experiments in legislation should have turned its attention to the
question which may perhaps be looked upon as most specially inviting
attention from social reformers in a new country. The circumstances of
New Zealand in relation to the land were from the first exceptional.
In every other country occupied by savage tribes in modern times which
has been taken possession of for purposes of settlement by people of
European race, the ownership of the soil has been assumed, as a matter
of course, to vest not in the aboriginal natives, but in the intruding
settlers. Spain, England, France, Holland, Germany, and the United
States have one after the other adopted this convenient theory of
international morality, and entered with a cool assumption of right
upon the inheritance of their comparatively helpless predecessors. In
New Zealand the conditions of the country and its inhabitants rendered
this popular system wholly inapplicable. The area of the country was
limited, to an extent which rendered it impossible to adopt the
fiction which has lain at the root of nearly all the forcible
confiscation of the territory of native tribes, namely, that they
could make no profitable use of so great an area. The islands of New
Zealand contain only a little more land than Great Britain itself,
and sixty years ago, when England first thought of annexing them to
her empire, the native inhabitants numbered little if anything short
of a hundred thousand souls. They were besides a settled people who
cultivated the soil, and moreover they were warlike, and formidable to
any invader. In consequence of these things a wholly new departure was
made in the case of New Zealand. The country was not occupied on any
plea of discovery or of conquest, as had been done in so many parts of
the world before, but the sovereignty of the islands was obtained by
treaty with the chiefs of the native tribes, upon the distinct
guarantee that the full rights of the aboriginal inhabitants to their
lands should be recognized and protected by England against all
comers.
From the first, therefore, the lands of New Zealand have been
purchased by the government before they could be disposed of to the
settlers. The community had no vast tracts of land to dispose of which
had cost nothing but the expense of survey, but as a matter of fact
had to look on every acre as an investment which must be sold for a
certain definite price unless the transaction was to result in an
absolute loss of money to the people at large. It may well have
happened that the result of so unusual a condition of affairs was to
lead the community to regard the public lands in a somewhat different
light from other people. At any rate it led to all lands being sold
for a price which prevented their being lightly esteemed or as a rule
held as freeholds in large areas. So much was this the case that from
the first nearly all pastoral lands were held under leases from the
government at fixed annual rentals. Fully forty years ago the
southern, and larger, of the islands was nearly all purchased from the
comparatively small native population by the government, and in that
island a very large proportion of the land has always been let on
lease for grazing. In the northern island nearly one-half of the land
even now belongs to the original native owners, and much of this area
is leased from them by Europeans for farming or grazing purposes.
In this way it has happened that in New Zealand, more than in any
other country occupied by people of European race, the inhabitants
have grown accustomed to the idea of holding land on lease, with the
people at large, as represented by the government, for landlord. Under
these conditions it is easy to understand how the doctrine of the
single tax found a peculiarly congenial home in the minds of New
Zealand public men. It is true that large areas of the lands of the
country had been disposed of in freehold to settlers. It is true that
the freehold tenure of the native inhabitants had in a certain sense
been guaranteed to them by treaty, at least in so far that it should
never be taken from them without compensation. It is true that the
mass of the people were very fully possessed by the apparently almost
universal preference for the idea of a freehold over every other
tenure of lands so far as they were personally concerned. But, on the
other hand, they had grown accustomed to the practice of holding areas
of land on lease both from the government and from the native owners,
whose tenure was not individual, but tribal, and they had learned the
lesson that there was no intolerable hardship in the system.
The attempt to introduce a system which should give effect to the
principle underlying the economic theory of Henry George in New
Zealand was not hastily made, nor was it attempted on a scale that
could be fairly open to the charge of being revolutionary in its
incidence. The first step taken by the legislature was in the
direction of so dealing with the public estate of the country as to
encourage settlers to lease rather than to purchase the freehold. With
this in view a system of leases in perpetuity was established, and
areas of the best and most accessible of the land still unsold were
set apart to be dealt with under the new plan. Any person, not already
the holder of land in freehold, which, together with the land applied
for under perpetual lease, would make an area of more than six hundred
and forty acres, or one square mile, could apply for a lease of not
more than three hundred and forty acres on perpetual lease. Five
dollars per acre was fixed as the price of the land, such being the
average price of first-class freehold land unimproved in the country,
and the applicant was entitled to a lease for 999 years of the land
applied for, subject to the conditions that he resided upon the land
during the first ten years of the tenancy; that he improved it to the
extent of thirty per cent of its upset value within six years; and
that he paid as annual rental interest at the rate of five per cent on
the price or value of the land.
Each lease contained clauses rendering the land subject to revaluation
at the end of each period of twenty-one years, on which the rental
would be calculated. If the new valuation, which it was provided
should rigidly exclude all improvements on the land, was assented to
by the tenant, the matter was settled for another twenty-one years;
but if he objected to the new valuation as excessive, it was provided
that he could demand that it should be offered by public auction
(subject to payment of the value of his improvements), and that the
amount bid for it either by himself or by anybody else at the sale
should be esteemed the value on which the rental was to be calculated
during the twenty-one years next following the sale. In case the
present holder of the lease was the highest bidder, this was the only
result of the sale; but in case he was outbid he was bound to transfer
the lease to the best bidder, on receiving from the government the
amount at which his improvements had been valued. This payment might
be made in government bonds, bearing interest at four per cent, at the
option of the government, and the new holder of the lease was charged
as rent the interest on the value of the land as bid by himself and
also interest at five per cent upon the former leaseholder's
improvements. By this means it was proposed to retain for the
community at large the increased value of the lands of the country
which was not due to the improvements made from time to time by the
leaseholder. The inducement held out to the public to accept such
leases in preference to a freehold was the saving of capital involved
in not paying for the land when taken up, but only interest on the
amount. This, it was hoped, would suffice to render it popular with a
considerable class of actual working settlers as distinguished from
speculative buyers.
It is only fair to say that in spite of every effort that could be
made by the government, the system did not commend itself to the
judgment or the prejudices of the persons interested to any very great
extent. What they wanted--what it may be taken for granted is wanted
by nearly everybody in dealing with land--was a fixed tenure. It was
not enough to know that they had a lease for 999 years; they wanted to
know what they were to pay for it, not only during the first
twenty-one years, but at any time during the 999. Eventually this had
to be conceded, and as the land law of New Zealand now stands the
holder of a perpetual lease gets it for a rental of four per cent upon
the original price fixed by government on the land, subject still,
however, to the conditions as to residence and improvements on the
land during the first ten years.
Having abandoned this promising and theoretically perfect plan for
securing to the state all state-produced increase in the value of the
public lands, the New Zealand parliament was still anxious to secure
for the country the other advantages held out by the author of the
single-tax doctrine. These advantages may be briefly summed up in the
words, the discouragement of large holdings and the prevention of
speculation in future land values. To obtain these results without
laying the community open to the charge of practical confiscation,
which has been, and probably will always be, the strongest argument
against the practical application of the doctrine of the single tax,
as propounded by its author, was felt to be no easy matter. Even in
New Zealand there were already some large freehold estates, and these
naturally included some of the most desirable and valuable of the
land. It was eventually decided to impose a land tax, the incidence of
which would tend at least to discourage speculation, while it supplied
revenue for the public expenditure.
A uniform tax of one penny in the pound sterling, equivalent to one
two-hundred-and-fortieth part of the capital value of all land in the
country held in freehold by Europeans, was imposed, the value of
improvements being in all cases deducted from such valuation. Each
owner of land is, however, allowed an exemption of land to the value
of two thousand five hundred dollars, on which no tax is payable, as
well as of all mortgage money secured on the freehold. Thus all
freehold lands held by any individual are liable to be taxed above the
value of $2,500, so far as he is really interested in them; while all
money lent on mortgage of land is subject to a tax of five per cent on
the annual interest reserved by the terms of the mortgage. New Zealand
is mainly a country of small holdings, and the result of this system
has been that, out of about 90,000 holders of land in freehold, only
about 13,000 actually pay the tax on land. In other words, the
settlers of the colony who own land which, apart from improvements and
mortgage debts, is worth more than $2,500, are found to be only about
one-seventh of the whole number.
To provide for the discouragement of land speculation on a large scale
a further provision is made by the enactment of a further tax upon all
lands held by individuals or corporations of a value exceeding $25,000
clear of incumbrance. This is called the graduated land tax, and
provides for a farther taxation on all such lands, beginning at
one-eighth in addition to the original tax, and rising by advances of
an additional eighth for each sum of $25,000 at which the land is
valued, until a maximum rate of three times the original tax is
reached in the case of large estates. To provide for the risk of
vexatious opposition to valuations on the part of owners, there is a
farther provision that the government may at its option elect to
purchase, at an advance of ten per cent over the valuation objected
to, any unimproved land held in freehold. It is also a part of the
system that the government may compulsorily purchase at a valuation
any lands not in actual use in case any association of persons shall
apply to have this done, undertaking satisfactorily to take the land
upon its purchase under the conditions of perpetual lease, which of
course includes subdivision into small areas, with residence and
improvement.
By these means the people of New Zealand confidently expect to secure
the subdivision of the lands of the country into small areas; to
discourage to the utmost the holding of land by capitalists in
expectation of greatly increased values at the expense of the less
wealthy classes; to render practically impossible the establishment on
any extensive scale of private landlordism in respect of agricultural
lands; and gradually to substitute, as far as possible, the payment to
the state of a yearly interest on value, for the purchase of the
freehold in the land of the country.
So far as the experience of the last eight years, during which the
system has been in force, may be taken as a reliable guide, the
experiment shows many signs of success. It has certainly checked the
tendency to speculate in lands with a view to a rise in price, which
threatened to become a great, as it certainly was a growing, evil. It
has been found that it will not pay to do this in the face of
taxation, and particularly of the graduated tax; and owners of large
areas of land have developed a strong inclination to subdivide and
sell lands which they formerly were disposed to hoard and increase.
The power given to the government to purchase lands where the owners
have objected to the valuation for taxation purposes has not been
widely exercised, but several very important and considerable
compulsory purchases of estates have been made in cases where
associations of persons wishing to take the land on perpetual lease
have applied to the government for that purpose. The chief benefit of
such examples, indeed, seems to have been in compelling owners either
to use the land themselves or to offer it for sale to persons anxious
to use it; but from the New Zealand point of view this would appear to
be almost if not quite equally desirable. Finally, the land tax has
largely enabled the country to do without other taxes, which would
necessarily have fallen more heavily upon the class of workers with
small incomes, instead of being levied on the classes best able to
bear them.
It yet remains to be seen whether evils may not lurk, as yet
unnoticed, in the system, which may impair if not destroy its
usefulness. One consequence which was predicted by its opponents,
however, has not been found to follow upon the introduction of the
system. It was said that capital would be withdrawn from the country,
and that poverty and stagnation would result. No such result has
followed up to this time. New Zealand, with its less than a million
inhabitants, is to-day looked on as one of the soundest dependencies
of the British empire; it continues to draw to it from the mother
country as much capital as it can profitably use; its exports steadily
increase; and its people, if not rich, are well-to-do and comfortable.
It may be said, indeed, that New Zealand has not accepted Henry
George's doctrines as they were propounded by their author, and this
is literally true. It is, however, also true that they have accepted
the essential spirit of those doctrines, and, applying that spirit to
the circumstances of their own country, are giving probably the most
useful practical illustration of all that is best in them for the
world's acceptance. No doctrine in economics yet propounded for the
acceptance of humanity has ever been found to be applicable in
exactly the same form or to exactly the same extent under all
circumstances, and this, it may be safely said, will prove
emphatically true of the doctrine of the single tax. The single tax,
like all other economic plans, is not an end, but only a means. The
end must be the amelioration of the condition of the masses of the
people, and the consequent prosperity and happiness of the great
majority. In New Zealand the people and their leaders believe this to
be secured by taxing wealth rather than comparative poverty; by giving
every encouragement to those who will devote themselves to the
cultivation of the land; and by throwing every obstacle in the path of
those who would fain establish and promote the pernicious system of
private landlordism, which everywhere tends to create and perpetuate
class distinctions, with their long train of attendant evils.
In these respects New Zealand presents an object-lesson which can
hardly fail to be of value to other countries, even if their
conditions differ widely from her own. Her successes may be noted with
advantage, her mistakes may be criticised with profit, in every free
country and by all those who see that existing conditions are far from
perfect in any part of the world, and that the safety as well as the
advancement of society may depend largely upon the introduction of
wise and, it may be, far-reaching reforms.
NATURAL SELECTION, SOCIAL SELECTION, AND HEREDITY.
BY PROFESSOR JOHN R. COMMONS,
_Of Syracuse University, N. Y._
The term "natural selection" is a misnomer, as Darwin himself
perceived. It means merely survival. "Selection" proper involves
intention, and belongs to human reason. Selection by man we call
artificial. Natural selection is the outcome of certain physical
facts: 1. Environment: the complex of forces, such as soil, climate,
food, and competitors. 2. Heredity: the tendency in offspring to
follow the type of the parent. 3. Variation: the tendency to diverge
from that type. 4. Over-population: the tendency to multiply offspring
beyond the food supply. 5. Struggle for life: the effort to exclude
others or to consume others. 6. Consciousness of kind: the tendency to
spare and coöperate with offspring and others of like type. 7.
Survival of the fittest: the victory of those best fitted to their
environment by heredity, variation, numbers, and consciousness of
kind.
These biological facts underlie human society, but a new factor enters
with novel results. This is self-consciousness. Society is based not
merely on consciousness of kind, as worked out by Professor Giddings,
but peculiarly on individual self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is a product of evolution, at first biological as
explained by natural selection, and second, sociological. The
biological character is the prolongation of infancy, i. e. the
prolonged plastic and unfolding state of the brain. This makes
possible a new kind of development unknown to the animal, namely,
education. Education is preëminently a social activity. I say
education instead of environment. In natural selection there is a
physical environment which presses upon individuals, and only those
survive who are fitted to sustain this pressure. In social selection
society enters between the individual and the physical environment,
and, while slowly subordinating the latter, transforms its pressure
upon the individual, and he alone survives who is fitted to bear the
social pressure. This pressure reaches the individual through the
educational media of language and social institutions, especially the
family, the state, and property. Institutions rest upon ideas and
beliefs, and these are epitomized in language. Language in turn, by
giving names to things and relations, and by thus transmitting to each
individual the accumulated race experience, gradually brings him to
the consciousness of himself. This is education.
But self-consciousness is at first only vague, capricious, and
unprincipled. It grows by becoming definite, self-controlled, and
conscientious; that is, more regardful both of its own higher self and
of others. It thus develops into moral character, which we call
personality. Personality is the final outcome of social selection.
When once liberated it becomes a new selective principle to which all
others are subordinated. What, then, are the social conditions which
promote or retard the survival of personality?
It is a debated question where we shall place the dividing line
between pre-social and social man. In view of what precedes we should
look for that line at the point where self-consciousness begins to
throw about itself a social covering. This covering is private
property. The former view that primitive property was common property
is now nearly abandoned. The supposed village communities of free
proprietors were really villages of slaves and serfs. The semblance of
common property in primitive times belongs to the pre-social or
gregarious stage, and differs but little from the common use of a
given area by a colony of beavers.
Private property involves two facts: 1. Perception of enduring value
in external objects; 2. Exclusive control and enjoyment of those
objects. Its psychological basis is therefore self-consciousness,
which is the knowledge not of an abstracted and isolated self, but of
self as related to external nature and human beings.
The first private property was animals and tools. Artificial selection
begins with the domestication of animals. Soon it lays hold on man
himself by means of social institutions, all of which originate as
private property. The primitive social family was not a state of
promiscuity nor even the voluntary pairing of animals and birds, but
it was private property in women, beginning as wife-capture and
becoming wife-purchase and polygamy. Natural selection, too, is
transcended when cannibalism ceases. The self-conscious victor
enslaves his enemy and reduces him to property. Next, government
arises as private despotism, and with it the land becomes the property
of the chief. Thus the family, the state, protracted industry, and the
control of social opportunities begin with that artificial selection
denoted by private property.
Property in its early forms means the domination of the powerful over
the weak. Social institutions develop out of this primitive tyranny,
where the caprice of owners crushes the personality of the masses,
towards a state of equal rights and opportunities for all. The
industrial classes emerge from slavery and serfdom into a wage system,
which in turn is modified in the direction of fair wages, short hours,
and security of employment--fundamental conditions for personal
development.
The family has arisen from the private property of a despot to the
mutual coöperation of lovers, and the woman becomes a person instead
of a chattel. The legal successor of polygamy--the slavery of
women--is not monogamy, but prostitution, which is the wage system of
the sexes, grounded on the subordinate position of women and their
meagre opportunities for self-support.
Government is passing into democracy, and property in land and capital
is being hedged about by the police and taxing powers, or diffused and
socialized in the interest of the personal equality of all.
Social evolution is therefore the evolution of freedom and
opportunity, on the one hand, and personality, on the other. Without
freedom and security there can be no free will and moral character.
Without exalted personality there can be no enduring freedom. The
educational environment, therefore, which develops personality must
itself develop with freedom. The ruling ideas of justice, integrity,
morality, must move in advance, else the personality of individuals
will not survive the temptations of freedom. To what extent,
therefore, can education modify the individual? The answer is to be
sought in the problems of heredity and degeneration.
The human degenerate is essentially different from the animal
degenerate. The latter is solely a physical product, and by losing
certain organs is better fitted for survival, as parasites and snakes.