HOW MAN PASSES FROM POVERTY AND SLAVERY TOWARD WEALTH AND FREEDOM.
The first poor cultivator is surrounded by land unoccupied. _The more
of it at his command the poorer he is._ Compelled to work alone, he is
a slave to his necessities, and he can neither roll nor raise a log
with which to build himself a house. He makes himself a hole in the
ground, which serves in place of one. He cultivates the poor soil of
the hills to obtain a little corn, with which to eke out the supply of
food derived from snaring the game in his neighbourhood. His winter's
supply is deposited in another hole, liable to injury from the water
which filters through the light soil into which alone he can
penetrate. He is in hourly danger of starvation. At length, however,
his sons grow up. They combine their exertions with his, and now
obtain something like an axe and a spade. They can sink deeper into
the soil; and can cut logs, and build something like a house. They
obtain more corn and more game, and they can preserve it better. The
danger of starvation is diminished. Being no longer forced to depend
for fuel upon the decayed wood which was all their father could
command, they are in less danger of perishing from cold in the
elevated ground which, from necessity, they occupy. With the growth of
the family new soils are cultivated, each in succession yielding a
larger return to labour, and they obtain a constantly increasing
supply of the necessaries of life from a surface diminishing in its
ratio to the number to be fed; and thus with every increase in the
return to labour the power of combining their exertions is increased.
If we look now to the solitary settler of the West, even where
provided with both axe and spade, we shall see him obtaining, with
extreme difficulty, the commonest log hut. A neighbour arrives, and
their combined efforts produce a new house with less than half the
labour required for the first. That neighbour brings a horse, and he
makes something like a cart. The product of their labour is now ten
times greater than was that of the first man working by himself. More
neighbours come, and new houses are needed. A "bee" is made, and by
the combined effort of the neighbourhood the third house is completed
in a day; whereas the first cost months, and the second weeks, of far
more severe exertion. These new neighbours have brought ploughs and
horses, and now better soils are cultivated, and the product of labour
is again increased, as is the power to preserve the surplus for
winter's use. The path becomes a road. Exchanges increase. The store
makes its appearance. Labour is rewarded by larger returns, because
aided by better machinery applied to better soils. The town grows up.
Each successive addition to the population brings a consumer and a
producer. The shoemaker desires leather and corn in exchange for his
shoes. The blacksmith requires fuel and food, and the farmer wants
shoes for his horses; and with the increasing facility of exchange
more labour is applied to production, and the reward of labour rises,
producing new desires, and requiring more and larger exchanges. The
road becomes a turnpike, and the wagon and horses are seen upon it.
The town becomes a city, and better soils are cultivated for the
supply of its markets, while the railroad facilitates exchanges with
towns and cities yet more distant. The tendency to union and to
combination of exertion thus grows with the growth of wealth. In a
state of extreme poverty it cannot be developed. The insignificant
tribe of savages that starves on the product of the superficial soil
of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, looks with jealous eye on
every intruder, knowing that each new mouth requiring to be fed tends
to increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence; whereas the
farmer rejoices in the arrival of the blacksmith and the shoemaker,
because they come to eat on the spot the corn which heretofore he has
carried ten, twenty, or thirty miles to market, to exchange for shoes
for himself and his horses. With each new consumer of his products
that arrives he is enabled more and more to concentrate his action and
his thoughts upon his home, while each new arrival tends to increase
his _power_ of consuming commodities brought from a distance, because
it tends to diminish his _necessity_ for seeking at a distance a
market for the produce of his farm. Give to the poor tribe spades, and
the knowledge how to use them, and the power of association will
begin. The supply of food becoming more abundant, they hail the
arrival of the stranger who brings them knives and clothing to be
exchanged for skins and corn; wealth grows, and the habit of
association--the first step toward civilization--arises.
The little tribe is, however, compelled to occupy the higher lands.
The lower ones are a mass of dense forests and dreary swamps, while at
the foot of the hill runs a river, fordable but for a certain period
of the year. On the hillside, distant a few miles, is another tribe;
but communication between them is difficult, because, the river bottom
being yet uncleared, roads cannot be made, and bridges are as yet
unthought of. Population and wealth, however, continue to increase,
and the lower lands come gradually into cultivation, yielding larger
returns to labour, and enabling the tribe to obtain larger supplies of
food with less exertion, and to spare labour to be employed for other
purposes. Roads are made in the direction of the river bank.
Population increases more rapidly because of the increased supplies of
food and the increased power of preserving it, and wealth grows still
more rapidly. The river bank at length is reached, and some of the
best lands are now cleared. Population grows again, and a new element
of wealth is seen in the form of a bridge; and now the two little
communities are enabled to communicate more freely with each other.
One rejoices in the possession of a wheelwright, while the other has a
windmill. One wants carts, and the other has corn to grind. One has
cloth to spare, while the other has more leather than is needed for
its purpose. Exchanges increase, and the little town grows because of
the increased amount of trade. Wealth grows still more rapidly,
because of new modes of combining labour, by which that of all is
rendered more productive. Roads are now made in the direction of other
communities, and the work is performed rapidly, because the exertions
of the two are now combined, and because the machinery used is more
efficient. One after another disappear forests and swamps that have
occupied the fertile lands, separating ten, twenty, fifty, or five
hundred communities, which now are brought into connection with each
other; and with each step labour becomes more and more productive, and
is rewarded with better food, clothing, and shelter. Famine and
disease disappear, life is prolonged, population is increased, and
therewith the tendency to that combination of exertion among the
individuals composing these communities, which is the distinguishing
characteristic of civilization in all nations and in all periods of
the world. With further increase of population and wealth, the desires
of man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. The nation,
thus formed, has more corn than it needs; but it has no cotton, and
its supply of wool is insufficient. The neighbouring nation has cotton
and wool, and needs corn. They are still divided, however, by broad
forests, deep swamps, and rapid rivers. Population increases, and the
great forests and swamps disappear, giving place to rich farms,
through which broad roads are made, with immense bridges, enabling the
merchant to transport his wool and his cotton to exchange with his
now-rich neighbours for their surplus corn or sugar. Nations now
combine their exertions, and wealth grows with still increased
rapidity, facilitating the drainage of marshes, and thus bringing into
activity the richest soils; while coal-mines cheaply furnish the fuel
for converting limestone into lime, and iron ore into axes and spades,
and into rails for the new roads needed for transporting to market the
vast products of the fertile soils now in use, and to bring back the
large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and the thousand other products
of distant lands with which intercourse now exists. At each step
population and wealth and happiness and prosperity take a new bound;
and men realize with difficulty the fact that the country, which now
affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts,
conveniences, and luxuries of life, is the same that, when the
superabundant land was occupied by tens of thousands only, gave to
that limited number scanty supplies of the worst food; so scanty that
famines were frequent and sometimes so severe that starvation was
followed in its wake by pestilence, which, at brief intervals, swept
from the earth the population of the little and scattered settlements,
among which the people were forced to divide themselves when they
cultivated only the poor soils of the hills.
The course of events here described is in strict accordance with the
facts observed in every country as it has grown in wealth and
population. The early settlers of all the countries of the world are
seen to have been slaves to their necessities--and often slaves to
their neighbours; whereas, with the increase of numbers and the
increased power of cultivation, they are seen passing from the poorer
soils of the hills to the fertile soils of the river bottoms and the
marshes, with constant increase in the return to labour, and
constantly increasing power to determine for themselves for whom they
will work, and what shall be their reward. This view is, however, in
direct opposition to the theory of the occupation of land taught in
the politico-economical school of which Malthus and Ricardo were the
founders. By them we are assured that the settler commences always on
the low and rich lands, and that, as population increases, men are
required to pass toward the higher and poorer lands--and of course up
the hill--with constantly diminishing return to labour, and thus that,
as population grows, man becomes more and more a slave to his
necessities, and to those who have power to administer to his wants,
involving a necessity for dispersion throughout the world in quest of
the rich lands upon which the early settler is supposed to commence
his operations. It is in reference to this theory that Mr. J. S. Mill
says--
"This general law of agricultural industry is the most important
proposition in political economy. If the law were different, almost
all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would
be other than they are."
In the view thus presented by Mr. Mill there is no exaggeration. The
law of the occupation of the land by man lies at the foundation of all
political economy; and if we desire to know what it is that tends to
the emancipation of the people of the earth from slavery, we must
first satisfy ourselves that the theory of Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo
has not only no foundation in fact, but that the law is directly the
reverse, and tends, therefore, toward the adoption of measures
directly opposed to those that would be needed were that theory true.
The great importance of the question will excuse the occupation of a
few minutes of the reader's attention in placing before him some facts
tending to enable him to satisfy himself in regard to the universality
of the law now offered for his consideration. Let him inquire where he
may, he will find that the early occupant _did not_ commence in the
flats, or on the heavily timbered-land, but that he _did_ commence on
the higher land, where the timber was lighter, and the place for his
house was dry. With increasing ability, he is found draining the
swamps, clearing the heavy timber, turning up the marl, or burning the
lime, and thus acquiring control over more fertile soils, yielding a
constant increase in the return to labour. Let him then trace the
course of early settlement, and he will find that while it has often
followed the course of the streams, it has always avoided the swamps
and river bottoms. The earliest settlements of this country were on
the poorest lands of the Union--those of New England. So was it in New
York, where we find the railroads running through the lower and
richer, and yet uncultivated, lands, while the higher lands right and
left have long been cultivated. So is it now in Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and Ohio. In South Carolina it has been made the subject of
remark, in a recent discourse, that their predecessors did not select
the rich lands, and that millions of acres of the finest meadow-land
in that State still remain untouched. The settler in the prairies
commences on the higher and drier land, leaving the wet prairie and
the _slough_--the richest soil--for his successors. The lands below
the mouth of the Ohio are among the richest in the world; yet they are
unoccupied, and will continue so to be until wealth and population
shall have greatly increased. So is it now with the low and rich lands
of Mexico. So was it in South America, the early cultivation of which
was upon the poor lands of the western slope, Peru and Chili, while
the rich lands of the Amazon and the La Plata remained, as most of
them still remain, a wilderness. In the West Indies, the small dry
islands were early occupied, while Porto Rico and Trinidad, abounding
in rich soils, remained untouched. The early occupants of England were
found on the poorer lands of the centre and south of the kingdom, as
were those of Scotland in the Highlands, or on the little rocky
islands of the Channel. Mona's Isle was celebrated while the rich soil
of the Lothians remained an almost unbroken mass of forest, and the
morasses of Lancashire were the terror of travellers long after
Hampshire had been cleared and cultivated. If the reader desire to
find the birthplace of King Arthur and the earliest seat of English
power, he must look to the vicinity of the royal castle of Tintagel,
in the high and dry Cornwall. Should he desire other evidence of the
character of the soil cultivated at the period when land abounded and
men were few in number, he may find it in the fact that in some parts
of England there is scarcely a hill top that does not bear evidence of
early occupation,[22] and in the further fact that the mounds, or
barrows, are almost uniformly composed of stone, because those
memorials "are found most frequently where stone was more readily
obtained than earth."[23] Caesar found the Gauls occupying the high
lands surrounding the Alps, while the rich Venetia remained a marsh.
The occupation of the Campagna followed long after that of the Samnite
hills, and the earliest settlers of the Peloponnesus cultivated the
high and dry Arcadia, while the cities of the Argive kings of the days
of Homer, Mycenae and Tiryns, are found in eastern Argolis, a country
so poor as to have been abandoned prior to the days of the earliest
authentic history. The occupation of the country around Meroë, and of
the Thebaid, long preceded that of the lower lands surrounding
Memphis, or the still lower and richer ones near Alexandria. The negro
is found in the higher portions of Africa, while the rich lands along
the river courses are uninhabited. The little islands of Australia,
poor and dry, are occupied by a race far surpassing in civilization
those of the neighbouring continent, who have rich soils at command.
The poor Persia is cultivated, while the rich soils of the ancient
Babylonia are only ridden over by straggling hordes of robbers.[24]
Layard had to seek the hills when he desired to find a people at home.
Affghanistan and Cashmere were early occupied, and thence were
supplied the people who moved toward the deltas of the Ganges and the
Indus, much of both of which still remains, after so many thousands of
years, in a state of wilderness. Look where we may, it is the same.
The land obeys the same great and universal law that governs light,
power, and heat. The man who works alone and has poor machinery must
cultivate poor land, and content himself with little light, little
power, and little heat, and those, like his food, obtained in exchange
for much labour; while he who works in combination with his fellow-men
may have good machinery, enabling him to clear and cultivate rich
land, giving him much food, and enabling him to obtain much light,
much heat, and much power, in exchange for little labour. The first is
_a creature of necessity_--a slave--and as such is man universally
regarded by Mr. Ricardo and his followers. The second is _a being of
power_--a freeman--and as such was man regarded by Adam Smith, who
taught that the more men worked in combination with each other, the
greater would be the facility of obtaining food and all other of the
necessaries and comforts of life--and the more widely they were
separated, the less would be the return to labour and capital, and the
smaller the power of production, as common sense teaches every man
must necessarily be the case.
It will now readily be seen how perfectly accurate was Mr. Mill in his
assertion that, "if the law were different, almost all the phenomena
of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they
are." The doctrine of Malthus and Ricardo tends to make the labourer a
slave to the owner of landed or other capital; but happily it has no
foundation in fact, and therefore the natural laws of the production
and distribution of wealth tend not to slavery, but to freedom.