Land and Labor
There is more prose than poetry in the desperate conflict now
waging in every part of the civilized world between labor and
capital,--between the dog and his tail, again, for, when the question
is reduced to a comprehensive statement of fact, it will be readily
seen that capital is the offspring of labor, not labor the offspring
of capital. Capital can produce nothing. Left to itself, it is as
valueless as the countless millions of gold, silver, copper, lead and
iron that lie buried in the unexplored womb of Nature. This storied
wealth counts for nothing in its crude, undeveloped state. As it is
to-day, so it was a thousand years ago. Years may add to the bulk,
and, therefore, the richness of its value; but until man, by his labor
of muscle and brain, has brought it forth, it has no value whatever.
To have value, it must become an object of barter, of circulation, in
short, of exchange. As its value depends upon its utility, so when it
can no longer be used it again becomes a useless mass of perishable
wealth. It is the product of labor, pure and simple. Speaking on
"Management of the Banks" (footnote p. 223), in his work on _Labor and
Capital_, Edward Kellogg says:--
All who become rich by speculations in bank, state and other
stocks, gain their wealth at the expense of the producing
classes; for no increased production is made by the changing
market value of these stocks. It is clear, that when the
rate of interest is increased, the gains of money-lenders
are augmented, and the money gained will buy a greater
quantity of property and labor. The increased gains of the
lender must be paid by the borrowers, by the productions of
their own or of others' labor.
So Adam Smith, speaking of "the Origin and Use of Money" (_Wealth of
Nations_, p. 33), says:
In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations,
every prudent man in every period of society, after the
first establishment of the divisions of labor, must
naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a
manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar
produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one
commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be
likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their
industry.
Labor is the one paramount force which develops the resources of the
world. It produces all the wealth; it pays, in the last analysis, all
the taxes--National, State and municipal; it produces the wealth which
sustains all the institutions of learning, as well as ministers to the
profligate luxuries of the idlers and sharpers who add nothing to the
wealth of society, but on the contrary constantly take from it, and
who have not inaptly been termed by Dr. Howard Crosby the "dangerous
classes;" it makes the wealth which gives a few men millions of
dollars as their share, either as rental or usurious interest upon
capital invested in the production of wealth; and it creates the vast
surplus which lies in the coffers of the Federal and State treasuries
of our land.
The producing agency, without which there could be no wealth; without
which the landlord could exact no rent and capital could draw no
interest, the producing agency alone receives an inadequate proportion
of the wealth it produces. The man who conducts any business requiring
labor and capital not only exacts an unjust proportion of the
laborer's hire, but takes more than he justly should as interest upon
his capital and as reward for his own time and labor, often amounting
to no trouble or labor, he delegating to other hands, such as foremen
or overseers, the absolute control of his investment. Yet, the man who
invests capital not only derives, in a majority of cases, a sufficient
income to enable him to live in more than comfort but to have a
healthy bank account; while the laborer, who alone makes capital draw
interest by giving it employment in developing the resources of
nature, derives only a bare subsistence, frequently not sufficient to
meet the absolute necessaries of his daily life. His wife and children
must be content with life simply--bare, cold life--often without any
of the conveniences or the commonest luxuries which make existence
anything more than the curse it is to a large majority of humankind.
This is peculiarly true of the condition of the masses of the Old
World, and is fast becoming true in our own young and vigorous
country.
In every quarter of the globe the cry of depressed and defrauded labor
is heard. The enormous drain upon the producing agents necessary to
maintain in idleness and luxury the great capitalists of the world who
accumulated their ill-gotten wealth by fraud, perjury and "conquest,"
so called, grinds the producing agent down to the lowest possible
point at which he can live and still produce. The millionaires of the
world, so called "aristocracies," and the taxes imposed by sovereign
states to liquidate obligations more frequently contracted to enslave
than to ameliorate the conditions of mankind, are a constant drain
which comes ultimately out of the laboring classes in every case.
What are millionaires, any way, but the most dangerous enemies of
society, always eating away its entrails, like the cultures that
preyed upon the chained Prometheus? Take our own breed of these
parasites; note how they grind down the stipend they are compelled to
bestow upon the human tools they must use to still further swell their
ungodly gains! Note how they take advantage of the public; how they
extort, with Shylock avarice, every penny they possibly can from those
who are compelled to use the appliances which wealth enables them to
contrive for the public convenience and comfort; how they corrupt
legislatures and dictate to the unscrupulous minions of the law. The
Athenians were wise who enacted into law the principle that when a
citizen became too powerful or rich to be controlled within proper
bounds, the safety of society demanded that he should be exiled--sent
where his power or riches could not be used to the detriment of his
fellow-citizens. Should such a rule be applied to-day, society in
every land could disgorge with much advantage the men who ride the
people as the Old Man of the Sea rode Sindbad the luckless sailor. But
our civilization is built upon a higher conception of individual right
and immunity; there is now no limit to the right of one man to rob
another of the produce of his labor or his natural and conferred
rights. Not only may individuals rob and plunder their fellows with
absolute impunity, but our laws have put breath into that soulless
thing which has become notoriously infamous as a "corporation." Around
this thing, this engine of extortion and oppression, our laws have
placed bulwarks which the defrauded laborer, the widow and orphan, and
even the sovereign public, cannot overleap. Here is where Monopoly
first shows its cormorant head.
If millionaires are enemies of society, and I assume that they
are--not because they have property, but because, as a rule, they have
acquired it by unjust processes and use it tyrannically--what excuse
have we for aristocracies, an idle class, a privileged class, who toil
not, nor spin? What is a recognized aristocracy, such as England
maintains? From what perennial fountain did it draw its nobility and
wealth? Came they not through Norman conquest and robbery? Who pay the
heavy taxes levied upon the people to support the privileged classes
of England? The royal revenues and princely preserves, are they not
supported out of the sweat of the poorer classes, upon whom all the
burdens of society fall at last? And why should there be royal
revenues and princely preserves? Do they add anything to the wealth of
a nation or the happiness of a people? Let us see.
Brassey (Sir Thomas), in his book on _Work and Wages_, p. 71, says:
The Irish Poor Law Commissioners stated that the average
produce of the soil in Ireland was not much above one half
the average produce in England, whilst the number of
laborers employed in agriculture was, in proportion to the
quantity of land under cultivation more than double, viz.:
as five to two. Thus ten laborers in Ireland raised only the
same quantity of produce that four laborers raised in
England, and this produce was generally of an inferior
quality.
Why is it that ten men in Ireland produce no more than four men
produce in England?
Henry George says (_Social Problems_, p. 150):
A year ago I traveled through that part of Ireland from
which these government-aided emigrants come. What surprises
an American at first, even in Connaught, is the apparent
sparseness of population, and he wonders if this can indeed
be that over-populated Ireland of which he has heard so
much. _There is plenty of good land_, but on it are only fat
beasts, and sheep so clean and white that you at first think
that they must be washed and combed every morning. Once,
this soil was tilled and was populous, but now you will find
only traces of ruined hamlets, and here and there the
miserable hut of a herd, who lives in a way that no Terra
del Fuegan could envy. For the 'owners' of this land, who
live in London and Paris, many of them having never seen
their estates, find cattle more profitable than men, and so
the men have been driven off. _It is only when you reach the
bog and the rocks_ in the mountains and by the sea shore,
that you find a dense population. Here they are crowded
together on land on which nature never intended men to live.
It is too poor for grazing, so the people who have been
driven from the better lands are allowed to live upon it--as
long as they pay their rent. If it were not too pathetic,
the patches they called fields would make you laugh.
Originally the surface of the ground must have been about as
susceptible of cultivation as the surface of Broadway. But
at the cost of enormous labor the small stones have been
picked off and piled up, though the great boulders remain,
so that it is impossible to use a plow; and the surface of
the bog has been cut away and manured by seaweed, brought in
from the shore on the backs of men and women, till it can be
made to grow something.
Sir Thomas Brassey writes from a capitalist's standpoint, while Mr.
George writes from the standpoint of a philosopher who not only sees
gross social wrongs but boldly applies the remedy. But let us see if
the same fester which irritates the body of Irish society has not also
a parasitical existence in our own land, where society is yet in its
infancy, where the people are supposed to enjoy all the advantages of
the competitive system, and where all are, measurably, free to take
and to use the opportunities offered the pioneers, or him who gets
first his grip upon the three natural elements absolutely essential to
man's existence, viz.: air, water, and land.
Wm. Goodwin Moody says (_Land and Labor in the United States_, p. 77):
Instead of being able to boast, as could our fathers, that
every man who tilled the soil was lord of the manor he
occupied, owning no master, the last census report made a
return of 1,024,701 tenant farms in our country in 1880.
A comparison of this showing with the land-holdings of
Great Britain and Ireland will help to a better
understanding of what these things import. The very latest
statistics give the total number of holdings in England and
Wales at 414,804; in Ireland, at 574,222; in Scotland, at
80,101; total, 1,069,127. Showing that in the whole of Great
Britain and Ireland, counting all the holdings as tenant
occupations, which they are not, there are 200,000 less
tenant farms than in the United States.
Again:
Among the owners of the tenant farms in our country are
English, French, and German capitalists, non-residents, who
have bought immense tracts of the railroad lands, and seized
upon the alternate government sections lying within their
railroad purchases, and on those tracts have commenced their
bonanza operations, or planted their tenants on the American
system.
When it is remembered that the entire network of railroads in the
United States is practically under the absolute control of five or six
men who, having derived their valuable franchises and more than
princely land grants from the people, show the utmost disregard of the
comfort, convenience or rights of the donors; when it is remembered
that one family in the city of New York controls enough land with
enough tenants to constitute an overgrown village; and that what they
do not claim as their own is held by one-fourth of the rest of the
population; when it is remembered that nearly every article which has
become a household necessity has been seized upon and can be obtained
only through some corporation, in the manufacture of which the
government has virtually granted a monopoly, as Charles granted to the
Duke of Buckingham a monopoly in the sale of gold lace; when it is
remembered that, even in this new country, three-fourths of the
population rent their homes and cannot buy them[14]; when these things
are remembered, as they should be, it will be readily seen that the
condition of our work-people is fast becoming no better than that of
the people of Europe, where a thousand years of false social
adjustments, of usurpation and of tyranny, have reduced the
proletariat class to the verge of starvation and desperation.
True, the immigrant laborers from Europe in the North, and the
colored people at the South tend to crowd into the cities, where their
labor is least needed and the conditions of life for them must be at
the hardest; true, in America if a man _has it in him_ the way is open
for him to mount to the topmost round of the social ladder; true, too,
the operatives in manufactures and the agricultural laborers here live
on a far higher plane than in Europe; but the elements of degradation
as well as of elevation are present in our land, and "easy in the
descent" to the infernal regions. Let us be warned in time.