JOSEPH PELS 
 HIS LIFE-WORK
 
 JOSEPH PELS 
 
 HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 MARY PELS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 1916
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 Printed in U. S. A.
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOI 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 JOSEPH FELS 
 
 Engine and wheel and chain that clank and groan 
 In ceaseless factory-din thundering apace, 
 Ear-stunning clamor of the market-place, 
 
 And yet, amid it all, he heard the moan. 
 
 When Riches made its golden bribe his own, 
 
 And Power trumpet-called him from the throng, 
 And soft, luxurious Ease, with drowsy song, 
 
 He was as one not hearing save the moan. 
 
 Half the vast world he traversed in his quests, 
 As Galahad for the Grail, heedless of self, 
 Unresting, squandering time and strength and 
 pelf, 
 
 Followed and sought and fought and now he rests. 
 
 ; FBANK STEPHENS.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE MAKING or A BUSINESS MAN . . 1 
 
 II SOCIAL AND PERSONAL LIFE . . . . 14 
 
 III THE SITUATION IN ENGLAND ... 25 
 
 IV FARM COLONIES: LAINDON ... 38 
 
 V HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAYLAND ... 50 
 
 VI WHY SMALL HOLDINGS FAIL ... 65 
 
 VII POLITICAL INTERESTS 78 
 
 VIII HOME COLONIZATION 90 
 
 IX THE METHODS or MONOPOLY . . . 104 
 
 X THE SINGLE TAX 118 
 
 XI THE CONTEST WITH THE LEISURED CLASS 142 
 
 XII PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 156 
 
 XIII THE FELS FUND COMMISSION . . .. 183 
 XIV EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS AND SUF- 
 FRAGE 199 
 
 XV LATER ACTIVITIES 217 
 
 XVI PERSONAL . 252
 
 JOSEPH PELS 
 HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 I 
 
 The Making of a Business Man 
 
 THE parents of Joseph Fels were German 
 Jews who emigrated to America in the 
 troublous days of 1848. The father had not 
 been concerned with the revolution of that 
 year, but he was uprooted by the conditions of 
 the time, and felt urged to remove his family 
 from the disturbed atmosphere; the future 
 seemed to promise more in the new world than 
 in the old. 
 
 Lazarus Fels, the father, was an energetic 
 man of good judgment and a fair measure of 
 business ability. Although alert, he did not 
 possess the rapid foresight which later dis- 
 tinguished his son. His general background 
 of ideas was that of the time, and his conserva- 
 tive instincts militated against any habit of 
 examining fundamental beliefs, which was to
 
 2 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 be the quality most characteristic of bis son. 
 His active industry commanded the respect of 
 his .neighbors, and he possessed a very notice- 
 able power of making friends. When many 
 years later a son visited Yanceyville, the old 
 clerk of the court remembered Lazarus Fels, 
 and spoke of him in terms of high esteem. 
 
 Susanna Fels, the mother, was typical of 
 the Jewish woman whose domestic genius com- 
 mended her to the writer of Proverbs. An 
 admirably efficient housewife, she rendered 
 her husband yeoman service in the. difficult 
 days of their early sojourn in the United 
 States. She showed a quiet courage and a 
 determination to make possible her husband's 
 success for which the ordinary words of praise 
 are inadequate. For it must be remembered 
 that she came to America young, with three 
 little children, a stranger in language, race 
 and religion. Her husband was forced to 
 leave her alone in Philadelphia for nearly a 
 year, while he traveled South in search of busi- 
 ness. It was no easy burden she had to carry. 
 More than forty years after her death there still 
 remains with her children the vivid recollec-
 
 THE MAKING OF A BUSINESS MAN 3 
 
 tion of her gentleness, her refinement, and her 
 quiet, yet resolute determination. Joseph 
 Fels used to say in after years that it was 
 through women such as his mother that the 
 Jewish race had been able to endure. 
 
 After the first year in America, the 
 family settled in Halifax County, Virginia, 
 and it was there, five years after their de- 
 parture from Germany, that Joseph was born. 
 He was the fifth-born and fourth-surviving 
 child. While he was still an infant, the family 
 moved to Yanceyville, North Carolina, where 
 they remained until Joseph was twelve. Liv- 
 ing in a German Jewish family the boy still 
 found most of his associates among Gentiles. 
 A large part of the population was colored 
 and Joseph always retained a tender place in 
 his heart for the Negro race. These varied 
 human elements in the North Carolina village 
 where the boy lived during his impressionable 
 years must have helped to shape that cosmo- 
 politanism which was so marked a character- 
 istic of the man in later years. 
 
 In Yanceyville and later in Richmond and 
 Baltimore, Joseph went to school, but it may
 
 4 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 be said that the boy profited little from his 
 schooling. He was a mischievous boy and 
 there are tales of frequent conflicts with peda- 
 gogical authority; tales, too, that he did not 
 suffer without retort the weight of pedagogi- 
 cal disapproval. We hear of his readiness to 
 stand up for his rights, of his determination 
 that neither boy nor teacher should do him 
 injustice. 
 
 Even in these early days he seems to have 
 been endowed with an acute business sense. 
 At fourteen he had established with the aid of 
 a younger brother a cellar in which a kite busi- 
 ness flourished. Joseph was the managing 
 director and seems to have displayed consider- 
 able ability in securing profitable trade. His 
 stock was always ready at the right season and 
 repairs were efficiently carried out. That 
 small business was already a foretaste of his 
 commercial tendency. 
 
 By fifteen, Joseph was thoroughly tired 
 of school. He rebelled against the constant 
 discipline and the monotonous routine. Like 
 so many Jews, at fifteen he was already a man. 
 He felt the need of more intimate contact with
 
 THE MAKING OF A BUSINESS MAN 5 
 
 life, and desired urgently the realization of its 
 color and its excitement. 
 
 In 1866, the family moved to Baltimore 
 where Joseph continued in school until he was 
 fifteen, when he was allowed to leave and enter 
 his father's business. The latter was then en- 
 gaged in the manufacture of toilet-soap, and 
 doubtless a boy so energetic and masterful as 
 Joe was of no small service to him. At the 
 end of the first year he had found that there 
 was not enough for him to do. The business 
 was measurably prosperous and maintained the 
 family in comfort; but in 1870 through causes 
 for which he was not responsible the father lost 
 the business and found it necessary to make a 
 new beginning. 
 
 It was a serious misfortune, but new plans 
 were soon on foot. Joseph entered the em- 
 ployment of a commission agency in coffees 
 and was fairly successful. Within a year he 
 and his father had accepted a position as repre- 
 sentatives in Baltimore of a Philadelphia soap 
 house and a definite district was assigned to 
 them for their business operations. The con- 
 nection lasted a few years and provided them a
 
 6 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 fair living. But its prospects were too limited, 
 and in 1873 father and son felt justified in 
 moving to Philadelphia where they took out 
 a commission with a larger house under more 
 favorable terms. 
 
 Still, work such as this required some sub- 
 ordination, and to a nature like that of Joseph 
 Fels nothing was more galling than a sense of 
 restraint or authority. From the very begin- 
 ning it was his ambition to be master of his 
 own career. Consequently in the autumn of 
 1875 he went into partnership with a Phila- 
 delphia manufacturer. The business was 
 small although it had long been established, 
 but he felt that he could work better as master 
 than as agent. By the end of 1876 he was 
 in a position to buy out the partner and take 
 over the business. In view of the dimensions 
 of his fortune later, it is interesting that the 
 purchase price was four thousand dollars, and 
 that this check was the largest he had ever 
 drawn. 
 
 So was established Fels and Company, and 
 now that he was master of his own actions he 
 threw himself heart and soul into the work.
 
 THE MAKING OF A BUSINESS MAN 7 
 
 His one idea and his one hope was to make 
 it a success and it was rarely indeed in these 
 years that he allowed his mind to deviate from 
 this single endeavor. He traveled everywhere 
 in its interest, his easy, confident manner, and 
 his incejssant good humor making him an ex- 
 cellent salesman. It is safe to say that in the 
 fifteen years from 1875 the business was never 
 out of his mind. At home and in his office, 
 day and night, he schemed and planned and 
 organized. The business, despite keen and 
 able competition, prospered continuously and 
 from the year of its establishment never 
 showed any decline. 
 
 About the time of the formation of the 
 new firm of Fels & Co. his brother Samuel 
 entered the business and in 1881 was made a 
 partner. But by 1890 it seemed to them that 
 so keen a competition asked too much. It was 
 not only that in the manufacture of toilet soap 
 the competition is incessant; the salesman 
 has also to study every shift and current of 
 populai whim. He must have many varieties 
 in quality, color, perfume; he must choose 
 pleasing wrappers, the right boxes, the right
 
 8 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 advertisements. His goods must not become 
 stereotyped, while at the same time they must 
 always retain a sufficient identity to be borne 
 in mind. It will be clear how great a strain 
 all this imposes on the manufacturer. The 
 fear of waste is continually before his eyes ; he 
 knows that a new variety may be unsuccessful, 
 that the wrapper may be wrong, the box in- 
 sufficiently attractive, the price too high or 
 too low. He must also be able to convince 
 the middle man that he and he only has the 
 varieties that the former requires. In no other 
 field of industry, in fact, is the margin on the 
 market so narrow and insecure. The young 
 manufacturer had been long aware of these 
 difficulties and had perceived the wisdom of 
 specializing, if possible, on some one variety 
 that would render unnecessary the constant at- 
 tention to such a multitude of petty details. 
 It was in this search that he came across 
 the soap that is associated with the name of 
 Fels. A Philadelphia company had for some 
 time been applying the naphtha process to a 
 laundry soap ; but the business was badly man- 
 aged, both on the side of manufacturing and
 
 THE MAKING OF A BUSINESS MAN 9 
 
 in salesmanship, and serious losses had been 
 incurred. A study of the problem convinced 
 the firm that the process was an excellent one 
 and that it needed only patience and ability to 
 make it a commercial success. Once so con- 
 vinced, they did not hesitate. In 1893, they 
 bought an interest in the company and a year 
 later bought out the old directors completely, 
 amalgamating the business with Fels and Com- 
 pany. Meantime his brother Maurice, al- 
 though pursuing independent interests, was 
 closely connected with the business. 
 
 At first the manufacture of the new soap 
 was carried on coincidently with that of toilet 
 soap. It naturally took some time for the 
 "Fels Naptha" to become known and still 
 longer for it to become established. But in 
 two or three years, the success of the new ex- 
 periment was certain. It had come to stay. 
 So large was the demand for the new product 
 that the partners felt justified in discontinuing 
 the manufacture of toilet soaps, and in con- 
 centrating the entire attention of the firm on 
 the new article. A large manufacturing plant 
 grew up in Philadelphia, admirably equipped
 
 10 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 and organized. From this time Joseph Fels' 
 financial success was assured. 
 
 So told, the story seems simple enough. 
 Tireless effort and a wise patience allied to 
 ability proved successful as always. He seized 
 existing opportunities and made new ones. 
 He was compelled in the early stages of his 
 business career to rely upon himself; he had 
 also to make others rely upon him, and his 
 confidence brought him through to remarkable 
 success. In spite of the fact that when the 
 occasion demanded, he could hold his own in 
 the most hard driven bargain, he was able to 
 humanize all his business relations. 
 
 No one who would understand the life of 
 Joseph Fels can afford to neglect what he 
 gained from his experience in business. His 
 shrewd practicality was everywhere evident 
 in what he later undertook in political affairs. 
 He was anxious to prevent misdirected energy. 
 He was angered at the waste of things, acutely 
 conscious that this more than anything else 
 lies at the bottom of human misery. He was 
 always talking of the things lying idle that 
 might be used; this was the keynote of his
 
 THE MAKING OF A BUSINESS MAN 11 
 
 public activity. He believed that exactly the 
 same kind of talent which was applied to the 
 direction of private enterprise could be suc- 
 cessfully applied to the conduct of national 
 business. 
 
 He knew that the success of a great busi- 
 ness depends upon making it appeal to the im- 
 agination of the crowd. That was how Fels 
 Naptha had built up its own fortune; an elo- 
 quent claim had been skilfully and pictur- 
 esquely made for it. People had been inter- 
 ested in the claim ; they had bought it and been 
 satisfied in the testing. Not otherwise did he 
 conceive that great political movements should 
 be engineered. He wanted to capture the 
 popular imagination. "All great move- 
 ments," he would have said with Disraeli, 
 "spring from the passions." It is the stimu- 
 lated prejudice, a judgment before thought, 
 that sets the minds of men to work in common. 
 This point of view is equally valuable to a man 
 who wishes to sell a commodity and to a re- 
 former who wishes to change social conditions. 
 
 Joseph Fels' instincts were all profoundly 
 democratic, but there can be no doubt that his
 
 12 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 constant association with working people, 
 through his factory and through his business 
 relations, served to strengthen and perfect his 
 belief in human equality. With his own work- 
 ing people, he lived on the frankest terms of 
 good fellowship. Their lives were their own 
 and he always looked with suspicion upon at- 
 tempts to regulate the social life of working 
 people. It was his duty and it was also, as he 
 frequently explained, to his advantage, to pro- 
 vide for their physical comfort and to pay 
 them the best wage the business could afford. 
 He had no sympathy with the policy of drive ; 
 he did not believe in making the worker the 
 accessory of the machine. He treated him as 
 an equal, but insisted upon his responsibility, 
 and he won his reward. His men felt it was 
 worth while to work for a firm which was no 
 corporate fiction but a living group of men 
 with regard for the bodies and souls of those 
 with whom they came in contact. 
 
 Such is the way in which Joseph Fels made 
 himself a successful business man. But in 
 achieving financial success he also shaped his 
 own life to larger issues. Courage brought
 
 THE MAKING OF A BUSINESS MAN 13 
 
 success and success brought more courage. 
 The mastery of petty difficulties strengthened 
 an optimism which always expected the best. 
 An open mind and daily association with men 
 enabled him to see the evils of our present 
 social organization. The constant attempt to 
 make men live to their best as employees or 
 business associates showed him how to use sug- 
 gestion and how to develop leadership. The 
 facing of new problems as they arose in the 
 building of a great business trained him in 
 foresight and gave him confidence in his ability 
 to judge plans not yet tried. But, meantime, 
 Joseph Fels, the business man, was also being 
 shaped by varied personal experiences.
 
 II 
 
 Social and Personal Life 
 
 fTlHE life of Joseph Fels as a boy was 
 ^ largely confined to the well-regulated 
 activities of a conservative Jewish family, tem- 
 pered by the influences characteristic of a small 
 southern town of blacks and whites during the 
 Civil War and the period of reconstruction. 
 Yanceyville lay aside from the track of the 
 war and consequently the events which devas- 
 tated the South and strained the resources of 
 the North to the breaking point, did not 
 directly affect the fortunes of the Fels family. 
 From the age of fifteen, the life of Joseph, as 
 already described, was increasingly absorbed 
 in business. 
 
 The year that he was twenty an event oc- 
 curred which was destined to have profound 
 influence on all his after life. He fell in love 
 with a girl who was still a child, and vowed 
 
 himself to her service, a vow which held with 
 
 u
 
 SOCIAL AND PERSONAL LIFE 15 
 
 growing power for the forty succeeding years 
 of his life. To understand this event one must 
 realize the essential romanticism of the man. 
 With all his intense practicality his nature was 
 that of a dreamer. His imagination always 
 anticipated events. His intuitions quickly be- 
 came convictions and he stood ready to gamble 
 all he had on their validity. He could never 
 endure the oppression of suspended judgment 
 but decided at once and backed his decision 
 with action. 
 
 One day in the year 1873, Joseph Fels then 
 at the age of twenty, while pursuing his work 
 as traveling salesman, found himself in the 
 little town of Keokuk, Iowa. During casual 
 conversation with one of his customers, men- 
 tion was made of the fact that there was in 
 the same town another family of the name of 
 Fels. As Joseph had thought that he had no 
 relatives in America beyond his immediate 
 family, the circumstance struck him as so un- 
 usual that he felt interested to seek them out 
 and make their acquaintance. This acquain- 
 tanceship was renewed on each succeeding 
 visit to the town.
 
 16 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Upon his approach to the house at his very 
 first call, his attention was attracted by a little 
 girl of nine standing in the doorway, who con- 
 fidently ushered this stranger into the home of 
 her parents. 
 
 Mr. Fels loved in after years to tell how at 
 that moment he felt this child was destined 
 for him and that no sacrifice would be too great 
 to win her and make her his wife. This resolve 
 grew into a devotion which continued unabated 
 for the next nine years. 
 
 In his attitude as elder brother and in his 
 solicitude to assist in her development, there 
 lay a dormant romanticism which ripened into 
 a love and companionship of rare tenderness 
 and mutual inspiration. They were married 
 in the year 1881. 
 
 In July of 1884 a son was born to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Fels, but in December of the same year 
 the baby fell ill and died. It was naturally a 
 serious blow as Mr. Fels had a passion for 
 children, but this misfortune was a significant 
 turning point in the lives of both. To fill the 
 gap caused by the loss of the child, Mrs. Fels 
 occupied herself with social activities and in-
 
 SOCIAL AND PERSONAL LIFE 17 
 
 tellectual pursuits. In this way the home 
 which had hitherto been consecrated to do- 
 mestic ideals and business interests became a 
 center of intelligence and progressive ideas. 
 In this atmosphere of critical discussion, Mr. 
 Fels' inherent radicalism began to take more 
 definite shape. The hospitable home attracted 
 artists, business men, dreamers, poets, social- 
 ists and reformers of every kind. Many of 
 these found in Mr. Fels quick understanding 
 and generous sympathy. From them he came 
 in turn to feel the irresistible charm of think- 
 ing new thoughts, dreaming new dreams and 
 working toward their realization. 
 
 It is difficult to trace with any exactness 
 Mr. Fels' social ideas in these years. It was 
 a period in which he was content to mitigate 
 rather than to construct. He helped people 
 constantly. There seemed in him a generous 
 emotion of philanthropy in the original 
 sense of that word. He gave freely even when 
 his own income was small and needed in the 
 business ; and even while, underneath the satis- 
 faction he felt in affording relief, there was 
 an unshaped but imperative desire to destroy
 
 18 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 the need for giving. His mind was like an 
 intricate mass of loose threads that needed a 
 plan to weave them into a definite design. 
 This plan had its beginning in his extreme in- 
 dividualism, his desire that each man should 
 stand on his own feet and make the most of 
 his manhood. The business travels were to 
 him a kind of education. Men were always 
 his books; and on the road he met variety 
 enough even for so persistent an enquirer. He 
 is all the time probing his fellow travelers on 
 social problems. He adopts little in these 
 years but there are few men so alert to ex- 
 amine. 
 
 The conservative temperament was entirely 
 alien to Mr. Fels in young manhood as in later 
 years. There was little in the social order that 
 commanded his reverence. Those who spoke 
 of tradition and the ancient ways made no ap- 
 peal to him. The men who awakened his in- 
 terest were those who seemed to herald a 
 change. It was not that he had any special 
 point of contact with their social philosophy. 
 He had simply a general sympathy with their 
 vague flavor of modernity. "They were try-
 
 SOCIAL AND PERSONAL LIFE 19 
 
 ing," as he once said, "to understand them- 
 selves, without any of the damned nonsense of 
 trying to understand their grandfathers." 
 
 Mr. Pels had never been strongly drawn 
 to the service of the synagogue. He respected 
 it as a conservator of a magnificent tradition 
 but it seemed to him a force for the main- 
 tenance of dogma. What he wanted, and 
 what his nature needed, was a religion of 
 humanity, one that stood apart from race and 
 class, from creed and time, and asserted the 
 brotherhood of man. For a time he was a' 
 member of the Ethical Society but his religion 
 was not a matter of institutions, and through- 
 out life his friends were chosen regardless of 
 creed or race. He was a man, and in every 
 other man he saw a brother. 
 
 By 1895 Mr. Eels' business career had 
 achieved a solution of its most pressing prob- 
 lems and had opened the road to undoubted 
 success. The varied associations of road and 
 home, the close contact with men and sharp 
 clash with their opinions had accomplished the 
 work of shaping and maturing his character. 
 That year may therefore be regarded as the
 
 20 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 point at which the formative elements in his 
 life gathered themselves into an instrumen- 
 tality which could be consciously used towards 
 the constructive work of the world. This new 
 period quickly asserted itself in a definite 
 product. 
 
 One of the circumstances most commonly 
 attendant upon the private exploitation of 
 land values is the existence in every town and 
 city of vacant spaces not intended for use, 
 but held in anticipation of increased prices. 
 These plots, usually acquired with old build- 
 ings, show in most cases the results of house 
 wrecking activities, and the public often tol- 
 erates an unsightly rubbish heap or unspeak- 
 able hoardings on main thoroughfares, and 
 side by side with the best results of public im- 
 provement. Though economically and aes- 
 thetically undesirable, the speculator may hold 
 them as long as he likes, safely protected by 
 the rule that private property is inviolable. 
 It is many years since Governor Pingree of 
 Michigan, seeing the multitude of unsightly 
 vacant spaces in the city of Detroit originated 
 the plan of securing their temporary use for
 
 SOCIAL AND PERSONAL LIFE SI 
 
 gardening purposes. The potatoes produced 
 by the poor of Detroit on vacant building lands 
 became famous, and Mr. Fels was struck by 
 the applicability of the plan to his own city 
 of Philadelphia. 
 
 The undertaking began in the most modest 
 way with a meeting of a few business men and 
 social workers in the city, an exposition of a 
 plan, and a committee to start the experiment. 
 A few land owners were found willing to lend 
 their sites to be cultivated by working men 
 with a taste for gardening. The plan was ad- 
 vertised; and applicants from the first were 
 more numerous than was anticipated. Once 
 started, this society has never looked back and 
 has grown steadily in strength and usefulness. 
 Mr. Samuel Fels became president in 1907. 
 Chicago, Cleveland, and New York established 
 similar organizations for the cultivation of 
 vacant lots. 
 
 Even in its tenth year, with an income of 
 only thirteen hundred dollars, the Philadelphia 
 society was able to^provide gardens for eight 
 hundred families, representing approximately 
 four thousand men, women and children who
 
 22 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 produced vegetables to the value of $10,400. 
 That is to say, every dollar subscribed pro- 
 duced an eight-fold return in foodstuffs. 
 Many of the workers employed on these va- 
 cant lots were able, after providing themselves 
 and their families with vegetables for their 
 own consumption, to sell the surplus and thus 
 earn a little ready money. Work was found 
 for the unemployed in preparing land for al- 
 lotment holders; and later many of the un- 
 employed themselves took up allotments. As 
 soon as the funds of the society permitted, the 
 workers were instructed and guided by an ex- 
 perienced superintendent. 
 
 These results, it must be remembered, were 
 obtained not from rich soil, but from old, un- 
 used building sites locally regarded as eye- 
 sores and dumping grounds. The workers, 
 too, were for the most part people without 
 previous agricultural or gardening knowledge, 
 who were recruited at random from the work- 
 ing class population of Philadelphia. To the 
 material benefit which the cultivation of these 
 vacant lots brought to the people who worked 
 them, must be added the blessing of improved
 
 SOCIAL AND PERSONAL LIFE 23 
 
 health, together with restored manhood and 
 new possibilities of life. "How many men," 
 Mr. Fels once said in a meeting of the society, 
 ''have we lost simply through lack of the 
 medicine nature prescribes, fresh air and 
 vigorous exercise?" The educational value of 
 this work was seen in the establishment of 
 school gardens, which, with Mr. Fels' eager 
 encouragement, were early made a feature of 
 the scheme. 
 
 This experiment meant much in Mr. Pels' 
 life. It gave point and direction to certain 
 ideas which had for some years been upper- 
 most in his mind. He had always been im- 
 pressed by the possibilities inherent in the 
 cultivation of the land. He had before this 
 helped men, broken by the struggle of life in 
 the city, to establish themselves as farmers. 
 The experiment with the city lots had shown 
 that there was a real hunger for the land ; the 
 society from the start had always more ap- 
 plicants than it could supply. Meantime 
 there was no dearth of land. There was no 
 scarcity even of unused land. There was 
 almost a plethora of land deliberately with-
 
 24 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 held from cultivation or from other improve- 
 ments, merely for purposes of speculation. 
 At that time only the problem existed for him. 
 He had probably no kind of solution to sug- 
 gest for it; but the experience must undoubt- 
 edly have exercised no small influence on his 
 mind.
 
 Ill 
 
 The Situation in England 
 
 TN 1901 it became desirable for Mr. Fels to 
 - go to England to work up a distributing 
 branch of the business in that country. Eng- 
 land the fact is from another standpoint 
 significant was a free trade country and it 
 was thus possible to compete there on equal 
 terms with domestic productions. For two or 
 three years after his arrival in England Mr. 
 Fels, with his close co-worker, Walter Coates, 
 devoted his energies to the establishment of 
 this branch of the business. Owing to the 
 keenest competition and the general difficulty 
 of securing custom, this work was for a time 
 very arduous and required close and exclusive 
 attention. In the course of a few years, how- 
 ever, the business became plainer sailing and 
 Mr. Fels gradually relinquished the direction 
 to Mr. Coates. During the last ten years of 
 
 25
 
 26 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 his life he gave only very occasional super- 
 vision to the conduct of business affairs. 
 
 Constituted as he was with ready sympathy 
 for the oppressed and needy, combined with 
 completely democratic conceptions, he was in- 
 evitably drawn into participation in social 
 affairs and the kind of work that is generally 
 described as social reform. 
 
 To understand clearly the direction of his 
 interest and activities, it is necessary to review 
 briefly the chief features of the situation in 
 England during the opening years of the cen- 
 tury. The conclusion of the Boer War left 
 the British public with some serious practical 
 problems and many kinds of discontent. The 
 national conscience was already beginning to 
 react after its somewhat extreme commitment 
 to ideals of imperialistic enterprise. The war 
 and the years immediately following disclosed 
 to England many ugly conditions within her. 
 She began to feel it necessary to be for a time, 
 at any rate, a "little England" and put in order 
 some of the pressing affairs of her own house- 
 hold. With the trade depression that imme- 
 diately supervened, the problem of unemploy-
 
 THE SITUATION IN ENGLAND 27 
 
 merit, acute from the time when the armies 
 returned from South Africa, began to assume 
 portentous dimensions. From 1905 to 1908, 
 the country was faced with a condition in its 
 labor market that was truly appalling. Ad- 
 ministrators seemed to have a dearth of means, 
 and a greater dearth of ideas for dealing with 
 the situation. Local resources were wholly 
 inadequate, whether for relief or the provision 
 of temporary relief works. 
 
 It appeared as if the country could not ex- 
 pand its trade to the point of absorbing the 
 enormous labor surplus, or shoulder the ter- 
 rible burden that began to fall upon its ma- 
 chinery of relief. Bands of the hungry were 
 for a time almost daily upon the streets de- 
 manding work. The nation was, in short, hav- 
 ing to pay the penalty of industrial efficiency, 
 the possession of millions of factory-trained 
 and habituated workmen, kept always suffi- 
 ciently numerous to ensure low wages in the 
 best of times, and doomed, with the cyclical 
 recurrence of depression, to unemployment 
 and privation. 
 
 Added to this state of affairs, was the more
 
 28 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 than disquieting realization of national deter- 
 ioration. The small percentage of recruits 
 found acceptable for service abroad came as 
 a shock to those who had previously taken for 
 granted the superior quality of the nation's 
 physique. Overcrowded and unhealthy urban 
 districts where the workers have their homes, 
 the cramped and mechanical nature of their 
 occupations, the general disregard for life and 
 health accorded the wage-earning population, 
 had been found to have reached their natural 
 consequence in a proletariat rapidly deteriorat- 
 ing in fitness as well as in the means of sub- 
 sistence. Nothing short of a national crisis 
 ever makes the Englishman clearly recognize 
 a defect in the national life, but it came home 
 with striking force in the years following the 
 war. Every student of economic and social 
 affairs, every reformer, and even every poli- 
 tician found his attention absorbed by these 
 crying questions of employment and health. 
 On the whole much has been done legislatively 
 to improve the sanitary conditions of the 
 worker. With increasingly efficient inspec- 
 tion of factory and of home, with workmen's
 
 THE SITUATION IN ENGLAND 29 
 
 compensation, and latterly, sickness insurance, 
 it may be said that Britain is on her way to 
 establishing for the laboring population a set 
 of tolerable conditions of life. 
 
 For the problem of unemployment, how- 
 ever, little has been achieved. Old-age pen- 
 sions and labor exchanges count for little as 
 against the burden of unemployment which 
 came into view a decade ago, and which will 
 inevitably recur when the present war is over. 
 To put the matter briefly, the problem of the 
 social reformer ten years ago was to ameliorate 
 the condition of a huge population of industrial 
 workers, with precarious and scanty means of 
 subsistence, and rapidly becoming degenerate, 
 through the evil effects of factory and city 
 slum. 
 
 The remedy adopted for unemployment 
 was naturally conditioned by the circumstances 
 of the time, great urgency for which no pre- 
 vious foresight had provided, the hasty en- 
 deavor to provide public works which would 
 absorb a proportion of the surplus labor. 
 Local efforts were aided by grants made by 
 the government and administered in London
 
 30 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 by the Central Unemployed Body, which came 
 into existence in 1904. Certain general works 
 were carried on by the committee and vacan- 
 cies allotted to the different boroughs. In ad- 
 dition, a rudimentary kind of labor exchange 
 activity was initiated to meet the needs of such 
 employers as happened to require men. These 
 palliatives effected only a small fraction of the 
 relief demanded. An important principle, 
 however, was established, namely, that the 
 Government should, in times of trade depres- 
 sion, become an employer for the purpose of 
 utilizing the labor surplus; a principle which 
 has received application in the Development 
 Act. The general establishment of labor ex- 
 changes operative throughout the country, to 
 equalize the demand upon the labor market, is 
 the further administrative contribution to the 
 solution of the problem. 
 
 Knowledge was not lacking, during this 
 decade in which unemployment mounted to 
 the highest point of its curve and gradually 
 descended to its normal, of the one great 
 remedy which is adequate to cure the greatest 
 of economic illnesses. Those whose prevision
 
 THE SITUATION IN ENGLAND 31 
 
 reaches beyond the screen of great temporary 
 prosperity have been well aware that the na- 
 tional life of Britain, as of other countries, can 
 only conserve itself by an agriculture which 
 grows concomitantly with, and balances in- 
 dustry. It has remained for Professor Ash- 
 ley, himself one of the greatest of commercial 
 experts, to show the vital necessity of this re- 
 lation, and for a great war to bring home the 
 fact that it is a serious matter for a great na- 
 tion to neglect the tillage of the soil. 
 
 The "back to the land" cry, however, has 
 made itself heard for nearly a generation. 
 Social reformers in England have for many 
 years contemplated with envy the rural de- 
 velopment of Continental countries, the con- 
 servation of a strong and resourceful peas- 
 antry, the evolution of intensive culture with 
 skilful and scientific methods of tillage, the 
 spectacle of nations that in emergency would 
 be self-supporting. Increasing alarm has 
 been felt that the population of England 
 should be dragged from its last few roots in 
 the soil and placed in the urban and industrial 
 atmosphere to wither and decay. The small
 
 32 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 holders of Denmark, Belgium and France un- 
 doubtedly constitute an element of national 
 strength that is lacking in England. Great 
 wealth certainly belongs to an industrial na- 
 tion with a world's trade, but is a doubtful com- 
 pensation for the drain on human quality, 
 when, in addition, this industrial system finds 
 itself with a normal surplus of workers, which 
 at recurring intervals increases to the point of 
 being an alarming problem. 
 
 The difficulty was to find means. An in- 
 dustrial proletariat has seemingly become a 
 part of the order of things. Consciously or 
 unconsciously, the employers of labor always 
 aid that conspiracy of circumstances which has 
 made Britain urban and industrial. High 
 profits naturally derive from low wages, and 
 the scale of wages is determined by the labor 
 market. With a surplus, the tendency is in- 
 evitably to that low limit which just prevents 
 starvation. It is therefore to the interest of 
 employers to depopulate the rural districts and 
 herd the population in cities, to provide man- 
 ual training for children and technical educa- 
 tion for youth, to make it, if possible, less prof-
 
 THE SITUATION IN ENGLAND 33 
 
 itable to cultivate the soil, and in addition, 
 to secure possession for members of their own 
 class of large sections of land for merely resi- 
 dential and sporting purposes. Every one 
 knows now that back to the land is impossible 
 in England, because there is no land available 
 for use. But there was a long struggle to 
 open the gate of the industrial prison. 
 
 The Small Holdings Act seemed the dawn 
 of a new day for the people of England, but 
 the light glimmered and went out when the 
 attempt was made to apply its provisions. 
 Even confiscation has no value when the con- 
 fiscator is the person whose interest it is to 
 abstain. The Garden City movement seemed 
 to promise something, but whatever its benefits 
 it has no effect upon the labor market; indeed 
 this market is brought under closer control. 
 The key to the whole problem is simply that 
 the laborer, to have any advantageous position, 
 must in the last resort be able to leave in- 
 dustry and secure a living by the pursuit of 
 agriculture. It is as a great alternative oc- 
 cupation that agriculture can supplement and 
 balance industry, and play its appropriate role
 
 34 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 in the life of a nation. Allow the land to be 
 available for use, give the children as much 
 instruction in natural occupations as in the 
 crafts, and the rights of workers would not be 
 long in establishing themselves. 
 
 Ten years ago, however, it seemed that the 
 Small Holdings Act constituted an avenue to 
 rural re-population, and the problem of great- 
 est difficulty seemed that of training members 
 of a city-bred population for work on the soil. 
 The best method seemed to be the establish- 
 ment of colonies, which would serve as inter- 
 mediate stations between town and country. 
 The experiments of Dr. Paton and of General 
 Booth had made the idea in some degree fa- 
 miliar. Their underlying intention was to 
 provide healthful employment through which 
 workers could earn a part of their mainte- 
 nance. The purpose was philanthropic and 
 largely in the interest of religion. 
 
 Modifications toward betterment in the 
 British social economy are proverbially slow 
 and at the same time so vague that their general 
 bearing is indeterminate and unconscious. To 
 clarify its meaning is to harm any tendency
 
 THE SITUATION IN ENGLAND 85 
 
 because notice involves a disproportionate de- 
 gree of suspicion and criticism, and con- 
 sequent reaction. In England to label is to 
 damn. The social region bounded on one side 
 by the fixed doctrine of the economics of em- 
 ployment, supply and demand in the labor 
 market, and on the other, by the equally hard 
 and fast principle of the poor law this region 
 occupied by the unemployed, so long a field 
 barren of ideas and accessible only to the 
 sterile seeds of charity this field Joseph Fels 
 chose for his labors. Just as his efforts 
 changed many a London rubbish heap into a 
 garden full of living things for the further 
 support of life, so he hoped to see the human 
 rubbish heap flowering and producing. 
 
 The conditions seemed present for some 
 successful work to be undertaken. There was 
 the idea of returning to the land as an outlet 
 for unemployed labor, and the idea of coloniz- 
 ing as the means of providing the necessary 
 training, but no practical movement could be 
 got under way. Authorities both national 
 and local seemed land-locked either by conven- 
 tion or regulation, and charity was wholly in-
 
 36 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 adequate to deal with the issue. Some sort of 
 impetus was necessary and this was supplied 
 by Mr. Fels. His simple practical directness 
 set matters moving. If it was a good thing to 
 put the unemployed upon the land, then get 
 land. If it was a good thing to train in col- 
 onies for agricultural work, then form colonies. 
 If it was a labor too great for philanthropy to 
 accomplish and required administration by 
 state and local authorities, then proceed to 
 secure such administration. If some one was 
 needed to take the initiative in all these mat- 
 ters, he was quite willing to offer himself. 
 
 It was clear to him that whatever was done 
 should not be a matter of capricious charity 
 but of public enterprise; that the foundations 
 should be laid for a permanent rather than a 
 temporary structure; that whatever existing 
 machinery might be adapted to this new pur- 
 pose should be utilized. It was not so much a 
 lack of instrumentalities as the limitations 
 placed upon their use that formed the chief 
 obstacle. The administration of relief was 
 bound to a narrow course by the principles 
 and regulations of the Poor Law. The
 
 .THE SITUATION IN ENGLAND 87 
 
 Guardians of the Poor with the strict inter- 
 pretation of their duties had to force all the 
 needy into the groove of utterly destitute 
 paupers, that is, to subject them to workhouse 
 treatment. 
 
 The idea that relief could be administered 
 in a way which might lead to the betterment 
 of those relieved, either by providing healthful 
 occupation or in training for a new sphere of 
 activities was so contrary to the intention of 
 the Poor Law that no Board of Guardians 
 could see its way to broaden its activities by 
 including a farm colony. Mr. Fels saw that 
 it might be a different story if the use of a 
 farm colony were offered to guardians to re- 
 lieve the congestion in the workhouse, or the 
 strain upon outdoor relief. It was at this 
 point that he came in contact with Mr. George 
 Lansbury and formed that partnership in 
 social and political work which has left its 
 enduring mark upon this generation.
 
 IV 
 Farm Colonies: Laindon 
 
 cause of labor in its struggle toward 
 political expression and representation 
 has had its martyrs and heroes, also its due 
 proportion of the stupid and time serving. 
 When it unexpectedly found its strength in 
 1906, with a relatively imposing representa- 
 tion in Parliament, and knew that henceforth 
 it was a power in politics to be reckoned with, 
 it faced the difficulty of reducing into a meas- 
 urable program of action the multitudinous 
 discontents of the labor world, and somehow 
 discovering enough agreement to present a 
 solid front to political opponents. It became 
 as every one knows a party ; its representatives 
 were disciplined to the orders of a whip, and 
 the expression of its opinions was arranged and 
 officialized. Among those who made this pos- 
 sible two figures stand out, Keir Hardie and 
 George Lansbury. 
 
 As the chief and for a long time the only 
 
 38
 
 FARM COLONIES: LAINDON 89 
 
 spokesman for labor in the House of Com- 
 mons, Mr. Hardie displayed a devotion and a 
 courage which will receive a greater apprecia- 
 tion in the future than even his colleagues are 
 able at present to accord. Mr. Lansbury was 
 not until recently within the precincts of the 
 House. He entered politics because he felt 
 that he had a special work to perform, but it 
 is doubtful if the dull fetters of membership 
 gave him as wide or useful a scope as he had 
 enjoyed as a private citizen of the East End 
 of London. He is one of the most expert 
 Poor Law administrators in the country, hav- 
 ing served a long period on the Poplar Board 
 of Guardians. As one of the Commissioners 
 on the reform of the Poor Law, he gave his 
 knowledge and experience to the framing of 
 the Minority Report. He is one of the men, 
 rare enough in or out of public life, who may 
 be trusted to know the right intuitively and 
 pursue it unflinchingly, whatever theoretical 
 opinions they may express or be credited with. 
 When party loyalty came in conflict with his 
 convictions, he sacrificed his seat to his prin- 
 ciples.
 
 iO JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 With such a man then, Mr. Fels became 
 associated and the connection covered an un- 
 interrupted period of eleven years. Mr. 
 Lansbury, as a member of the Board of Guard- 
 ians for Poplar, was already in 1904 endeavor- 
 ing to extend the scope of relief in a way to 
 alter materially the limitations of the old Poor 
 Law. Mr. Fels was at the time busy with the 
 formation of his Vacant Lands Cultivation 
 Society. During his first visit to Mr. Lans- 
 bury at his home in Bow, the conversation 
 turned upon the utilization of land as a mode 
 of solving the problem of unemployment. 
 Mr. Lansbury was impressed by the business- 
 like energy of his new friend and the desire 
 to do rather than to talk. For the next four 
 months hardly a day passed without their meet- 
 ing. Mr. Lansbury's greatest concern was 
 that in Poplar, one of the poorest of East End 
 districts, the problem of unemployment had 
 reached an acute point. The workhouse was 
 inadequate for the accommodation of those 
 who wished to enter, and great distress was be- 
 ing experienced by many others in the district 
 who were not applying to the Guardians for
 
 FARM COLONIES: LAINDON 4,1 
 
 relief. Mr. Fels was asked to advance money 
 for a vigorous agitation and this he did. A 
 deputation of a thousand women was or- 
 ganized and sent from Mile End to West- 
 minster. From among these, the first deputa- 
 tion of working class women went to the House 
 of Commons. It was interesting that this 
 was the first deputation of its kind to enter the 
 House, and probably gave to the Suffragists 
 their idea of petitioning in the same manner. 
 On this occasion only working class women 
 waited upon Mr. Balfour and Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman. Some scores of mem- 
 bers were interviewed the same afternoon. 
 Nothing, However, was done that session. 
 
 But Mr. Fels was not content to wait. He 
 proceeded to worry the Local Government 
 Board, and persuaded Mr. Walter Long to 
 sanction the use of some land he was ready to 
 buy and lend to the Poplar Board of Guard- 
 ians. This move was, of course, supported by 
 Mr. Lansbury's vigorous agitation outside. 
 One hundred acres were bought at Laindon 
 and the first farm colony for the unemployed 
 was established. It is noteworthy that in con-
 
 42 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 nection with this purchase some one of the 
 Guardians let out the fact that the farm in 
 question was to be secured, and in consequence 
 the price was increased more than five hun- 
 dred pounds. The arrangement was that the 
 farm should be let to the Poplar Guardians 
 for a term of three years at the rent of one 
 peppercorn, and that the Guardians should 
 have the option of purchase for the price paid 
 at any time during their tenancy. Possession 
 was taken in March, 1904, and one hundred 
 able-bodied paupers were set to work. Tem- 
 porary structures for dormitories, kitchen, 
 laundry and lavatory were added, and a re- 
 servoir for water supply was immediately 
 built. 
 
 Many newspaper correspondents visited 
 the farm and the experiment became widely 
 known. The superintendent announced that 
 forty of the hundred would be acceptable as 
 laborers anywhere if he were the employer. 
 Over a dozen were old soldiers of at least ten 
 years' service and all but one had stripes or 
 medals; no one had a pension. In contrast 
 with the degenerative restrictions of the work-
 
 FARM COLONIES: LAINDON 43 
 
 house, the men were given great freedom. 
 Papers, books and games were provided, and 
 Mr. Fels sent down a piano. The success of 
 the colony was immediately manifest to all 
 except those who believe that the workhouse 
 test is a foundation of the British Empire. 
 As an example of what was considered en- 
 lightened procedure, the following may be 
 quoted from a letter in the Times by a Pad- 
 dington Guardian: 
 
 May I draw attention to the methods pursued by 
 the Paddington Guardians for the last thirty years 
 in connection with the unemployed? . . . 
 
 A married man on applying for relief is offered 
 work in the labor yard where firewood is made. The 
 work is renewed week by week if necessary, and if the 
 man's conduct is reported well of by the labor mas- 
 ter. . . . For his further help, the labor yard is 
 constantly visited by an officer of the Church Army, 
 and the labor master gives him opportunity to seek 
 work. Many years' experience has shown the suc- 
 cess of this method. ... In Paddington there are 
 some thirty thousand people who in Mr. Charles 
 Booth's words "have a struggle to obtain the neces- 
 saries of life and make both ends meet," yet year 
 after year men in Paddington, who by experience 
 know what winter suffering is, persistently refrain 
 from seeking means by which they and their wives 
 and families may be fed and warmed.
 
 44 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 This shows how far the Laindon experiment 
 had gone beyond what was commonly accepted 
 as enlightened practice in the administration 
 of relief. An illustrated booklet was issued, 
 and visitors from all parts of the country came 
 to see the experiment. 
 
 The policy accepted and made effective by 
 the Poplar Board of Guardians seemed to Mr. 
 Fels to offer that combination of public author- 
 ity and private enterprise which would solve 
 his problem. He therefore proceeded with 
 the acquisition of farm properties and at the 
 same time approached the various metropoli- 
 tan Boards of Guardians and extended his 
 offer generally to all parts of the Kingdom. 
 At first these bodies seemed eager and many 
 of them invited Mr. Fels to attend and ex- 
 plain the terms of his offer. Public bodies 
 are as acquisitive as individuals, and the glory 
 of their administrative achievement is meas- 
 ured inversely on the scale of expense. No 
 amelioration of the lot of the poor is creditable 
 if it increases the rate. Public feeling shud- 
 ders At starvation but does not in the least mind 
 permanent destitution.
 
 FARM COLONIES: LAINDON 45 
 
 The Board of Guardians and the adminis- 
 tration of relief stand historically and actually 
 apart from the general system of local gov- 
 ernment. It has no responsibility to or con- 
 nection with the county or borough council. 
 It maintains a separate election, a separate 
 rate and a separate connection with the Local 
 Government Board. Members are unpaid 
 and seek election for the sake of local prestige. 
 The board's functions are the maintenance of 
 a workhouse and the administration of outdoor 
 relief. The principle which animates all its 
 activities is that of the old Poor Law which 
 provided that the state of any person seeking 
 relief must be calculatedly kept lower than 
 that of the lowest paid laborer. It has always 
 been supposed that an automatic test of desti- 
 tution was provided by making the conditions 
 of relief unattractive. The boards are, there- 
 fore, not guardians of the poor but of the funds 
 intended to relieve them. Naturally only 
 those individuals are elected who are prepared 
 to keep the rate down to that point which will 
 just guard a locality from the accusation of 
 permitting its poor to starve. The provisions
 
 46 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 of the Minority Report of the Poor Law Com- 
 mission, which involved the abolition of guard- 
 ians and the assimilation of relief to the gen- 
 eral administration of county and borough 
 councils, with a change of the principle of 
 saving from starvation to one of saving 
 from destitution itself, have not commended 
 themselves to the British public; they are 
 socialistic. 
 
 The close and local responsibility of guard- 
 ians to rate payers with its necessary conse- 
 quence in the kind of personnel thus selected, 
 explains the reception which Mr. Fels met in 
 his efforts to help the poor to help themselves. 
 There was also another characteristic. In 
 Great Britain one understands charity, and 
 one understands business, but no one has yet 
 understood that the two could in any way be 
 combined. The provision of land to form 
 labor colonies seemed at first glance the act 
 of the amiable philanthropist to be fully ex- 
 ploited and rewarded with the usual fatuous 
 vote of thanks. The moment the conditions 
 were disclosed, the whole transaction appeared 
 to discerning guardians as a wolf in sheep's
 
 FARM COLONIES: LAINDON 47 
 
 clothing, business parading as philanthropy, 
 and Mr. Fels a sharp business man, an Ameri- 
 can and a Jew, trying to extricate himself from 
 bad land deals at the public expense, or else 
 seizing the three years' improvement which the 
 colony might give the land. Mr. Fels, of 
 course, had no desire for the cheap glory of 
 the philanthropist which comes of relieving 
 others of work and responsibility, and his de- 
 sire was to facilitate a new modus operandi in 
 dealing with unemployment. He was willing 
 to risk losses to achieve his object, but he saw 
 as always that to be permanently beneficial a 
 plan must stand on its own feet and not live 
 on the passing bounty of any individual. 
 
 An example of the way in which Mr. Pels' 
 offer was met may not be out of place. At a 
 meeting of the Distress Committee of Strat- 
 ford a discussion took place, the lines of which 
 are indicated by the following extracts : 
 
 The Executive Subcommittee presented a report 
 upon the farm colony proposals. They had received 
 an offer from Mr. J. Fels of an estate at Wickford 
 of some five hundred acres at a peppercorn rent for 
 three years ; the Committee then to have the right of 
 purchase at the figure at which Mr. Fels acquired the
 
 48 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 property. The Subcommittee secured the opinion 
 of Mr. Kemsley, of Messrs. Kemsley and Co., who 
 reported strongly against the use of the land for 
 such purposes on the ground of its unworkable char- 
 acter during winter months at a time when in West 
 Ham they would have the need for larger scope for 
 a farm colony. Mr. Kemsley stated the reasons for 
 such an opinion which were strongly supported by 
 the Subcommittee who spent a day on the farm and 
 went into the full details. . . . Mr. Fels said he did 
 not agree with the opinions of the expert because 
 they were not actual facts. . . . Two hundred men 
 with spades could be put on the land, the arable land 
 could be broken up and the pasture land could all be 
 cultivated. They could grow fruit there. He had 
 communicated with the Essex County Council ask- 
 ing them to put ditches in the main road to drain the 
 ground. . . . The farm was as good as they could 
 get anywhere within fifty miles of London. . . . Mr. 
 Paul stated that on the farm Mr. Fels offered to the 
 West Ham Board of Guardians he wanted to oc- 
 cupy the valuable frontage himself. Mr. Fels : 
 "Who says that? " Mr. Paul: "That is what you 
 told the Board of Guardians." Mr. Fels : "That is 
 absolutely untrue." Mr. Paul: "Do you say that 
 is untrue? Do you deny the truth of my state- 
 ment?" . . . Mr. Fels said it was no use putting 
 two hundred men on the land unless they placed some 
 incentive before them. He was to retain 20 per 
 cent, of the land, to provide plots on which were to 
 be erected buildings to be let for small holdings. 
 He did not hope to make any money out of it. He 
 made money out of his business. He was not specu-
 
 FARM COLONIES: LAINDON 49 
 
 lating in property. He reserved the right to be be- 
 lieved until they proved him to be a liar. . . . Mr. 
 George Hay remarked he had no wish to make any 
 charge against Mr. Fels because he believed that gen- 
 tleman meant well. He made a fair offer if the land 
 was suitable . . . they had an eye upon their two 
 thousand pounds and that impressed upon them the 
 necessity of getting land. . . . Mr. Arnold Hills 
 protested against the gross discourtesy with which 
 Mr. Fels had been treated. There was such a thing 
 as casting pearls before those who did not appreci- 
 ate them. He had farmed Essex land for more than 
 twenty years, and he could not accept Mr. Kemsley's 
 report. Mr. Kemsley said they would do more harm 
 than good there. Of course, they would never do so 
 if they did the same way the Essex farmers did, but 
 with spade digging it would grow almost any kind of 
 crop. Mr. Kemsley said he felt he had a very thank- 
 less task as they had a gentleman who had offered 
 them land on very favorable terms for a farm colony. 
 All he could say was exactly opposite to what Mr. 
 Fels had said ... no business man would take this 
 heavy land on as a speculation. . . . Counsellor 
 Watts said the Subcommittee were more than anx- 
 ious to get men on the ground but they did not wish 
 to commit themselves to impracticable schemes. 
 They were anxious to get the two thousand pounds 
 but they were going to be honest to themselves and 
 the general public. He was not going to be a party 
 to any half measures. . . . On the motion of Mr. 
 Mills a vote of thanks was also tendered to Mr. Mas- 
 terman, Mr. Fels and Mr. Lansbury for their at- 
 tendance.
 
 Hollesley Bay and Mayland 
 
 A S there seemed considerable prospect of 
 <** local authorities taking advantage of Mr. 
 Fels' offer, now broadly known through the 
 press, he and Mr. Lansbury found themselves 
 not long after the successful beginning of the 
 Laindon experiment making visits throughout 
 England, and inspecting land of all kinds. 
 Through Mr. Goodchild, an expert from the 
 London County Council who advised as to the 
 development of Laindon, an estate at Hollesley 
 Bay was discovered to be available. This was 
 a property of thirteen hundred acres organ- 
 ized as an agricultural college for the sons of 
 gentlemen, but it had fallen upon bad times 
 and was now for sale. Mr. Fels and Mr. 
 Lansbury went to the estate and interviewed 
 the managing director, who treated them very 
 much as interfering intruders, and seemed to 
 
 50
 
 HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAYLAND 51 
 
 think that although the place was for sale it 
 was very wicked for any one to think of buy- 
 ing it. For his consolation nothing was said 
 about purchase or the use for which it was in- 
 tended. The difficulty was that the price was 
 something over thirty thousand pounds which 
 seemed so much that there might be no public 
 authority willing to take it over. 
 
 Meanwhile matters were becoming more 
 acute, and the Government was being greatly 
 worried partly owing to the agitation which 
 had been set on foot. Mr. Walter Long 
 called a conference of guardians and counsel- 
 lors and from it formed an organization known 
 as the London Unemployed Fund composed 
 of representatives from all authorities in Lon- 
 don. Mr. Lansbury was a member of this 
 body and although very ill at the time man- 
 aged to attend the first meeting. A letter was 
 read from Mr. Fels offering the body the loan 
 of an estate of thirteen hundred acres for three 
 years free of rent. Mr. Lansbury rose and 
 quietly moved that this generous offer be ac- 
 cepted. It was seconded by Mr. Grinling of 
 Woolwich, who was aware of the plan, and be-
 
 62 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 fore the Board realized what it was doing the 
 motion was carried. Mr. Fels then bought 
 the estate and within a few weeks the place 
 was occupied by five or six hundred of the un- 
 employed. The question arose as to how the 
 land should be worked, and after some months 
 Mr. Thomas Smith, later Mr. Fels' manager 
 at Mayland, was called in as expert. Among 
 the men there were numbers who showed great 
 adaptability and proved capable of doing much 
 better work than under the conditions possible 
 at the colony. The problem was therefore as 
 to whether some of the men should not be per- 
 manently settled on the land. This raised 
 the difficulty of cottages, and the degree to 
 which development could be undertaken was 
 determined by whether or not the estate would 
 remain public property. Mr. Fels advanced 
 more money with which was started a terrific 
 agitation in London for the passing of the Un- 
 employed Workmen Act. Again the women 
 were brought out, some ten thousand chiefly 
 from East and South London, and a great 
 procession marched across London, while a 
 deputation of twenty or thirty women and
 
 HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAYLAND 53 
 
 some men representing the London Trades' 
 Council waited upon Mr. Arthur Balfour. 
 Very little encouragement was received from 
 him but the movement persisted and finally the 
 Bill, the fate of which had hung in the balance, 
 was passed owing it was thought at that time 
 to a speech by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. This 
 was at the end of 1905. With the advent of 
 the Central (Unemployed) Body set up under 
 the Unemployed Workmen Act, the position 
 was more secure, but there was a shortage of 
 funds to carry on the work at Hollesley Bay. 
 As a result of the appeal made to Mr. Balfour 
 by the deputation, Queen Alexandra opened 
 a fund, and for one winter this fund provided 
 all the money necessary. 
 
 The Central Body which had taken the 
 place of the London Unemployed Fund was 
 persuaded to take over the estate at Hollesley, 
 and Mr. Fels loaned two thousand pounds 
 with which to build cottages. As soon as 
 these cottages were completed they were oc- 
 cupied by the London men who had been 
 trained on the colony. The attention of Mr. 
 Fels and Mr. Lansbury was then given to ex-
 
 54 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 tending the plan so as to deal with larger num- 
 bers of men. It was intended to purchase 
 another estate and much territory was scoured 
 to find a suitable one. It was found quite 
 close to Hollesley Bay and the purchase was 
 at the point of completion when another factor 
 entered into and altered the whole situation. 
 With the change of government early in 
 1906, Mr. John Burns became president of 
 the Local Government Board. It is difficult 
 even now to estimate the harm done to the 
 cause of progress by this one man. So long 
 a follower and bearer of the flag of democracy, 
 he entered the Cabinet as the representative 
 of the people. It was thought that now the 
 dumb masses had their spokesman in high 
 places, that injustice and oppression could 
 claim attention at the very fount of power, 
 that the liberal cause had at last definitely 
 joined hands with that of the working multi- 
 tude. Instead of that, England has witnessed 
 for nearly a decade the administration of a 
 government department utterly oblivious of 
 the tendency of the time, deaf to every sugges- 
 tion of reform, blind to everything that might
 
 HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAYLAND 55 
 
 disturb the established order, so filled with ven- 
 omous reaction that it has become an odious 
 thing to the minds of all who wanted to help 
 the lot of the poor. Mr. John Burns forbade 
 the Central Body to have anything to do with 
 the purchase of a new estate and the whole plan 
 was ruined. All the progressive action of 
 those enlightened statesmen, Walter Long and 
 Gerald Balfour, who had presided over the de- 
 partment, was reversed, and Hollesley Bay 
 became merely a country annex to take the 
 overflow from London workhouses. 
 
 It will have been discerned that Mr. Pels' 
 main interest was to establish a permanent re- 
 lation between the land and as many of the 
 workers as could adapt themselves to its cul- 
 tivation. Of each property offered the pub- 
 lic authorities, he proposed to retain some- 
 thing like a quarter, to be developed into small 
 holdings and receive men trained in the colony 
 to serve, at any rate, as an example to the 
 others. The whole work was an endeavor to 
 remedy that topsyturvydom in which millions 
 of acres lying uncultivated and tens of thou- 
 sands of men wanting work and ready to cul-
 
 56 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 tivate it, could not be brought together. Plans 
 were made for utilizing a property at Wye as 
 a colony for women, but once more Mr. John 
 Burns blocked the way to success. It is worth 
 recording that during the same administration 
 of the Local Government Board, the Com- 
 mission appointed for considering the reform 
 of the Poor Law presented its report. The 
 ends for which Mr. Lansbury had been work- 
 ing slowly but with success were embodied in 
 the systematized provisions of the Minority 
 Report ; but Poor Law reform, whether along 
 the lines of the majority or of the minority, 
 had no chance so long as its destiny lay in the 
 hands of Mr. John Burns. 
 
 Balked thus in endeavoring to contribute 
 to the solution of the unemployed problem, Mr. 
 Fels decided to test possibilities on his own ac- 
 count. He had acquired a property at May- 
 land near Althorn in Essex about forty miles 
 from London, and now proceeded to use it for 
 the purposes of his experiment. The remain- 
 ing possibility seemed to him to lie along the 
 line of small holdings. He therefore pro- 
 ceeded to establish upon the farm in question
 
 HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAYLAND 57 
 
 something over twenty holdings of from five 
 to ten acres, each equipped with dwelling and 
 out-houses and partly planted with fruit. The 
 larger portion of the estate was carried on as 
 a farm under the management of Mr. Thomas 
 Smith, an expert agriculturist and enlightened 
 man, who was willing to give the small holders 
 needful advice and supervise their work until 
 they had learned to find their own way. For 
 the purposes of instruction and also to give 
 a demonstration of the possibilities of inten- 
 sive culture, a French garden was established 
 which was extended to cover two acres, 
 equipped with frames and bell-glasses, sheds 
 and watering facilities and a great range of 
 hot-houses. A gardener was secured from 
 near Paris and kept for two years to show 
 the best methods that were being utilized in 
 France. The experiment was a costly one, 
 something like twenty-five thousand pounds 
 being necessary to equip the estate. 
 
 It was Mr. Fels' desire on this occasion to 
 reach a somewhat better type of industrial 
 product than the unemployed examples he had 
 been dealing with. The small holdings were
 
 58 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 therefore allotted to individuals with families 
 who possessed a certain minimum amount of 
 capital. Needless to say there were many 
 hundreds of applicants. 
 
 There was much hope, in the early days of 
 liberal administration, of a great development 
 in the direction of small holdings through the 
 vigorous application of the Small Holdings 
 Act which conferred considerable power upon 
 county councils, but as everyone knows, the 
 'Act remained, and still remains, a dead letter. 
 The Liberal Party is in the view of a foreigner 
 a most interesting and curious political prod- 
 uct. It maintains itself by lofty professions 
 and magnificent promises combined with a 
 minimum of achievement. The majority of its 
 leaders are politicians, that is, individuals who 
 are more concerned with talking to the public 
 than with statesmanship. Its chief pride is 
 that of proposing innumerable bills. The dif- 
 ference between it and the Conservative Party 
 is that whereas the latter proposes little and 
 does little, the former proposes much and does 
 nothing. After nearly a decade of Liberal 
 gorernment, the worker may well ask himself
 
 HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAYLAND 59 
 
 if his condition is better than it was ten years 
 ago, apart from the usual trade cycle. There 
 are, of course, Liberals who feel that they made 
 the intervening period of prosperity. After 
 all there is only one important matter, and 
 that is to receive a just return for one's labor. 
 To redress adventitious grievances is a small 
 matter when wages do not rise, and their pur- 
 chasing power is always declining. Prosper- 
 ity, like most other things, appears to be a 
 monopoly. But in those earlier days it was 
 thought, and Mr. Fels shared the delusion, 
 that the time was arriving when Britain might 
 be an agricultural nation and again fasten in 
 the soil the roots of its national life. 
 
 So far as concerns the Mayland experi- 
 ment the results were in some small measure 
 successful. One-third of the small holders 
 have remained until the present and have no 
 desire to return to industrial pursuits, but their 
 labor has been very hard and they have no more 
 than made a living. 
 
 They were nearly all townsmen without 
 previous experience of farm life except such 
 as might have been gained on allotments.
 
 60 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Several were from Woolwich, others from Pop- 
 lar, Peckham, etc., and one or two from the 
 provinces. As already noted, considerable 
 expenditure was involved in preparing the 
 holdings. Not only had the holdings to be 
 laid out and provided with buildings, and the 
 land prepared for cultivation, but new roads 
 were necessary, and it soon became clear that 
 market gardening would be faced with the 
 serious if not fatal difficulty of a shortage of 
 water. Mr. Pels endeavored to meet this by 
 establishing underground tanks for rain wa- 
 ter, and by sinking an artesian well, with tank 
 and water mains. There was a borough sup- 
 ply to the neighborhood but this had always 
 been inadequate and the public authority has 
 made no effort to remedy the defect. Almost 
 before the holdings were in working order and 
 before profits from produce were in sight, there 
 supervened the exceptionally bad season of 
 1907. This exhausted much of the holders' 
 own capital and Mr. Pels gave further aid in 
 the form of loans. 
 
 When returns began to come in, it was 
 discovered that two factors in the situation
 
 HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAYLAND 61 
 
 blocked the road to success. In the first place, 
 all produce had to be marketed at Covent Gar- 
 den, and in the second, it had to be sent over 
 the Great Eastern Railway. Commission 
 rates and high railway tariffs left only a small 
 margin of profit. It is an interesting fact to 
 be noted in passing that the whole transport 
 and marketing organization is fatally discrimi- 
 native against the British producer. In prac- 
 tice a position of preference is given to the for- 
 eign market gardener. The rents charged to 
 the holders had to be altered from time to time 
 because of the same reasons that had called for 
 the additional expenditure. They were at first 
 based on 4 per cent, of the capital outlay, 
 equivalent to an average rent of thirty pounds 
 for each holding. The tenure was in the first 
 instance annual for a preliminary period of 
 three years, at the end of which, if the land- 
 lord and tenant were mutually agreeable, a 
 long lease was to be arranged. It was agreed 
 to consider several of the items of expenditure 
 as experimental and therefore chargeable to 
 the owner. In consequence, rents were re- 
 duced to an average of twenty-four pounds
 
 62 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 per holding. In 1908 the scale of rents was 
 again revised. Rent for 1907 was wholly de- 
 ferred. In 1908 half rent was to be paid and 
 half deferred. In 1909 three-quarters were 
 to be paid and one-quarter deferred. In 1910 
 the full rent was to be paid. The deferred 
 rent was to be spread over the succeeding thir- 
 teen years and added to the normal rent. In 
 1910 there was another failure of crops, and 
 the burden of debt owing by almost every 
 holder, for money lent and rent due, was fast 
 assuming proportions which made repayment 
 almost hopeless. The holders were offered 
 one of two alternatives. Anyone who had be- 
 come hopeless of ultimate success and wished 
 to give up his holding could have a clear receipt 
 for all money borrowed and rent owing, and 
 would receive as a gift half of the amount of 
 his original capital; or, each holder who re- 
 mained would live rent free up to and includ- 
 ing Lady Day, 1911. Should he for four suc- 
 cessive quarter days following that date have 
 paid the rent due according to his agreement, 
 he would be entitled to and freely given a full 
 discharge of all moneys owing up to the time
 
 HOLLESLEY BAY AND MAY1AND 63 
 
 of the offer. About half the holders chose 
 the one alternative and half the other. Among 
 those who left were two who had long con- 
 templated emigration to Australia and had now 
 found the opportunity. 
 
 From this costly experiment Mr. Pels 
 learned a number of lessons. There was 
 clearly manifest a desire on the part of the in- 
 dustrial laborer, to enter agricultural life as 
 shown in the twelve hundred or more applica- 
 tions for these few holdings, and a strong de- 
 termination among most of those who had em- 
 barked, to continue the new mode of life in 
 spite of all discouragement. It was clear 
 again that some of the factors that could have 
 turned failure into success lay outside his hands 
 and were of the nature of public services and 
 utilities. Most important of all, it became evi- 
 dent that for a number of reasons every small 
 holder would lie in the hollow of the landlord's 
 hand. Other impressive facts came to light. 
 The rates paid in 1905, when the population 
 was fourteen, amounted to thirty pounds 
 twelve and threepence. In 1910, with one 
 hundred and seventy-four persons, the rates
 
 64 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 amounted to one hundred and fifty-six pounds 
 nine and twopence. The land was originally 
 purchased at about eight pounds three shillings 
 per acre, but after the enterprise developed it 
 was not possible to obtain adjoining land for 
 less than fourteen pounds per acre. Thus 
 their own industry, by increasing the land 
 values for all the neighboring landlords, 
 blocked the way to expansion. Mr. Fels had 
 learned that the score of holdings which he 
 had established and supported could do nothing 
 towards the hundreds of thousands that would 
 be necessary to solve the problem of poverty.
 
 i 
 
 VI 
 Why Small Holdings Fail 
 
 T was now necessary for Mr. Fels to recon- 
 sider the whole theory of small holdings. 
 His conviction that a return to agriculture was 
 essential to a healthy national life and a pre- 
 ventive of poverty was stronger than ever, 
 but the existing modes of providing small hold- 
 ings seemed fatally defective. It was impor- 
 tant to inquire whether the conditions under 
 which intensive agriculture was carried on in 
 continental countries would throw light upon 
 and assist to the solution of the problem. It 
 seemed clear that the authorities even with 
 powers of compulsory acquisition would do lit- 
 tle toward providing land. The first impres- 
 sion of one visiting the gardening districts of 
 Denmark, Holland and Belgium is likely to 
 be misleading. That enormous quantities are 
 produced and placed on the markets goes with- 
 out saying, and there is the appearance of great 
 
 65
 
 66 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 prosperity, but matters do not, on closer in- 
 spection, turn out to be so satisfactory. The 
 small holders in all these countries receive small 
 benefit of their labor, and live in a large propor- 
 tion of cases on the borders of privation. Any 
 satisfactory proposals looking to repopulation 
 of the country must take these facts into ac- 
 count and give some explanation of their cause. 
 The first fact that inquiry discloses is that 
 there are many more would-be small holders 
 than there are small holdings. In other words 
 there is a perpetual competition, the tendency of 
 which is to put the highest premium on merely 
 obtaining land. One who is willing to sacrifice 
 in the highest degree the benefits of his hold- 
 ing is the one who will obtain it. This keeps 
 the rental value of land so high as to take from 
 the small holder all except the merest liveli- 
 hood. In some parts of Flanders the price of 
 land before the war had risen to several hun- 
 dred pounds per acre. In Denmark for many 
 years land values have been rising by leaps and 
 bounds. In the latter country, also, nearly all 
 that the landlord leaves is taken in the form 
 of taxes levied on buildings and equipment.
 
 WHY SMALL HOLDINGS FAIL 67 
 
 It is obvious then that communities of small 
 holders, however much they may contribute 
 to the prosperity of a country, participate in 
 that prosperity in only a minimum degree, and 
 so far from relieving the burden of poverty 
 merely swell it. The conditions that militate 
 against small holdings and are even fatal to 
 their success are landlordism and the taxing of 
 improvements. All labor put into a holding 
 merely increases its rental value which the land- 
 lord promptly seizes, and its ratable value 
 which the collector of taxes quite as promptly 
 takes into account. 
 
 Statistics in Denmark show that the small 
 holders produce in live stock alone double the 
 quantity of horned cattle per acre that are 
 produced in the country as a whole, over three 
 times as many pigs and over twice as many 
 fowls. The movement toward increasing 
 small holdings has been so strong since the 
 beginning of the century that more than half 
 the increase in population is found in the coun- 
 try districts. In spite of this enormous bene- 
 fit which the community derives from its peas- 
 ant farmers both in quality of population and
 
 68 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 quantity of output, it is a mistake to suppose 
 that they lead anything but a life of poverty, 
 and in too many cases the peasants are found 
 in a state not far removed from starvation. 
 In the long run, therefore, it is a doubtful bene- 
 fit to any country to establish small holdings 
 on a large scale, unless the workers can be 
 guarded from injustice and assured some fair 
 return for their labor. To mention Denmark 
 is to produce the very best example. In Nor- 
 way, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium the 
 conditions have been much worse, and even in 
 Denmark the peasant is doomed to frugal fare 
 in order to export to England what he pro- 
 duces, to have the money to pay his taxes and 
 the interest on his mortgage. The net income 
 of the Danish small holder seldom exceeds fifty 
 pounds a year. It is interesting, therefore, to 
 discover why it is that intensive culture ap- 
 plied to ten acres produces less net profit than 
 the ordinary tillage of thirty. Expenses are 
 less, as there is not so much plowing or manur- 
 ing or harvesting. Moreover, co-operation has 
 made it possible to market with the greatest 
 advantage, at any rate equal to that possessed
 
 WHY SMALL HOLDINGS FAIL 69 
 
 by the larger farmer. Why then, if the small 
 holder produces two or three times as much 
 per acre and the cost of production of any given 
 quantity is consequently less, does he not re- 
 ceive a net income at least equivalent to that 
 of his neighbor? It is obvious that there is 
 something wrong if three times the gross rev- 
 enue per acre that the large holder receives 
 does not net sufficient to maintain the peasant 
 farmer in a relative degree of comfort. 
 Flanders before the war afforded an even more 
 striking example. In this great garden coun- 
 try with all the advantages of co-operation, 
 only a small percentage were proprietors of 
 their holdings. The remainder paid an in- 
 creasingly high rental and were only annual 
 tenants liable to be dispossessed without com- 
 pensation. Whatever is done to improve a 
 holding at once increases the rent. 
 
 The price of land in these countries has 
 been constantly mounting up, following the 
 rental value which is its chief basis. In Den- 
 mark this tendency has been aided by the in- 
 cidence of taxation. Under the old system 
 there was a tax on land values levied along with
 
 70 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 rates according to a very old valuation. There 
 was, therefore, an inducement for the owner 
 of land either to cultivate it himself or else to 
 sell; consequently the price of land remained 
 reasonable. But this tax was abolished by the 
 Liberal Government early in the century and 
 replaced by other taxes which fell largely on 
 the products of labor. The price of land at 
 once advanced to cover the capitalized value 
 of the old taxes which amounted for the whole 
 country to some forty million pounds. There 
 was no longer an inducement to sell, and land 
 gradually withdrew from the market. In two 
 or three years the price increased 25 to 40 per 
 cent. In order to buy a holding, therefore, it is 
 necessary to sink a larger proportion of ready 
 capital which might go into improvement, 
 or else condemn a larger proportion of the la- 
 bor product to pay interest on mortgage debt. 
 If improvements are carried out, the new taxes 
 fall upon them and the farmer's labor has to 
 pay them as well as bear the mortgage burden. 
 The large holder with many acres and few im- 
 provements escapes with a small tax per acre, 
 while the small holder with many improve-
 
 WHY SMALL HOLDINGS FAIL 71 
 
 ments pays a tax per acre many times higher. 
 The foregoing considerations throw valu- 
 able light upon proposals for state aid in the 
 establishment of small holdings. These are 
 without exception, in one form or another, pro- 
 visions for state purchase. They usually in- 
 volve the method of advancing capital at a 
 low rate of interest for the purchase of hold- 
 ings, and require on the part of the would-be 
 holder a certain proportion of the necessary 
 capital. Invariably the land desired for the 
 purpose mounts to a quite disproportionate 
 price. In Denmark very often the land spec- 
 ulator is willing to advance to the purchaser 
 the proportion of capital which he is required 
 to provide, knowing that he will recoup him- 
 self when the purchase takes place. The whole 
 plan is, therefore, a demand for land which 
 forces up its value instead of increasing the 
 supply and making it cheap and accessible. 
 Government assistance means, therefore, that 
 the peasant may obtain land, but that when 
 obtained he will not lie able to make his living 
 upon it. In one of his terse phrases Mr. Fels 
 put the whole matter thus: "Instead of men
 
 72 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 demanding land, the land must be made to de- 
 mand men." 
 
 How then can circumstances be so ar- 
 ranged that the population of a country can 
 make use of that country's land? There are 
 certain well-known facts which gave a point 
 of departure to Mr. Eels' thinking. It is uni- 
 versally true that the conditions of labor are 
 best in a new country where land is cheap and 
 plentiful. Wages are invariably high. In- 
 stead of many men competing with each other 
 to secure a piece of work, the work is com- 
 pelled to look for a man and pay him what he 
 earns. No one is compelled to continue as 
 laborer either in industry or in agriculture, as 
 it is easy to become land-owner and therefore 
 independent. The simple effect upon the la- 
 bor market, or the demand for men's services, 
 of the existence of cheap and accessible land, 
 contains the clue to the whole matter. The 
 same is seen wherever there is any considerable 
 amount of common land. A little while ago 
 the Commission appointed to investigate the 
 scarcity, of labor and the consequent high wages 
 in Uganda, came to the conclusion that this
 
 WHY SMALL HOLDINGS FAIL 73 
 
 was due to the existence of the reserves, large 
 tracts pre-empted from occupation by the for- 
 eigner; and advocated the diminution of this 
 territory in order to make the natives work. 
 A European example was to be found in the 
 Ardennes where there existed common lands 
 with a sparse population and little industry, 
 and wages were far higher than in thickly pop- 
 ulated and highly cultivated Flanders. With 
 accessible land the universal rule is that if in- 
 dustry fails to pay an adequate price for labor, 
 the latter simply removes itself to the land 
 where it is certain of its livelihood. It was not 
 mere greed which led to the enclosure of Eng- 
 lish commons but the demand for cheap labor. 
 To put the matter bluntly, men were shut away 
 from their one great recourse in order to be 
 compelled to accept the employer's own price 
 for their services. 
 
 By 1908 it was very clear to Mr. Pels not 
 only that the Small Holdings Act would not 
 be applied but that if it should, it would be in- 
 effective. He could see now that state pur- 
 chase would defeat its own ends and that the 
 small holder working with government aid
 
 74. JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 would have to carry a burden that he could 
 not support. He wanted some method that 
 would make land plentiful and accessible as 
 in new countries. But unfortunately in Eu- 
 rope and especially in Britain, the land is pre- 
 empted by a relatively small number of indi- 
 viduals. It was necessary to make them re- 
 linquish. Nationalization by purchase did not 
 commend itself to him as it would only increase 
 the difficulty which he was trying to avoid. 
 For the state to enter the market means the 
 highest possible prices, and even if the capital 
 applied should bear only a low rate of interest, 
 it would constitute an overwhelming/ burden 
 for the peasant farmer. Land to be useful 
 for small holders must be not only plentiful 
 but cheap, or, put in other words, its value 
 must be use value. In this way Mr. Fels came 
 to see that the only effective method of dealing 
 with the problem would be to place a tax upon 
 the value of land apart from all improvements. 
 He saw that if such a tax were gradually raised 
 to the equivalence of rent, which is the ultimate 
 basis of all capitalized land value, the prices 
 would fall to a use basis. No one would care
 
 WHY SMALL HOLDINGS FAIL 75 
 
 to hold land for rent if this rent were to be im- 
 mediately collected from him by the state, and 
 no one could afford to hold land without using 
 it to the fullest, if he had to hand over its an- 
 nual rental value for the privilege of holding. 
 The plan had a further advantage in that 
 improvements would be relieved of the taxa- 
 tion which is found to act so harmfully in Den- 
 mark, and every inducement would thus be 
 given to the extension of equipment and en- 
 richment of the soil so necessary to intensive 
 cultivation. In addition there would be com- 
 plete justice in the incidence of taxation. The 
 land would become a series of sites for carry- 
 ing on agricultural industry much in the man- 
 ner of other industrial sites. Everyone is 
 aware that the site value reflected in high or 
 low rent depends upon situation and communi- 
 cation. The small holding near a market and 
 with easy communication naturally fetches a 
 higher rent than one farther removed, and this 
 rental value would merely be transformed into 
 tax value. In other words, the holder who 
 is far from market and reaches it with diffi- 
 culty is compensated by having to pay a lower
 
 76 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 rental or, under the new plan, a lower tax. 
 From now on, Mr. Fels devoted his energies to 
 bringing about this great reform. 
 
 His exertions in the interest of land taxa- 
 tion cannot be described as merely the out- 
 come of his acceptance of Henry George's 
 principles. He was acquainted with them and 
 was convinced that they were sound many years 
 before he threw himself and his resources into 
 their service. His early period of activity in 
 England was inspired by other motives than 
 his desire to establish land taxation, this seem- 
 ing too remote and difficult of achievement for 
 one who wished to see concrete results grow- 
 ing, however slowly, under his hand. It was 
 that his problems, at first disconnected from 
 land taxation, led him, chiefly through the fail- 
 ure of his efforts, to conclude that social re- 
 form is a hopeless struggle against conditions 
 that hamper and balk and kill, and that these 
 conditions grow out of and center in the pri- 
 vate and privileged possession of land. In the 
 early days, like most others, he saw land mo-, 
 nopoly and its remedy as a thing apart, for 
 .Utopian contemplation rather than for every-
 
 WHY SMALL HOLDINGS FAIL 77 
 
 day work. But ten years' struggle to achieve 
 other reforms taught him that the curse of 
 privilege intrenched in the ownership of land 
 had thrust its tentacles into every part of the 
 social order, and was ever ready to strangle 
 efforts toward a cleaner and juster civiliza- 
 tion.
 
 E 
 
 VII 
 Political Interests 
 
 VERY man of wealth who desires to 
 
 achieve something in the direction of so- 
 cial betterment finds his chief difficulty to be 
 the practical one of making personal adjust- 
 ments. There is the ever present army of 
 sycophants; there is a multitude with ideas of 
 greater or less value that make their appeal to 
 be supported and set going; and there is the 
 ever present spectacle of human suffering to 
 be alleviated. The path of least resistance is 
 undoubtedly to join the brigade of philan- 
 thropists. Charity provides a means of spend- 
 ing unlimited money without responsibility. 
 Its activities are systematized. It is a certain 
 road to respectability and a crown of glory. 
 Some strength of character is needed to resist 
 the personal insistence as well as the inherent 
 temptation to sink one's self in the dissipation 
 of giving. For Mr. Fels, palliation and tink- 
 
 78
 
 POLITICAL INTERESTS 79 
 
 ering were not enough. He conceived it to 
 be a fundamentally mistaken policy to use the 
 surplus good of each generation to repair the 
 wastage that it wrought. His ambition was 
 to make unnecessary the activities of charity 
 which in course of time he came to hate. They 
 left, he was accustomed to say, nothing but evil 
 on both sides. "I hate to give," he told an 
 audience once, "and most men are ashamed to 
 receive as long as charity allows them to re- 
 main men." Here was a fundamental count in 
 the indictment. Charity cut at the root of that 
 personal initiative and independence which 
 constitute the very essence of manhood. 
 
 Motives such as these impelled Mr. Fels 
 to turn away from charity as inadequate, and 
 to keep himself from the personal importunity 
 which engulfs those who resign themselves to 
 the philanthropic life. He soon perceived that 
 it was in the political field and through politi- 
 cal agencies that his cause must advance. He 
 determined, therefore, to put his financial re- 
 sources and his personal services into the effort 
 to place the taxation of land values upon the 
 statute book. He was naturally compelled to
 
 80 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 establish relations with his fellow workers, to 
 assist and extend existing agencies, and gen- 
 erally to seek for means of bringing his re- 
 form more fully into the field of public discus- 
 sion and political action. His relation with 
 the United Committee for the Taxation of 
 Land Values was always close, and this group 
 of able and devoted men could always count on 
 his unstinted help. The members of Parlia- 
 ment who were advocates of the reform were 
 his friends. They were affiliated to the Liberal 
 Party and, of course, pledged to the general 
 aims of Liberal policy. The United Com- 
 mittee has always believed that their reform 
 would be brought about only after being in- 
 tegrated to Liberal plans, with the consequence 
 that its advocacy has had to remain secondary 
 to the more general party intentions. That 
 this affiliation has served some useful purpose 
 no one can doubt. But it was hardly consist- 
 ent with Mr. Fels' character and methods to 
 allow what he conceived to be a matter of prime 
 importance to be kept in abeyance until the 
 scope of Liberal policy might be sufficiently 
 extended to include it at some remote future
 
 POLITICAL INTERESTS 81 
 
 date. He did not, therefore, join the Liberal 
 ranks. His discernment had been too well 
 trained in business affairs not to make it clear 
 to him that Liberal policy would give no large 
 place to the taxation of land values. It 
 formed an instrument of tremendous effective- 
 ness in the fight with the Lords, but Liberals 
 were interested in it only as a means of war. 
 If the cause had been put on its own merits, 
 what was at that time only smoldering rebel- 
 lion would have risen to the point of open re- 
 pudiation. It was clear to Mr. Fels that by 
 land reform the Liberal politicians did not 
 mean what he meant. It might be very well 
 to fight the Conservatives, pre-eminently the 
 party of landlords, but as soon as the fruits 
 of the new land policy should begin to show 
 themselves in the world of industry, the mag- 
 nates who constitute the backbone of liberalism 
 would give it their unflinching opposition. 
 
 These considerations led Mr. Fels to turn 
 always more hopefully to the cause of labor. 
 Here were the people who held his sympathy 
 and whom he desired chiefly to benefit. Only 
 the workers would find it to their interest to
 
 82 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 carry through the reform in its full and effec- 
 tive measure. It might take long for the 
 common people to see the advantage of land 
 reform, but they in the end would find it their 
 most certain means to the attainment of free- 
 dom and justice. Mr. Fels, therefore, worked 
 in the interest of the Labor Party, and there 
 were few contests in which the Labor candidate 
 did not have the advantage of his helping hand. 
 
 But there were, and are, many difficulties 
 in the way. The working man, however in- 
 telligent, who has been bred to town life, who 
 by apprenticeship or otherwise has been trained 
 into exercise of a particular craft, is unable 
 to see at first view how land reform can solve 
 his special problem, that problem being the 
 simple one of securing a due proportion of the 
 earnings of the industry in which he partici- 
 pates. 
 
 It seems to him a matter that lies between 
 himself and the capitalist who employs him. 
 About this central question group the minor 
 ones pertaining to the conditions of labor. He 
 joins his fellow- workmen in order to bring 
 united action to bear upon the employer. His
 
 POLITICAL INTERESTS 83 
 
 ultimate recourse is the strike which periodic- 
 ally faces the employer with the alternative of 
 advancing wages or seeing his employees leave 
 their work in a body. This seems to be the es- 
 sential purpose of trade unionism. The prac- 
 tice of Mr. Fels' own firm as large employers 
 of labor, had been to advance wages to as high 
 a point as possible on their own initiative, be- 
 cause they found it to be good business policy. 
 He knew that any struggle over wages was 
 for the workers an unequal and losing one. 
 However much the employer may suffer, he is 
 nearly always in a better position to carry on 
 a protracted conflict than his laborers who, in 
 most cases, have few resources and can only 
 undertake a strike at the risk of the most ter- 
 rible consequences. Mr. Fels knew also that, 
 union or no union, so long as the labor market 
 carries a large surplus, wages can be held al- 
 most at the limit of subsistence. Whatever 
 might or should be, the price of labor is in fact 
 determined, like that of other commodities, 
 by the supply on the market. If the supply 
 can be reduced, the demand and therefore the 
 price, will rise just as with coal, corn or any-
 
 84 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 thing else. It is well known that the suppres- 
 sion of any industry will throw those who prac- 
 tice it into other channels. The suppression 
 of agriculture carried on continuously over 
 nearly a century has moved the country popu- 
 lation to the town, and given a steady stream 
 of applicants for industrial occupations. How 
 can the tide be set the other way, and what 
 would be its consequences? 'Agriculture, in 
 countries where the common people prosper, 
 is not merely one occupation amongst many 
 others, but the great alternative to all industry. 
 Let the conditions for its practice be advan- 
 tageous as compared with the trades, let the 
 land demand workers and pay them adequately 
 for their work. The consequence would be 
 seen immediately in the withdrawal of the la- 
 bor surplus in the industrial market, and that 
 desirable state of affairs would be reached in 
 which employers would compete for laborers, 
 instead of laborers competing for the privilege 
 of obtaining a job at rates that barely keep 
 them and their families from the verge of 
 starvation. Moreover, the taxation of land 
 values would relieve the working population of
 
 POLITICAL INTERESTS 85 
 
 that unfair incidence of rates and taxes which 
 under the existing system they have to bear. 
 
 The way in which adjustment as between 
 agricultural and industrial pursuits would take 
 place is precisely the same as is found in the 
 adjustment of the trades. When a young man 
 is faced with the necessity of choosing a means 
 of livelihood, his choice is determined partly 
 by inclination, partly by opportunity, but in 
 the main by the economic advantage which one 
 trade manifests as compared with the others. 
 There is a perpetual selection going on of men 
 by trades so that the benefits are equalized by 
 reason of numbers entering. Agriculture 
 would, therefore, not only stop the constant 
 migration from country to town to swell the 
 ranks of industry, but if permitted to exercise 
 the advantages and attractions that belong to 
 it, would undoubtedly produce a current in 
 the opposite direction and reduce the supply 
 of labor. 
 
 But a more important difficulty that Mr. 
 Fels had to face in endeavoring to secure the 
 assent of the laboring world to his reform, was 
 due to the fact that the laboring world had to
 
 86 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 a large extent committed itself to the tenets of 
 socialism. One of the chief of these is the 
 nationalization of land, which naturally pre- 
 sents itself as an alternative reform. It is a 
 curious fact that reformers in so many cases 
 keep their ideas within a closed system of prin- 
 ciples, thus preventing co-operation in practi- 
 cal political activity; and it must be said that 
 many socialists would rather sit still contem- 
 plating the joys and the advantages of a so- 
 cialist state that is to spring full-fledged out 
 of a moment's intervening revolution, than set 
 themselves laboriously, little by little, to shape 
 the trend of social evolution. Mr. Fels, al- 
 ways practically bent and basing his program 
 on existing conditions, was unable to give his 
 assent to those proposals which involved state 
 ownership of all industry and the nationaliza- 
 tion of land by legislation or purchase. These 
 matters might be supremely desirable of them- 
 selves, but appeared to him out of the range of 
 possible achievement in the first case, and al- 
 together undesirable in the case of the land. 
 The socialistic principle as applied to the great 
 public services of distribution and communica-
 
 POLITICAL INTERESTS 87 
 
 tion had his complete support. He conceived 
 the object of revenue to be the extension and 
 betterment of such services, and saw also that 
 these services were the instruments that con- 
 ferred value in a great degree upon the land. 
 It was with reference to the socialization of 
 these land values as the source of revenue for 
 the public services that differences arose. He 
 endeavored to make his socialist friends see that 
 whereas the confiscation of land by legisla- 
 tion was impracticable, and whereas acquisi- 
 tion by purchase Would throw an intolerable 
 burden upon the people, the taxation of land 
 values would accomplish what they wanted, 
 and possess the superior advantage of being 
 within the sphere of practical politics. More- 
 over, it is not clear that nationalized land would 
 provide the remedy for present day evils. 
 There must in the last analysis be individual 
 tenure of some kind, and the state as ultimate 
 landlord may not prevent the existence of a 
 host of sub-landlords who would exploit rental 
 values more or less as at present. It is diffi- 
 cult to understand why socialists have not 
 adopted the taxation of land values as a prac-
 
 88 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 tical and certain method of bringing about what 
 they desire. Once the whole of ground rental 
 is secured to the state, it is obvious that owner- 
 ship is merely a matter of words, while tenure 
 and use must be provided for in any case. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing, Mr. Fels 
 could see that full utilization of the land would 
 go far toward the abolition of industry for 
 profit, which lies at the heart of the socialist 
 contention. There is a distinction in the capi- 
 tal employed in industry not sufficiently taken 
 into account. It is a simple distinction be- 
 tween debenture and preferred stock, on the 
 one hand, and common share issues on the 
 other. Everyone knows that the initiatory and 
 working provision for a new industry is sup- 
 plied as capital bearing a fixed charge and con- 
 stituting a mortgage on the business. This 
 supply is necessary whoever owns the business, 
 state or individual, and it would have to bear 
 a charge either as interest or sinking fund for 
 redemption. Exploitation for profit comes in 
 connection with that large world of common 
 share issues, the home of promoters and job- 
 bers, in which values are capitalized dividends,
 
 POLITICAL INTERESTS 89 
 
 and which is firmly established upon the backs 
 of the toilers. If it is admitted that the pro- 
 ceeds of any industry should go as reward to 
 those who supply the actual and legitimate 
 capital, and to the workers who carry it on, 
 then clearly there is no room for fluctuating 
 share values. The greater part of the City 
 of London would be in search of means of live- 
 lihood. The difficulty is that the worker has 
 no way of collecting his proportion. He does 
 not even trouble to understand that while he 
 toils for his sovereign per week, the well dressed 
 individual whom he sees on his way to the city 
 and for whom he feels so much respect, has 
 merely pocketed the other sovereign that he, 
 the worker, has earned. The problem after 
 all is simply how to place the laborer in a posi- 
 tion to collect the due return of his labor. An- 
 tecedent to the millennium, there appears to be 
 only one way, namely, to make him free to give 
 his services to, or withdraw them from, any em- 
 ployer. When the owners of land clamor for 
 men to help them earn the rent which the state 
 inexorably collects, the workers will have 
 achieved their freedom.
 
 VIII 
 
 Home Colonization 
 
 TN the winter of 1905, the late General Booth, 
 appalled by the degree of unemployment 
 then existing, came to the conclusion that only 
 in emigration was a remedy to be found. He 
 proposed therefore to raise a fund by means 
 of which five thousand families should be as- 
 sisted to emigrate to Australia. He was con- 
 vinced that it lay in his power to send out the 
 type of settler of which he believed the colony 
 to stand in need. Mr. Fels emphatically dis- 
 agreed with this suggestion. He was not con- 
 vinced, in the first place, that work was to be 
 had in Australia. He doubted very seriously 
 whether "assisted" emigration of the type sug- 
 gested by General Booth would result in the 
 choice of fit persons ; and above all he felt cer- 
 tain that there was room and to spare in Eng- 
 land for the proposed emigrants. With this 
 
 thought in mind he made an offer through the 
 
 BO
 
 HOME COLONIZATION 91 
 
 press to the British Government. It was in 
 the following terms: 
 
 "I am informed that, probably encouraged 
 by Mr. Rider Haggard's report to the Gov- 
 ernment on the success of Salvation Army col- 
 onies in South America, General Booth has of- 
 fered to settle some 1500 families on land in 
 the Colonies, if the Government will provide, 
 say, 300,000 for that purpose. 
 
 "I believe England's own home land will 
 support her present population and she should 
 not allow some of her best blood to leave her 
 shores by assisted emigration. There can be 
 no objection to voluntary emigration. 
 
 "If General Booth's scheme is really to set- 
 tle 1500 families in the Colonies and if he makes 
 the proviso that the Government shall assist 
 him in his undertaking to the extent of <300,- 
 000, I am quite sure that better results can be 
 obtained with a like amount of money without 
 so large a proportion of the money being un- 
 productively paid over to transportation com- 
 panies or in commissions to land and other 
 agents. 
 
 ''Bearing these points in mind, I would
 
 92 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 gladly be one of twenty to guarantee the set- 
 tling right here in Great Britain on home 
 land, of the same number of families with the 
 same assistance from Government. If nine- 
 teen others cannot be found to join me, I shall 
 still be prepared to act alone to the extent of 
 my proportion. 
 
 "Inasmuch as there is a hitch in connection 
 with General Booth's scheme which will prob- 
 ably ultimately cause it to be entirely dropped, 
 the present seems an opportune moment for 
 carrying out home colonization. During the 
 last fifty years the number of persons em- 
 ployed upon the land in this country has de- 
 creased by some one and a quarter millions, 
 whilst there is no evidence to show that the 
 quality of the land or the conditions of the 
 climate are responsible for this great falling 
 off. 
 
 "Experiments made by private land own- 
 ers and public authorities prove conclusively 
 that, under a system of small holdings, with 
 absolute security of tenure for the cultivator, 
 farming is still a profitable occupation. The 
 Vale of Evesham, Worcester, is somewhat of
 
 HOME COLONIZATION 93 
 
 an object lesson in this direction, there being 
 thousands of acres in small holdings, though 
 conditions are not nearly what they should be 
 in respect of permanence of tenure or of oc- 
 cupation. 
 
 "The public does not know that there is 
 about the same percentage of unemployed in 
 most of the Colonies as in the mother country. 
 It may also not be aware that the United 
 States is not a Mecca for the unemployed and 
 the moneyless. 
 
 "In addition to agriculture which has been 
 so much neglected of late years in Great Brit- 
 ain for reasons which must be obvious to most 
 thinking people, there is the question of af- 
 forestation. A Royal Commission has shown 
 that there are in Great Britain some twenty 
 million acres of absolutely waste land capable 
 of being put under timber. Not less than one 
 hundred thousand adults representing a popu- 
 lation of (say) half a million people, would 
 find profitable and healthy employment in this 
 class of industry. 
 
 "The state forests of Germany bring in an 
 average of about eighteen million pounds to
 
 94 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 the national exchequer ; Great Britain imports 
 timber to the value of over forty million 
 pounds, a great proportion of which could and 
 should be grown on home land." 
 
 It was but a nine days' wonder. General 
 Booth's scheme was, as he had foreshadowed, 
 already doomed owing to great divergence of 
 Australian opinion as to its merits. The press 
 loudly acclaimed Mr. Fels' generosity, articles 
 were written about his public spirit, the usual 
 notices were contributed on the possibilities of 
 afforestation; in prospect indeed the money 
 was spent over and over again. One com- 
 ment on the plan, that of the Star, is worth 
 preserving because it shows so real an apprecia- 
 tion of Mr. Pels' object. Its editor com- 
 mented on the plan as follows: (Issue of Oc- 
 tober 18, 1905.) 
 
 Mr. Joseph Fels comes forward with a practical 
 proposal for the restoration of the manless land to 
 the landless man. If the Government will grant a 
 sum of 300,000, he will make one of twenty to guar- 
 antee the settling of fifteen hundred families in this 
 country. If nineteen others cannot be found to join 
 him, he is prepared to act alone to the extent of his 
 proportion. We need not say that we heartily wel- 
 come Mr. Fels' patriotic offer. We hope he will get
 
 HOME COLONIZATION 95 
 
 his nineteen partners in double quick time. Surely 
 there are nineteen men who are willing to save Eng- 
 land from the fate of Ireland, to stop the torrent of 
 emigration which is draining her life blood. We 
 have often been called "Little Englanders" because 
 we refuse to treat these islands as a mere parish, and 
 because we hold that the health of the outer empire 
 depends upon our heart beats. That is why we sup- 
 ported Mr. Jesse Ceilings in his opposition to Gen- 
 eral Booth's scheme for deporting five thousand stal- 
 wart Englishmen to Australia. We are convinced 
 that there is plenty of land at home for the strong 
 man, if only the barriers between him and the land 
 are leveled. During the last fifty years, as Mr. Fels 
 points out, the number of persons employed upon the 
 land has decreased by a million and a half. . . . 
 There is no doubt that the scientific farmer, employ- 
 ing modern methods, can hold his own against the 
 world. But he must be delivered from the fetters 
 which our obsolete land laws have riveted upon his 
 enterprise. It is time to call our great landlords to 
 give an account of their stewardship. There can be 
 no radical reform without compulsion. The state 
 must recover the land for the people. 
 
 It is, of course, more picturesque to ship our bone 
 and sinew off to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 
 But it is a fact not generally known that the percent- 
 age of unemployed in most of the Colonies is as high 
 as it is here. The state of South Africa at this mo- 
 ment is deplorable. Thousands of white men are 
 walking in gloomy despair about the streets of Cape 
 Town and Johannesburg. We hear a great deal 
 about the successful emigrants but of the dismal fail-
 
 96 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 ures we hear less. There are plenty of young men 
 who curse the day when they left England. Yet, 
 take it all in all, we do not believe there is a finer 
 country in the world for the honest, steady and 
 strenuous man than this England of ours. We ought 
 to rediscover its unknown rural charms, and to re- 
 populate its desolate acres. The cult of the coun- 
 try, which the bicycle and the motor have revived, 
 ought to make the task of manning the land an easy 
 one. ... If some part of the millions which our im- 
 perialists waste on barren war were spent on affores- 
 tation and land nationalization, England would be 
 happier and stronger. What did we get for the two 
 hundred and fifty million pounds squandered in the 
 South African War? We provided work under de- 
 grading conditions for forty-five thousand China- 
 men. We established an oligarchy of landlords. 
 Why not, in future, spend our millions at home for 
 the benefit of our own people ? 
 
 Mr. Fels heartily welcomed so spirited an 
 appeal. He urged everywhere the justifica- 
 tion of an immediate experiment. No coun- 
 try, he wrote, could be truly prosperous where 
 the "submerged" population formed a large 
 percentage of the people. The endurance and 
 vitality of England must, sooner or later, be 
 seriously threatened if there grew up a per- 
 manently unemployed class. If competition 
 were so to operate that the worker thrown out
 
 HOME COLONIZATION 97 
 
 of employment found it impossible to recover 
 the means of livelihood, any real sentiment of 
 patriotism became impossible. 
 
 Such was his plea. But beyond the de- 
 mands of the press that attention be devoted 
 to his plan, nothing was done. So far as can 
 be discovered, no seconder of his offer ap- 
 peared. The rich classes were clearly apa- 
 thetic. Of Government action of any kind 
 we are ignorant. It is possible that the plan, 
 like that of General Booth, was referred to 
 the ministerial committee on agricultural set- 
 tlements in the Colonies; perhaps in the last 
 month of Mr. Balfour's administration no time 
 could be spared from the all important task of 
 saving his ministry from the destruction to 
 which it appeared doomed. Certainly Mr. 
 Walter Long failed to give this experiment the 
 thoughtful consideration he had devoted to the 
 farm labor colonies. Mr. Fels, not unnatur- 
 ally, was keenly disappointed. The need was 
 clear, conditions were urgent. Continental ex- 
 periment and analogy justified high hopes for 
 the success of a well executed plan of home 
 colonization. The existence of a real land him-
 
 98 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 ger had been many times demonstrated; that 
 industrial workers could be made into useful 
 agriculturists Mr. Fels himself had shown. If 
 landlords cared nothing for his plan, some- 
 thing was seriously wrong with the landlords. 
 Here, as in all his other endeavors, he came 
 face to face with the same intolerable barrier 
 to progress. 
 
 Mention has already been made of Mr. 
 Fels' work in connection with the cultivation 
 of vacant lots in Philadelphia. In 1904 he 
 conceived the idea of starting a society in Lon- 
 don with the same object. He went over Lon- 
 don seeking the co-operation of men and 
 women whose help seemed likely to be of serv- 
 ice, and by the end of the year an association, 
 with a committee to which such men as Mr. 
 Percy Alden, Professor Patrick Geddes, Mr. 
 George Lansbury and Mr. Israel Zangwill 
 gave their assistance, was formed. Mr. Fels 
 himself acted as secretary of the enterprise. 
 The society had objects more or less similiar 
 to those of its American parent. The tempo- 
 rary loan of unused land was to be obtained
 
 HOME COLONIZATION 99 
 
 from every possible source. This land was to 
 be prepared during the winter for cultivation, 
 thus providing, in some degree at any rate, a 
 source of constructive work for the unem- 
 ployed. The land so prepared was to be let 
 either free or at a nominal rent to approved 
 applicants, the preference being given to those 
 with families. Tools and seeds were to be pro- 
 vided either free, or at cost price, and practi- 
 cal instruction was to be given wherever neces- 
 sary. 
 
 A beginning had already been made when 
 the society was organized with land lent by the 
 Bromley Gas Light and Coke Company in 
 West Ham. This was a dreary-looking tract 
 situated in the most desolate region of East 
 London. It had once been a fertile market 
 garden famous for the production of celery. 
 It was now covered with twitch which flour- 
 ished and killed every other plant. In a few 
 months twenty-five acres of this desert were 
 transformed into flourishing vegetable gar- 
 dens. The heavy labor of preparing their al- 
 lotments fell mostly upon the applicants them- 
 selves and provided a serious test of their in-
 
 100 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 terest and perseverance. The result of the 
 first season's working was a return of about 
 forty pounds per acre, which meant that the 
 holders of even a few rods had gone far to- 
 ward the maintenance of themselves and fam- 
 ilies. The success of this first effort strength- 
 ened the society in approaching public authori- 
 ties and private owners. The London County 
 Council placed at its disposal several pieces of 
 unused land and the work was extended in 
 Fulham and other sections. The Gas Light 
 and Coke Company gave the use of seven 
 acres, also situated in Fulham, which was al- 
 lotted to fifty-six men, each of whom held an 
 average plot of twenty square rods. There 
 was no example of failure and the more seri- 
 ous mistakes were avoided through the effi- 
 cient superintendence of Mr. R. L. Castle who 
 had been gardener to the Duke of Bedford. 
 The rules adopted in connection with the Ful- 
 ham tract will illustrate the general method: 
 
 1. The plots of land, twenty square rods in 
 extent, are let to partially employed men by 
 the above society, free of rent, rates and taxes. 
 
 2. In the event of the land being required
 
 HOME COLONIZATION 101 
 
 by the owners, the longest possible notice will 
 be given to the men for the removal of their 
 crops. 
 
 3. If a man subsequently obtains full em- 
 ployment which does not permit him to give 
 the necessary time to the cultivation of his plot, 
 notice must be given to the superintendent who 
 will arrange for another man to take over the 
 plot and crops upon fair terms. 
 
 4. The plots must be cultivated and 
 cropped to the satisfaction of the superintend- 
 ent who will give all the instruction required. 
 For the first digging, and for wheeling on to 
 the land the apportioned manure, supplied free 
 by the society, ten and sixpence per plot will 
 be paid to the men on the completion of the 
 work. 
 
 5. Each man must remove all rubbish as 
 directed, and keep his own paths clean. 
 
 6. The crops may be sold or used by each 
 grower as he prefers, but he must report the 
 quantities as removed to the superintendent. 
 The plot holders would, however, greatly as- 
 sist if they keep a record of all crops grown, 
 and an account of all moneys received for sales
 
 102 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 of produce. This information is required by 
 the society to enable them to make out their 
 yearly report. 
 
 7. Seeds or plants purchased and supplied 
 by the society will be charged to the men at 
 cost price, but the amount can be paid when 
 the first crops are used or sold. 
 
 8. Work on Sundays should be completed 
 by ten a. m. 
 
 9. The men are expected to behave hon- 
 orably with regard to their neighbors' crops 
 and to take all possible care of the tools sup- 
 plied which must be returned to the shed every 
 day in a clean state. 
 
 10. A deposit of sixpence will be required 
 for each key supplied, and this deposit will be 
 returned when the men give up the keys and 
 plots. 
 
 11. Misconduct or wilful neglect will sub- 
 ject a holder to the loss of his plot and crops. 
 
 Within six months after the London So- 
 ciety's origin, it had given birth to similar so- 
 cieties in Edinburgh, Belfast, Middlesboro and 
 Dublin. Wherever an invitation to explain 
 the scheme was forthcoming, Mr. Fels threw
 
 HOME COLONIZATION 103 
 
 other work aside to go. By the end of the 
 first year the London Society had two hundred 
 and fifty men at work on its plots, and had 
 many more applications for land. Ninety per 
 cent, of the men were successful in their ex- 
 periment, and the average yield per acre ex- 
 ceeded forty pounds. Nothing handicapped 
 the Society except the lack of land, and the 
 characteristic refusal on the part of Mr. John 
 Burns to grant a loan of money for clearing 
 the land let by the public authorities of Lon- 
 don. When it is remembered that the income 
 of the Society barely exceeded five hundred 
 pounds, the measure of its success will be in 
 some degree realized. The Society has just 
 received a grant from the government, and 
 with the greater need of cultivating unused 
 lands created by the present war, it may well 
 have a large field of usefulness*.
 
 A 
 
 IX 
 
 The Methods of Monopoly 
 
 S has been seen, it was clear to Mr. Fels 
 that there was no necessary conflict be- 
 tween legitimate capital, that is, capital des- 
 tined for actual use in the provision of equip- 
 ment, and the labor necessary to make use of 
 it. It was equally clear that profits could be 
 derived from illegitimate capital, simply be- 
 cause some mode of constraint was brought to 
 bear upon the choice of workers which forced 
 them to lower their margin and sell their labor 
 cheaply. His concern was to discover the 
 origin of this constraint and he found it in the 
 conditions which make agriculture unattrac- 
 tive and unprofitable, conditions associated 
 .with the private ownership of land used for the 
 exploitation of rental values. His further 
 thinking led him to an understanding of mo- 
 nopoly in general and how it always serves to 
 
 104
 
 THE METHODS OF MONOPOLY 105 
 
 keep labor in servitude, and seize upon a por- 
 tion of its due return. The same forces that 
 exploit labor exploit the consumer of commodi- 
 ties in so far as this is possible. The consum- 
 er's only protection lies in the perfectly free 
 play of all the activities of production and ex- 
 change, which is known as competition. It is 
 difficult to see how the economic world could 
 keep itself going among a people with even 
 a semblance of freedom without that determi- 
 nation of values which commodities find on the 
 market under competitive conditions. There 
 is no other way in which any one of the indefi- 
 nitely divided and specialized functions of pro- 
 duction can automatically find its place. The 
 simple question in any business activity, "Does 
 it pay?" means that in the totality all func- 
 tions are limiting and corrective. 
 
 But there are elements in every business 
 which strive to make a commodity pay more 
 than its actual value, to intervene in what may 
 be considered the natural economic process and 
 so restrain it as to take an undue share of 
 profits either from consumer or laborer. An 
 extreme example may be found in that type of
 
 106 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 South American enterprise which secures pe- 
 ons by the trickery of loans, keeps them bound 
 by debt, pays them what it pleases and com- 
 pels them to purchase all supplies at its own 
 store and at its own price. This is interfer- 
 ence in the normal adjustment of values, both 
 of labor and of supplies. A ring of coal deal- 
 ers, acting in conjunction with producers who 
 held the claims of labor in abeyance by threats 
 of government intervention to avoid disturb- 
 ance in war time, has been able to force con- 
 sumers to pay for a necessary commodity some- 
 thing more than double its value. Any large 
 aggregation of capital, dealing in any commod- 
 ity, can throttle small competitors and collect 
 the losses involved through subsequent en- 
 hanced prices to consumers. These common- 
 places illustrate the fact that business is al- 
 ways endeavoring to over-reach and levy a tax 
 for the use of commodities. Such factors are 
 difficult to find and more difficult to deal with, 
 but they exist everywhere and prove that com- 
 petition is merely a Utopian condition, and 
 laissez faire a blind doctrine which permits the 
 most ruthless exploitation.
 
 THE METHODS OF MONOPOLY 107 
 
 The function of the state is increasingly 
 conceived as one of intervention in the economic 
 process, not, however, in the old manner of 
 being itself a monopolist. The days are past, 
 except in backward countries, when the priv- 
 ilege of exclusive dealing in any commodity is 
 sold by king or government. There is dimin- 
 ishing tolerance for the derivation of revenue 
 from the direct monopoly of any article of con- 
 tinuous necessity. Obviously a tax upon salt 
 could secure whatever income a state might 
 require. The article merely goes upon the 
 market and collects from the consumer its own 
 value plus the tax. Any article so treated, 
 whether matches or tobacco in France, spirits 
 in Russia, or tea or tobacco in England, come 
 within the same category. Excise or tariff 
 duties involve no difference in principle; the 
 liquor traffic in Great Britain is, as a matter 
 of fact, a form of government monopoly. The 
 tendency is away from crude and primitive 
 forms of interference in the economic process 
 and more in the direction of restraint upon the 
 more obviously predatory elements in the busi- 
 ness world. To redress economic grievances
 
 108 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 and maintain the balance fair, seems to be in- 
 creasingly a function of the state. 
 
 It is obvious, however, that regulation is a 
 mode of interference which differs in principle 
 from intervention, or playing a direct part in 
 the business world. Possibly regulation could 
 be carried far enough to prevent exploitation in 
 some kinds of industry, but its machinery 
 would have to be elaborated to an extensive 
 degree, and there would still remain many 
 modes of evasion; and it is not always certain 
 that inspection is efficient. The British rail- 
 ways provide a good example. The conditions 
 of labor may be perfectly defined and well 
 enforced, tariffs may be adjusted with great 
 precision, there may even be control over the 
 issue of capital and the collection of dividends, 
 but the railway remains in principle a business 
 for exploitation and not for service. Again, 
 the most careful and thorough-going inspection 
 of the coal industry can hardly alter the fact 
 that neither labor nor the consuming public 
 has more than a small portion of the benefit 
 from this national possession. 
 
 In America, experience proves tHat the In-
 
 THE METHODS OF MONOPOLY 109 
 
 terstate Commerce Commission, even after 
 great efforts, can have only a slight and mo- 
 mentary effect upon the gigantic interests that 
 it endeavors to hold within bounds. It needs 
 be recognized, therefore, that while regulation 
 and inspection are probably always necessary 
 as a mode of state interference, they differ es- 
 sentially and in principle from direct partici- 
 pation in the economic process. The opinion 
 is always growing, however, that the state 
 should be able in the last analysis to play a 
 decisive part in the conduct of business, and 
 that this part should somehow be associated 
 with the derivation of the national income. If 
 some guiding principle could be discovered 
 which would place in government hands the 
 special territory in which the most extensive 
 forms of exploitation are practiced, and from 
 which others are derived, the state would at 
 once be in a position to apply a large income 
 to national purposes and at the same time hold 
 the economic balance. 
 
 Only slight examination of existing facts 
 is needed to show that in productive industry 
 neither capital expended on equipment nor la-
 
 110 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 bor hired for operation, receives an undue share 
 of returns. It is therefore to the other factor 
 in production, namely, that of natural re- 
 sources, that attention must be given. When 
 the combined effort of capital and labor brings 
 to the surface a ton of coal, the first charge 
 upon it is a royalty to the colliery owner. The 
 accident that a man possesses a plot of land 
 beneath which nature has placed a carbonifer- 
 ous deposit enables him, without the expendi- 
 ture of capital or applying the labor of his 
 hands, or exercising an effort of any kind, to 
 levy a tax for his private emolument upon the 
 consuming public. It shows great considera- 
 tion on his part to allow the nation to make 
 any use of these natural and national resources, 
 and the people, possibly out of gratitude, as 
 nothing else can explain this curious fact, re- 
 ward him with a fortune which he does nothing 
 to earn. One has only to mention oil, coal, 
 steel and copper, together with the railways 
 which transport them, to account for nearly 
 all the great fortunes made in America. 
 Probably the capital actually expended in bor- 
 ing and pumping machinery is never overpaid ;
 
 THE METHODS OF MONOPOLY 111 
 
 it is certain that the laborers who carry on the 
 work never receive more than their due. How 
 then can oil produce fortunes ? The answer is 
 perfectly simple. It is by securing control of 
 the oil supply and levying a tax upon the world 
 for being permitted to use it. This tax is 
 merged in the price of oil, and the world does 
 not seem to have sufficient intelligence to dis- 
 tinguish it. A London laborer who with his 
 family occupies a single room, pays for the 
 privilege of being somewhere above a few 
 square feet of ground, a tax to some individual 
 who exerts himself no more than to check his 
 receipts, and usually even this is deputed to 
 someone else. One is taxed if one walks or 
 sits or sleeps upon the earth's surface, and 
 even for the privilege of being buried. The 
 rule for fortune making is then a simple one. 
 It is to corner some portion of nature and 
 charge the world an admission fee. 
 
 So far in commercial evolution there has 
 appeared only one mode of protection for the 
 purchasing public. The housewife's reply, 
 "It is cheaper across the way, I will buy it 
 there" contains the whole philosophy of com-
 
 112 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 petitive prices and the fixing of values. It is 
 therefore of prime importance for any would- 
 be monopolist to drive his opponents from the 
 field, so that the purchaser may have no alter- 
 native but to buy his commodity, if it is an ob- 
 ject of necessity, at his own prices. If a com- 
 petitor cannot be driven out he may perhaps 
 be absorbed and the spoils shared. As capital 
 aggregates, it becomes easier to make life im- 
 possible for the smaller opponents. For this 
 purpose, it is useful to control the means 
 of communication. The great monopolistic 
 trusts of America invariably dominate the 
 important railway lines. The practical effect 
 is simple enough. If you are a great colliery 
 owner in any district and a small opponent 
 begins to work a coal field that he happens to 
 possess, you have only to see that he is given 
 no railway trucks to transport his produce; 
 you may then purchase the mine at your own 
 price. 
 
 There is much idle talk in this day about 
 the morality of business. It is held a repre- 
 hensible thing to strangle a small competitor 
 or to exploit the public in a ruthless manner;
 
 THE METHODS OF MONOPOLY 113 
 
 but this attitude is altogether senseless. Busi- 
 ness is business, and men do what the condi- 
 tions permit them to do. There are not many 
 who would refuse the prerogatives of president 
 of the Standard Oil Company or of a London 
 ground landlord. If the business of highway 
 robbery had not been excluded by a very ef- 
 ficient set of conditions and if it had depended 
 upon merely moral sanctions, it would now 
 be in a flourishing condition. As circum- 
 stances made it more difficult for the highway- 
 man to practice his profession, he doubtless 
 developed strong convictions regarding the in- 
 violability of the person. It is useful for all 
 monopolists to control the channels of public- 
 ity in order to keep before the public the 
 eternal principle of the sanctity of private 
 property. The fact is that as soon as the world 
 understands the matter and is aware of para- 
 sitism, it will say little about the immorality of 
 business but promptly rearrange conditions to 
 make it impossible. The monopolist is prob- 
 ably in the vast majority of cases like anybody 
 else, no better and no worse, and merely takes 
 advantage of a business opportunity presented
 
 114 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 to him, just as anyone else would do. It is 
 foolish to attack persons instead of rearrang- 
 ing conditions. Mr. Fels often said that cir- 
 cumstances had made him a robber. He 
 merely accepted profits from a business which 
 depended partly upon the sagacity of his 
 brother and himself, and partly upon the mo- 
 nopoly of a most valuable manufacturing pro- 
 cess. Anyone else would do the same ; but Mr. 
 Fels possessed a clarified vision and knew how 
 the trick was done, and to the end of his life 
 never felt his money to be a private possession. 
 He was determined that in so far as lay in his 
 power, monopoly should be suicidal. 
 
 It is clear then that there are factors in the 
 business world which tend to emerge and as- 
 sume a position of advantage with reference to 
 the others. Even if they are for a time in- 
 volved in production, they gradually withdraw 
 and assume the role of tribute gatherers. 
 Landlordism in any one of its multitudinous 
 forms is merely a monopoly of one of the nat- 
 ural sources of wealth; and rent, instead of 
 being a reward for labor or for the use of capi-
 
 THE METHODS OF MONOPOLY 115 
 
 tal, is a type of profits which represents no 
 contribution to the world's store of wealth, but 
 is a tax levied on production for permission to 
 approach the natural sources, paid by both 
 capital and labor unless they can devise some 
 means of re-collecting from the consumer. As 
 wealth accumulates through production, the 
 tendency is for any large fortune to entrench 
 itself as landlord. To collect rent is the best 
 and most secure method the world has yet de- 
 vised for getting something for nothing. In 
 a nation with multiplying resources, there is 
 eager competition in the monopoly market, and 
 these commodities are forced to high prices. 
 It is a commonplace that increase of wealth 
 and population carries an increase of land 
 values and correspondingly higher rentals. It 
 is also a profitable field for speculation. To 
 hold landed property on the outskirts of a 
 growing town and wait for the ripe fortune to 
 drop into one's hands is the most common of 
 spectacles in all new countries. This eager- 
 ness to collect tribute is probably an explana- 
 tion of those recurring waves of business de-
 
 116 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 pression which sweep over the world. It is 
 well known that the cost of land in the Argen- 
 tine has passed its productive value, that the 
 profits of working can hardly more than meet 
 the rental charges and operating expenses, and 
 yet people wonder why there should be depres- 
 sion in the Argentine trade. The explana- 
 tion is a simple one. If the landlord collects 
 all that the land produces, there is little left 
 with which to buy imports, and given a credit 
 system which stands like a pyramid on its apex, 
 it is not strange that the countries which depend 
 on the sale of manufactured articles should 
 feel the consequences. There is of course an 
 arrest in the increase of land values until capi- 
 tal and labor, by improved processes or by ad- 
 justing themselves to a diminished margin, can 
 recover the balance. It is difficult for the Brit- 
 ish mechanic to understand that the hard times 
 which throw him out of employment and re- 
 duce him to privation, may result from the 
 grabbing propensities of landlords in the Ar- 
 gentine or Australia or South Africa. Mr. 
 Fels knew that his reform needed to be as world 
 wide as commerce and credit, and for this rea-
 
 THE METHODS OF MONOPOLY 117 
 \ 
 
 son refused to work within the closed limits 
 of nationality. He was "the American who 
 came interfering in the domestic affairs of 
 England."
 
 T 
 
 X 
 
 The Single Tax 
 
 EN years' social and economic experimen- 
 tation had brought Mr. Fels to an accord 
 with the political teaching associated with the 
 name of Henry George, to which he had given 
 neither close study nor careful thought. Now 
 it seemed to him as in a sudden illumination 
 the social truth for which he had been so long 
 seeking. It provided, he conceived, not 
 merely a means for the mitigation of the ills 
 of poverty, but a method by which poverty it- 
 self could be finally wiped out. It is charac- 
 teristic of the man that once the vision was 
 clear, he did not hesitate to throw his whole 
 energy into the propagation of this doctrine. 
 The teaching which centers around the 
 name of Henry George has come to occupy 
 a prominent place in contemporary economic 
 discussion. At the very height of its power 
 
 118
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 119 
 
 and influence, the Times thought it necessary 
 to devote two pages of space, more valuable 
 then than now, to a consideration of Progress 
 and Poverty by the then unknown Calif ornian. 
 It was not a book lightly to be dismissed. Its 
 doctrines were not sufficiently answered by the 
 mere reply that it did not meet with the ac- 
 ceptance of orthodox economists. It has been 
 characteristic of orthodox economists to brand 
 as impossible every new doctrine that has not 
 yet won its way into the ordinary thought of 
 men. The theory could command consider- 
 able antiquity if that assists to its adequate ap- 
 preciation. It was urged at the birth of scien- 
 tific economics. Quesnay and Turgot had 
 firm hold of its central idea; the latter indeed 
 had so far understood its significance that its 
 application was the central point of his policy 
 when minister of finance to Louis XVI. If 
 the attention of thinkers was drawn away from 
 the direction the Physiocrats attempted to give 
 to economic study, that was due to no fault of 
 their teaching. It was because the application 
 of science to industry changed the whole orien- 
 tation of European thought.
 
 120 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Wealth, the Physiocrats taught, is based in 
 the last analysis upon land. Man is economi- 
 cally as well as by nature a child of the earth. 
 Henry George seized this cardinal truth at 
 the very outset of his thought. If land is the 
 basis of all wealth and if all men have need 
 of wealth that they may live, it is clearly un- 
 just that land should become the possession of 
 the few; the vast majority must thereby be 
 deprived of access to the means of living. 
 "The ownership of land," wrote Henry 
 George, "is the great fundamental fact which 
 ultimately determines the social, the political, 
 the economic, and, consequently, the intellec- 
 tual and moral condition of a people. And 
 it must be so. For land is the habitation of 
 man, the store-house upon which he must draw 
 for all his needs." 
 
 In the course of history men have, for the 
 most part, been deprived of their natural in- 
 heritance. In order that they may live and 
 increase they have been compelled to add to 
 that inheritance, to augment the fortune that 
 the few enjoy. It is impossible to trace the
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 121 
 
 steps in that process, for it is the record of 
 the whole of mankind. But it is historically 
 undeniable that as men have been in greater 
 numbers divorced from the soil, as they have 
 been forced into the class called the proletariat, 
 have arisen the crucial economic problems that 
 confront the modern democracy. The value 
 of land, Ricardo taught long ago, is fixed by 
 that least productive soil which social circum- 
 stances call into productive use. The differ- 
 ence between its productivity and that which 
 gives the highest yield is called, simply, rent. 
 But who created this difference? It is due to 
 the foresight of no individual. It is due to 
 position, the pressure of population, the pos- 
 sibility of supplying with greater ease the needs 
 of that population. It is in short the existence 
 of the community. In proportion as land has 
 been concentrated in the hands of a few, those 
 few have been able to profit by the genius and 
 industry of the community. Society suffers 
 from its own improvement. By one of the 
 grimmest ironies to which history bears wit- 
 ness, those to whom a purely fortuitous event
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 has given possession of the soil, become legally 
 and economically entitled to tax the commun- 
 ity in proportion to its progress. 
 
 For Henry George, the central social prob- 
 lem consisted in the removal of this anomaly. 
 He understood what Joseph Fels later ex- 
 pressed in a single emphatic phrase, "No man 
 should have the power to take wealth he has 
 not produced or earned." The value of land 
 is mainly increased by communal effort. 
 "Land," Mr. Fels wrote, "has a value apart 
 from the value of things produced by labor; 
 as population and industry increase, the value 
 of land increases. That increase is commun- 
 ity-made value. I believe it belongs to the 
 community just as the wealth produced by 
 you belongs to you. Therefore I believe that 
 the fundamental evil, the great God-denying 
 crime of society is the iniquitous system under 
 which men are permitted to put into their 
 pockets, confiscate in fact, the community- 
 made values of land. It is proposed to take 
 to the community thab which is so obviously 
 its own. What economically it creates, that 
 it has morally the right to enjoy. If this view
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 123 
 
 were put on no ground other than that of com- 
 mon sense it would of a certainty be obvious 
 enough. It is in fact socially axiomatic. We 
 can proceed no further in our social develop- 
 ment unless account be taken of its essential 
 lightness." 
 
 If society creates these values, it has a clear 
 right to their possession. And, as Joseph 
 Fels was never tired of insisting, it is a little 
 late in the day to bring against this new decla- 
 ration of right the sneer that such rights are 
 unhistorical. We urge, he once told an ob- 
 jector, that the right is the offspring of an 
 obvious social need. How then is that right 
 to be enforced? The answer given by the 
 Single Taxers has at any rate the merit and 
 administratively this is of vast importance 
 of simplicity. It is proposed to tax the value 
 of land, irrespective of any improvements that 
 may be effected thereon, and to tax nothing 
 else. 
 
 Income as a result of personal exertions 
 is economically justified in claiming exemp- 
 tion. Imports and exports should be exempt 
 because they are ultimately the product of
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 labor. It is difficult to exaggerate the social 
 changes which would result from this reform. 
 It is in fact, what Henry George called a true 
 reform because it makes other reforms pos- 
 sible. The taxation of land values will in the 
 first place raise revenue. Even here it has an 
 advantage over other systems. It is open and 
 it is certain two advantages not lightly to be 
 minimized. It will have about it none of the 
 complex mystery which is associated with taxa- 
 tion at the present time. That, however, is 
 comparatively a minor advantage. Its effect 
 on industry must necessarily be of a far reach- 
 ing character. The tax in the first place will 
 be borne by the land owner; economists from 
 Ricardo to Marshall have united in the decla- 
 ration that a tax on economic rent cannot be 
 shifted either to tenant or to consumer. It 
 will thus force into use land that is at present, 
 either for purposes of speculation or of selfish 
 enjoyment, held out of use; for the tax will 
 be greater than the land owner can bear unless 
 he attempts improvements to meet it. He will 
 use his land simply because he will not be able 
 to do otherwise.
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 125 
 
 What would happen in an urban commun- 
 ity as a result of this reform was, to Mr. Fels' 
 thinking, one of its most important conse- 
 quences. The more land is forced into utili- 
 zation the cheaper must rents become, because 
 the quantity of buildings is greater, supply is 
 increased relatively to demand. That is itself 
 an important change in modern urban condi- 
 tions. A serious blow may thus be struck at 
 the prohibitive rents of great industrial centers. 
 Not only is the landlord economically com- 
 pelled to improve his urban property, but to 
 improve it he must give work that is socially 
 useful and thus increase employment. 
 
 If more land is forced into cultivation 
 clearly the price of raw materials must be re- 
 duced. This from a business point of view was 
 an argument to which Mr. Fels attached great 
 importance. In his own industry he found 
 grave difficulties resulting from the possession 
 by very few of all the available sources of 
 supply. It was not that those sources were 
 scanty and approaching exhaustion; supplies 
 were deliberately restricted in order to enhance 
 profits on a small output. Mr. Fels urged
 
 126 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 constantly that half the evils of the increased 
 cost of living in recent years were due to this 
 one tremendous fact, the "cornering" as he put 
 it, "by a few, of the natural resources of which 
 all men have need." He saw that if the full 
 extent of those resources was brought into use, 
 the price of raw materials would be reduced 
 with a clear effect upon the cost of living. 
 
 That result would assist greatly the con- 
 dition of the working class. If there is an in- 
 creased demand for labor there must be an in- 
 crease in wages ; not even the opponents of the 
 Single Tax deny the applicability to modern 
 conditions of the law of supply and demand. 
 Here was what appeared to Mr. Fels the es- 
 sential merit of Henry George's doctrine. By 
 calling into use to their fullest extent the nat- 
 ural resources of the state, an attack would 
 be made at the very root of the social problem. 
 The cost of living would be cheapened, the 
 possibilities of the community utilized and new 
 opportunities opened for labor. A reform 
 such as this seemed to Mr. Fels the first satis- 
 factory method he had encountered of dealing 
 with the problem of poverty.
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 127 
 
 It seemed to him, moreover, a natural re- 
 form. It would remove restrictions. It 
 would make unnecessary those taxes on com- 
 merce which, as Henry George pointed out, 
 prevent the free play of exchange. It would 
 stimulate industry by opening out new op- 
 portunities for the efficient use of capital. It 
 would make far easier the collection of revenue 
 
 i 
 
 by substituting a single and simple method of 
 taxation which would require comparatively 
 little administration, for a number of complex 
 and usually conflicting methods which require 
 a heavy staff of operators. It would lessen 
 to a remarkable degree and even destroy the 
 opportunities by which monopoly and special 
 privilege have attained their present high posi- 
 tion in the state. It would be an equal system 
 inasmuch as it assumes that a man should pay 
 for what he possesses of the peculiar benefit 
 in the way of economic privilege that the state 
 can confer, the use of the land. It thus con- 
 forms to Adam Smith's canon of taxation that 
 men should contribute to the state "in propor- 
 tion to the revenue which they respectively 
 enjoy under the protection of the state."
 
 128 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Mirabeau's father was wont to say that the dis- 
 covery of the principle of land taxation was 
 of an importance equal to that of the invention 
 of writing. 
 
 Important as were these economic consid- 
 erations, it was for reasons of an ethical kind 
 that Mr. Fels embraced the Single Tax doc- 
 trine with so whole hearted an enthusiasm. 
 For him, it made possible the approach of a 
 new social morality. It gave each man the 
 opportunity to be himself. It opened out for 
 the first time the well springs of his own na- 
 ture. It made possible an era of justice. 
 This was for him essentially its greatest recom- 
 mendation. For he had long been seriously 
 oppressed by the perception that justice was 
 impossible in a social order unjust in its very 
 foundations. A real freedom could come only 
 when the community had acquired the material 
 basis of freedom; and he realized that until 
 that liberty was attained every plea for social 
 fraternity was the veriest hypocrisy. Brother- 
 hood, he said often enough, is only possible 
 among equals. If a condition of life obtains 
 in which the vast majority is dependent upon
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 189 
 
 a small minority for its daily bread, that eco- 
 nomic subjection will result in political en- 
 slavement. It was, as he saw, a slavery in 
 everything but name. It was a negation of 
 democracy. It destroyed equality of oppor- 
 tunity. It created unjust distinctions of class. 
 The economic falsehood permeated even the 
 church. Men of religion came to preach that 
 morality was the acceptance of this untruth. 
 It vitiated the system of education. Political 
 economists constructed a code which attempted 
 to weld ever more firmly the worker's chains. 
 That is why Mr. Fels stigmatized the land 
 monopoly as a "God-denying crime." He 
 could see no end to its ramifications. It 
 seemed to penetrate into every nook and 
 cranny of the state. The divorce of men from 
 the soil had been the main source of poverty. 
 They had lost their birthright and it seemed 
 to him that of all tasks by far the noblest was 
 to restore them to their inheritance. 
 
 Many who met Mr. Fels after he had be- 
 come interested in Single Tax were inclined 
 to complain that he thought of nothing else. 
 In a sense this was true, and he gloried in the
 
 130 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 complaint. He told how for the first time he 
 had a faith which was compelling and ade- 
 quate. He had tired of the continual tinker- 
 ing at social ills. He had wearied of the end- 
 less procession of unavailing reforms. Ex- 
 pedients of every kind he had tried. Investi- 
 gations of every kind had had his sympathy 
 and support. Yet, as he saw, decades of zeal- 
 ous inquiry had not seen beyond the stage of 
 mitigation. The cry for social reform, for bet- 
 ter housing, higher wages, shorter hours, all 
 these were so many soporifics to make men 
 willing to endure an order wrong and rotten 
 in its foundation. The cure for poverty, he 
 once said, is its prevention. He hated from 
 the very depths of his being the smug com- 
 placency of charitable endeavor. What he 
 wanted was more than a formula of benevolent 
 regret. That is the secret of the devotion he 
 paid to his faith. 
 
 It is worth while emphasizing how empiri- 
 cal was Mr. Fels' faith. It was not some sud- 
 den revelation of a mystery that had been pre- 
 viously hidden. It came to him after long and 
 careful inquiry, after manifold experiments.
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 181 
 
 He had tried charitable work. He had sup- 
 ported almost every socialist and labor move- 
 ment. He had attempted colonizing enter- 
 prise. Increasingly he had come to see how 
 clearly the dearth of available land lay at the 
 root of social ills. He saw, too, that the land 
 monopoly was a hydra-headed monster; to cut 
 off any save the central head was but to 
 strengthen and revivify it. It came to him 
 slowly but with the deep conviction that is 
 born of intimate experience, that the cardinal 
 principle in any declaration of social faith must 
 be the destruction of the land monopoly. 
 Everything else seemed to him but the estab- 
 lishment of fine superstructures upon a worth- 
 less basis of sand, and, as he once whimsically 
 said, even for that rent had to be paid. He 
 did not put forward the Single Tax as a pan- 
 acea. He had too much knowledge of the 
 cdmplexity of social life to be thus unintel- 
 ligent. What he did insistently emphasize 
 was the truth that the time for tinkering at 
 our ills had gone by, that it was vital to set 
 about the building of a new social structure. 
 With Mr. Fels to realize was to act. Once
 
 132 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 the vision had been clearly seen, he set to work 
 to attempt its fulfillment. He made inquiries 
 in every direction to know what work was 
 being done for the Single Tax, who were do- 
 ing it, how it was being done. He proffered 
 whatever services he could render, time, money, 
 organization, thought, with an eager gladness 
 that put new courage into the hearts of all 
 with whom he came in contact. Unlike the 
 majority in any movement, he contributed not 
 only enthusiasm but also, what was even more 
 important, suggestive ideas. He was so es- 
 sentially a man of action that in him theory, 
 almost at the birth, crystallized into prac- 
 tice. The thing was urgent, it should be done. 
 There was something infectious in the opti- 
 mism by which he became possessed. He was, 
 as he conceived, working directly at the main 
 root of social ill. He had been given a key 
 that opened the gate to a new and splendid 
 world. 
 
 It is not without significance that to Henry 
 George no less than to Joseph Fels did the 
 inspiration of this work bring content and op- 
 timism. Those who knew him found in him
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 133 
 
 a new purposiveness direct and impressive. 
 The reason is simple. They had both been 
 puzzled by the confusion of the modern social 
 order. They had both, until comparatively 
 well on in years, wandered almost blindly 
 ahead, searching, experimenting, hoping, and 
 yet ever failing to find a real clue to that vast 
 labyrinth. The watch words of a campaign 
 were theirs. They knew that over the gate- 
 way to the world of their dream liberty and 
 justice must be written. They knew there 
 was work for them to do ; and then there came 
 knowledge of the way. "Liberty," wrote 
 Henry George, "came to a race of slaves 
 crouching under Egyptian whips and led them 
 forth from the House of Bondage. She har- 
 dened them in the desert and made them a race 
 of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic 
 law took their thinkers up to heights where 
 they beheld the unity of God, and inspired in 
 their poets strains that yet phrase the highest 
 exaltations of thought." It was the desire to 
 recover the spirit of liberty that took posses- 
 sion of Henry George and, in no less degree, 
 of Joseph Fels. He would help men, in that
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 fine phrase of Mirns, to share no less in the 
 gain than in the toil of living. The optimism 
 which characterized both George and himself 
 was born of a certainty that his mission was 
 true. To him the axioms of the Single Tax 
 not merely represented the sum of his whole 
 industrial experience, but were the truest de- 
 scription of the economic realities that lie at 
 the bottom of social appearance. Had it been 
 objected to him that these axioms were too 
 simple for the facts they attempted to describe 
 he would have replied that the truth is in its 
 nature a simple thing; it is, he once said, the 
 "rediscovery of the obvious." He believed 
 that social complexity was simply the child of 
 social ill. It was the product of centuries of 
 accumulated economic error. Once we re- 
 turned to the working of what he called nat- 
 ural law, once we restored to man what was his 
 by right, economists would find that social life 
 would proceed simply, because it would pro- 
 ceed justly. To him the application of Henry 
 George's doctrine meant the restoration of 
 man's natural right. If men are to possess
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 185 
 
 happiness they must have access to the means 
 of life. 
 
 Mr. Fels had always a deep interest in the 
 opposition to the Single Tax and his corre- 
 spondence, no less than his speeches, is full 
 of comments on its nature. To the argument 
 which has latterly found favor with the most 
 academic and distinguished of his antagonists, 
 that the Single Tax means the abolition of a 
 system of protection to home industries, Mr. 
 Fels would have replied that there was noth- 
 ing he so ardently desired. It was not only, 
 as he judged, that a protected industry was a 
 parasitic industry, and thus an industry never 
 standing on its own feet by virtue of its native 
 strength, but what to his cosmopolitan temper 
 was far more serious, a protective system was 
 supremely hostile to international fellowship. 
 He pointed out again and again that a nation's 
 trade was the expression of a nation's mind, 
 that the more closely nations enjoy commercial 
 intercourse, the more do they come to under- 
 stand each other. Free trade, as Cobden 
 whom he was proud to acclaim as a supporter
 
 136 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 of the Single Tax saw, was thus a means of 
 spreading friendship. By breaking down iso- 
 lation, it broke down misunderstanding, than 
 which there was no more fertile cause of war. 
 
 Perhaps the argument which most puzzled 
 him was the somewhat curious plea that the 
 Single Tax was dangerous because, while the 
 object of the budget is to balance expenditure 
 and revenue, it may produce a surplus. The 
 fear of this surplus he could never understand 
 because he knew how immense were the com- 
 munal needs to which it could be appropriated. 
 As he once told a questioner, on education 
 alone he would be willing and prepared to 
 spend tenfold the present appropriation. 
 "We have not yet begun to exploit the na- 
 tion's abilities," he told a friend, "and we can 
 sink plenty of money in finding them out." 
 Indeed it was his eager anxiety to put the 
 plans he cherished into action which made him 
 desirous of increasing the income of the state. 
 
 He was often told that the Single Tax was 
 fallacious because it over-simplified the prob- 
 lem of assessment. People were fond of quot- 
 ing to him cases where property had been
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 187 
 
 rated either too high or too low as evidence 
 that a true valuation was impossible. But to 
 him this was to neglect the whole point at 
 issue. The advocate of the Single Tax takes 
 as the basis of his estimate the selling value of 
 any piece of land, which is sufficiently easy to 
 ascertain. 
 
 There is a last group of objections with 
 which he was frequently confronted. He was 
 sometimes accused of sowing class hatred be- 
 cause he proposed to tax only the land-owning 
 class of the community. It was once urged 
 to him that the payment of taxation confers 
 a sense of social responsibility which the Single 
 Tax would destroy. It gives a certain stake 
 in the community which promotes good gov- 
 ernment. It was, again, represented to him 
 that the evils borne by the peasantry of France 
 under the ancient regime were largely brought 
 home to them by the unjust burden of taxa- 
 tion they were compelled to bear. Inequitable 
 taxation roused America to revolution. The 
 history of English liberty is a history of a 
 struggle to control the revenue. So that, in 
 this view, taxation ought almost of necessity
 
 138 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 to be unfairly imposed to arouse a people to 
 a keener sense of its wrongs. It is curious to 
 find Mr. Fels denounced as a promoter of 
 hatred. Perhaps more than any other man 
 who took part in the stress and heat of the 
 great social conflict of his time, did he have 
 an abiding sense of the ultimate unity of which 
 men are capable. If he cried out against the 
 land-owners it was because they retarded its 
 realization. It was because they prevented 
 the promotion of economic fraternity that he 
 was assured of their danger to the state. To 
 the argument that to abolish taxation is to 
 destroy a sense of social responsibility, he made 
 answer that the spirit taxation breeds is not the 
 spirit that makes a state endure; for him it 
 was tainted with compulsion and was there- 
 fore a barrier in the way of freedom. Un- 
 just taxation, he once said, did not cause the 
 American Revolution, but the repression those 
 taxes symbolized. No one can understand the 
 basic motives of his life who does not realize 
 how much of his intense faith in the teaching 
 of Henry George came from this hatred of 
 bondage. The prophecy of eternal poverty
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 139 
 
 was to him a doctrine of eternal damnation. 
 He had to fight against it because as he said 
 again and again, there was no other fight worth 
 while. 
 
 In every man and woman he saw a pos- 
 sible crusader. He made no apology for urg- 
 ing their assistance; he could not understand 
 a lack of enthusiasm for his ideal. If any- 
 thing in the world aroused in him a sense of 
 bitter antagonism and it was rarely he could 
 be so aroused it was the sight of satisfied 
 men and women. "So keen am I in the opin- 
 ion that we are doing great things these days," 
 he wrote to a friend shortly before his death, 
 "that at the risk of making myself a nuisance 
 I am approaching every man who I believe has 
 money and whom I know to have a heart." 
 It is thus that great movements are made. 
 
 It has been pointed out how deeply his 
 business experience confirmed him in his be- 
 lief. Often he expressed his amazement that 
 the government of cities and nations should be 
 carried on with so little regard to business. 
 "Election to a public office," he wrote, "seems 
 to denude a man of all his business acumen
 
 140 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 and cause him to forget all the sound methods 
 which are essential to success in the commer- 
 cial world." It troubled him to see a system 
 of taxation which had simply grown up by ac- 
 cident, in which there was neither method nor 
 principle. He believed that this confusion lay 
 at the root of public indifference to social ques- 
 tions. Men did not study the problems of 
 communal life simply because an artificial com- 
 plexity made them seem dull by depriving them 
 of their real vitality. "If a business man is 
 asked," he said, "what principle is adopted 
 in raising the revenue of his city, he will either 
 be quite nonplussed, or else he will blurt out 
 that ancient shibboleth, ability to pay. Im- 
 agine him trying to carry on his business on 
 these lines, and yet that is the method we are 
 told to adopt in taxation." This fact made 
 him eager to preach the doctrine to business 
 men. He believed that with them it would 
 make the greatest progress because it was, as 
 he urged, in accordance "with sound and honest 
 business principles." It should make a prac- 
 tical and immediate appeal to manufacturer 
 and worker alike; as he once expressed it, "it
 
 THE SINGLE TAX 141 
 
 is the Key that opens the door of their common 
 interests." 
 
 This then was the economic system of 
 Joseph Fels, assuredly no dismal science. 
 He tried to see simply and truly the path that 
 lay ahead. He knew that his belief ran 
 directly counter to accepted tradition. He 
 knew that it cut at the root of convention and 
 prejudice, he knew that realization would lie 
 far beyond his time, but his courage never 
 wavered because what he had he knew to be 
 the truth.
 
 XI 
 
 The Contest With the Leisured 
 Class 
 
 HHHE objective of all of Mr. Fels' later ac- 
 * tivities was to bring about a thorough dis- 
 cussion of the taxation of land values on the 
 platform, in the press and in Parliament. In 
 England a particularly favorable opportunity 
 for action had arrived. A new government 
 had come into office in 1906 with a majority 
 greater than that possessed by any previous 
 ministry. Its head, Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman, had been for many years sym- 
 pathetically disposed towards the movement. 
 In the House of Commons itself the group of 
 land taxers was, numerically at any rate, more 
 powerful than it had ever been before. Mr. 
 Fels soon won his way into their confidence. 
 He had no personal axe to grind, no party 
 affiliations to embarrass. He simply wanted to 
 
 142
 
 CONTEST WITH LEISURED CLASS 143 
 
 help in any way in which help could be ren- 
 dered. He traveled about speaking, wrote to 
 the press, interviewed members of Parliament, 
 entertained in that social fashion which makes 
 half the legislation of Great Britain. His city 
 office became a kind of campaigning center 
 where invariably a little group of enthusiasts 
 was to be found. 
 
 In 1909 came what was in a sense the turn- 
 ing point of his career. The chapter of poli- 
 tical history which led up to and culminated in 
 the budget of that year is sufficiently well 
 known. It represented the fruition of the new 
 liberalism. It had been many years since the 
 taxation of land values had received, in the 
 famous Newcastle program, the official rec- 
 ognition of the Liberal Party. Every Liberal 
 leader of importance during the long period 
 of opposition had given at least lip service, 
 and some of them like Campbell-Bannerman 
 seemed ready to meet its claims in full. The 
 party, however, continued to be dominated by 
 the old guard with its Whig tendencies and 
 Gladstonian descent. It circled about the 
 time-honored policies of Free Trade, Discs-
 
 144 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 tablishment and Home Rule. Measures of 
 social reform were incidental and tentative. 
 Liberalism had to find itself after coming into 
 power. Gradually, however, the new elements 
 began to emerge and take first place. The 
 problems of dense population and the intensi- 
 fying industrial struggle could not be solved 
 by the Gladstonian formulas. The discontent 
 of labor, now vocal in the House of Commons, 
 was ever more ominous. The day had arrived 
 for live issues handled by live men. Mr. 
 Lloyd George placed himself at the head of 
 the liberal democracy and led an attack upon 
 the very stronghold of privilege. Whether 
 or not its consequences may be obliterated by 
 the war, the budget of 1909 will always stand 
 as the acme of liberal achievement, co-ordinate 
 with the establishment of free trade. What 
 the budget actually proposed was little 
 enough, but the principle which it involved will 
 without doubt achieve a social revolution. A 
 land tax was to be introduced which differ- 
 entiated, for the purposes of assessment, be- 
 tween the site value and the improvement 
 value of land. A new valuation was made
 
 CONTEST WITH LEISURED CLASS 145 
 
 necessary which would give the English peo- 
 ple the first understanding they had had since 
 1690 of what the land was worth and its pos- 
 sibilities as a source of revenue. 
 
 But the most important result of the 
 budget was that the eyes of the elector were 
 open to the meaning of the Single Tax. Mr. 
 Fels began to make preparations for a cam- 
 paign of unprecedented magnitude. The 
 measure was not Single Tax; it was far from 
 what Mr. Fels would have desired. But it 
 was the thin end of the wedge. It marked the 
 beginning of a statutory recognition of the 
 land tax principle and as such was given the 
 strongest support of the United Committee 
 and all believers in the Single Tax. 
 
 An amazing outburst of opposition was 
 provoked by the measure. The House of 
 Lords, as guardians of privilege and represen- 
 tatives of the leisured class, decided to stake 
 its very existence as a legislative power on this 
 struggle. If there had ever been doubt as to 
 the importance of a land tax, this sullen re- 
 sistance showed it to be the conviction of priv- 
 ilege that the enactment of this principle into
 
 146 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 law pointed the way to its doom. "Any one 
 would have thought," Mr. Fels once exclaimed, 
 "that Mr. Lloyd George proposed to consign 
 the members of the House of Lords to the 
 workhouse." The opposition was well or- 
 ganized. The whole power and tradition of 
 privilege were invoked to secure the defeat of 
 the measure. It was not without success that 
 the Unionist Party endeavored to shift the 
 burden of conflict from the tax problem to the 
 constitutional question of whether the House 
 of Lords had the right to reject a money 
 bill. Leagues of protest against the budget 
 were formed. From the beginning to the end 
 of the fight Mr. Fels gave practical expres- 
 sion of his sympathy. He has even been ac- 
 cused of being the chief provider of munitions 
 for the campaign. Although the budget was 
 utterly incomplete from his point of view, he 
 felt that it marked an era in constructive 
 legislation. His liberality made possible the 
 great demonstration in Hyde Park which did 
 as much to revive the determination of the 
 Liberal Ministry as it did to overawe the op- 
 ponents of the measure.
 
 He sailed for the United States late in 
 1909 on the eve of the general election in Great 
 Britain. In his own country he spoke every- 
 where in explanation of the British budget. 
 He was convinced that nothing was so im- 
 portant as to awaken the people to an under- 
 standing of what possibilities that measure 
 contained. There have been few elections in 
 British political history, the issue of which has 
 been more significant and upon which the at- 
 tention of the whole world was more clearly 
 focused, than that of 1910. It returned the 
 Liberals to power with a mandate not only to 
 pass the land clauses of the finance bill, but to 
 end once for all the veto power of the House 
 of Lords. It was the first concerted attack 
 on the leisured class. To Joseph Fels, a dem- 
 ocrat, that was not its least achievement. 
 
 Social evolution is so long in passing be- 
 yond the stage of tribute gathering that it 
 would almost seem that this is established in 
 the natural order of things. At any rate this 
 appears to be the conviction in the minds of 
 the modern industrial community. From the 
 earliest days of the production of wealth there
 
 148 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 have been modes by which some of it could be 
 taken without compensation. The savage 
 chief with his band of warriors descended upon 
 a village, killed the men and carried off the 
 women and chattels. With a more extensive 
 and elaborate organization it was found that 
 conquest might be put to more useful purposes. 
 Larger returns were available if the conquered 
 communities were allowed to live and proceed 
 with the work of production. It was now only 
 necessary that a portion of the proceeds should 
 be handed over. While savagery destroyed 
 life outright, barbarism gave the privilege of 
 continued existence in exchange for labor, and 
 this evolutionary stage has lasted with some 
 modifications to the present day. 
 
 When William the Conqueror came to 
 England he achieved a very insignificant mili- 
 tary object, but brought into play the powers 
 of a most expert political economist. By par- 
 celling out the conquered territory to his fol- 
 lowers, he assured the country a thorough-go- 
 ing and efficient rule which centered in alle- 
 gience to the throne ; the law of rent is infinitely 
 more powerful than the law of arms. In
 
 CONTEST WITH LEISURED CLASS 149 
 
 course of time the nobles came to doubt the 
 validity of the King's first mortgage, but that 
 made no difference so far as the people were 
 concerned. From then till now, England has 
 had the unshaken distinction of possessing a 
 leisured class. Never once has the right to 
 collect tribute from the people been brought 
 into question. As the old families exhausted 
 themselves, the class has been recruited from 
 the multitude of candidates derived from more 
 common clay, but the tribute has gone on with- 
 out ceasing. It must be a matter of pride to 
 the common people of England that they have 
 always done this duty so nobly and unflinch- 
 ingly. The result is that the modern commun- 
 ity finds it difficult to obtain the means of sub- 
 sistence because its leisured idols have discov- 
 ered in modern times so many expensive de- 
 vices for increasing their comfort and luxury. 
 As this is one of the most interesting fields 
 of human psychology, it may be well to in- 
 quire into the prerogatives of landlordism. 
 That the position is one of power goes almost 
 without saying. The fear of eviction or in- 
 creased extortion is a potent instrument of con-
 
 150 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 trol ; in case of urgent need the landlord seldom 
 fails to use it. Even political convictions 
 sometimes feel its influence. 
 
 But eyen more important than the direct 
 relation between the landlord and his retainers 
 is the exalted position which leisure maintains 
 in the eyes of the whole community. Re- 
 spectability constitutes the certain and unas- 
 sailable line of intrenchment for the leisured 
 class. The plain fact is that the only com- 
 pletely respectable person is the one who does 
 nothing at all, that is, one who participates 
 in no kind of productive work. In this, par- 
 asitism does not suffice, or else paupers and 
 vagabonds would be elevated to high places; 
 but the fact of leisure must be elaborately and 
 expensively advertised. No device can be 
 neglected which may illustrate the fact that 
 one is far removed from any kind of useful 
 work. The principle operates in many curi- 
 ous ways. Clothing of both men and women 
 mounts the social scale just in proportion as 
 it proves that one could not, if one wished, do 
 anything. The elaborate cylinders in which 
 the respectable masculine form encases itself,
 
 CONTEST WITH LEISURED CLASS 151 
 
 no less than the laced and hobbled and high 
 heeled attire of women, are intended to give 
 the impression that life is free from labor. 
 Ideas of cleanliness are to a large extent ficti- 
 tious and conventional. The laborer is de- 
 spised not for being dirty but because he 
 works. Clean collars and wristbands are de- 
 sirable because they show an absence of manual 
 activity. The advertisement of leisure goes 
 so far as to necessitate the existence of a class 
 attendant upon the more exalted, which also 
 participates in the benefits. Leisure, so to 
 speak, spills over. The flunkey must main- 
 tain the appearance and demeanor of an in- 
 dividual free from work, at any rate when 
 seen in attendance upon the larger parasite. 
 The greatness of the master is enhanced if 
 butler and footman can also produce the illu- 
 sion of being great personages. On the other 
 hand, those who toil must never be allowed to 
 forget the fact that they are low. Even serv- 
 ant girls who escape from their servitude for 
 a weekly outing and desire for that short time 
 to make the world believe by dress and manner 
 that they are not working, need to be criticised
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 and even repressed. The descending scale of 
 respectability manifests many examples of 
 dual personality. Perhaps the most pathetic 
 is that of the clerk. He is under the painful 
 necessity of combining a life of unspeakable 
 drudgery with the appearance of exalted leis- 
 ure. Practice, however, habituates him, with- 
 out much psychological difficulty, to put aside 
 top hat and frock coat when attacking his 
 ledgers. Imaginatively he dwells in the world 
 of leisure. This makes him the bulwark of 
 the Conservative party. Other professions 
 that cultivate display of the symbols of leisure 
 are those that depend upon humbug for their 
 success, such as those of law and medicine. 
 There is nothing more valuable than to let your 
 client get the impression that you do not really 
 need his case. The vicarious respectability of 
 the clerk is also seen in shop assistants and 
 waiters. Here the intention is to advertise the 
 greatness of the establishment to which they 
 belong. There must, however, be some show 
 of leisure on the part of the heads. College 
 professors must keep apparent the respecta- 
 bility of their institution as well as of academic
 
 CONTEST WITH LEISURED CLASS 153 
 
 learning which is esteemed in inverse ratio to 
 its utility. Thus respectability shades down in 
 terms of leisure and the pretense of leisure, 
 distinguishing and defining the social classes 
 until the navvy is reached, and even he finds 
 the means of impressing his superiority upon 
 somebody else, it may be his wife. The whole 
 system derives from and centers in that apex 
 of the social order, the not inconsiderable group 
 who own the land and therefore the people. 
 Let it be said again that the persons con- 
 cerned are not to be blamed. The rent roll 
 for them is an inexorable determinant of their 
 existence. Often a lad leaves Oxford with an 
 imagination stimulated by the world he faces 
 and resentful that life can never have for him 
 the flavor of a great adventure, that his hands 
 can never know the joy of making and shap- 
 ing things. The scheme of things determined 
 his course from the day he was born, and not 
 many years are needed to settle him in ac- 
 quiescence and maintenance of the system. 
 The class is of course being constantly in- 
 creased by the possessors of newly made for- 
 tunes. Their admission to the ranks of leis-
 
 154 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 ure is for some time resented, but the economic 
 factor on which the whole scheme rests is all 
 determining, and no rich man can be for long 
 excluded in spite of the vulgarity which his 
 wealth derives from recent contact with labor. 
 It is refreshing to know at least one rich 
 man who played the role badly. Joseph Fels 
 was never able to see that the humanity beneath 
 a greasy engineer's suit was essentially differ- 
 ent from his own. He could never bring him- 
 self to believe that it did not matter whether 
 poor children were fed or not. He knew that 
 if these people had their due there would be 
 no great fortunes to expend on carriages, 
 flunkeys, great houses, expensive dress and 
 charitable subscriptions. Directness of vision 
 and honesty of principle made impossible for 
 him participation in the great masquerade. 
 Behind the array of conventional pretense he 
 recognized the sordid form of the world's 
 greatest injustice. A leisured class rides upon 
 the backs of the poor. The community which 
 displays great luxury displays a corresponding 
 degree of privation; the counterpart of the 
 palace is the hovel. To enable any individual
 
 CONTEST WITH LEISURED CLASS 155 
 
 to flaunt his leisure, numbers are doomed to 
 grinding toil. Confronted with this situation, 
 the course of an honest man is simple. One 
 accepts the situation or one does not. Joseph 
 Fels did not.
 
 XII 
 
 Personal Propaganda 
 
 rTIHE great value of the budget for Mr. 
 * Fels was that its principle when fully ap- 
 plied would give opportunity to those desiring 
 work and would force the leisured into some 
 useful occupation, would mark, as he said, "the 
 greatest national industrial revival that the 
 world has ever witnessed." For leisure is re- 
 tained through the monopolization of resources 
 that rightly used would be communal. "The 
 tax," he told an audience in Portland, "will be 
 taken off industry and thrift and labor, all of 
 which will be stimulated. Monopoly will be 
 taxed out of existence, for all monopoly is 
 founded on land. Competition will be free 
 . . . the leisured classes are against the land 
 tax reform because it will destroy their 
 monopoly in land." He explained how the 
 trusts of the United States would be affected 
 by such a measure. "There is the oil trust. 
 
 166
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 157 
 
 If it had to pay taxes on its great oil and gas 
 fields at their real value, and not just as waste 
 lands, how long would it hold them out of the 
 market unproductively ? It would produce all 
 the oil it could sell, and the kerosene would be 
 cheap to the poor man and gasolene to the 
 automobile owner. The trust would have to 
 sell the lands it was unable to use, and there 
 would no longer be a monopoly in oil." 
 
 That the working out of the budget was 
 a failure Mr. Pels would have been the first 
 to admit. The reason of that failure seemed 
 to him sufficiently simple. When the admin- 
 istration of its principles came to be applied, 
 there was a lack of courage for which he had 
 scarcely been prepared. "He is not really a 
 land-tax man," he wrote of Mr. Lloyd George 
 three years later, when early in 1913 the con- 
 clusions of the latter's Land Enquiry Com- 
 mittee were published. Mr. Lloyd George, 
 in his view, failed at the critical moment to 
 apply consistently the principles in which he 
 had declared his belief. He so framed the de- 
 tails of the measure as to make possible endless 
 delay and litigation. Mr. Fels himself would
 
 158 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 have had no agreement on valuation or refer- 
 ences to a court. The assessment would have 
 been made once and for all by government ex- 
 perts without what he called "the fanatical 
 appeal to a court prejudiced beforehand" 
 against the effort the budget was intended to 
 further. It was to him a disappointment that 
 so fair a promise should have issued in so 
 meager a fulfillment. 
 
 Whatever disappointment he felt was lost 
 in the activities which made more and more 
 demands on his time. Any chronological 
 record of his movements after 1909 becomes 
 practically impossible. Roughly, it is true to 
 say that half the year was spent by him in Eng- 
 land and half in America. But there were 
 two long Continental visits when he braved 
 the difficulties of language and tried to stimu- 
 late the organization of the Single Tax move- 
 ment in Denmark, France, Sweden, Germany, 
 Italy and Spain. In 1909-10, he toured 
 through most of the Middle West of the 
 United States. In the following winter he 
 was speaking through the Southern States. 
 In 1911-12, he toured through Canada and the
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 159 
 
 Far West. His time was filled with tireless 
 activity. He wrote countless letters, consid- 
 ered schemes of propaganda, visited anyone 
 from whom there was the hope of assistance. 
 He did not hesitate to expose himself to re- 
 buff if he felt that eventually he might be able 
 to effect some good. He even approached 
 Mr. Carnegie twice in a single year trying, 
 of course vainly, to convince that unsparing 
 philanthropist that his right hand was en- 
 deavoring to re-erect what his left hand had 
 destroyed. He attended congresses, meet- 
 ings, lectures, debates. He sought out the 
 prominent men of any town he visited, and at- 
 tempted their conversion. He denounced the 
 rich, including himself, unsparingly. "We 
 can't get rich," he told a Chicago audience, 
 "under present conditions, without robbing 
 somebody. I have done it; you are doing it 
 now, and I am still doing it. But I am pro- 
 posing to spend the money to wipe out the 
 system by which I made it." This speech 
 created no small sensation and he was asked 
 for an explanation of his remarks ; but he had 
 nothing to explain. Under a system which
 
 160 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 placed a premium on economic exploitation, 
 it was simply impossible for a man to make 
 money on a large scale by fair competition. 
 "People listen to me," he told an interviewer, 
 "when I say this, because I am a rich man. 
 Many a poor man has said exactly the same 
 thing and suffered imprisonment for sedition." 
 
 Instances abound of remarkable events on 
 these tours. In London for instance he per- 
 suaded a famous American statesman to visit 
 the offices of the United Committee, and the 
 interview Mr. Fels wrote to a friend is not 
 without interest. 
 
 "I consider him," he wrote, "an ignoramus 
 on our question and think he is working too 
 much on the preaching track to be an open-eyed 
 public man. I went to see him at Claridge's 
 Hotel and talked with him for about an hour 
 and a half. He knows nothing about the land 
 question or, at any rate does not show it by his 
 talk. Finally, as he said Tom L. Johnson in- 
 sisted that he should see John Paul, I took him 
 to the office of our United Committee the next 
 morning. . . . After a little general talk, Orr 
 asked a couple of questions. The first he tried
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 161 
 
 to answer, but got so mixed that he jumped 
 up, grabbed the telephone, called up the hotel 
 and asked to be connected with his wife's room, 
 when he inquired of her whether the man had 
 come and then said he would be there in fifteen 
 minutes. He thereupon jumped up, shook 
 hands with all of us and slipped out." It is 
 not difficult to understand why Mr. Fels re- 
 fused to be bound by the ordinary ties of poli- 
 tical association. 
 
 An incident in a budget meeting is not 
 without interest. A discussion on the Single 
 Tax had taken place and questions were asked. 
 The following interlude occurred. 
 
 "Major-General," who occupied a front seat and 
 had followed the procedure with close interest, said, 
 "Gentlemen, to get the matter through, I am a pro- 
 prietor of some waste land, and I would like to know 
 what to do with it. I don't think it would be right 
 to tax it." 
 
 ME. HEMMEEDE: "What sort of waste land?" 
 
 GENEEAL: "Land of no value." 
 
 ME. HEMMEEDE: "If it is of no value then the 
 tax would not hit it." 
 
 GENEEAL: "I understood that you proposed 
 that all land should be taxed." 
 
 MB. HEMMEEDE said he knew of a case of waste 
 land rated at 4s and 5s an acre and when the town
 
 162 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 bought it, they had to pay 1,000 per acre. They 
 
 would like to know if this piece of waste land had 
 
 any ratable value. 
 
 GENERAL: "No, it does not produce anything." 
 MB. HEMMERDE: "Could it produce anything?" 
 GENERAL: "No. I want to know what to do 
 
 with it. I understood you proposed that the whole 
 
 of the land should be taxed." 
 
 MR. HEMMERDE: "Certainly." 
 
 GENERAL: "And that all land has a value." 
 
 MR. FELS: "Would you give it to anyone who 
 
 wanted it?" 
 
 GENERAL : "No." 
 
 MR. HEMMERDE : "We could get the surveyor of 
 
 taxes to put a value on it." 
 
 GENERAL: "I would say it was valueless. It 
 
 does not produce anything." 
 
 MR. HEMMERDE: "It must have some value, or 
 
 you would not wish to keep it." 
 
 GENERAL: "I like to look at it." [Laughter.] 
 MR. FELS : "Suppose someone else was prepared 
 
 to do something to get . . . looking at it, would you 
 
 let them have it?" 
 GENERAL: "No." 
 MR. FELS: "May I ask whether you have ever 
 
 received an offer for the land?" 
 GENERAL: "No." 
 
 MR. FELS : "Would you take 1 an acre for it?" 
 GENERAL: "No. It doesn't produce anything. 
 
 I don't want to part with it." 
 
 MR. FELS: "Would you take 2 an acre?" 
 
 GENERAL: "I don't want to sell it." 
 
 MR. FELS: "Would you take 5 an acre for a 
 
 plot in the center of it?"
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 163 
 
 GENERAL: "I don't want to sell it." 
 ME. FELS: "Would you take 20?" 
 GENERAL: "I don't want to sell it. I like to 
 
 look at it." 
 
 MR. FELS: "Then it has a value." [Loud 
 
 laughter.] 
 
 There could hardly have been an apter il- 
 lustration of what the budget was to effect. 
 
 Almost equally characteristic was a letter 
 to a wealthy American who wrote criticising 
 his propaganda. The American may be 
 named Brown. 
 
 My dear Brown: 
 
 I have held yours until I cooled down, because 
 there are some things in it that are not fair to your- 
 self. My state of mind has cooled; here is what I 
 have to say, not from the rich man to his fellow rich 
 man, but from the naked Joseph Fels to the naked 
 John Brown. 
 
 You freely say that the economic philosophy of 
 Henry George is a practical and just method of tax- 
 ation and deserves the support of all right-minded 
 men, and that the introduction of the Single Tax is 
 one of the greatest tasks to be undertaken. 
 
 You then go on to say that you would like to help 
 me more, but cannot except at times by writing upon 
 the subject, because, being no longer a young man, 
 you have not the power and strength that you had in 
 bygone days. You also refer to other responsibili- 
 ties which, you tell me, "weigh heavily upon you."
 
 164 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 You wind up this particular paragraph of your let- 
 ter by saying that the Lloyd George Insurance Bill 
 absorbs you. 
 
 The above are your reasons for not helping finan- 
 cially, though what your age and interest in the In- 
 surance Bill have to do with the matter, I cannot con- 
 ceive. 
 
 Now let us see where the responsibility of age and 
 the Insurance Bill will defeat the thing you freely 
 acknowledge as one of the best in the world. You 
 are a millionaire, have always been a millionaire, so 
 far as I know, and perhaps as long as you can re- 
 member. You live, when in London, at a swell hotel, 
 keep a motor car, private secretary, and other more 
 or less useful adjuncts to a rich man, including the 
 hob-nobbing with other rich men, which, of course, 
 means a large expenditure of money. In New York 
 
 you live at the Hotel, as you tell me, which, I 
 
 take it, means $100 a week. You perhaps spend in 
 luxuries $50,000. To you they may not be luxuries 
 because you have never known anything else, but they 
 are luxuries to me, and to others who have a con- 
 ception of the right use of money. 
 
 You got your money as I freely acknowledge I 
 got mine through one or other of the various mo- 
 nopolies and special privileges. You play with the 
 matter of charity and philanthropy, and try to com- 
 fort your immortal soul and stifle your conscience 
 with the idea that you are doing something. Well! 
 you are. You are making matters worse, and it 
 won't matter much to the world in general. . . . 
 
 Now I am looking for millionaires, and I prefer 
 American millionaires. I want each one of them to
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 165 
 
 put up $100,000 a year to help free men, and make 
 such as you and myself impossible. , . . 
 
 My dear Brown, had you not better tear the veil 
 from your eyes? It is a simple process. Just look 
 at yourself in the clear light of truth and personal 
 responsibility. I am fully aware that this letter 
 may lose me an acquaintance, but I am not pleading 
 for you to help me. I am pleading for you to help 
 men. 
 
 To Mr. Carnegie the first letter, of June 
 21, 1910, is as follows: 
 
 Andrew Carnegie, Esq., 
 
 Skibo Castle, N. B. 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 An item in the enclosed paper has just caught my 
 eye. Are the statements therein correct? If so, 
 your memory is a little short, you and I having met 
 some five years ago at Charing Cross Station by ap- 
 pointment, as I was then anxious to interest you in 
 the farm labor colony movement here which I was 
 then promoting. I need hardly say that I was pro- 
 moting that movement to create land hunger, and not 
 because I considered the establishment of such colo- 
 nies a cure for the poverty question ! 
 
 Taking it for granted that you are correctly re- 
 ported, I plead guilty to the charge that my object 
 is nothing more nor less than the Single Tax accord- 
 ing to the Henry George philosophy ; but it is not in 
 a resuscitated form at all, as Henry George was 
 never more alive than at present, even though no 
 longer with us in the flesh.
 
 166 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 I am glad to note that you knew George, and that 
 you appreciated his integrity. I hope, however, you 
 are not correctly reported in the statement that you 
 could never see anything but absurdity in the Single 
 Tax, for I have heretofore given you credit for hav- 
 ing brains of quite an unusual character. 
 
 I have no doubt that George was highly appre- 
 ciative of the fact that you told him his philosophy 
 was impossible of leing carried out in the States, but 
 am equally sure he did not agree with you, as we have 
 carried the fight for his philosophy into one of the 
 States of the Union where the American farmer pre- 
 dominates, and, in my opinion, we shall have a large 
 measure of the Single Tax in that State in 1912 
 I refer to Oregon, which is really as important as an 
 agricultural State as Iowa, which you are reported 
 to have said that George invaded, but that his views 
 were so ridiculed by the people as to cause him to 
 conclude that his campaign was useless. I don't be- 
 lieve this, either! No work done anywhere at any 
 time for furthering the cause of economic freedom 
 was ever hopeless; and you of all men should 
 know this, seeing that you have done so much to make 
 it hopeless, without succeeding in breaking down the 
 courage of the common people. 
 
 I do not doubt that your hobby lies in free libra- 
 ries, though these "free" libraries are perhaps not so 
 free as you would like to believe, as all I know of are 
 a permanent charge on the local rates, and, to this 
 extent, are not free, but are a noose around the necks 
 of the common people, for which they will yet rise 
 and curse you indeed, they have in many cases al- 
 ready done so.
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 167 
 
 I do not doubt that, during the money panic in 
 New York, you could have made an extra $50,000,- 
 000, but I can hardly be asked to respect your reason 
 for not making it ! Somebody else probably made it, 
 and did his share towards further choking the free- 
 dom of the people ! 
 
 Your frank expression of want of sympathy for 
 the so-called submerged tenth is in keeping with the 
 balance of the statements in the enclosed article. Of 
 course, you have little sympathy with the submerged 
 tenth. Indeed, I do not know of anyone who has ex- 
 pressed his soft impeachment of your sentiments in 
 this connection, and I am confirmed in this by the 
 fact that you have done so much during your life to 
 submerge so large a proportion of the tenth. I am, 
 too, not insensible to your sympathy with the swim- 
 ming tenth, who, as you say, are striving to help 
 themselves; but this is only carrying out your own 
 philosophy, as you belong to the swimming tenth of 
 those who have risen on the backs of their fellows. 
 
 Natural laws do, in the end, control such matters, 
 as you well say, but they control them in quite a dif- 
 ferent way from that which you are so much in the 
 habit of propagating. 
 
 You make an absolute mis-statement, however, in 
 saying that the deserving rise out of their poverty, 
 and save their own respect from the mire. Are you 
 not really talking through your hat in making such 
 a mis-statement, when you, as a man long immersed 
 in monopoly and special privilege, must know that 
 the submerged tenth (indeed in Great Britain, the 
 submerged third) is submerged by monopoly and spe- 
 cial privilege ; I refer especially to land monopoly.
 
 168 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Just recall a portion of your own life, and the 
 thousands yea, tens of thousands ! of men, women 
 and children you have done so much to submerge ; re- 
 call the Homestead strikes, and the hundreds of labor 
 wars in which you and your companies were, and are 
 still, engaged! 
 
 You will answer this by saying that you are no 
 longer in business ; but that is hardly a correct way 
 of putting it, seeing that you converted your mo- 
 nopolies into 5 per cent, bonds, and still draw your 
 interest from the sufferings of men, women and chil- 
 dren. The fact that you have made 50 or 100 men 
 of your own build millionaires merely adds to the 
 agony by spreading the suffering, and the only way 
 you can remedy the matter is to stop spreading suf- 
 fering by putting your money and great abilities to 
 the task of destroying the power of one man, or set 
 of men, to stamp under foot the liberty and free will 
 of thousands of other men. 
 
 The economic philosophy of Henry George is now 
 a living issue in the world and not an inconsequen- 
 tial exhibit of it and in last year's British Budget, 
 the land valuation clauses may even touch your own 
 pocket through Skibo Castle and all the enterprises 
 or investments in which you may have an interest in 
 Great Britain. 
 
 In conclusion, I am writing you this letter direct, 
 instead of spreading it in the pages of newspapers, 
 and I do so in the hope that you will write me fear- 
 lessly and frankly; and, if I have made a single 
 charge in this letter which is not well within the truth, 
 I will personally apologize to you and withdraw the 
 part that is untrue. Yours very truly, 
 
 (Signed) JOSEPH FELS.
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 169 
 
 The second letter was sent six months later, 
 shortly after Mr. Carnegie had made his gift 
 of ten million dollars to the International 
 Peace Foundation. Mr. Fels wrote to him 
 and pointed out what he conceived to be the 
 fatal effects of the method of peace propa- 
 ganda pursued by Mr. Carnegie. "You have 
 given," he * wrote, "ten million dollars to an 
 international peace fund. The object is 
 worthy. The donor's intentions are good. 
 But a worthy object and a good intention can- 
 not alone make a gift a real benefaction. Do- 
 nations, no matter how large, to suppress evils, 
 no matter how great, can accomplish nothing 
 unless they should be used to remove the funda- 
 mental cause of the evils. 
 
 "Aggressive warfare is always the result 
 of what appears to be an economic necessity. 
 The last great \var, that between Russia and 
 Japan, will serve as an illustration. These 
 two nations fought over the possession of 
 Korea. Russia wanted Korea because she 
 feels the need of a seaport accessible all the 
 year round, that she may be able to export and 
 import merchandise freely without being both-
 
 170 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 ered with any tariff restrictions other than 
 those of her own making. Japan felt that her 
 independence would be threatened that is, 
 she realized that her refusal to trade freely 
 with the rest of the world would create a 
 temptation for other nations sufficiently strong 
 to deprive her of independence. 
 
 "If conditions of absolute international 
 free trade had prevailed, Russia would no more 
 have felt the lack of an accessible seaport than 
 does the State of Ohio. If Japan maintained 
 no custom houses, the power that would try to 
 rob her of her independence would have noth- 
 ing to gain and very much to lose. Henry 
 George made this clear in his Protection or 
 Free Trade. 
 
 'What,' he wrote, 'are the real substantial 
 advantages of this Union of ours? Are they 
 not summed up in the absolute freedom of 
 trade which it secures, and the community of 
 interests that grows out of this freedom? If 
 our states were fighting each other with hostile 
 tariffs and a citizen could not cross a state 
 boundary line without having his baggage 
 searched, or a book printed in New York could
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 171 
 
 not be sent across the river to Jersey City un- 
 til duty was paid, how long would our Union 
 last, or what would it be worth? The true 
 benefits of our Union, the true basis of the in- 
 terstate peace it secures, is that it has pre- 
 vented the establishment of state tariffs, and 
 given us free trade over the better part of a 
 continent.' 
 
 "The 'need of foreign markets' which is so 
 frequently used as an argument to justify 
 wars of criminal aggression is a 'need' that 
 would not be felt if the aggressing nation en- 
 forced justice at home. Our own war in the 
 Philippines would not have received popular 
 indorsement but for the false hopes of 'new 
 foreign markets' held out to commercial inter- 
 ests. This bait was held out and was swal- 
 lowed, in spite of the fact that potential new 
 markets exist here at home. 
 
 "The unemployed and partially employed 
 population and the underpaid workers form a 
 potential market far greater than any war of 
 conquest could secure. To secure this new 
 market, labor need but be given access to the 
 natural resources now withheld by private mo-
 
 172 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 nopolists. The vacant and the partially used 
 city lots, and the valuable mining and agri- 
 cultural lands held out of use for speculation, 
 are causing poverty, unemployment, and low 
 wages. The result is under-consumption of 
 manufactured products, which manufacturers 
 and merchants are bamboozled into believing 
 can be relieved by forcing the people of weaker 
 nations to purchase. 
 
 "Then again, the interests which dragged 
 the United States into the disgraceful Philip- 
 pine adventure would not and could not have 
 succeeded in doing so, had not the existence 
 of land monopoly at home made it evident that 
 the same institution would surely be continued 
 by our government in the Philippines. 
 
 "Will the Carnegie fund be used to any 
 extent in abolishing land monopoly, thus 
 checking any possible repetition of successful 
 appeals to commercial cupidity in support of 
 land-grabbing schemes abroad? Hardly. 
 
 "A gift of ten millions to secure relief from 
 malaria in a swampy district, which could not 
 be used to secure the draining of the swamps, 
 or the destruction of the mosquitoes would be
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 173 
 
 just as effective as your peace donation." 
 It goes without saying that Mr. Fels' ad- 
 vice was disregarded ; we cannot even find that 
 his letter received a reply. Perhaps, as he 
 suggested, he had made a proposal too radical 
 even for a retired millionaire. But it was not 
 only with the powerful that his enormous cor- 
 respondence in these years concerned itself. 
 He received every day scores of letters offer- 
 ing suggestions, criticising, cursing, request- 
 ing information. The first he considered al- 
 ways with a courteous attention. To the criti- 
 cisms he replied for the most part in an amus- 
 ingly optimistic vein. Those who cursed were 
 amply repaid in their own coin; Joseph Fels 
 never hesitated to tell any man in full and 
 plain terms exactly what he thought of him. 
 To those who asked for information he always 
 replied in elaborate detail, and a separate 
 packet of literature, with a copy of Progress 
 and Poverty would, as a rule, accompany his 
 reply. His ideas and views were embodied in 
 many short articles and public letters. It was 
 his habit never to let any occasion pass when 
 the theory of the Single Tax could be driven
 
 174 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 home. A housing bill was proposed; he would 
 urge that the present assessment on improve- 
 ments simply penalized the tenant. A park 
 was presented to some neighborhood ; he would 
 point out the benefit it conferred on the land- 
 lords of the locality. One grows almost be- 
 wildered at the multifarious and incessant ac- 
 tivities he undertook. He arranged, at one 
 time, that every elector in Great Britain should 
 receive a bundle of Single Tax literature. He 
 attended practically every Trade Union Con- 
 gress from 1909 to distribute leaflets to the 
 members. He gave evidence to the land com- 
 mittee of the Labor Party. He went to radi- 
 cal congresses of every kind in the hope that 
 they might be turned to good use. If a friend 
 started a journal of any description, he clam- 
 ored to be allowed to explain his cause therein. 
 It mattered nothing that the purpose of the 
 paper was different from, even on occasion, 
 antipathetic to the Single Tax. If the pur- 
 pose was different, then his article would in- 
 troduce a little variety; and if it was antipa- 
 thetic the editor could point out his errors in 
 a leader.
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 175 
 
 Two characteristic tales may be told in this 
 connection: In 1910 Mr. Fels persuaded Tom 
 L. Johnson, the famous mayor of Cleveland, 
 and a close friend, to pay a visit to him in Eng- 
 land. While they were there, Johnson noticed 
 that a Free Trade Congress of all nations was 
 to be held in Antwerp, and the idea occurred 
 to Mr. Fels of using it for propaganda pur- 
 poses. To receive credentials from the Ameri- 
 can Free Trade League was the matter only of 
 a cable. Mr. Fels took over a band of thirty 
 stalwarts, eager to declare their enthusiasm 
 for a Free Trade that went far beyond the 
 ideals of most of its professed adherents at 
 Antwerp. At first, the Congress was ada- 
 mant to his insistence that the Single Tax was 
 merely the logical development of Free Trade 
 ideas ; it could not hear him. Then procedural 
 objections were urged. No place had been set 
 for him in the program were he to speak, 
 all arrangements would be upset. The myriad 
 official difficulties were coldly set before him. 
 But Mr. Fels was not thus easily daunted. A 
 tribute was to be paid to Richard Cobden 
 Cobden who, seeing the land-hunger of Eng-
 
 176 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 land had declared his belief in Free Trade in 
 land. Mr. Fels saw his opportunity. No 
 more enthusiastic appreciation of Cobden was 
 paid than his, but it combined also, and skil- 
 fully, a eulogy of Henry George as the man 
 who had logically carried out Cobden's con- 
 clusions. And no member left the Congress 
 without ample literature upon the subject. 
 "It was the best piece of work I have yet 
 done," he wrote to a friend, "we came near to 
 stampeding the Convention. I feel pretty 
 sure that Henry George was never so near 
 coming into his own as now in any country. 
 It is the struggle of the century, and the most 
 inspiring struggle, too." 
 
 His other exploit was suggested by the 
 Antwerp adventure. An International Con- 
 ference on Unemployment was held in Paris 
 in September, 1910, and Mr. Fels, with a large 
 box of literature, freely distributed later, was 
 in attendance. The conference was divided 
 into three sections, on the statistics of unem- 
 ployment, on labor exchange, and on unem- 
 ployment insurance. He spoke at length in 
 all three. In the first, he urged that the time
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 177 
 
 had passed when they need bother about the 
 actual extent of unemployment. The age 
 tended to choke itself in a series of "splutter- 
 ing investigations" which resulted in nothing 
 save satisfaction to the investigators. They 
 knew that there was serious unemployment; 
 that was sufficient to make them anxious to get 
 ahead. He objected to labor exchanges and 
 to unemployment insurance because they were 
 beginning the problem at the wrong end ; they 
 assumed the inevitability of unemployment 
 and then attempted its minimization. He was 
 not content with that. He assumed that it 
 could be prevented by the adoption of the Sin- 
 gle Tax. Then the Conference heard some 
 bitter home-truths about satisfaction with pal- 
 liatives. He ended by an appeal for converts 
 to his crusade. He wrote of this Conference 
 to a friend: "Of course you will know what 
 I had to say on these things. I take it we 
 cannot do better, wherever possible, than by 
 attending all such conferences and showing 
 those assembled the utter futility of palliative 
 measures, and the absolute necessity of attack- 
 ing unemployment at its base. I do not think
 
 178 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 I ever before felt more bitter against a set 
 of well-dressed, well-fed people who did not 
 know what they were talking about, and I im- 
 parted as much bitterness to what I said as I 
 knew how." He accomplished something more 
 on this journey than mere skirmishing. "The 
 most interesting incident of my Paris trip was 
 that I had to inaugurate the first Single Tax 
 League in France. . . . The fact that the 
 Physiocrats before the great Revolution 
 enunciated what practically became the Henry 
 George philosophy made it peculiarly interest- 
 ing." Then followed a characteristic thought: 
 "Whenever you have an odd ten minutes to 
 spare, write Georges Darien, the secretary of 
 the new League, an encouraging letter; per- 
 haps Eggleston or some other of the chaps will 
 do it too." It was this initiation of comrade- 
 ship in the movement which was not the least 
 valuable of Joseph Fels' gifts to it. 
 
 It was to this friend, Mr. U'Ren of Ore- 
 gon, that Mr. Fels wrote a letter that deserves 
 reproduction in full, because nothing shows 
 more clearly the trend of his political thought
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 179 
 
 at this time. It makes clear, too, how in- 
 tensely he felt upon this subject: 
 
 "You were very good," he wrote, "to write 
 me so fully and freely on your opinion of my 
 contentions as to the open agitation of our 
 question in all its baldness. No one I can re- 
 call could have done it better, or been more 
 patient about it. Thank you from the very 
 bottom of my heart. You're one who, seeing 
 the justice of things in its right relations, gives 
 his friend of his plenty, and opens his own 
 reservoir of knowledge freely for his friend's 
 guidance. I value what you write to me, and 
 it will serve me well in the work to which I 
 have consecrated my life I say consecrated, 
 for so I consider devotion to the high and no- 
 ble cause in which we find ourselves engaged. 
 Surely no nobler or greater has yet crossed 
 the horizon of the thinker, or the saint or sin- 
 ner. Happily, too, one lives in an atmosphere 
 which is not poisoned by fear of the stake or 
 guillotine these days, though intolerance and 
 ignorance and slavishness to opinion still find 
 lodgment in the breasts of millions of people.
 
 180 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 One often thinks these are equally bad, con- 
 sidering the high state of civilization to which 
 we are supposed to have attained. 
 
 "Your letter gives one to think. I'll keep 
 it by me for a time then I'll make dupli- 
 cates and submit them to a number of our col- 
 leagues. Perhaps, by and by, others will 
 come up to the point of seeing the vision you 
 outline ; it is an alluring dream for the present. 
 But who shall say that dreams which hold the 
 germ of substantiality, as this one does, are 
 impossible of materialization, even in the short 
 span of our own lives? In considering this 
 thing, I have taken on a new lease of life, and 
 hope, and assurance. And so, though I have 
 set myself to seeing human freedom as an es- 
 tablished fact, in one or more lands, during 
 the next twenty years, I am much inclined to 
 wipe out the time limit, and to declare boldly, 
 'I'll see human freedom.' 
 
 "The mere hint of the prospect has given 
 me greater happiness during the last three 
 years than I can recall of the previous 53. 
 There, you have my age. 
 
 "The suggestion you outline for Pennsyl-
 
 PERSONAL PROPAGANDA 181 
 
 vania is most alluring Pennsylvania, my 
 own State. It is a thing well worth the doing 
 no, the trying to do, even though one may 
 not see it done. Perhaps (who knows?) I may 
 find other men who will also see the vision to 
 help with their purses. There are more and 
 more devoted souls, who are glad to give them- 
 selves, coming to the front daily, hourly. 
 There are few men given to view this great 
 work going on in so many countries as I am. 
 It all makes me very humble and very thank- 
 ful. I'm sure you understand. 
 
 "I seem to have completely changed in the 
 last three years in many directions. Perhaps 
 this is caused by my earnest effort to see 
 through the eyes of other men, of other na- 
 tions, with other viewpoints than mine. I be- 
 lieve I am more patient with the opinions of 
 others, and perhaps, too, the vision has en- 
 larged. 
 
 "It is in my plan to go and see you at your 
 work-bench, in your own shop and among your 
 own people. A man is seen more clearly in 
 his own environment, and I am hoping to leave 
 for the West early in December. I must get
 
 182 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 up to a number of the Canadian towns, cer- 
 tainly Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. 
 I am promising myself to raise hell, and part 
 of the $10,000 Kiefer is still praying for, to 
 round off his work. It may amount to prey- 
 ing for it, but I don't mind that. It is simply 
 robbing in a good cause."
 
 XIII 
 
 The Fels Fund Commission 
 
 UNTIL the beginning of 1909, that is, for 
 the first four years of his connection with 
 the Single Tax movement, Mr. Fels was con- 
 tent to work through the different organiza- 
 tions already in existence. He helped them 
 time and again with funds, speeches, articles. 
 Yet he was not altogether satisfied with their 
 activity. The conviction grew upon him that 
 the movement suffered seriously from decen- 
 tralization and disconnectedness. It seemed 
 to bear no obvious relation to movements akin 
 to itself. It had economic, but not political sig- 
 nificance. This, of course, was true mainly of 
 the United States; in Great Britain the pur- 
 pose of the United Committee had been the 
 steady permeation of political parties. But in 
 America, particularly since the death of Henry 
 George, though Single Taxers had not lost 
 any of their enthusiasm, Mr. Fels felt very 
 
 183
 
 184 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 keenly that they had lost much of their direc- 
 tion. The movement tended to expend itself 
 in the reading of papers, in colonization experi- 
 ments, in social functions at which Single 
 Taxers might discuss a coming golden age, 
 which, for the most part, they did little 
 or nothing to forward. The movement, in 
 fact, seemed to have decreased both in vitality 
 and in force. People in the United States did 
 not discuss its principles as they had done in 
 George's lifetime. Single Taxers were as 
 prominent in opposition to socialism as they 
 were in the advocacy of their own doctrine. 
 Early in 1908, Mr. Fels began seriously to 
 cast about for means to put a stop to what he 
 called "the possibility of economic and intel- 
 lectual dry-rot." Mr. Bolton Hall provided 
 him with the opportunity he desired. 
 
 Early in January, 1909, Mr. Hall wrote to 
 Mr. Fels and asked his assistance in a coloniza- 
 tion movement in which he was interested. To 
 that letter Mr. Fels replied from London as 
 follows : 
 
 "Your letter regarding the use of the 'lit- 
 tle lands' has just reached me, and I believe
 
 THE FELS FUND COMMISSION 185 
 
 it is a move in the right direction. For my 
 part, I am a sincere believer in the taxation of 
 land values, and while this 'little land* proposi- 
 tion of yours is not the most direct means to 
 'get back to land,' it works in that direction. 
 Anything that creates land hunger must of 
 necessity put before the public the unreason- 
 ableness of our present system of taxation, and 
 the certainty that it must be reformed. 
 
 "And because of my belief that the time is 
 ripe to spread information on land reform in 
 general, you may draw on me for an advance 
 of $5,000 in that behalf, and I will agree to 
 donate $25,000 each successive year for the 
 next five years towards a propaganda, pro- 
 vided others can be found to give an equal 
 amount each year. In other words, I will 
 spend $125,000 altogether, to be under the 
 charge of a committee of land reformers, pro- 
 vided others will contribute likewise. 
 
 "You can make the movement so broad 
 that men like Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mr. 
 Andrew Carnegie, Mr. James J. Hill, and 
 other equally conservative men can stand with 
 us on the same platform."
 
 186 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 This letter is the origin of the Joseph Pels 
 Fund Commission of America. Mr. Hall 
 showed the offer to a group of friends and they 
 founded the organization which now bears Mr. 
 Fels' name. An advisory committee, to which 
 George Foster Peabody, Louis F. Post, then 
 editor of The Public and now Assistant Secre- 
 tary of Labor in Mr. Wilson's administration, 
 Bolton Hall, Henry George, Jr., then a mem- 
 ber of Congress, and Bishop Williams gave 
 their adherence, was formed. In addition to 
 this committee was the actual working Com- 
 mittee entrusted with the control and disposal 
 of the Fund. To this belonged Jackson H. 
 Ralston, Lincoln Steffens, most militant of 
 American radicals, Frederic C. Howe, now 
 Commissioner of Immigration in New York, 
 and then in the famous "cabinet" of Tom L. 
 Johnson, and Mr. George A. Briggs. Daniel 
 Kiefer, probably, as Mr. Fels once said, the 
 "most efficient mendicant in the United 
 States," was appointed its chairman. 
 
 Two things must be emphasized. The 
 Commission attached, despite his protest, Mr. 
 Fels' name to its work, because they believed
 
 THE FELS FUND COMMISSION 187 
 
 that his position in the business world of 
 America would give them a standing of prac- 
 tical importance. Mr. Fels himself neither in 
 its origin nor at any other time played any part 
 in the control or direction of the fund. He 
 refused even to form part of the advisory com- 
 mittee. He preferred then as always to re- 
 main a freelance in the movement entirely un- 
 connected with any organization. He stood 
 to the Fund in no relation other than that of 
 an important contributor who sympathized 
 with its objects and always deeply admired 
 the work it was able to achieve. He was, of 
 course, often enough consulted on the plans of 
 the Commission, though as often as not, he 
 would refuse possibly to fetter its members by 
 offering counsel. He simply stood to it from 
 the outset in the relation of an interested spec- 
 tator who cared profoundly for its success. 
 Nor was he disappointed in his hopes of what 
 it would achieve. 
 
 The plans the Commission set before itself 
 in the first year of its activity were commend- 
 ably large. It assisted largely the progressive 
 movement in Oregon which, under the leader-
 
 188 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 ship of Mr. W. S. U'Ren, seemed likely to do 
 work of permanent democratic value. Mr. 
 U'Ren was promoting a Single Tax measure 
 in that State and the Commission felt that they 
 could do no finer work than assist it. Simi- 
 larly, did they help in Rhode Island where, 
 under Mr. Garvin, the Single Tax forces were 
 highly organized, and in Missouri where the 
 atmosphere was akin to, though less developed 
 than, that of Oregon. A Press Bureau on an 
 extensive scale was established which not only 
 distributed material to a large number of radi- 
 cal journals, but also constituted a bureau of 
 information in regard to the land problem all 
 over the world. A depot of literature was 
 created which distributed books and pamphlets, 
 mainly free of cost, all over the United 
 States. Publications either definitely or 
 largely Single Tax were assisted in various 
 ways. A beginning was made of what is now 
 a remarkably complete directory of Single 
 Taxers all over the world, a list which has 
 proved of invaluable service as a means of 
 propaganda, and must be of unique utility in 
 any political movement. Experts were sent
 
 THE FELS FUND COMMISSION 189 
 
 out to work up special districts. Arrange- 
 ments were made to supply clubs and organi- 
 zations of every kind with speakers thoroughly 
 acquainted with the economic philosophy of 
 Henry George. 
 
 From the very first, in fact, the Commis- 
 sion served, as it now serves in an increasing 
 degree, as the clearing-house of the whole 
 movement. It gave the Single Tax a national 
 status by providing it with a national organi- 
 zation. It focused the activities of the Single 
 Taxers and then reflected them outwards 
 where they could prove of the greatest service. 
 In its mere collection of funds to match the 
 money subscribed by Mr. Fels, it probably 
 penetrated into quarters where the Single Tax 
 had never before been known. For the first 
 time it endeavored to distribute literature not 
 only on an enormously wide scale, but in a 
 thoroughly complete and scientific manner. 
 The fundamental thing was the spread of Mr. 
 George's own books. To this end, the Com- 
 mission arranged for the publication of cheap 
 editions of his works. At Mr. Fels' sugges- 
 tion translations of Progress and Poverty into
 
 190 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Italian, Bulgarian, Swedish, Yiddish and Chi- 
 nese were arranged. The machinery of Con- 
 gress was skilfully utilized in conjunction with 
 Mr. Henry George, Junior, to effect an enor- 
 mous distribution of Mr. George's Protection 
 or Free Trade exactly at that psychological 
 moment when the revision of the tariff was 
 being everywhere discussed. Nor was this all. 
 It was realized that if the movement was to 
 make an adequate appeal, regard must be had 
 to the variety of men's interests. Some men 
 were farmers, some manufacturers, some en- 
 gaged in the process of distribution, a large 
 number were wage-earners. Each naturally 
 desired to understand the relation of the move- 
 ment to his own special problems. For each, 
 therefore, in addition to the large mass of 
 purely general literature, a special series of 
 reports began to be issued. The relation of 
 Single Tax to farming, to manufacturing in- 
 dustries, to the wage problem, to trade union- 
 ism, were specially studied and short, pithy 
 pamphlets published upon them. At the end 
 of its first year's work, the Commission could 
 fairly claim that at no time since Mr. George
 
 THE FELS FUND COMMISSION 191 
 
 himself had taken charge of the propaganda, 
 had the movement been so widely discussed or 
 so generally appreciated. 
 
 The Commission, as was natural, did not 
 fail to meet with criticisms, and it is but right 
 to explain Mr. Fels' relation to them. It was 
 complained to him that the Single Tax move- 
 ment was essentially a democratic movement, 
 that he had had no right thus to foster the 
 establishment of an autocratic and self-ap- 
 pointed body. His reply to this was suffici- 
 ently simple. The need of the kind of body 
 his gift had brought into being was daily be- 
 coming more apparent. Every organization 
 began by a number of men agreeing to foster 
 certain aims and so had the Joseph Fels Com- 
 mission commenced. As to its autocratic char- 
 acter, Mr. Fels was never very seriously con- 
 cerned. It was, as he again and again pointed 
 out to his complainants, always open to receive 
 suggestions ; and the main thing was efficiency. 
 When its actual work was complained of, it 
 would be time to discuss its methods and char- 
 acter. To a similar complaint that "his" Fund 
 had no right to divert to itself all the funds
 
 192 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 of the movement, Mr. Fels replied that there 
 could be no greater test of the popular appre- 
 ciation of its merit. "People," he told one 
 such critic, "give either because they like what 
 the Fund is doing or because they sympathize 
 with the way it is doing it. No one gives to 
 anything just because he wants to get rid of 
 his money." Nor did he pay much heed to 
 those who complained of the broad basis upon 
 which the Commission had been established. 
 Some complained of subsidies to papers not 
 entirely Single Tax in their character. Others 
 thought that the Commission had no right to 
 divert its funds to movements like the Initia- 
 tive and Referendum movement. Mr. Fels 
 had no sympathy with either of these attitudes. 
 He did not like papers that were solely Single 
 Tax in outlook because he knew by hard ex- 
 perience that they preach only to the con- 
 verted. He preferred to support an ably con- 
 ducted radical journal which had an outlook 
 sufficiently Single Tax to make its readers un- 
 derstand the potentialities of the movement. 
 This, indeed, was the reason why the Com- 
 mission particularly chose out The Public as
 
 THE FELS FUND COMMISSION 193 
 
 its organ. Courageously sustained and bril- 
 liantly edited by Mr. and Mrs. Post for many 
 years, the paper had, as Mr. Fels put it, "the 
 real root of the matter"; and if people read 
 a radical comment from the Georgian stand- 
 point on the problems in which they were 
 interested, their sympathy was far more likely 
 to be won than by a journal for the object of 
 which they had at the outset no affection. "It 
 isn't business," he wrote in his practical way, 
 "there won't be readers, and there won't be 
 advertisements." Time has shown that he was 
 not mistaken in that judgment. 
 
 He believed, too, intensely in the promo- 
 tion of the Initiative and Referendum. To- 
 gether they constituted a formidable weapon 
 against the holders of monopoly. Often 
 enough it was the constitutional expedient nec- 
 essary to secure the passage of a Single Tax 
 measure. In that event, it was as he thought, 
 the necessary incident of the ideal, and he sup- 
 ported it with all the enthusiasm at his com- 
 mand. Indeed, to him the Initiative and Ref- 
 erendum were measures fundamental to any 
 democracy. Their absence was due mainly,
 
 194 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 as he conceived, either to fear or to distrust 
 of the common people, and both of those senti- 
 ments appeared to him entirely without basis 
 in fact. It seemed to him the merest stupid- 
 ity not to trust the people. Confidence enough 
 and to spare had been placed in the benevo- 
 lence of an aristocracy and the sense of a legis- 
 lature's responsibility, and in both events they 
 had proved to be misplaced. He urged con- 
 tinually that no finer check than these existed 
 upon the possibility of legislative misde- 
 meanor. 
 
 Of one curious type of criticism a word 
 may be said, and it is his own word. When he 
 began to devote large sums of money to the 
 Single Tax, he was criticized by the capitalist 
 press in an amusing variety of ways. Some- 
 times it appeared that he was supporting an 
 exploded fallacy. Sometimes he was told, as 
 in a famous New York paper, that he had, 
 like Mr. Carnegie, grown tired of his wealth 
 and had chosen what he deemed the most fit 
 method of its restoration. Point was sup- 
 posed to be given to this type of comment by 
 his own remark that he, in common with every
 
 THE FELS FUND COMMISSION 195 
 
 wealthy man, was virtually a robber, since he 
 had battened on the monopoly the law had en- 
 abled him to maintain. A paragraph, "The 
 wicked wealth of Mr. Fels," gave him the oc- 
 casion for a pointed reply. 
 
 "I believe," he wrote, "as I said in my 
 speech, that the fortunes acquired by many 
 people, are largely due to unjust economic con- 
 ditions, and from the moral point of view, these 
 conditions are responsible for what is prac- 
 tically a system of robbery. You say that it 
 is 'impossible to work up complete sympathy 
 with the moral distress of Mr. Fels. He can 
 divest himself of his stolen goods if he so much 
 wishes, and thus re-establish his soul-cleanli- 
 ness.' But surely this would solve no problem, 
 nor remove the cause of distress from any sym- 
 pathetic mind. No efforts of mine can repair 
 the mischief which is wrought by the unjust 
 distribution of wealth. I cannot discover the 
 men, women, and children who have been 
 wronged by being deprived of what they have 
 produced with hard and exacting labor. Even 
 if I could discover them, and if I were to re- 
 store to them the wealth, or a small part of the
 
 196 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 wealth of which they have been unjustly de- 
 prived, they would offer gratitude to which 
 I have no just claim, because the wealth was 
 not really mine. This relationship would be 
 bad for them and bad for me. There is only 
 one method, therefore, of curing the evils that 
 spring from the unjust distribution of wealth, 
 and that is by putting a stop to the injustice. 
 "In your editorial you associate me with Mr. 
 Carnegie, who has gained a world-wide repu- 
 tation as a philanthropist, and thus suggest that 
 his motives and mine, in discussing this sub- 
 ject, are the same. There is a mistake here. 
 There is a clear distinction between our mo- 
 tives as well as our methods. Mr. Carnegie 
 has generously endowed universities and li- 
 braries for the better education of working- 
 people. I appreciate such work, but I would 
 point out that this is not what the working- 
 people are most in need of at the present mo- 
 ment. There are hundreds of thousands of 
 well-educated men in Europe and America who 
 cannot get reasonable scope for the applica- 
 tion of their labor. The land of this world 
 in some shape or other is the subject on which
 
 THE FELS FUND COMMISSION 197 
 
 every man must exercise his labor. Much of 
 the land is held up by private individuals 
 against the men who are willing to use it ; and 
 for more of it men have to pay too high prices 
 or rent. The result is that we have vast arm- 
 ies of unemployed men in every civilized coun- 
 try. I venture to affirm that, whether as a 
 matter of business or of justice, what these 
 men require is not more education, but more 
 freedom of access to land. The education 
 they have received is rendered useless, and they 
 are denied opportunity of developing and edu- 
 cating themselves further. 
 
 "I object to land being held out of use as 
 it is, under the laws of most countries. This 
 policy prevents men from helping themselves, 
 and forces them into the miserable and humili- 
 ating position of accepting and soliciting char- 
 ity. I object further to land being used by 
 one man as a means of exacting from another 
 part of his earnings. A tax on land values 
 according to the principles of Henry George 
 would bring the land into use and enable the 
 tax authorities to exempt buildings and im- 
 provements from the burdens that now fall
 
 198 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 upon them. This system would abolish pov- 
 erty by stopping that form of legal robbery 
 for which the laws of the country are respon- 
 sible. I am willing to spend money to intro- 
 duce this system; I invite others to join me. 
 It is a more reasonable task to do what one 
 can to prevent the waste and ruin of human 
 life and happiness than to stand by while men 
 are broken, even if we attend with bandages 
 and ointment to bind up their wounds. This 
 movement has taken root and is growing rap- 
 idly in the United States, in Great Britain, 
 in Canada, in the leading European countries 
 and in Australasia. In a few years we shall 
 realize a large measure of our aims." 
 
 There is no more succinct statement of the 
 Single Tax. The Commission was simply his 
 commentary on its aims.
 
 XIV 
 
 Educational Experiments and 
 Suffrage 
 
 IN all his activities toward betterment, Mr. 
 Fels proceeded upon the principle that a 
 necessary condition to mental and moral im- 
 provement is the re-arrangement of the physi- 
 cal conditions of life. As the old Physiocrats 
 maintained that culture is historically derived 
 in its various forms from types of physical en- 
 vironment, and civilization a consequence of 
 geographical conditions, so there are those who 
 believe that the making of the individual man 
 or woman is conditioned, not so much by the 
 artificial environment of class-room and text- 
 books, as by the environment of physical things 
 and conditions found in early childhood; it is 
 through dealing with conditions of real im- 
 portance and interacting with a world whose 
 significance is vital that any learning worth the 
 while must be derived. 
 
 199
 
 200 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 At various times Mr. Fels endeavored to 
 secure a larger measure of instruction and 
 practice in gardening for the children, believ- 
 ing as he did in the unlimited possibilities of 
 the soil in making men and women. As in 
 most other cases during that period, he was 
 before his time. The authorities were quite 
 willing to be given financial assistance, to be 
 applied as they thought best. They would 
 give no grant and almost no facilities for gar- 
 dening, believing that nature study was quite 
 sufficient. Nature study at that time, as in- 
 deed at present, consisted in the Council 
 Schools, of little more than producing before 
 children a few flowers, twigs, leaves and tad- 
 poles, with possibly a dove, rabbit or guinea- 
 pig kept in confinement in the class-room. 
 While the silent pressure -of industry makes 
 itself felt even in the infants' class, and es- 
 pecially in the growing provision for manual 
 and technical training, those occupations which 
 deal more directly with nature, which are vital 
 in the conservation of national life and of over- 
 whelming importance as the basis for in- 
 dividual development, these have found, and
 
 EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS 201 
 
 still find, in British schools only sporadic and 
 feeble support. Short-sighted education 
 authorities are eager to serve their masters 
 by producing in increasing quantity a pro- 
 letariat of mechanical skill without knowledge 
 of, or interest in, the one occupation which 
 could save it from the industrial labor market, 
 and at the same time, make life more worth 
 the living. 
 
 Apart from what was done for the teach- 
 ing of gardening in connection with the Va- 
 cant Lands Cultivation Society, Mr. Fels' en- 
 deavors toward altering the machinery of ed- 
 ucation resulted in disappointment. At May- 
 land, however, where he was free to organize 
 a school without official interference, as there 
 was of course no grant, he succeeded in pro- 
 ducing an institution which might had cir- 
 cumstances continued favorable have become 
 a model school of great influence. He called 
 to his assistance the experience and judgment 
 of Miss Maria Findlay, a veteran and leader 
 in the cause of educational reform, and with 
 the enthusiastic support of his teachers, ar- 
 ranged for the children of the colony a cur-
 
 202 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 riculum which had few equals and no superiors. 
 It was concerned to a large extent with the 
 every-day occupations seen about them, gar- 
 dening, carpentry and the care of animals ; and 
 even the more formal materials of instruction 
 were never permitted to pass out of touch with 
 reality. 
 
 Having built and equipped such a school, 
 having provided admirable teachers and an 
 unsurpassed curriculum, Mr. Pels invited the 
 Education Committee of the County Council 
 to take over and incorporate it in their system, 
 and to give assurance that its excellencies 
 would be maintained. Needless to say there 
 was no place for it in the system. 
 
 Of more importance so far as concerns 
 ultimate results was the co-operation of Mr. 
 Fels with Miss Margaret McMillan, in her 
 efforts to improve the physical conditions of 
 childhood. This original and energetic re- 
 former, devoted to the cause of poor children, 
 feeling always the futility of instructing minds 
 housed in bodies unfed, unclean and often 
 diseased, has given her life to arousing the 
 nation's interest in its children. She has
 
 EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS 203 
 
 worked with teachers, with authorities, with 
 politicians, on the platform, at conferences, 
 everywhere that opportunity presented itself, 
 with unsurpassed zeal, and in the end with 
 astonishing success. Mr. Fels met her as she 
 was leaving Bradford, after achieving for that 
 city the proud distinction of incorporating 
 into the local educational system provision for 
 the hygienic needs of children. In conversa- 
 tion at the reception given to mark her de- 
 parture, Mr. Fels discovered that here was 
 something of unlimited importance for the 
 well-being of the future generation, consistent 
 with his own most intimate convictions, and 
 worthy of every degree of support that it could 
 receive. He offered at once to give financial 
 support to Miss McMillan if she would con- 
 ceive and carry out a scheme of hygienic 
 centers of larger scope than Bradford had been 
 able to allow her. Miss McMillan came to 
 London and soon afterwards at his home in 
 Bickley the offer was renewed, made definite, 
 and attached to a plan with which Miss McMil- 
 lan intended to approach the education au- 
 thority. This was in May, 1904. In Novem-
 
 204 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 ber of the same year they went together to in- 
 terview the Education Committee of the Lon- 
 don County Council, and made an offer of 5,- 
 000 to assist in carrying out a plan of health 
 centers. The Committee was, of course, con- 
 servative, and treated the innovation with the 
 usual degree of suspicion. As very often hap- 
 pened when Mr. Fels was present, the inter- 
 view became somewhat stormy. He usually 
 succeeded in expressing his opinion of men and 
 things. The central idea in the plan was the 
 establishment and equipment of centers in the 
 various districts of London for the hygienic 
 inspection and treatment of school-children. 
 These centers would, of course, necessitate the 
 installation of baths. The Committee was suf- 
 ficiently magnanimous to be willing to accept 
 the money without the plan. Asked what they 
 could do with 5,000, they agreed that they 
 might be able to establish two centers. Miss 
 McMillan knew that with this money she could 
 establish fifty. After this interview, Mr. Fels 
 told her that he could see little prospect of 
 success in dealing with the authorities, and that 
 it would be better for her to do her work alone,
 
 with his support. With a view to carrying 
 out the plan Miss McMillan began to work for 
 medical inspection in the schools, feeling that 
 the whole movement toward the physical bet- 
 terment of children would have to be of a piece. 
 She prepared a precis, secured the supporting 
 signatures of the most enlightened medical 
 men of London, as Sir Victor Horsley, Sir 
 Lauder Brunton, Mr. Forbes Winslow, Sir 
 J. Crichton Browne. She secured also the 
 support of the then president of the National 
 Union of Teachers. Armed with this docu- 
 ment she went to the House of Commons and 
 interviewed her friend, Mr. Jowett. Her plan 
 contained three provisions compulsory in- 
 spection, an annual report, and a supervisory 
 board at Whitehall. Neither from Mr. 
 Jowett, nor afterwards from Mr. Birrell, was 
 much encouragement received. Not daunted, 
 however, she again interviewed Mr. Jowett to- 
 gether with Mr. Illingworth, Mr. Birrell's sec- 
 retary, gave them more details, and told them 
 the cost. Thereupon Mr. Birrell received a 
 deputation introduced by Mr. Keir Hardie 
 and supported by several eminent medical men.
 
 206 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Medical inspection was embodied in the Ed- 
 ucation Bill of 1906, and on July 16th, the 
 clauses referring to it were carried in the 
 House. The Bill was dropped in August but 
 the clauses providing for medical inspection 
 were inserted in its successor and carried in 
 the Education Act of 1907. 
 
 Having progressed so far, Miss McMillan 
 turned to the pursuit of her main objective, the 
 establishment of health centers. She obtained 
 permission of the London County Council to 
 use a single small room in Bow, and supported 
 by Mr. Fels, established the first school clinic. 
 Two physicians, Dr. Eder and Dr. Tribe, at- 
 tended, each, one afternoon per week. The 
 education authority, however, being still dis- 
 trustful and unsympathetic, sent few patients. 
 The treatment therefore turned out to be too 
 expensive, amounting to 7s. 6d. per child. As 
 there was a hospital rate of 5s. per child 
 which the Council could use, the clinic was con- 
 sidered a failure. Miss McMillan, still de- 
 termined, decided to drop all connection with 
 the school authorities and proceed on her own 
 lines. She went to Deptford and organized
 
 EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS 207 
 
 a private clinic, attended by two physicians, a 
 dentist and a nurse. Not having to wait for 
 the County Council to send patients the clinic 
 was at once filled. From then, to the present, 
 children have continued to pour in, and the 
 treatment per child has been found to amount 
 to 2s. 6d., half the hospital rate. This aroused 
 the much belated interest of the Education 
 Committee and in 1911 it agreed to assist with 
 a grant for dental treatment. This was fol- 
 lowed in 1912 by an additional grant for eye 
 and ear treatment. Miss McMillan has pub- 
 lished two reports, showing methods, results 
 and cost. Through these the Deptford ex- 
 periment has become known throughout the 
 world, and the school clinic will soon be every- 
 where an established part of the educational 
 machinery. Holding firmly to her original 
 idea of hygienic as well as medical treatment, 
 Miss McMillan has widened the scope of the 
 clinic to include remedial drill, and camps for 
 boys and girls. In 1912 she opened a baby 
 clinic. 
 
 In this way Mr. Fels placed his resources 
 at the service of originality and devotion.
 
 208 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 While increasingly absorbed in other reforms, 
 his interest in the Deptford experiment con- 
 tinued to the end. Just before leaving Eng- 
 land on his last journey, while on a visit to the 
 clinic, he happened to see some vacant land 
 close by. He wrote to the County Council 
 and secured the use of it to Miss McMillan. 
 
 It is needless to describe the ways in which 
 Mr. Fels gave encouragement and assistance 
 to the cause of woman's suffrage. It is of 
 more importance to make clear his mode of 
 thinking and the motives which originated his 
 action. With him the movement was a factor 
 which made toward freedom, and just as he 
 endeavored to show men workers how to use 
 political for the attainment of economic free- 
 dom, so he saw the suffrage as a necessary in- 
 strument by which women workers could secure 
 for themselves a tolerable place in the world. 
 
 The whole course of history from savagery 
 to the present day displays women, in the mass, 
 as sunk in more or less profound servitude. 
 So far from being the cherished object of man's 
 solicitous protection, as he always likes to make
 
 SUFFRAGE 209 
 
 her believe, the facts show that she has in the 
 main been his willing or unwilling slave. It 
 is part of the masculine constitution to be in- 
 herently disinclined to work. His permanent 
 desire is to utilize or exploit some force or 
 thing already in existence, without aiding its 
 creation. The savage hunter after days of 
 rest would go into the forest and kill his ani- 
 mal. He would thereupon leave it to be 
 brought in and prepared by his women. There 
 is evidence to show that all the main activities 
 which originated civilization, as the domestica- 
 tion of plants and animals, the utilization of 
 fire, the cultivation of the soil, the arts of weav- 
 ing and pottery, were all feminine achieve- 
 ments. Man was largely concerned with war 
 and the chase. This primitive psychology has 
 been maintained to the present day. Man by 
 nature inclines to the coup, the stroke, the 
 momentary use of his strong right arm, and 
 later, to the direction of work and the exploita- 
 tion of all who can be made to work for him. 
 The hard and patient labor has always fallen 
 to the lot of woman. 
 
 The step is a short one from the savage
 
 210 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 household to the modern office in which women 
 do the drudgery, while man is the office man- 
 ager. The pretense that women's sphere does 
 not intersect that of productive labor is his- 
 torically and actually absurd. Instead of 
 woman endeavoring to enter into the occupa- 
 tions of man, it is more correct to say that 
 man has, under the modern circumstances of 
 great populations, industrially organized com- 
 munities, and the general absence of wars, 
 gradually occupied the sphere which histori- 
 cally belongs to woman. A few months of 
 war have demonstrated how unessential man 
 is in the main life-maintaining functions of 
 society. It is now discovered that women can 
 even make munitions of war. Man is, as 
 always, the fighting, dominating drone. It is 
 a pity that there is no trade union of house- 
 wives, to make articulate their position, work 
 and requirements. It would at once be dis- 
 covered, that instead of being outside the eco- 
 nomic sphere, she is the larger half; if there 
 were no other reason, because she is almost the 
 sole disbursive agent of all income. Apart 
 from household activity, which is taken for
 
 SUFFRAGE 
 
 granted, and unconsidered, women constitute 
 an increasingly larger proportion of produc- 
 tive labor, in industry; this labor is allotted 
 to her as a class, and always distinguished by 
 being underpaid. Wherever found, from the 
 sweated shirtmaker, through the textile trades, 
 through laundresses, domestic servants, wait- 
 resses, to clerks, inspectresses, and professional 
 women, the rule is the same ; the work of quality 
 and quantity equal to that performed by men 
 receives, when carried on by women, a lower 
 scale of pay. Here then is a basis for a 
 demand for the suffrage. The business of gov- 
 ernment is to redress grievances. Women 
 are forced into a class distinction by the con- 
 ditions of industry and by the inherent ten- 
 dency of man to exploit them. The one effec- 
 tive mode of righting the balance is to have a 
 voice in the conduct of affairs. 
 
 There seems to be a difficulty even among 
 suffragists in recognizing the woman worker. 
 There are some who advocate a measure of 
 suffrage that would leave her out altogether. 
 It is not likely to be successful, because it would 
 then include the women who neither need nor
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 want the suffrage. It is a curious fact that in 
 the upper ranges of the social scale what 
 amounts to a different female species is en- 
 countered. The unproductive and parasitic 
 woman, guarded from every semblance of 
 work, must be protected from the contamina- 
 tion of a political campaign. No one can sup- 
 pose that the cherished occupier of a rich man's 
 seraglio is a fit recipient of the vote or any- 
 thing else, except contempt. Her part in poli- 
 tical life consists in petty intrigue. Every 
 one knows that the people of the upper class 
 are not vote casters. They are vote getters. 
 The objection frequently made to the ex- 
 tension of suffrage to the women is, that it 
 would align sex against sex and therefore en- 
 gender antagonism. The obvious reply is that 
 sex antagonism is already, and has always been 
 in existence, and is an essential part of the 
 masculine attitude. The suffrage would as- 
 sist to diminish, if not to destroy, this antagon- 
 ism, as an analysis of its cause must show. 
 There is first of all the essentially masculine 
 love of domination. Most men feel that it 
 somehow disgraces them to work under women,
 
 SUFFRAGE 213 
 
 and the feeling is strong, even if unconscious, 
 that the admission of women to a voice in ad- 
 ministration would intrench upon the most 
 cherished of man's prerogatives, that of "boss- 
 ing" somebody. In the second place, the cur- 
 rent of masculine opinion inevitably sets 
 against anything that might assist women to 
 economic independence. Man's judgment is 
 never quite free from considerations that per- 
 tain to the marriage market, and he always de- 
 sires that his own great desirablity should be 
 supplemented by conditions which make it 
 difficult for woman to earn her own living. 
 The plain fact is that man fears a free and 
 equal choice in the matter of mating, and this 
 fact seems to be the hidden core behind most 
 of the clap-trap about the protection of women. 
 Apart from the hot-house product already 
 mentioned, which indeed requires no considera- 
 tion, no one ever hears of woman, woman of 
 the people, being protected from anything 
 whatever. It is upon her particularly that the 
 most brutal and even abhorrent facts of life 
 are allowed to pour unrestrained. Her role 
 is rather that of protector than protected. In
 
 214 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 what way can the woman of the working-class 
 household supplement her husband's earnings, 
 and at the same time keep the household go- 
 ing? The answer is by sweated home in- 
 dustry, by taking in washing or by going out 
 charring; the most arduous and least remuner- 
 ative of occupations. The only protection ex- 
 ercised toward these women is the protection 
 from their rights, and the opportunity to 
 secure for themselves a chance in the world. 
 There is then, a real and profound sex antagon- 
 ism, which the suffrage movement is endeavor- 
 ing to surmount. The cry that emancipation 
 is prejudicial to the home merely calls in ques- 
 tion man's right to say anything about the 
 home. To the vast majority it is merely a 
 place for his rest, feeding and comfort. Its 
 essential meaning seldom penetrates to the 
 masculine consciousness, and this obtuseness 
 is as marked in cabinet ministers as in navvies. 
 The greatest of all difficulties that the 
 movement faces is the tendency to read the 
 fatuous ineptitude of upper-class women into 
 all ranks of society. Men in authority, be- 
 cause their experience has never taught them
 
 SUFFRAGE 815 
 
 otherwise, firmly believe that woman is con- 
 stitutionally incapable of grasping and han- 
 dling the exigencies of administration. It is a 
 pity that they cannot one and all board for a 
 week in a typical working-class household. 
 They would find innumerable cases where the 
 man would hesitate to declare, except very 
 privately, that he is the head, in spite of the 
 occasional use of his strong right arm. As a 
 matter of fact it requires a better grasp and a 
 nicer balance of judgment to carry on a house- 
 hold, and bring up a considerable family of 
 children on a pound a week, than have been 
 displayed for many years at the Local Gov- 
 ernment Board or the Home Office. 
 
 Here then was Joseph Fels' case for the 
 suffrage. His creed contained but one article, 
 "Freedom and equal opportunity for all." If 
 a citizen's work constitutes citizenship he could 
 see no reason why sex should debar from a voice 
 in the conditions of that work. But he had 
 another reason as well; it was his confidence 
 in the penetrative insight and grasp of the 
 essential, which characterizes every activity 
 that woman undertakes. The natural conser-
 
 216 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 vators and disbursers of all wealth would not be 
 long in applying their intuitive and acquired 
 knowledge to the resources of the community. 
 It is difficult to conceive a state, in the conduct 
 of which women play their appropriate part, 
 allowing the sources of all production to re- 
 main monopolized and exploited for the private 
 benefit of a comparatively few individuals, 
 while the mass of the people are held in servile, 
 patronized, inspected and regulated bond- 
 age. His faith was strong that woman would 
 soon penetrate the screen of pretense to the 
 injustice which lies behind.
 
 XV 
 
 Later Activities 
 
 LOSELY connected with his zeal for edu- 
 cation, was the deep interest he took in 
 boys' and girls' clubs. Here, too, he felt was 
 creative work, the turning of leisure to an un- 
 conscious educational purpose. Of the vari- 
 ous ways in which he gave expression to his 
 interest, there is no space to speak; but one 
 story we are able, through the Hon. Lily 
 Montague, to reproduce. 
 
 "Mr. Joseph Fels first influenced the life 
 of the West Central Girls' Club when he ap- 
 peared in the character of a fairy godfather at 
 our Anniversary Celebration in 1910. On this 
 occasion he was present when Miss Montague 
 made an appeal for building an adequate home 
 for the many girls and women who come to 
 London to learn English, or are orphaned and 
 seek a home rather than the ordinary lodging 
 house. Slips were handed to all the large au- 
 dience who filled the New Theater, but only 
 
 217
 
 218 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 one slip was filled in with any substantial 
 promise. Miss Montague and all her friends 
 read this slip over and over again before they 
 understood that 1000 had been offered, and 
 then a little later Mr. Pels himself was able to 
 make the meaning of the promise clear. He 
 was not interested in mere working machines, 
 he wanted human beings. He was very glad 
 for Jewish working girls to have a home, but 
 insisted that some sort of garden should be pro- 
 vided. It was therefore through Mr. Fels that 
 the roof-garden was made at the Emily Harris 
 Home, and on summer afternoons and hot eve- 
 nings, girls of all nationalities are reaping the 
 advantage of his great thoughtfulness. 
 
 "After Mr. Fels had once become inter- 
 ested in the Club and Home, he remained in 
 touch with the workers and members. On sev- 
 eral occasions, he invited parties of girls to 
 visit his country house and gave them delight- 
 ful afternoons. His visitors always felt at 
 home at Bickley and they always considered 
 that their host was the youngest of the party. 
 
 "It was Mr. Fels' pleasure to invite men 
 and women of knowledge and culture who
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 219 
 
 would interest the girls and enlarge their out- 
 look on life, and he himself did not lose any op- 
 portunity of giving them some understand- 
 ing of the great land problem. So long as 
 the West Central Club and the Emily Harris 
 Home exist, the name of Joseph Fels will be 
 remembered not as that of a mere benefactor 
 but as that of a real and understanding 
 friend." 
 
 In other more important ways did Mr. 
 Fels manifest an interest in the affairs of his 
 race. The treatment of the Jews in Russia 
 was a matter of intense and recurring concern, 
 and he took a large part in efforts to alleviate 
 their condition. This work brought him into 
 association with Mr. Zangwill in whom he 
 found that combination of dreamer and worker 
 which always made to him an irresistible ap- 
 peal. Mr. Fels was from the outset inter- 
 ested in the Jewish Territorial Movement, but 
 rather as an outlet for his own economic plans 
 than as an end in itself. This close connec- 
 tion with movements towards Jewish coloniza- 
 tion makes his attitude and conclusions of suffi- 
 cient value to record.
 
 220 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Probably the most distinctive Jewish prod- 
 uct of this generation is the Zionist Movement. 
 It is rooted in the profoundest of racial senti- 
 ments and its motive has existed ever since the 
 great dispersion. That Jews will some day 
 gather from the ends of the earth to their 
 ancient home, with institutions and customs 
 safely guarded through all the ages, with blood 
 kept pure and racial unity intact, that politi- 
 cal and religious freedom would be again 
 achieved, is a dream that lies near the heart of 
 every true son of Israel. It has, in this 
 day, flowered out into definitely conceived plan 
 and intent, with a great organization and an 
 immense aggregation of capital. The only 
 bar to the realization of the great hope has 
 seemed to be that Palestine lay in the posses- 
 sion of the Turk. It is within the world of 
 possibility that the present war will remove 
 this disability and it will be seen how much 
 of seriousness underlies the movement 
 
 It is not surprising that Zionism, powerful 
 as it is in its appeal, has failed to command the 
 assent of numbers of the Jewish community. 
 A large section, feeling with no less intensity
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 221 
 
 the national ambition, believed that the associa- 
 tions of Palestine would be but poor compensa- 
 tion for what they considered its lack of pro- 
 ductiveness. If the chief object is the attain- 
 ment of political and religious liberty, the abil- 
 ity to practice customs and develop institu- 
 tions distinctively Jewish, this after all could 
 be best realized in a region sufficiently favored 
 by nature not to render prosperity impossible. 
 Even so, the difficulty is sufficiently great as 
 the habitable world has been swallowed by the 
 voracious nations of modern Europe. Not- 
 withstanding the difficulty, the movement 
 which represents this attitude, the Jewish Ter- 
 ritorial Organization known as the ITO, has 
 explored a number of regions and investigated 
 political possibilities in a practical way. Mis- 
 sions of scientific experts were sent out to re- 
 port upon Cyrenaica and Angola. The result 
 was discouraging. These regions did not ap- 
 pear to the ITO leaders much better than Pal- 
 estine. 
 
 Mr. Fels' knowledge of artificially pro- 
 duced colonies was probably more extensive 
 and profound than that of any other man of
 
 222 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 the generation. It had been secured through 
 much disappointment to expectation and much 
 sacrifice of money. He was aware that a mere 
 aggregation of families does not constitute a 
 community, as it does not imply the presence 
 of cohesive forces which are, in the main, of 
 natural origin and slow growth. If, however, 
 these factors are implicit he conceived it pos- 
 sible to stimulate a rapid development and thus 
 give that adjustment of thought and activity 
 that would unify a group into a community. 
 There must be present, he always believed, 
 some common participation in an ethical, or 
 spiritual, or intellectual interest. The great 
 difficulty in economically initiated colonies 
 which he had helped to establish both in 
 America and in England, was to bring people 
 together for extra-economic purposes. Even 
 for the small group of families of a score or 
 more at Mayland, he established school, amuse- 
 ment and reading rooms, and provided as well 
 as he could addresses and series of lectures on 
 a great variety of topics. This side of com- 
 munity life can never be forced. It can only 
 be made easy of exercise in its incipient stages
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 
 
 if some disposition is already present. If it 
 continued permanently absent, Mr. Fels was 
 aware that, however prosperous the members 
 of the group might be, it was still merely an 
 aggregation and not a community. It is cer- 
 tain that a colony of Jews would not fail 
 through lack of spiritual cohesion. This is in- 
 deed the most powerful factor that would be 
 involved, and has seemed to supporters of the 
 Zionist movement an adequate basis for colon- 
 ization. Mr. Fels shared the opinion of Mr. 
 Zangwill, that conditions entailing permanent 
 poverty would ultimately result in failure, 
 however close might be the communism of poli- 
 tical and spiritual purpose. Such a colony 
 would probably appeal only to members of 
 the race dwelling in countries of extreme op- 
 pression, and even there, under the most ill- 
 favored conditions. The Jew, after all, is no 
 more called upon to renounce worldly pros- 
 perity than other races, and Mr. Fels was quite 
 aware that he would refuse to do so. For 
 Jewish colonization then, the economic ques- 
 tion is of paramount importance, and the one 
 regarding which the makers of colonies seem
 
 224 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 most ignorant. It is within the memory of 
 some that a band of enthusiastic Australian 
 socialists conceived the idea of realizing their 
 Utopia in South America. With their own 
 ship and an abundance of goods they crossed 
 the ocean and founded "New Australia" in 
 the garden land of Paraguay. It is part of 
 the irony of fate that the inspiration of eco- 
 nomic idealism should plant their community 
 in a region where there could be no market 
 facilities for two generations. Twelve miles 
 of road through a swamp have been their un- 
 doing. What they produced they could not 
 place upon the market. 
 
 To the same country came a band of Ger- 
 mans headed by Dr. Foerster, brother-in-law 
 of Nietzsche, to found a "New Germany," and 
 the colony seeking the same perfection of in- 
 ternal organization was planted in a remote 
 region with impossible communications. 
 There can be no escape from the economic 
 world with hope of permanent survival. Any 
 colonist must feel in time that he has some 
 right to material prosperity and will inevitably
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 225 
 
 go in search of it. His knowledge of all these 
 and other experiments in colonization made it 
 seem to Mr. Fels, as to Mr. Zangwill, that 
 their chief concern was to find for Jewish col- 
 onies places well favored by nature, with ad- 
 equate means of communication. 
 
 But Mr. Fels' insight carried him even 
 further. Given a colony of the most perfect 
 spiritual communism and endowed with an ad- 
 equate supply of natural resources available 
 for production and exchange, there was still 
 lacking an element of assurance that the colony 
 would subserve its noble purpose. Mere free- 
 dom from external oppression is no guarantee 
 against internal tyranny, and Mr. Fels could 
 not see that servitude of Jew to Jew was much 
 better than servitude of Jew to Gentile. That 
 his race contains some proportion of voracious 
 members, he did not doubt; in fact he was 
 acquainted with some of them. It was there- 
 fore his desire that the economy of the col- 
 onies should from the start provide adequate 
 protection against monopolistic slavery. The 
 utter simplicity and effectiveness of what he
 
 226 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 urged may be seen in the following quotation 
 by Mrs. Lona Ingham Robinson: 
 
 "Suppose a few hundred people obtain ac- 
 cess to a fertile, uninhabited island and set out 
 to colonize it. They recognize that all sites 
 or selections cannot possess equal advantages, 
 that some will be wooded, some not, some high, 
 some low, near water or otherwise, some near 
 centers of trade, some far out, some large, 
 some small and so on. They inspect and make 
 a plot of the grounds and each family or adult 
 person makes a selection with the full under- 
 standing that while the whole island belongs 
 to all, the various locations must necessarily 
 vary in desirability or become more valuable 
 with the increase of people. So the colonists 
 equalize their holdings something like this: 
 
 "The least desirable or perhaps the smallest 
 lot or site in use will be taken as a basis to 
 compute all the others by. Recognizing that 
 the occupant of the least advantageous site has 
 left all the better or bigger locations for the 
 others, or has had it left to him by others, 
 while the whole is as much his as theirs, it is 
 agreed that he shall occupy his holding free.
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 227 
 
 All the others, having better locations, agree 
 now to pay annually into the collective fund 
 sums equal to the advantage, expressed in 
 money, their sites have over the poorest site in 
 use. This collective fund would represent all 
 the various advantages in excess of the poorest 
 lot in use. 
 
 "Now that these various inequalities are 
 taken off, paid into the public fund, the col- 
 onists all stand practically alike in their hold- 
 ings. They have paid all the excess values 
 into the treasury. When this fund is straight- 
 way used for public purposes, roads, schools, 
 fire protection, town hall, library, etc., in which 
 all share alike, they have worked out trium- 
 phantly the problem of equal rights to the use 
 of the island. As years go on and increase of 
 population and trade increase the value of all 
 their holdings, their public fund grows larger 
 just in proportion as they need more improve- 
 ments. So their land values being sufficient 
 for their expenses, no other taxes are thought 
 of. Whatever private means the colonists 
 brought with them or earned by labor after- 
 ward are neither listed nor rated. Every one
 
 228 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 has the worth of what he was assessed, for the 
 use of his location. This assessment is what 
 he pays all the other co-owners for exclusive 
 use of his apportionment." 
 
 Shortly after he made Mr. Zangwill's ac- 
 quaintance, Mr. Fels became a member of the 
 council of the "I TO" and thenceforward took 
 an active interest in its plans. He was a fre- 
 quent attendant at its council meetings and, as 
 Mr. Zangwill gives testimony, of much aid by 
 reason of the shrewd practicality of his judg- 
 ments. As plan after plan was considered, 
 and had to be placed on one side, Mr. Fels 
 began to undertake some investigations on his 
 own account. When he visited Diaz in 1907, 
 one of his proposals was for a Jewish settle- 
 ment in Mexico. He had inquiries made 
 about South America. A letter of inquiry he 
 wrote about the latter possibility is not with- 
 out its interest. 
 
 "I may not before have mentioned to you 
 that, being a Jew, I am greatly interested in 
 the future of my people, and for several years 
 I have been co-operating with such men as 
 Israel Zangwill. . . . His organization has
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 229 
 
 been on the look-out for a country in which 
 the oppressed Jews of Russia and other lands 
 might be invited to settle, where a measure at 
 least of autonomy might be had. Within the 
 last month an expedition has been dispatched 
 to investigate the Angola district on the West 
 Coast of Africa. . . . 
 
 "My interest in this matter is very great, 
 of course, and grows as I see the constant 
 cruelties which are inflicted upon my people, 
 defenseless as they are under the Russian Gov- 
 ernment. Whether or not autonomy could be 
 gained by settlement in one or other of the 
 South American countries is a matter about 
 which I should like to consult with you. I 
 believe, for instance, that Paraguay has only 
 700,000 population. That is a country about 
 as large as Great Britain, and I believe a settle- 
 ment of people could well be carried on in that 
 country. Of course, I have in mind the right 
 kind of landlords, and my interest is not un- 
 mixed with my obsession about the Single 
 Tax." 
 
 It is interesting to note that he grew the 
 more interested in the movement as its possi-
 
 230 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 bilities verged more and more towards the his- 
 toric birthplace of the Jews in Palestine. It 
 is not, indeed, unlikely that he would, in the 
 end, have become a Zionist. What is certain 
 is this that he had been gripped by the vision 
 of a Jewish people with a cultural center of its 
 own, standing to the West as Greece stood to 
 the East two thousand years ago. To him the 
 Jews were essentially a race of missionaries, 
 born to preach by book and by example the 
 gospel in which he himself believed. The state 
 must in its constitution set out from a basis of 
 economic justice, that is to say its economic 
 philosophy would be the philosophy of Henry 
 George. There appeared to him something 
 almost of a poetic justice in the Jews thus giv- 
 ing to the world the example of freedom as in 
 an earlier day they had given birth to religion. 
 He worked steadily to promote the end in 
 view. Friends were written to, his audiences, 
 almost invariably, learned something of his 
 thought, and Jewish Single Taxers would in- 
 evitably receive whatever he could procure of 
 the literature of the subject. One of the last 
 conversations he had was an expression of his
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 281 
 
 high hopes in this regard. It is now partic- 
 ularly interesting to note in one of his letters 
 the expression of an anxiety that Mr. Louis 
 Brandeis should assume the leadership of the 
 American movement. Certainly the growing 
 association with it of his wife would have met 
 with his hearty approval, would have been, in- 
 deed, the realization of his own desire. 
 
 For it is clear that his previous attitude 
 toward Zionism, especially as concerns the 
 economic inadequacy of Palestine, was due to 
 insufficient knowledge. In late years actual 
 colonization on a considerable scale and in a 
 completely scientific manner has been success- 
 fully initiated. There are some fourteen thou- 
 sand agricultural colonists well established, 
 and, until the war ended their export trade, as 
 prosperous as could be expected. The soil 
 gives a reasonable response as soon as scientific 
 tillage is substituted for the abuse which passed 
 amongst the Arabs as agriculture. The ex- 
 ported products meet a great demand in the 
 world's markets, and there is every reason to 
 believe that in the course of a generation or 
 so Palestine may be remade into a garden.
 
 232 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 Another factor in the movement would 
 have been decisive with Mr. Fels. He had 
 offered support on a large scale to the ITO on 
 the single condition that the system of land 
 tenure be in accordance with the principles of 
 Henry George, which are also the principles 
 of Moses and an integral part of the Jewish 
 code. His rebuff was possibly due to the fact 
 that some of the prominent supporters of the 
 ITO were of the great Jewish landlord class 
 in England, which made it difficult for the 
 movement to be entirely democratic. Zionism, 
 on the other hand, has affirmed its abhorrence 
 of oligarchic control, and in the constitution 
 of the National Fund, its agency for purchase 
 and tenure of land, it has made clear its inten- 
 tion to base colonization on the principle of 
 permanent state ownership of land, and the 
 utilization of rentals as the source of revenue 
 for the state. This frank adoption of single 
 tax as an integral part of its plan and intent 
 would have commended Zionism to Mr. Fels 
 as worthy of his most zealous support as soon 
 as the way was found open to realization. 
 
 The Jews were not the only persecuted
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 233 
 
 race in whom he felt deep interest. For in- 
 justice of any kind he had the very deepest 
 abhorrence and that feeling, indeed, lay at the 
 bottom of most of his activities. He took a 
 large part in the famous McQueen case. Dur- 
 ing the latter's imprisonment he made it his 
 care that Mrs. McQueen should not suffer. 
 He obtained testimony in England from labor 
 members of Parliament, trade union leaders, 
 and business men as to Mr. McQueen's record 
 in England. Wherever he was informed that 
 Mr. McQueen had at any time been employed, 
 he visited to obtain evidence. He searched 
 the English police records. He wrote to many 
 men of influence in the matter, members of the 
 court of Pardons and the Governor of New 
 Jersey. He offered to give Mr. McQueen em- 
 ployment on his release. He got H. G. 
 Wells to visit McQueen and write up the case 
 in "The Future in America." The recollec- 
 tion of the Rev. A. W. Wishart, who was 
 mainly instrumental in securing Mr. Mc- 
 Queen's pardon, gives a characteristic picture 
 of Mr. Fels. Mr. Wishart tells how he be- 
 came interested in the case and wrote a pam-
 
 234 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 phlet about it. "About this time," he con- 
 tinues, "I received a letter from Mr. Pels say- 
 ing that he had read of the case in the London 
 papers and wanted to know what he could do 
 to help me. As I then had invested about 
 $150 or $200 of my own money in the case, 
 which I could ill afford, and as I saw other 
 expenses ahead of me, I wrote to Mr. Fels 
 that some financial help would be most timely, 
 especially if I was to carry on the case any 
 further. He sent me ... a cheque. Very 
 soon afterwards he wired me he was coming to 
 Trenton to see me, which he did. He stayed 
 at my house all night and we visited several 
 judges of the Board of Pardons who were also 
 on the Court of Errors and Appeals Bench. 
 Mr. Fels also went with me to Paterson. It 
 was a bitterly cold day, and we tramped all 
 day long, visiting business men, everywhere 
 meeting with rebuffs and sometimes almost 
 with insults, because it was believed by the 
 Paterson men that McQueen was a dangerous 
 criminal, and that we might be in better busi- 
 ness than in trying to secure his release from 
 the penitentiary. Mr. Fels sent my brief on
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 235 
 
 the case to innumerable people, and wrote very; 
 many letters which tended to interest influen- 
 tial men in the case. Little by little friends 
 sprang up on many sides. After two years of 
 such battling, we succeeded in convincing the 
 Board of Pardons that McQueen should be re- 
 leased." 
 
 Of his relations with an actual criminal a 
 word may be told. Mr. Fels came in contact 
 with a prisoner of gipsy blood who had spent 
 many years of his life in prison. Kindly treat- 
 ment soon won his confidence and little by lit- 
 tle he told Mr. Fels his story. The latter per- 
 suaded him to write it down. From the torn 
 little bits of dirty paper, from an ill-written, 
 ill-spelt and utterly disconnected narrative 
 there was ultimately pieced together a con- 
 demnation of the conditions in a certain state 
 penitentiary such as no words can describe. 
 Horrified at this, Mr. Fels had a fair copy of 
 the man's narrative made and sent it to the 
 Governor of the State concerned. He re- 
 ceived no reply. He wrote and urged that 
 such a revelation suggested at least the need 
 for an inquiry. To this response was made
 
 236 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 that the Governor could take no steps in the 
 matter. Mr. Fels was furious at this rebuff. 
 It was, as he said, at least worth while to have 
 the indictment investigated; it might happen 
 to be true and the Governor would have the 
 satisfaction of knowing that he had remedied 
 an injustice. To this request, also, he received 
 a curt refusal. He could stand it no longer. 
 He wrote to the Governor, demanding an im- 
 mediate inquiry at which a representative nom- 
 inated by himself should be present ; otherwise 
 he threatened to publish the statement and the 
 correspondence in every journal in the United 
 States. Within a month the inquiry had been 
 held to his satisfaction. 
 
 This unceasing hatred of injustice was 
 shown in his ever-ready help to the Russian 
 revolutionists. Time and again he was told 
 of some escaped radical's distress ; and his eager 
 interest in the event and his anxiety to be of 
 more than financial service were at least as 
 much appreciated as his actual monetary aid. 
 One instance of his sympathy in this connec- 
 tion is too remarkable to go unnoticed. 
 
 In 1907, a Congress of all the members of
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 237 
 
 the Social Democratic Party in the Russian 
 Douma was arranged to meet at Vibourg in 
 Finland. It was driven out by the authorities 
 and endeavored to assemble in Sweden. This 
 was forbidden on complaint from the Russian 
 Government, and a similar prohibition came 
 from other Continental countries. They were, 
 therefore, driven to London. When they ar- 
 rived, their funds were exhausted and so far 
 from being able to carry on their conferences, 
 the delegates, over a hundred in number, were 
 in serious danger of starvation. Some one 
 suggested an application to Mr. Fels who at 
 once loaned them eighteen hundred pounds. 
 The money was repaid in but small part, not 
 only from the poverty of the delegates, but 
 because so many of them were sacrificed later 
 by the Russian authorities. 
 
 Yet these activities were but deviations. 
 The Single Tax was, after all, the main ob- 
 ject he had in view, and to that he endeavored 
 to subordinate everything else. He watched 
 the progress of the Fels Commission with the 
 deepest anxiety. Once it was clear that the 
 method was successful, he began to make simi-
 
 238 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 lar plans for most of the countries in which he 
 interested himself. To Canada he gave a dol- 
 lar for every dollar raised by the Single Taxers 
 in that country ; to Norway, Sweden and Den- 
 mark, a kroner for every kroner raised by the 
 Scandinavians. Similarly with Australia, 
 New Zealand and Germany. Where the 
 movement, as in France, Spain, China, seemed 
 not. sufficiently advanced to make this method 
 advisable, he gave a direct subvention to the 
 local or national groups concerned. In Eng- 
 land, for the most part, his contributions were 
 made directly through the United Committee. 
 He realized that the hereditary political asso- 
 ciations of the great landowners had made the 
 English struggle unique and that the move- 
 ment would probably be successful only by the 
 steady permeation of the Liberal and Labor 
 members of Parliament. Towards the close 
 of his life, he began to be convinced of the need 
 for the erection of some central body to unite 
 in a single organization the varied activities in 
 Europe. Had he lived, it is probable that he 
 would have created a European Commission
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 239 
 
 of this kind ; this idea is now being carried into 
 effect. 
 
 It must not be imagined that Mr. Fels re- 
 garded his function in the movement as solely 
 that of a creator of its endowments. He was, 
 on the contrary, very active in the repression 
 of any such view. The number of requests for 
 his support must have been relatively enor- 
 mous, but he constantly refused his assistance 
 until he was given evidence of local activity. 
 It seemed to him that his duty was rather to 
 stimulate the Single Taxers themselves to ac- 
 tion than to allow them to consider that any 
 funds they deemed necessary would be at once 
 forthcoming. If he had made any general 
 criticism of the movement, he would have urged 
 that its adherents had not shown themselves 
 sufficiently capable of disinterested self-sacri- 
 fice. A movement, he said again and again, 
 never advances very far until it can point to 
 its martyrs. It was for that reason that he 
 limited his subscriptions to what any State or 
 district could itself raise. He was a stimulus 
 to local exertion, a kind of economic gadfly
 
 240 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 who stung men into activity. The friend who 
 said that his "speeches made you feel how little 
 you had done" exactly expressed what those 
 speeches set out to achieve. That the Joseph 
 Fels Commission was able to stem the tide of 
 apathy which, at its inception, seemed to have 
 overwhelmed the Single Tax movement, there 
 can be no shadow of doubt. Both he and his 
 coadjutors continually made it evident that 
 they had no sort of sympathy for passive ex- 
 pressions of adherence. "The greatest thing," 
 he once said, "is to contribute yourself; next, 
 give your money." He himself fulfilled both 
 those behests in spirit as well as in letter. 
 
 It was a sign of reawakening interest when 
 on November 19th and 20th, 1910, the Com- 
 mission was able to inaugurate the first Single 
 Tax Conference. It was an interesting oc- 
 casion. Mr. Fels himself was present and took 
 an active part in the proceedings. The Com- 
 mission reported on what it had done, and ably 
 withstood the fires of its critics. To the latter 
 Mr. Fels made a characteristic retort. There 
 had been much agitation directed as has been 
 already noted against the support given to
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 241 
 
 the Direct Legislation movement. "I want 
 to say," he remarked, "that since my return to 
 this country, and since I have been learning 
 the reasons why certain things have been done, 
 I am in perfect agreement with the work of the 
 Commission." 
 
 The Conference was an interesting experi- 
 ment in democratic organization. It was a 
 purely informal gathering of some eighty peo- 
 ple from fifteen States of the Union. There 
 was no set program beforehand. Any one 
 could introduce a resolution. Every type of 
 Single Taxer, humble and representative, was 
 present. Every one who had taken charge of 
 any aspect of the movement, Mr. Lincoln 
 Steffens, Mr. Bolton Hall, Mr. Daniel Kiefer, 
 Mr. Louis F. Post, Mr. U'Ren, Mr. Fels him- 
 self, contributed an analysis of their experi- 
 ence. Mr. Fels also told something of the 
 condition of things in Europe. He spoke of 
 the budget of 1909. "The land clauses in the 
 British budget were put there to stay. Noth- 
 ing that any party can do will stop the move- 
 ment in England. Had it not been for the 
 land clauses in the budget, the Liberal party
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 would have gone down to defeat, and if these 
 clauses are cut out of any future program the 
 party will go down to defeat." He com- 
 mented hopefully on the movement in Sweden 
 and Denmark. "In Denmark," he said, "the 
 question of the taxation of land values is better 
 understood than anywhere in the world. One 
 hundred and forty thousand small farmers in 
 Denmark with an average of less than twenty 
 acres apiece, are teaching our doctrines every- 
 where. In many of the public schools of Den- 
 mark you will see pictures of Henry George 
 on the wall." He told of Spain and France, 
 of what, under his inspiration, Dr. Macklin 
 was doing in China. "I had," says a friend 
 who was present, "a wonderful sense of his 
 cosmopolitanism. His sympathy seemed so 
 big that he took the world in his arms." 
 
 A year later the movement held its second 
 congress in Chicago. In the meantime he had 
 visited France and Germany and established 
 definite working connections in both countries. 
 It is of some special interest that in Germany 
 he should have won the aid and friendship of 
 William Schrameier who as governor of Kiau-
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 
 
 Chau, had been successful in raising the entire 
 revenue of that colony by means of the Single 
 Tax. In England he was mainly concerned 
 in fighting the Insurance Act, to which he was 
 very bitterly opposed. It seemed to him that 
 the act marked the initiation of a dangerously 
 paternalistic spirit in legislation. It pena- 
 lized the trade-unions by putting the benefits 
 they could offer against those to be offered by 
 the great insurance companies. And he was 
 in complete disagreement with the principle 
 that "the contributions of the healthy must 
 pay for the sickness of the unhealthy. It 
 seems to me a better use of their savings to put 
 them to some positive purpose." 
 
 In the early winter he came over to the 
 United States and on November 23 he was in 
 Chicago for the second conference of which he 
 had been elected honorary president. Nearly 
 two hundred people were present at its general 
 sessions from twenty States in the Union, be- 
 sides representatives from Great Britain and 
 Canada. Much had happened since the pre- 
 vious conference. The Commission was able 
 to report a preliminary victory in Oregon in
 
 244 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 the passage of the amendment granting home 
 rule in taxation to counties. Progress along 
 similar lines, though without definite result, 
 was reported in Missouri, Rhode Island, and 
 Ohio, in all of which the Joseph Fels Fund had 
 taken an active part. The American Eco- 
 nomic League had been organized under the 
 Commission which supplied material to more 
 than 300, now 700, newspapers. The Public 
 had been supported, literature had again been 
 distributed on an enormous scale. The Com- 
 mission, on the whole, had good reason to be 
 satisfied with the progress of its efforts. 
 
 The Conference discussed every aspect of 
 the movement. It had again to meet the criti- 
 cism of the irreconcilables, who felt that the 
 funds should be devoted to Single Tax alone; 
 but they were unable to make any impression. 
 Mr. Fels insisted that the propaganda should 
 be such as the situation seemed to demand, and 
 that to pin the movement down to any hard 
 and fast lines of activity would be largely to 
 render it ineffective. He told of his activities 
 in Europe, and of a meeting he had held on 
 the Mauretania which Mr. Croker, the well-
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 245 
 
 known Tammany "Boss" had attended. "I 
 embarrassed Mr. Croker," he said, "by asking 
 him why he had been one of the crowd that had 
 killed Henry George. Croker answered, 
 after some hesitation, 'If we hadn't killed him, 
 he would have killed us.' ' 
 
 The next two years were a time of inces- 
 sant activity for Mr. Fels. He had become so 
 identified with the movement that the demands 
 made by it upon his time grew by leaps and 
 bounds. He was being continually asked for 
 opinion, criticism, suggestion. From every 
 part of the world came invitation after invita- 
 tion to take over the propaganda of the move- 
 ment. In the summer of 1912, he paid a long 
 visit to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, in the 
 winter to Canada. Everywhere he was speak- 
 ing once, twice, sometimes three times daily, 
 in theaters, churches, synagogues, clubs. He 
 was drafting briefs of evidence for the Single 
 Tax to municipal commissions on taxation. 
 He was unceasing in his attention to the press. 
 In 1913 he went to take part in the first Single 
 Tax conference ever held in Spain, where, but 
 a year before, there had been but three known
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 adherents. A characteristic letter of this year 
 deserves to be quoted in full. The then Gov- 
 ernor of Alabama, had written for his views 
 on the revision of taxation and had expressed 
 his own opinion in these terms: "Under the 
 laws as they now exist in Alabama, nearly all 
 personal property escapes taxation. I am in- 
 clined to believe that the remedy is an income 
 tax." To Mr. Pels, of course, this was the 
 rankest heresy, and he replied as follows: 
 
 "It was good to get your cordial and kindly 
 letter of the 24th inst. and I am glad to hear 
 directly from you of your familiarity with the 
 economic philosophy of Henry George. I am 
 glad to note it is your intention to appoint a 
 voluntary commission for the purpose of revis- 
 ing your revenue system, it being your inten- 
 tion to consider carefully the question of per- 
 sonal property taxation. 
 
 "You tell me that under your present laws 
 nearly all personal property escapes taxation. 
 Why tax any personal property? 
 
 "Now, my dear Governor, those things we 
 want to get rid of, we tax. If the City Council 
 of Montgomery should want to get rid of dogs,
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 247 
 
 they would put a tax on dogs so heavy that the 
 dogs would disappear without much ceremony. 
 In building houses, we should get rid of win- 
 dows if a tax were laid on windows, as is now 
 the case in Belgium I believe, and was, until 
 sixty years ago, in England. There are still 
 to be seen in England hundreds of cottages 
 with but one window a relic of that foolish 
 taxation. 
 
 "So I am rather grieved that you should 
 incline towards an income tax as any help 
 whatever. If we should tax personal prop- 
 erty of any kind, we make it more difficult for 
 people to accumulate personal property, and 
 the bigger the tax we put on a house, whether 
 a dwelling, a factory, or a bank building, the 
 fewer of them will be put up, and the less 
 money will be invested in them, simply because 
 of this taxation. 
 
 "On the other hand, if we should untax in- 
 dustry and business, by placing no tax at all 
 on produce of labor, including buildings, we 
 shall give the greatest impetus to industry. A 
 question then arises, of course, as to where we 
 shall get an income for state, county, and city
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 purposes. My answer to this is that we should 
 find out the site-value of every piece of land 
 in Alabama, based upon the market or fair 
 price as between a willing buyer and a willing 
 seller, and then place a tax upon this assessed 
 land value. Of course, the thing could not be 
 done in a year or ten years or twenty years, but 
 it could be done gradually and certainly, with 
 the greatest benefit to all those who are willing 
 to work. It would ultimately destroy the 
 speculator in land values, who is simply a par- 
 asite upon society. 
 
 "Please accept the enclosed copy of 'Prog- 
 ress and Poverty/ Its author seems to me 
 perhaps the greatest of modern prophets." 
 
 The early winter of 1913 Mr. Fels spent 
 in England. There was much on his mind. 
 The liberal Government had imprisoned Mr. 
 Lansbury and the hunger strike had naturally 
 not been without its effect on the latter's health. 
 Mr. Fels decided to leave for America and 
 persuaded Mr. Lansbury to accompany him. 
 They left England on the 3rd of December on 
 the Mauretania, where Mr. Fels held his usual 
 meeting. Little was done in America until
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 249 
 
 midway in January when the fourth confer- 
 ence of the Fels Commission was held in Wash- 
 ington. The Conference met in a happy 
 mood. "We meet," announced Mr. Kiefer, 
 the Chairman of the Commission, "for the first 
 time in the history of the movement with 
 Single Tax on the statute-book of two States 
 of the Union." Real advances had been made 
 in Texas and Colorado and even more signifi- 
 cantly in Pennsylvania and New York. 
 
 The conference had much business to trans- 
 act, but Mr. Fels took very little part in its 
 active discussions. So quiet and subdued was 
 he that some delegates were actually unaware 
 of his presence, until he was pointed out to 
 them. His attitude was remarkably com- 
 posed. There was about him a sense of re- 
 pose, very rare in him, and this dimly seemed 
 to reflect over the conference. When he did 
 speak, it was of his eagerness to live to carry 
 on his work; yet he urged that his hopes were 
 now secure and that he was certain of the con- 
 firmation of his efforts. He told his friends 
 that the great thing was an insistence on the 
 spirit of society. "You are to look on its in-
 
 250 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 stitutions as an expression of its soul," he as- 
 serted, "you are to make that soul manifest in 
 all you think and feel and do." Once there 
 came a flash of the old fighting spirit when Mr. 
 Gompers, the president of the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor, spoke of the strength of the 
 protected interests in America. "At this 
 juncture," says the official report, "Mr. Fels 
 presented Mr. Gompers with a leather-bound 
 copy of 'Progress and Poverty,' the book cost- 
 ing 48 cents in England and 70 cents in the 
 United States, an object lesson in Free 
 Trade." But, for the rest, his friends noticed 
 and wondered at that strange calm. 
 
 He returned to Philadelphia at the close 
 of the Conference, staying as in the last few 
 years he had always stayed, with two very dear 
 friends, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Barnes. He was 
 very occupied with business affairs, and grew 
 more and more tired and depressed. But there 
 seemed no premonition of serious illness. 
 
 By the tenth of February, 1914, when the 
 business affairs that had caused him anxiety 
 were finally completed, he was evidently far 
 from well. He suffered much from fever and
 
 LATER ACTIVITIES 251 
 
 it was very difficult, as always, to persuade 
 him to keep his mind from business mat- 
 ters. By the nineteenth, it was obvious that he 
 was in serious danger from pneumonia. He 
 fought splendidly against the enervation 
 caused by the fever and talked much of his 
 plans and hopes. On the twenty-first he 
 seemed much better. But as the night pro- 
 gressed he grew rapidly worse, and it was ob- 
 vious that his strength was nearly exhausted. 
 It was his will alone that kept him alive. 
 Early in the morning he spoke to Mrs. Fels 
 and tried to convey the thought that per- 
 haps his death would be a gift of life to the 
 movement ; then he could face it fearlessly and 
 gladly. Just as the first gleam of the sun 
 heralded the day he passed. It seemed right 
 and splendid that he should die thus, fronting 
 the dawn.
 
 XVI 
 
 Personal 
 
 T 1 1HE story of the life work of Joseph Fels 
 * cannot be concluded without an attempt 
 to bring the vivid personality of the man before 
 the reader. In stature he was short, five feet 
 two, but so well proportioned that he never 
 seemed small. His beard which he kept closely 
 cut was grey, but the thick fringe of hair, for 
 he was almost bald, kept its color of black. 
 He always wore a soft hat. 
 
 On his way home from business, he could 
 be seen daily turning the corner of the street 
 and covering the short intervening space with 
 his quick, decisive step, his head turned slightly 
 to the left and a tendency to sway a bit to the 
 left in walking. In his left hand he carried a 
 small dispatch case filled with letters, and un- 
 der his right arm he invariably carried a mass 
 of papers. While he walked along he took 
 
 252
 
 PERSONAL 253 
 
 out his door key, and the door was opened al- 
 most without stopping. Once in the hall he 
 laid all of his things on the table, hung up his 
 coat and hat, cleared his throat and ran up the 
 stairs into the study. A cheery "Howdy" to 
 everyone, a quick peck of a kiss after carefully 
 rubbing his mouth with his coat sleeve, for 
 every woman in the room except his wife, whom 
 he kissed with infinite tenderness, a pretended 
 fight with the little boys if they were around, 
 and an effect of clearing the room of any dead 
 air or thoughts and you have his entrance into 
 the place where he lived. If it is near the din- 
 ner hour he tells you he is starved. He ate in 
 moderation and the simplest table was always 
 a sumptuous one to Joseph Fels. If urged 
 to take more of something he liked he would 
 say, "Lordy, son, there's no room but I'll take 
 a little to fill in the cracks." If he came late as 
 he did sometimes, his shy manner, as if he was 
 almost expecting a scolding, sent everyone 
 eagerly hurrying to wait on him. 
 
 Mr. Fels was restless and could never sit 
 quietly. If there was reading aloud he would 
 write letters at the desk; if there was talk he
 
 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 would stand with his back to the fire or walk 
 around the room. This cheerful, alert, joy- 
 ous nature that loved to sing snatches of paro- 
 dies or to quote "The bigger the rabbit the more 
 whiter his tail," could sometimes swing to the 
 other extreme and bring into the room or into 
 the hearts of those who loved him a gloom that 
 was like the blackness of night. Then he 
 scarcely ate, his smile was forced, and when he 
 conquered these depressions he came out of 
 them tired, with a quiet sadness that finally 
 merged into his usual sunny courageous nature. 
 Just as there were two sides to Joseph Fels' 
 disposition so there were two sides in his reac- 
 tion to people. He spared nothing of time, 
 money or generous judgment in helping in- 
 dividuals. On the other hand if he felt a lack 
 in a friend's attitude toward him or toward 
 the cause for which he worked, he was capable 
 of turning all his generous impulses into criti- 
 cism and hurt feeling that no amount of rea- 
 son could disperse. In business relations he 
 liked to feel out his man, often holding him 
 up in some deal to the penny, and then turning 
 around and giving the man as a friend much of
 
 PERSONAL 255 
 
 everything he had to give. He once said, "I 
 am two men. With my right hand I can skin 
 a man for five cents while with my left hand I 
 can give away five thousand dollars." He al- 
 ways wanted to avoid killing the divine spark 
 in any human being. One morning a friend 
 after having fed a number of tramps said to 
 the next one, "I will give you your breakfast 
 but you must promise not to tell any of your 
 friends about it." Mr. Fels overheard the re- 
 mark, and looking up timidly ventured, "How 
 could you ask him to keep from his friends 
 the one thing he could be generous enough to 
 share?" 
 
 This two-sided nature manifested itself in 
 many small acts. He had a mischievous boy's 
 attitude in watching a dog chase a cat, and 
 really enjoyed the perilous situation of the cat. 
 On the other hand when as happened one 
 evening he came home very late to dinner with 
 no excuse, it was found that he had brought 
 a little dog to a friend and had spent an hour 
 in the east side of London finding milk and 
 making the dog comfortable for the night. 
 And when a little five year old friend was or-
 
 256 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 dered to ride on account of illness, he started 
 off at a brisk walk, with his left hand in his 
 trousers pocket swinging his right, to the home 
 of a neighbor he didn't know, and bought a 
 donkey. How did he know there was a donkey 
 there for sale ? The touching part of this story 
 is that as Joseph Pels came across the fields 
 leading the donkey, followed by a tiny new- 
 born one, he was greeted by shouts of laughter 
 and asked, "But why did you buy two?" With 
 a twinkle of his brown eyes and an attempt at 
 raillery but with a seriousness that refused to 
 be hidden he said, "I couldn't separate the 
 mother and baby and so I bought them both." 
 His love for children was almost a passion 
 and in his heart he really adopted many a lad. 
 For the son of an Edinburgh friend he had a 
 deep affection and of him he wrote, "I never 
 before wanted to steal a sixteen-year-old boy 
 until this one came along. It is a pleasure to 
 look at the great, stout, manly lad." When 
 another friend named a son for him he was 
 deeply touched. And while his love for the 
 other children of the same family was equally 
 strong, there was a peculiar quality in his af-
 
 PERSONAL 257 
 
 fection for this child. The following letter 
 shows how deeply affected he was by this dem- 
 onstration of regard for him: 
 
 London, October 1, 1907. 
 Dear Joseph B : 
 
 Here's to you, my jolly little chap, and 
 may your shadows be few with untold quanti- 
 ties of sunshine always on tap for at least a 
 century. You are here, my little lad, to be 
 rubbed and scrubbed a few short baby years, 
 to be petted and kissed and thrashed and all 
 the balance. Then you'll be chucked on to 
 your own responsibilities and you'll have to 
 stand and take your lickings along with the 
 pettings of a more or less careless world. . . . 
 
 And, dear little boy, you've got my name 
 as part of yours. You are beginning its use. 
 I've got a considerable distance on the way to 
 finishing with it, so take care that you are 
 good to Joseph and love people. Just love 
 'em as much as I do. 
 
 Your 
 
 UNCLE JOE. 
 
 In the Fels family there were seven chil- 
 dren, Abraham, Barbara, Bettie, Joseph, 
 Maurice, Samuel and Rosena. With his two 
 unmarried sisters, Barbara and Rosena, and his
 
 258 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 brother Maurice, Joseph spent a great deal of 
 his time. For them he had a deep affection 
 and when in Philadelphia he would allow noth- 
 ing to prevent his spending his Friday even- 
 ings with them. During the last seven years 
 of his life he passed the months of his stay in 
 America in the home of his friend Earl Barnes. 
 There he felt that he received peculiar stimula- 
 tion to thought and action along the lines he 
 was so devotedly following. 
 
 Much of the freedom which Mr. Fels en- 
 joyed during the last decade of his life, a neces- 
 sary condition of his social work, was due to 
 the fact that his brother Samuel carried so large 
 a share of the business responsibility. As each 
 of the brothers possessed remarkable inde- 
 pendence of character there was necessarily a 
 divergence of views. Notwithstanding this, 
 there was a deep groundwork of family affec- 
 tion, and Mr. Fels was always conscious of the 
 sterling character of his younger brother. In 
 a letter dated 30th May, 1909, he writes, "We 
 are truly glad Sam is to be with us soon, three 
 weeks from now. I do want to get at close 
 quarters with Sam. He deserves to know me
 
 PERSONAL 259 
 
 as I am and I'll be glad to have him know how 
 greatly I respect and love him." 
 
 The scope and multiplicity of his activities 
 which included the management of more than 
 a score of business enterprises, participation 
 in, and often the responsible direction of, many 
 social and politicial movements, were made 
 possible through the skill and tireless energy 
 of Mr. Walter Coates, who, through twenty 
 years of public and private work, was his close 
 companion and devoted friend. 
 
 For one to think that Joseph Fels took up 
 the work of shaping the social mind to the doc- 
 trines of Single Tax easily and lightly is a mis- 
 take. No one ever put more labor, more heart- 
 ache or more courage into preparing himself 
 for propagandist work. Not trained to speak 
 and coming to it late in life, he found it, in- 
 deed, uphill work. He was never unconscious 
 of the struggle before him to influence opinion 
 through personal appeal; he took it seriously 
 but with a humorous sense of his dependence 
 upon others for help. In writing to a friend 
 who had many times given him assistance, he 
 said, "The Lord knows how I wish you were
 
 260 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 here. I want you, 'ma honey,' and I want you 
 bad; the wherefore at this particular juncture 
 being that 1 am invited to talk to a meeting 
 about farm colonies and small holdings to be 
 convened by the Lord Provost at Glasgow Fri- 
 day of next week. I will press Mollie and 
 Walt into service, though they are just com- 
 mon garden folk. They can't help me to lie 
 with the same smoothness of diction as you." 
 
 One night at the dinner table a lady, a 
 stranger to Mr. Fels, in describing someone, 
 said, "He is not of our kind." Mr. Fels had 
 not taken part in the conversation, but from 
 the other end of a long table he quietly in- 
 quired, "Isn't everyone of our kind?" It is 
 creditable to the woman that this gentle rebuff 
 made her his friend. Totally unconscious of 
 convention, he cut straight through to the 
 hearts of people. One cannot treat humanity 
 as he did without often causing embarrassment 
 to those who are near and dear. If he con- 
 versed with the butler at his friend's dinner 
 table, it was because he felt intuitively that he 
 was doing that man an injustice in being served 
 by him, and unconsciously he tried to undo this
 
 PERSONAL 261 
 
 injustice by talking with him on terms of 
 equality. 
 
 When he heard that the Crown Prince of 
 Denmark was interested in land reform he tried 
 to meet him. Owing to the red tape of the 
 Chamberlain's office he did not succeed in se- 
 curing an interview. But fate threw them both 
 on the same ferry boat when he was leaving Co- 
 penhagen. Seeing the Crown Prince on the 
 deck surrounded by those in attendance, Joseph 
 Fels does not think of himself either brazenly 
 or modestly, but thinking only of the work to 
 help humanity, and knowing that the Crown 
 Prince had expressed an interest in that work, 
 he leaves his own group, walks straight through 
 the royal party up to the Crown Prince of Den- 
 mark, holds out his hand and with a smile so 
 winning that no one could see it and be un- 
 moved, says, "How do you do, Crown Prince. 
 I am Joseph Fels, interested in bringing the 
 land and the people together." Amazement 
 on the part of his own friends, consternation 
 and surprise on the part of the Crown Prince's 
 suite have no effect on either. Man meets 
 man, and those who knew Joseph Fels are glad
 
 262 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 that the Crown Prince rose to his level, held 
 out his hand, walked away with him for a two 
 hours' conversation on problems bigger than 
 the breaking of conventional forms. Joseph 
 Fels' democracy was big enough to include all 
 human beings whether kings or the men who do 
 the menial work of the world. 
 
 The strength of Mr. Fels' personality was 
 his naive unconsciousness. His emotions were 
 those of a child. Criticism hurt him only when 
 it was personal. It usually stirred the fight 
 in him, and in wordy conflicts he was rarely 
 unsuccessful because he was fortified by an 
 idea. His egoism was a delight to those who 
 were big enough to understand him; it was 
 simply the honesty of the child nature of the 
 man. His was a natural reaction to the forces 
 with which the conventional world brought him 
 in conflict. To those most intimately con- 
 nected with him credit must be given for af- 
 fording free play to this striking personality. 
 The little mannerisms in speech, whether 
 merely ungrammatical or verging on explosive 
 abuse were by-products of the man's nature, 
 and were not tampered with by those who prac-
 
 PERSONAL 263 
 
 ticed correct grammar and elegant diction. 
 He was surrounded by such friends who ap- 
 preciated and loved his individual traits as 
 parts of a big personality. Joseph Fels was 
 not the kind of man who could be made over 
 into the polite, urbane, self-effacing man who 
 operated from behind breastworks. He was 
 dynamic, out in the open, fighting with every 
 emotion that caught him, but always with a 
 heart tender, true and direct. 
 
 This account of Joseph Fels can be ap- 
 propriately closed by a description of his 
 speech at Balliol College, Oxford, written by 
 Miss Margaret McMillan. It was a dramatic 
 moment in which the most progressive of mod- 
 erns stated his case in the home and atmosphere 
 of age-long conservatism. 
 
 "He arrived in a motor car an eager, im- 
 perious little man in a soft felt hat and rather 
 worn over-coat. But I did not see the arrival 
 and caught my first glimpse of him at the end 
 of shadowy cloisters, and in a soft cool twilight 
 that seemed remote indeed from the outer street 
 in the heat of late August noon. 
 
 "Dim was the old College, and peopled with
 
 264 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 shades. Here walked the dead; luminous- 
 eyed men who wrote saintly hymns, scholars 
 and statesmen and at least one immortal poet. 
 The winding corridors and stairs, the doorways 
 with their worn steps, and the long aisles under 
 heavy roofs of darkened stone were haunted 
 by these. And what stillness everywhere, a 
 busy kind of hush as if the air was full of mys- 
 teries, veiled life. 
 
 "Suddenly at the end of a corridor the 
 small, eager figure of Joseph Fels appeared, 
 his coat swinging wide, his soft hat drawn down 
 over his face at a impudent tilt. It was a sur- 
 prise. For though it was known that he was 
 coming to address the summer students of the 
 University Extension movement, the news 
 never reached me. Few of the men and women 
 now busy and happy with their tutors knew 
 anything of Joseph Fels, save that he was a 
 rich man who spent his money freely in rather 
 unusual ways. Later they would gather for 
 tea in the grounds of Balliol College and hear 
 what he had to say. 
 
 "Still Oxford is hospitable in its way. 
 Who would not wish to do the honors of such
 
 PERSONAL 265 
 
 a place as this world-famed center of life and 
 learning. A young undergraduate chaper- 
 oned the guest. We walked through many 
 halls, went into the vast kitchens of Wolsey's 
 College, looked down Addison's walk and 
 peered into stately rooms hung with portraits, 
 and smaller chambers where the great ones of 
 the world had lived. As the sun sank low in 
 the west we went back to the grounds of Bal- 
 liol College, where the ghosts gave place to 
 the work-a-day life of the world. 
 
 "A large number of men and women were 
 gathered from every part of England. They 
 represented almost every class, engineers, wag- 
 on-makers, factory hands from Lancashire, 
 'waivers' from Bradford, arsenal workers and 
 at least one navvy. Casual laborers too, rail- 
 way men, clerks, one or two titled women, and 
 mingled with these, scholars, tutors, and liter- 
 ary stars. A brilliant young leader-writer of 
 the Morning Post, an Archbishop's son in a 
 'blazer' and one dean of College. A very 
 motley gathering certainly. It included some 
 of the best of England's scholars and leaders 
 of thought. There was also a sprinkling of
 
 266 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 elementary school-teachers. A clever, robust- 
 looking Yorkshire mill-girl who wrote very 
 good essays sat in the foreground with a group 
 of her girl friends, talking to a brilliant young 
 tutor. 
 
 "The little American was the focus of all 
 attention and interest for a moment as he came 
 in, his face pale, with the strange pallor of the 
 Eastern. His manner was nervous, though 
 rather jocular, for he was not at all unconsci- 
 ous of the elements of power as well as pres- 
 tige in the men and women before him, as well 
 as of the historic site. As he took off his hat 
 he showed a typically Jewish head, wide and 
 rounded. Time and again that figure has ap- 
 peared in gatherings at critical moments. 
 Modern? No. He stood in the midst of the 
 big crowd scattered around the lawn and on 
 the slopes, under the dark walls, the type of 
 the wandering race that has suffered in many 
 lands ere there was any thought of Balliol Col- 
 lege, and had heard the law given on Sinai. 
 
 "Everyone expected him to be modern, 
 however. The chairman introduced him 
 briefly as an American, a business man who
 
 PERSONAL 267 
 
 lived in England during part of every year, 
 and announced his subject (though everyone 
 knew it and smiled a little over it) as 'The 
 Land.' 'You're quite right there,' said Mr. 
 Fels, 'I've only one subject, I've only one lec- 
 ture. The Gospel isn't long, it's short. But 
 you can say it over a great many times with- 
 out getting to the end of it. Yes, I'm going 
 to talk to you about the land this earth you're 
 standing on. Who does it belong to? Who 
 made it? Who's got a right to it? That's 
 what I am going to talk about here, that's what 
 I am talking about all the time.' 
 
 "The whole company looked a little bored, 
 though amused. The smart factory girl 
 smiled, becoming conscious of the speaker's 
 deficiencies, his accent and his unceremonious 
 way of speaking. The students in the Eco- 
 nomics classes (there were a great many of 
 them) fresh from their books brightened for a 
 moment and then grew dull. A chill wind 
 went round the whole assembly and not even 
 the courteous intent look on the Balliol men's 
 faces tempered it in the least. On the con- 
 trary the careful politeness emphasized the
 
 268 JOSEPH PELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 chill. A great many young students thought 
 they knew what their teachers were thinking, 
 and threw them half -apologetic and deferential 
 glances. The Jew, under his well-defined sur- 
 face manners, was perfectly conscious of all 
 this and it angered him. He began to speak 
 rapidly, with new emphasis. He also used 
 the unscholarly word 'damn.' The Yorkshire 
 girl, fresh from studies that rendered her a lit- 
 tle intolerant, could hardly conceal her indig- 
 nation. Then suddenly the speaker, fighting 
 thus for a moment with his audience, appeared 
 to transfer his scene of operations. It was as 
 if a rider dragged at his horse's heels vaulted 
 into the saddle. He got hold of the reins of 
 his own anger, his own ruffled temper. He 
 vaulted into a new attitude and found his place. 
 All was shown somehow at once in his face, in 
 his voice, which lost its fretted tones, and very 
 soon, in his speech. 'Learning itself I make 
 claim to none and am an ignorant man by com- 
 parison with many of you must flourish best 
 at last on a soil that is free from evil under- 
 growths. But are these conditions secured 
 here or even in new countries ? You know very
 
 PERSONAL 269 
 
 well that the poor come to these colleges only 
 by reason of an agitation raised in very modern 
 days, and even now by the will of those who 
 have secured every privilege by the initial priv- 
 ilege of land-owning. Below every movement 
 that calls itself progressive but puts off the 
 consideration of the evil of private monopoly 
 in land values, there is a moral evil that poisons 
 everything. To postpone the removal of this 
 is to postpone every other reform or vitiate it. 
 Yes, this is what I have come here to say.' He 
 paused for a moment, and a look of infinite 
 gentleness, sympathy and humility came to his 
 face. 
 
 "The audience was graver now though a 
 movement of resentment flowed into it. 
 
 "Now the voice gathered strength, but it 
 was a new kind of strength. Ever more de- 
 tached, it seemed yet nearer and more intimate. 
 It took no account of the differences of those 
 before him, still less of their feeling or rela- 
 tion to him. Where now, was the rich man, 
 the millionaire? Through the calm, sun- 
 bathed space between the college walls, and 
 over the green shaven mound, it rose and fell
 
 270 JOSEPH FELS, HIS LIFE-WORK 
 
 the Voice as of one crying in the wilderness. 
 With passionate faith, in perfect self -surrender, 
 in quiet acceptance of all labor and loss and all 
 suffering, and with a hope that bore up the soul 
 to fair and cloudless heights, it beat against 
 every heart as at a heavy door. And when the 
 speaker ended at last, falling back in his role 
 of diffident, half -jocular millionaire philan- 
 thropist, as suddenly as a bird falls into its nest 
 on the earth, there was deep silence for a mo- 
 ment, a silence far more charged with meaning 
 than was the so-called debate that followed. 
 Looking spent, and very white and small he 
 sat down. 
 
 "Did one hear that Voice again? Yes, in- 
 deed, though not on that day nor for a few 
 months later. In the evening, he was, I re- 
 member, a little subdued, and had nothing to 
 say about the University, nothing about his 
 critics and antagonists in the debate. 
 
 "But I did hear the Voice again. It was 
 after the news came of his death in Philadel- 
 phia. They say he was carried into a great 
 hall and lay in the midst of a great multitude. 
 Many wept, and they praised him. Love
 
 PERSONAL 871 
 
 was round him in death like a sun-lit sea 
 about a storm-rent battleship. Silent he lay, 
 yet not silent. Again we saw the dim cloisters, 
 the smooth lawn of Balliol, and the modern 
 students of many social orders. And his words 
 rang out now, but like a strain of music. 
 Strong words and brave, words that will not 
 die, nor be forgotten. For they tell of that 
 which abides amid all passing shadows, of 
 something that does not yield to doubt or fear, 
 or earthly powers, and which however baffled 
 or delayed cannot fail at last."
 
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