Part 7 (1/2)

At this point it may be well to remember that, conditions of land purchase by the city being subject to the Referendum, the buying could hardly be accompanied by corrupt bargaining.

When the effect of the public land in depressing land values, in other words in enabling producers to retain the more of their product, was seen, private as well as public agencies might aid in enlarging the scope of that effect. The philanthropic might transfer land to the munic.i.p.ality, preferring to help restore just social conditions rather than to aid in charities that leave the world with more poor than ever; the city might provide for a gradual conversion, in the course of time, of all the land within its limits to public control, first selecting, with the end in view, tracts of little market value, which, open to occupiers, would a.s.sist in keeping down the value of lands held privately.

But the more striking results of city public land would lie in another direction. The spontaneous efforts of each individual to increase and to secure the product of his labor would turn the current of production away from the monopolists and toward the producers. With a lot in the public domain, a wage-worker might soon live in his own cottage. As the settler often did in the West, to acquire a home he might first build two or four rooms as the rear, and, living in it, with later savings put up the front. A house and a vegetable garden, with the increased consequent thrift rarely in such situation lacking, would add a large fraction to his year's earnings. Pasture for a cow in suburban city land would add yet more. Then would this wage-earner, now his own landlord and in part a direct producer from the soil, withdraw his children from the labor market, where they compete for work perhaps with himself, and send them on to school.

What would now happen should the wage-workers of the city demand higher wages? It is hardly to be supposed that any industrial centre could reach the stage of radical reform contemplated at this point much in advance of others. When the labor organizations throughout the country take hold of direct legislation, and taste of its successes, they will nowhere halt. They will no more hesitate than does a conquering army.

Learning what has been done in Switzerland, they will go the lengths of the Swiss radicals and, with more elbow room, further. Hence, when in one industrial centre the governing workers should seek better terms, similar demands from fellow laborers, as able to enforce them, would be heard elsewhere.

The employer of our typical city, even now often unable to find outside the unions the unemployed labor he must have, would then, should he attempt it, to a certainty fail. The thrifty wage-working householder, today a tenant fearful of loss of work, could then strike and stay out.

The situation would resemble that in the West twenty years ago, when open land made the laborer his own master and wages double what they are now. Wages, then, would perforce be moved upward, and hours be shortened, and a long step be made toward that state of things in which two employers offer work to one employe. And, legal and social forces no longer irresistibly opposed to the wage-workers, thenceforth wages would advance. At every stage they would tend to the maximum possible under the improved conditions. In the end, under fully equal conditions, everywhere, for all cla.s.ses, the producer would gather to himself the full product of his labor.

The average business man, too, of the city of our ill.u.s.tration, himself a producer--that is, a help to the consumer--would under the better conditions reap new opportunities. Far less than now would he fear failure through bad debts and hard times; through the wage-workers'

larger earnings, he would obtain a larger volume of trade; he would otherwise naturally share in the generally increased production; and he would partic.i.p.ate in the common benefits from the better local government.

But the disappearance of the local monopolist would be predestined. The owner of local franchises would already have gone. The local land monopolist would have seen his land values diminished. In every such case, the monopolist's loss would be the producer's gain. The aggregate annual earnings of all the city's producers (the wage-workers, the land-workers, and the men in productive business) would rise toward their natural just aggregate--all production. As between the various cla.s.ses within the city, a condition approximating to justice in political and economic arrangements would now prevail.

What would thus be likely to happen in our typical city of 50,000 inhabitants would also, in greater or less degree, be possible in all industrial towns and cities. In every such place, self-government and direct legislation could solve the more pressing immediate phases of the labor question and create the local conditions favorable to remodeling, and as far as possible abolis.h.i.+ng, the superstructure of government.

_Wider Applications of These Principles and Methods._

The political and economic arrangements extending beyond the control of the munic.i.p.alities would now, if they had not done so before, challenge attention. In taking up with reform in this wider field, the industrial wage-workers would come in contact with those farmers who are demanding radical reforms in state and nation. As the sure instrument for the citizens.h.i.+p of a state, direct legislation could again with confidence be employed. No serious opposition, in fact or reason, could be brought against it. That the ma.s.s of voters might prove too unwieldy for the method would be an a.s.sertion to be instantly refuted by Swiss statistics. In Zurich, the most radically democratic canton of Switzerland, the people number 339,000; the voters, 80,000. In Berne, which has the obligatory Referendum, the population is 539,000. And it must not be overlooked that the entire Swiss Confederation, with 600,000 voters, now has both Initiative and Referendum. Hence, in any state of the Union, direct legislation on general affairs may be regarded as immediately practicable, while in many of the smaller states the obligatory Referendum may be applied to particulars. And even in the most populous states, when special legislation should be cast aside, and local legislation left to the localities affected, complete direct legislation need be no more unmanageable than in the smallest.

United farmers, wage-workers, and other cla.s.ses of citizens, in the light of these facts, might naturally demand direct legislation.