Part 12 (1/2)

If a community were to attempt to-day to divide its available land into tracts of just the size each one could himself cultivate, results would very soon demonstrate that such a division is a physical impossibility.

Land varies much in fertility, and the amount of labor necessary to cultivate one acre of land is very different from that necessary to cultivate another acre of land. Men differ in their ability to cultivate. One lacks strength; another intelligence--indeed, some lack intelligence so much that they can never successfully cultivate their own land, and these naturally become the employees of those who can.

Again, cultivation, of land leaves nothing for a man to do for a part of the year, and gives him a great deal more than one man can do during the rest of the year. It is impossible, therefore, to divide up the available land of any community into parts which will mathematically or even approximately correspond with the amount of work that each man can do during the year. Then, too, the men who render great services to the community seem ent.i.tled to larger buildings, better accommodations, more ease and comfort, more personal service than those who render no service beyond simply the day's work upon land. We find ourselves confronted immediately by the enormous difficulty that results from the inequality of land and the inequality of men, in any attempt to frame a society which will even approximately a.s.sure to every man the product of his own labor. These are inherent difficulties which no statesman can disregard.

These difficulties have been enormously increased by the selfishness, the intelligence, the violence, and the craft of men, which have been used to secure to some such large tracts of land that the majority were left without land altogether. And this system tends to be perpetuated by the natural and laudable desire of every man to leave his children after his death as well off as himself, thus creating laws regarding testacy and intestacy of a character to secure this.

But the satisfaction of this laudable paternal instinct has had a bad effect upon the community; for, whereas we are all disposed to allow to every man the property which he has acc.u.mulated himself, even though this acc.u.mulation confers upon him larger wealth than his services warrant, we cannot but feel it improper that his issue, who may be altogether worthless persons, should be enabled through the success of their skilful ancestor to lead lives of idleness and even profligacy from generation to generation. We are all, for example, outraged to think that because John Jacob Astor over a century ago had the forethought to invest his earnings in New York real estate, his descendant, William Waldorf Astor, should to-day, though he has abjured his American nationality and thereby escapes the payment of personal taxes, nevertheless receive millions annually arising from property which has increased in value through the labor of Americans and not through any labor of his own.

Thus we find that owing to inherent physical difficulties such as the inequality of land and the inequality of men, and owing to moral difficulties some of which are reprehensible, as for example, avarice and violence; and others commendable, such as intelligence and love of offspring, notions of property have become altogether different in fact from what they are in theory. Rights of property are not confined to the product of men's toil, but cover all those things which a family has been enabled under the law to acc.u.mulate whether by good deeds or by bad. This has given rise to two well-defined cla.s.ses--one very small which owns land, and the other very large which owns no land. And the fact that the small cla.s.s owns land and the large one does not own it, makes the latter dependent upon the former.

Much the same thing has taken place as regards personal property.

Relatively few men have secured control of the great industries of the country, and are thereby in a position to dictate who shall work at these industries, and as to the wages and conditions under which the work shall be done.

Economically, therefore, the world can be divided into two sets of people--a small set that owns the land and controls our industries; and an enormous number of people dependent upon these; that is to say, the vast majority can only work at these industries upon the conditions imposed by a relatively insignificant minority.

The inst.i.tution of property, therefore, originally destined to a.s.sure to men the product of their toil, has altogether changed in character, so that it--on the contrary--puts a very few men in a position where they can exploit the labor of the rest.

A study of property and liberty cannot be separated from a study of government, because the inst.i.tution of property involves the idea of law, and of a government to enforce the law. So long as no man seeks to secure more property than the product of his labor, the amount of government necessary to enforce the law need be but small--only just enough to compel the lazy to work and to prevent them from stealing.

But the moment the inst.i.tution of property is extended to cover more than the product of labor, government has to be harsh; for as this perverted notion of property creates a small propertied cla.s.s and a large proletariat, it is obvious that the government has to be bolstered by a powerful organization of law courts, prisons, army, and police in order to enable a very small minority to coerce a very large majority. In fact, in our ancient civilizations the propertied cla.s.s consisted of either priests, soldiers, or both. In the case of the priests, it was the domination of superior intelligence over unintelligent superst.i.tion; and in the case of the soldiers, it was the domination of organized force. Now, if the small propertied cla.s.s which controlled the government had governed well, or indeed had governed without grossly outraging the governed, the whole development of man might have been different. But it is not in human nature for a few men possessed of autocratic power to use that power wisely. There are exceptional periods in the history of the world when autocratic power has been used wisely; but in the long run the opportunities furnished by unlimited power to the evil propensities in men are certain to result in gross injustice. Such is the testimony of history.

Now if the few in the exploitation of the many had shown as much temperance and wisdom as our ranch-men show to their cattle--and this G.o.d knows is not much--the few might have enjoyed their liberty at the expense of the many for an indefinite period. But they have shown so little of either that in the State of New York our official Labor Bulletin publishes that there have been for two years past about 200,000 breadwinners unable to earn the means of subsistence, and this means--on the generally admitted average of four dependents (aged, infirm, women, and children) to every breadwinner--a million human beings on the verge of starvation for no fault of their own. And as the population of New York is about one-tenth that of the whole country, it would seem as though in this great, wealthy, prosperous nation of ours freedom spells for some ten millions of people freedom only to starve.

And as these ten millions are not cattle, but men and women with hearts and brains, armed with a vote and carefully--nay, compulsorily--educated to use this vote effectually, it does seem a little foolish to imagine that they will continue indefinitely to tolerate these conditions, if they can be changed.

So not only by the unfortunate majority, but also by some of the fortunate minority who have bowels of compa.s.sion, the question is being asked with insistence whether these conditions may not be changed and if so how.

Conspicuous among the evils that have resulted from misgovernment by the propertied cla.s.s, are personal slavery and political despotism.

And the history of the world may be summed up as the effort of the majority to escape from these two evils.

One reason why men have confused ideas about liberty is that they have not carefully distinguished the various phases through which this conflict has pa.s.sed; for there are three kinds of liberty, all of which are singularly interwoven one with the other and yet each of which is distinctly different from the other.

There is personal liberty; that is, freedom from physical restraint.

In all civilized countries, personal liberty has been, to a large measure, secured. Slavery, except in some parts of Africa, is practically unknown, and every individual is protected from arbitrary arrest west of Russia.

Next comes political liberty, which in so-called popular governments we are supposed to enjoy; that is, we are supposed to be no longer subject to autocratic government; we are supposed each to have a voice in determining who are to govern us and what are to be the laws under which we are to be governed. It will be seen later on that this so-called political liberty is, in fact, enjoyed only by a very few people in any country of the world, though universal franchise seems to a.s.sure it to all.

Third and last, there is economic liberty; that is, freedom to earn one's living. We have seen that the lawless savage enjoys economic freedom. There is no restraint whatever upon him in procuring those things which he needs--whether food, clothing, or shelter. We have also seen that his position was immensely improved by the inst.i.tution of property in the product of toil, for under this definition of property he practically enjoyed security and retained all the freedom previously enjoyed except the freedom to rob; and he enjoyed thereby a larger freedom because he did not have to keep perpetual watch over the things he had hunted or produced.

But the moment the land was appropriated by a few men so that the majority could not work on the land except as the wage servants of the propertied cla.s.s, then economic liberty came to an end; for no man can be considered economically free if he depends upon some other man not only for the means of subsistence, but for opportunity to work in order to earn the means of subsistence. This economic dependence, due to the appropriation of land by a cla.s.s, results in a loss of all the other liberties; for the franchise is of no value to a man every waking hour of whose day has to be spent in earning a wage just sufficient to support himself and his family. A vote can only be effectually exercised if directed by a political education sufficient to understand the political problems of the day, and if combined with other votes in a political organization sufficient to carry out the collective will of the people. The facility with which the Republican and Democratic parties have divided the vote of the proletariat is mainly due, I think, to the fact that the proletariat is too exhausted by overwork to undertake political organization, though it is beginning now to understand the necessity for doing so.

Last, but not least, a man cannot be regarded as enjoying liberty to any appreciable extent if his actions during all the waking hours of the day are determined, not by his own free will, but by the factory bell.

And although it may be necessary to secure personal and political liberty before economic liberty can be attained, it is certain that until economic liberty be attained, neither political nor personal liberty is effectually enjoyed. This subject will be treated at greater length when we study the Political Aspect of Socialism.[76]

The point which it is essential to keep clearly in mind now is that there are two notions of property, one of which is beneficent, and furnishes a maximum of security and a maximum of liberty; the other of which is unjust, and furnishes neither security nor liberty except to the privileged few. The first is the theory that men are ent.i.tled to property in the product of their labor; the second is that men are ent.i.tled to property in things which are not the product of their labor.

The most conspicuous of these things is land, which of course is not the product of any man's labor, but the gift of Nature or G.o.d to the whole race, or in America to Americans--certainly not to the Englishman, W.W. Astor, for instance. And the appropriation by a few men of all the tools of production--the factories, water power, steam power, electric power, and of the great natural monopolies such as railroads, telegraphs, telephones, tramways, gas, etc., has had just as bad a result as the appropriation of land, for it has brought about exactly the same condition--the exploitation of the many by the few.

This is the point which Henry George has overlooked, and it is a failure to appreciate this fact that princ.i.p.ally occasions the differences between Single Taxers and Socialists. Private owners.h.i.+p of land by a few was doubtless in its origin an act of spoliation; whereas private owners.h.i.+p of factories and natural monopolies was the result of the application of intelligence and labor to the organization of industry. The latter, therefore, seems relatively justifiable, whereas the first is not justifiable. But if the effect of the latter is as bad for the community as that of the former, and if there can be no escape from this system of exploitation except by readjusting property in factories as well as property in land, does it not seem evident that both must equally be faced?