died for all, that they which 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 87 
 
 live should not henceforth live unto them- 
 selves, but unto him which died for them, and 
 rose again." The inference is full of pathos 
 and power : " If he laid down his life for us, 
 we ought to be willing to lay down our lives 
 for the brethren." Gratitude is the noblest in- 
 gredient in rational happiness, and the strong- 
 est incentive to benevolent activity. Let the 
 truth get commanding possession of any man 
 that One bore his sicknesses and carried his 
 sorrows, was bruised for his iniquities and 
 wounded for his transgressions, chastised for 
 his peace and crucified for his redemption, 
 and let him realize that this glorious Being 
 wishes him for his sake to feed the hungry, 
 comfort the sorrowing, shield the endangered, 
 and rescue the lost, and every energy of life 
 will be set in motion. Labor will no longer 
 prove a load nor duty seem a task. 
 
 4. Rewards, The All-Father treats us ac- 
 cording to the laws of our nature. If he calls 
 us to a mission of sacrifice he holds before us 
 a ** recompense of reward," under the incite- 
 ment of which a young man of rarest gifts, 
 
88 Regress and Slavery 
 
 the greatest statesman of the race, adopted 
 into royal heirship and in sight of a throne, 
 turned from crown and scepter to associate 
 with slaves and lead a thankless people through 
 weary years of desert life, die alone, and sleep 
 in an unmonumented grave. Here is the solv- 
 ent of the mystery of consecrated lives. Here 
 is the exegesis of the lesson : ** He that loveth 
 not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 
 he love God whom he hath not seen?" Here 
 we recognize the obeyableness of the com- 
 mand that "he that loveth God love his 
 brother also.'* 
 
 The reward is gracious, not equivalent; 
 a divinely royal bounty, not an arithmetical 
 price. The order of the government is this: 
 To them who by patient continuance in well- 
 doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruption, 
 God will recompense eternal life. 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 89 
 
 TWELFTH PAPER. 
 
 III. There is regenerative power to harmon- 
 ize mind and heart with rule and motive. 
 
 It is not our own will, though that must be 
 consenting. It is not self-discipline, though 
 that has its uses. It is not the help of men or 
 angels, though sympathy, human or angelic, is 
 grateful. It is not psychical, for the intellect 
 may be intensely alive and the ideality per- 
 fect, yet the man remain selfish, sordid, sensual, 
 devilish, spiritually dead. 
 
 He only who fashioned the eye can fathom 
 the mysteries of life and lift lapsed humanity 
 out of derangement and diseased proclivity 
 into a new life, the broken spring mended, the 
 lost balance restored, and a new law written in 
 the members. 
 
 That a transforming power exists is placed 
 beyond dispute by numberless instances of its 
 wonder-working. It lifts the fierce into gen- 
 
90 Regress and Slavery 
 
 tleness, the arrogant into meekness, the proud 
 into humility, the self-seeking into self-forget- 
 fulness. It has achieved this change among 
 men of all tongues, ranks, colors, ages. It 
 has wrought the change among thousands of 
 thousands; it is doing it among thousands of 
 thousands now. I am not now asking you to 
 concede the divineness of the record, but you 
 will have to admit the force of facts. Peace 
 has come to disordered homes and love-rest 
 to troubled hearts through this power. Rea- 
 son about it as we will, its nature, origin, 
 modus y it is self-proved, witnessed by unim- 
 peachable and overwhelming testimony. It is 
 too obvious for argument that the Power 
 which molded the fierce Fijian man-eater 
 into a meek preacher of righteousness, set 
 King Tom in calm and fearless opposition to 
 the fetichism and all the abominations of his 
 own and surrounding tribes, and transformed 
 the bloody Tsimshean Indians into an indus- 
 trious and loving Christian community now at 
 Metlahkahtla is able to *'make the Ethiop 
 white." 
 
vs. "Progress and Poverty." 91 
 
 A full revelation of this grand scheme of 
 reform is found in one book only. Christmas 
 Evans found it there, and there the Fingo 
 finds it — a book which promotes every possible 
 virtue and discourages every possible vice. 
 Unlike the thirty yards of the books of Bud- 
 dhism, this volume teaches by principles as 
 broad as the domain of human life and plain 
 enough to be understood by wayfaring men. 
 It is a book that invites criticism and chal- 
 lenges competition ; that furnishes every man 
 in every emergency with the wisest of lessons 
 and the most wholesome of motives, and is 
 perfectly fitted to the needs of every stage of 
 civilization. Concerning this volume Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott said, "There is but one book." 
 Happy the homes in which its lessons are 
 devoutly studied! Happy the country in 
 whose schools and courts it is recognized as 
 the one authority in morals ! 
 
92 Regress and Slavery 
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 
 
 I RESPECTFULLY submit that we have fairly- 
 reached the following conclusions : 
 
 1. That Mr. George's patent definitions do 
 not in any degree modify the actual issues of 
 things, nor in any measure support his high 
 single-tax theory. 
 
 2. That the distinction he makes as to 
 rightfulness of ownership, between the prod- 
 ucts of labor expended on land and that ex- 
 pended otherwise, indicates imperfect knowl- 
 edge and leads to crude generalizations. 
 
 3. That the assumption that private own- 
 ership of land is the cause of the ignorance, 
 poverty, degradation, and vice which we de- 
 plore is too false to be presented as fact and 
 too thin to be offered as hypothesis. 
 
 4. That a functional government, ruled by 
 ballots and administered by political parties, 
 would be rent asunder by an attempt to in- 
 augurate the single-tax scheme. 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 93 
 
 5. That the government would be slower 
 and less distributive and more expensive than 
 private enterprise in building improvements. 
 
 6. That political revolutions and provincial 
 jealousies would be created by every attempt 
 of the government to improve one section 
 rather than another. 
 
 7. That in attempting to avoid the ** shock " 
 liable to attend his scheme of reform by con- 
 ceding perpetual retention and management, 
 with power to sell, will, rent, and devise un- 
 limited bodies of land now in possession or 
 yet to be possessed, Mr. George takes the 
 spinal marrow out of his whole scheme and 
 greatly aggravates any evils which are liable 
 to lead to the oppression of the hireling in his 
 wages. 
 
 8. That his ** True Remedy," the single tax, 
 is retrogressive, unstatesmanlike, unjust, im- 
 politic, one-eyed, impudent, outrageous, and 
 can never be carried into effect among a free 
 and self-respecting people. The fundamental 
 industry which feeds the nation and makes all 
 other industries possible, will never submit to 
 
94 Regress and Slavery 
 
 the enormous and insane proposition until the 
 forms and the very name of free government 
 are obsolescent and the spirit of liberty ex- 
 pires. 
 
 9. As I see it, no self-respecting American 
 citizen capable of comprehending relations and 
 foreseeing consequences will for a moment 
 tolerate the thought of desiring, or will consent 
 to receive, his safety and sustenance at the ex- 
 pense of others. Every honest man prefers 
 to pay his own bills. The good God grant 
 that the spirit of robbery and mendicity may 
 always be foreign on American soil ! 
 
 10. Authentic Christianity, as a social and 
 experimental force, will yield all that is benef- 
 icent in economics, all that is loyal in citizen- 
 ship, all that is faithful in domestic relations, 
 all that is just in business, all that is liberal 
 in benevolence, all that is generous in senti- 
 ment, all that is magnanimous in judg- 
 ment, all that is brave in righteousness, 
 all that is noble in manhood. It is therefore 
 the One Remedy for which piety should pray 
 and patriotism labor, and courage dare, and 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 95 
 
 zeal proclaim, and faith "lend its realizing 
 light." But it must be the genuine article. 
 No sham, no counterfeit, no make-believe, no 
 necromantic pudding of admixture will serve. 
 Veritable Christliness perfectly answers to the 
 high demand. It will solve the labor problem, 
 purge social impurity, cure laziness, quench 
 greed, and give to every man who opens wide 
 his heart and understanding to its sway a 
 brother's hand of help. Until then — until 
 law enters into life — life will evade law. 
 
 II. Therefore, missing, as it does, philoso- 
 phy, justice, and regenerative power ; ignoring, 
 as it does, the lessons of history and vast ex- 
 perience ; ignoring, as it does, the forecasting 
 of consequences ; assuming, as it does, what it 
 was impossible to prove ; and arguing, as it 
 does, on false and impertinent premises ; en- 
 couraging, as it does, irrational and falsely ex- 
 plained discontent ; stimulating, as it does, 
 class hatred and feculent thoughts of confisca- 
 tion and spoliation ; and striking, as it does, at 
 the fundamental industry which is the tap- 
 root of national prosperity, the scheme of 
 
96 Regress and Slavery 
 
 Progress and Poverty should henceforth wear 
 the truer label, REGRESS AND Slavery. 
 
 Undergirding principles of well-ordered 
 life which are contravened, infracted, or ig- 
 nored by the single-tax theory : 
 
 1. The free play of individuality, under the 
 stimulus of personal accountability and the 
 restraints of justice and the claims of brother- 
 hood, is essential to the highest type of civili- 
 zation and the most exalted and efficacious 
 development of religion. 
 
 2. Agriculture is the fundamental industry 
 on which all prosperity rests, and the ownership 
 in fee simple of a home is promotive of the 
 home-loves and homely virtues which are vital 
 to patriotism. Any policy which tends to 
 degrade the one and discourage the other is 
 detrimental and dangerous in proportion to the 
 measure of its popular acceptance. 
 
 3. Any plan of government and law which 
 promises the lazy, the selfish, the unthrifty, and 
 the unjust an exceptional class to bear the 
 financial burdens of civilization for them is a 
 
vs. " Progress and Poverty." 97 
 
 deep and demoralizing injury to the disbur- 
 dened and a cruel injustice to the overburdened. 
 
 4. Any scheme which ignores the inborn 
 selfishness of human nature and builds its 
 Utopia of universal happiness upon political 
 adjustments and human law, ignoring the 
 heart- renewing power of God and the Christ- 
 born heart-love for Jew and Samaritan, Par- 
 thian and Mede, Elamite and Cappadocian, is 
 a dream as idle and childish as the vagaries of 
 madmen or the drivel of idiots. 
 
 5. Any proposal of reform which attributes 
 the poverty and discontent of the dissipated 
 and unthrifty to other than their true causes is 
 an aggravation of the evil by the false methods 
 of the attempted cure. It is poison and pesti- 
 lence in the social atmosphere. 
 
 6. Any doctrine which encourages men to 
 curse their " misfortune "and dream covetously 
 of unearned riches, instead of '* working with 
 their hands [and heads] the thing that is 
 good," is a mischievous fallacy and a political 
 endangerment. 
 
 7. The notion that the only " laboring 
 
98 Regress and Slavery 
 
 classes" are hand-workers, and that riches ac- 
 cumulated by righteous enterprise in develop- 
 ing virgin resources are an injury to the " toiling 
 masses," is fit only for the distempered brain 
 of a paralogist. 
 
 8. The fancy that if the " government " 
 owned all lines of public conveyance it could 
 run them cheaper, pay better wages, and incur 
 less risk of malfeasance and mismanagement 
 than competing private corporations is a spec- 
 ulation which flies in the face of rational proba- 
 bility and the suggestions of experience. Even 
 now the clamor for an eight-hour law and 
 exceptional wages for all public employment 
 has more weight with ** government " and the 
 average politician than the sweating brows and 
 calloused hands of the uncomplaining whose 
 toil, in field and shop and ship and office, must 
 pay the unjust and discriminating score. 
 
 9. Any policy of government which pro- 
 poses to classify and burden or release useful 
 and necessary industries by popular vote is but 
 a new modus of tyranny and oppression against 
 which authentic manhood cannot fail to revolt. 
 
vs. '* Progress and Poverty." 99 
 
 10. A sound national policy would offer 
 every just inducement to the youth of our free 
 country to become owners of homes and tillers 
 of the soil, their honest acres being held by a 
 title as valid and respectable as that by which 
 men hold ships, manufactories, and merchan- 
 dise. 
 
 THE END. 
 
(D>' 
 
 ^h