We have traced the want and suffering that everywhere prevail among

the working classes, the recurring paroxysms of industrial depression,

the scarcity of employment, the stagnation of capital, the tendency of

wages to the starvation point, that exhibit themselves more and more

strongly as material progress goes on, to the fact that the land on

which and from which all must live is made the exclusive property of

some.

We have seen that there is no possible remedy for these evils but

the abolition of their cause; we have seen that private property in

land has no warrant in justice, but stands condemned as the denial

of natural right—a subversion of the law of nature that as social

development goes on must condemn the masses of men to a slavery the

hardest and most degrading.

We have weighed every objection, and seen that neither on the ground

of equity or expediency is there anything to deter us from making land

common property by confiscating rent.

But a question of method remains. How shall we do it?

We should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet all economic

requirements, by at one stroke abolishing all private titles, declaring

all land public property, and letting it out to the highest bidders in

lots to suit, under such conditions as would sacredly guard the private

right to improvements.

Thus we should secure, in a more complex state of society, the

same equality of rights that in a ruder state were secured by equal

partitions of the soil, and by giving the use of the land to whoever

could procure the most from it, we should secure the greatest

production.

Such a plan, instead of being a wild, impracticable vagary, has (with

the exception that he suggests compensation to the present holders of

land—undoubtedly a careless concession which he upon reflection would

reconsider) been indorsed by no less eminent a thinker than Herbert

Spencer, who (“Social Statics,” Chap. IX, Sec. 8) says of it:

“Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civilization;

may be carried out without involving a community of goods, and need

cause no very serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change

required would simply be a change of landlords. Separate ownership

would merge into the joint-stock ownership of the public. Instead of

being in the possession of individuals, the country would be held

by the great corporate body—society. Instead of leasing his acres

from an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the

nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir John or his

Grace, he would pay it to an agent or deputy agent of the community.

Stewards would be public officials instead of private ones, and

tenancy the only land tenure. A state of things so ordered would be

in perfect harmony with the moral law. Under it all men would be

equally landlords, all men would be alike free to become tenants. * *

* Clearly, therefore, on such a system, the earth might be enclosed,

occupied and cultivated, in entire subordination to the law of equal

freedom.”

But such a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not seem to me the

best. Or rather I propose to accomplish the same thing in a simpler,

easier, and quieter way, than that of formally confiscating all the

land and formally letting it out to the highest bidders.

To do that would involve a needless shock to present customs and habits

of thought—which is to be avoided.

To do that would involve a needless extension of governmental

machinery—which is to be avoided.

It is an axiom of statesmanship, which the successful founders of

tyranny have understood and acted upon—that great changes can best be

brought about under old forms. We, who would free men, should heed the

same truth. It is the natural method. When nature would make a higher

type, she takes a lower one and develops it. This, also, is the law of

social growth. Let us work by it. With the current we may glide fast

and far. Against it, it is hard pulling and slow progress.

I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property

in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the

individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession

of what they are pleased to call _their_ land. Let them continue to

call it _their_ land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise

it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. _It is

not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate

rent._

Nor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that the State

should bother with the letting of lands, and assume the chances of

the favoritism, collusion, and corruption this might involve. It is

not necessary that any new machinery should be created. The machinery

already exists. Instead of extending it, all we have to do is to

simplify and reduce it. By leaving to land owners a percentage of rent

which would probably be much less than the cost and loss involved in

attempting to rent lands through State agency, and by making use of

this existing machinery, we may, without jar or shock, assert the

common right to land by taking rent for public uses.

We already take some rent in taxation. We have only to make some

changes in our modes of taxation to take it all.

What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sovereign remedy,

which will raise wages, increase the earnings of capital, extirpate

pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative employment to whoever

wishes it, afford free scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate

morals, and taste, and intelligence, purify government and carry

civilization to yet nobler heights, is—_to appropriate rent by

taxation_.

In this way the State may become the universal landlord without calling

herself so, and without assuming a single new function. In form, the

ownership of land would remain just as now. No owner of land need be

dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon the amount of land

any one could hold. For, rent being taken by the State in taxes, land,

no matter in whose name it stood, or in what parcels it was held, would

be really common property, and every member of the community would

participate in the advantages of its ownership.

Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land values, must necessarily

be increased just as we abolish other taxes, we may put the proposition

into practical form by proposing—

_To abolish all taxation save that upon land values._

As we have seen, the value of land is at the beginning of society

nothing, but as society develops by the increase of population and the

advance of the arts, it becomes greater and greater. In every civilized

country, even the newest, the value of the land taken as a whole is

sufficient to bear the entire expenses of government. In the better

developed countries it is much more than sufficient. Hence it will not

be enough merely to place all taxes upon the value of land. It will

be necessary, where rent exceeds the present governmental revenues,

commensurately to increase the amount demanded in taxation, and to

continue this increase as society progresses and rent advances. But

this is so natural and easy a matter, that it may be considered as

involved, or at least understood, in the proposition to put all taxes

on the value of land. That is the first step, upon which the practical

struggle must be made. When the hare is once caught and killed, cooking

him will follow as a matter of course. When the common right to land is

so far appreciated that all taxes are abolished save those which fall

upon rent, there is no danger of much more than is necessary to induce

them to collect the public revenues being left to individual land

holders.

Experience has taught me (for I have been for some years endeavoring to

popularize this proposition) that wherever the idea of concentrating

all taxation upon land values finds lodgment sufficient to induce

consideration, it invariably makes way, but that there are few of the

classes most to be benefited by it, who at first, or even for a long

time afterward, see its full significance and power. It is difficult

for workingmen to get over the idea that there is a real antagonism

between capital and labor. It is difficult for small farmers and

homestead owners to get over the idea that to put all taxes on the

value of land would be unduly to tax them. It is difficult for both

classes to get over the idea that to exempt capital from taxation would

be to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. These ideas spring

from confused thought. But behind ignorance and prejudice there is a

powerful interest, which has hitherto dominated literature, education,

and opinion. A great wrong always dies hard, and the great wrong which

in every civilized country condemns the masses of men to poverty and

want, will not die without a bitter struggle.

I do not think the ideas of which I speak can be entertained by the

reader who has followed me thus far; but inasmuch as any popular

discussion must deal with the concrete, rather than with the abstract,

let me ask him to follow me somewhat further, that we may try the

remedy I have proposed by the accepted canons of taxation. In doing

so, many incidental bearings may be seen that otherwise might escape

notice.

CHAPTER III.

THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS OF TAXATION.

The best tax by which public revenues can be raised is evidently that

which will closest conform to the following conditions:

1. That it bear as lightly as possible upon production—so as least to

check the increase of the general fund from which taxes must be paid

and the community maintained.

2. That it be easily and cheaply collected, and fall as directly as may

be upon the ultimate payers—so as to take from the people as little as

possible in addition to what it yields the government.

3. That it be certain—so as to give the least opportunity for tyranny

or corruption on the part of officials, and the least temptation to

law-breaking and evasion on the part of the taxpayers.

4. That it bear equally—so as to give no citizen an advantage or put

any at a disadvantage, as compared with others.

Let us consider what form of taxation best accords with these

conditions. Whatever it be, that evidently will be the best mode in

which the public revenues can be raised.

_I.—The Effect of Taxes upon Production._

All taxes must evidently come from the produce of land and labor,

since there is no other source of wealth than the union of human

exertion with the material and forces of nature. But the manner in

which equal amounts of taxation may be imposed may very differently

affect the production of wealth. Taxation which lessens the reward of

the producer necessarily lessens the incentive to production; taxation

which is conditioned upon the act of production, or the use of any of

the three factors of production, necessarily discourages production.

Thus taxation which diminishes the earnings of the laborer or the

returns of the capitalist tends to render the one less industrious

and intelligent, the other less disposed to save and invest. Taxation

which falls upon the processes of production interposes an artificial

obstacle to the creation of wealth. Taxation which falls upon labor

_as_ it is exerted, wealth _as_ it is used as capital, and _as_ it is

cultivated, will manifestly tend to discourage production much more

powerfully than taxation to the same amount levied upon laborers,

whether they work or play, upon wealth whether used productively or

unproductively, or upon land whether cultivated or left waste.

The mode of taxation is, in fact, quite as important as the amount.

As a small burden badly placed may distress a horse that could carry

with ease a much larger one properly adjusted, so a people may be

impoverished and their power of producing wealth destroyed by taxation,

which, if levied in another way, could be borne with ease. A tax on

date-trees, imposed by Mohammed Ali, caused the Egyptian fellahs to cut

down their trees; but a tax of twice the amount imposed on the land

produced no such result. The tax of ten per cent. on all sales, imposed

by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, would, had it been maintained,

have all but stopped exchange while yielding but little revenue.

But we need not go abroad for illustrations. The production of wealth

in the United States is largely lessened by taxation which bears upon

its processes. Ship-building, in which we excelled, has been all but

destroyed, so far as the foreign trade is concerned, and many branches

of production and exchange seriously crippled, by taxes which divert

industry from more to less productive forms.

This checking of production is in greater or less degree characteristic

of most of the taxes by which the revenues of modern governments are

raised. All taxes upon manufactures, all taxes upon commerce, all taxes

upon capital, all taxes upon improvements, are of this kind. Their

tendency is the same as that of Mohammed Ali’s tax on date-trees,

though their effect may not be so clearly seen.

All such taxes have a tendency to reduce the production of wealth, and

should, therefore, never be resorted to when it is possible to raise

money by taxes which do not check production. This becomes possible

as society develops and wealth accumulates. Taxes which fall upon

ostentation would simply turn into the public treasury what otherwise

would be wasted in vain show for the sake of show; and taxes upon wills

and devises of the rich would probably have little effect in checking

the desire for accumulation, which, after it has fairly got hold of a

man, becomes a blind passion. But the great class of taxes from which

revenue may be derived without interference with production are taxes

upon monopolies—for the profit of monopoly is in itself a tax levied

upon production, and to tax it is simply to divert into the public

coffers what production must in any event pay.

There are among us various sorts of monopolies. For instance, there

are the temporary monopolies created by the patent and copyright

laws. These it would be extremely unjust and unwise to tax, inasmuch

as they are but recognitions of the right of labor to its intangible

productions, and constitute a reward held out to invention and

authorship.[55] There are also the onerous monopolies alluded to in

Chapter IV of Book III, which result from the aggregation of capital in

businesses which are of the nature of monopolies. But while it would

be extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, to levy taxes

by general law so that they would fall exclusively on the returns of

such monopoly and not become taxes on production or exchange, it is

much better that these monopolies should be abolished. In large part

they spring from legislative commission or omission, as, for instance,

the ultimate reason that San Francisco merchants are compelled to

pay more for goods sent direct from New York to San Francisco by the

Isthmus route than it costs to ship them from New York to Liverpool

or Southampton and thence to San Francisco, is to be found in the

“protective” laws which make it so costly to build American steamers

and which forbid foreign steamers to carry goods between American

ports. The reason that residents of Nevada are compelled to pay as

much freight from the East as though their goods were carried to

San Francisco and back again, is that the authority which prevents

extortion on the part of a hack driver is not exercised in respect to

a railroad company. And it may be said generally that businesses which

are in their nature monopolies are properly part of the functions of

the State, and should be assumed by the State. There is the same reason

why Government should carry telegraphic messages as that it should

carry letters; that railroads should belong to the public as that

common roads should.

But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as compared with the

monopoly of land. And the value of land expressing a monopoly, pure and

simple, is in every respect fitted for taxation. That is to say, while

the value of a railroad or telegraph line, the price of gas or of a

patent medicine, may express the price of monopoly, it also expresses

the exertion of labor and capital; but the value of land, or economic

rent, as we have seen, is in no part made up from these factors, and

expresses nothing but the advantage of appropriation. Taxes levied upon

the value of land cannot check production in the slightest degree,

until they exceed rent, or the value of land taken annually, for

unlike taxes upon commodities, or exchange, or capital, or any of the

tools or processes of production, they do not bear upon production. The

value of land does not express the reward of production, as does the

value of crops, of cattle, of buildings, or any of the things which are

styled personal property and improvements. It expresses the exchange

value of monopoly. It is not in any case the creation of the individual

who owns the land; it is created by the growth of the community.

Hence the community can take it all without in any way lessening the

incentive to improvement or in the slightest degree lessening the

production of wealth. Taxes may be imposed upon the value of land until

all rent is taken by the State, without reducing the wages of labor

or the reward of capital one iota; without increasing the price of a

single commodity, or making production in any way more difficult.

But more than this. Taxes on the value of land not only do not

check production as do most other taxes, but they tend to increase

production, by destroying speculative rent. How speculative rent checks

production may be seen not only in the valuable land withheld from use,

but in the paroxysms of industrial depression which, originating in

the speculative advance in land values, propagate themselves over the

whole civilized world, everywhere paralyzing industry, and causing more

waste and probably more suffering than would a general war. Taxation

which would take rent for public uses would prevent all this; while if

land were taxed to anything near its rental value, no one could afford

to hold land that he was not using, and, consequently, land not in

use would be thrown open to those who would use it. Settlement would

be closer, and, consequently, labor and capital would be enabled to

produce much more with the same exertion. The dog in the manger who, in

this country especially, so wastes productive power, would be choked

off.

There is yet an even more important way by which, through its effect

upon distribution, the taking of rent to public uses by taxation would

stimulate the production of wealth. But reference to that may be

reserved. It is sufficiently evident that with regard to production,

the tax upon the value of land is the best tax that can be imposed.

Tax manufactures, and the effect is to check manufacturing; tax

improvements, and the effect is to lessen improvement; tax commerce,

and the effect is to prevent exchange; tax capital, and the effect

is to drive it away. But the whole value of land may be taken in

taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate industry, to open

new opportunities to capital, and to increase the production of wealth.

_II.—As to Ease and Cheapness of Collection._

With, perhaps, the exception of certain licenses and stamp duties,

which may be made almost to collect themselves, but which can be relied

on for only a trivial amount of revenue, a tax upon land values can,

of all taxes, be most easily and cheaply collected. For land cannot be

hidden or carried off; its value can be readily ascertained, and the

assessment once made, nothing but a receiver is required for collection.

And as under all fiscal systems some part of the public revenues is

collected from taxes on land, and the machinery for that purpose

already exists and could as well be made to collect all as a part, the

cost of collecting the revenue now obtained by other taxes might be

entirely saved by substituting the tax on land values for all other

taxes. What an enormous saving might thus be made can be inferred from

the horde of officials now engaged in collecting these taxes.

This saving would largely reduce the difference between what taxation

now costs the people and what it yields, but the substitution of a

tax on land values for all other taxes would operate to reduce this

difference in an even more important way.

A tax on land values does not add to prices, and is thus paid directly

by the persons on whom it falls; whereas, all taxes upon things of

unfixed quantity increase prices, and in the course of exchange are

shifted from seller to buyer, increasing as they go. If we impose a tax

upon money loaned, as has been often attempted, the lender will charge

the tax to the borrower, and the borrower must pay it or not obtain the

loan. If the borrower uses it in his business, he in his turn must get

back the tax from his customers, or his business becomes unprofitable.

If we impose a tax upon buildings, the users of buildings must finally

pay it, for the erection of buildings will cease until building rents

become high enough to pay the regular profit and the tax besides. If

we impose a tax upon manufactures or imported goods, the manufacturer

or importer will charge it in a higher price to the jobber, the jobber

to the retailer, and the retailer to the consumer. Now, the consumer,

on whom the tax thus ultimately falls, must not only pay the amount of

the tax, but also a profit on this amount to every one who has thus

advanced it—for profit on the capital he has advanced in paying taxes

is as much required by each dealer as profit on the capital he has

advanced in paying for goods. Manila cigars cost, when bought of the

importer in San Francisco, $70 a thousand, of which $14 is the cost of

the cigars laid down in this port and $56 is the customs duty. But the

dealer who purchases these cigars to sell again must charge a profit,

not on $14, the real cost of the cigars, but on $70, the cost of the

cigars plus the duty. In this way all taxes which add to prices are

shifted from hand to hand, increasing as they go, until they ultimately

rest upon consumers, who thus pay much more than is received by the

government. Now, the way taxes raise prices is by increasing the cost

of production, and checking supply. But land is not a thing of human

production, and taxes upon rent cannot check supply. Therefore, though

a tax on rent compels the land owners to pay more, it gives them no

power to obtain more for the use of their land, as it in no way tends

to reduce the supply of land. On the contrary, by compelling those who

hold land on speculation to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on

land values tends to increase the competition between owners, and thus

to reduce the price of land.

Thus in all respects a tax upon land values is the cheapest tax by

which a large revenue can be raised—giving to the government the

largest net revenue in proportion to the amount taken from the people.

_III.—As to Certainty._

Certainty is an important element in taxation, for just as the

collection of a tax depends upon the diligence and faithfulness of the

collectors and the public spirit and honesty of those who are to pay

it, will opportunities for tyranny and corruption be opened on the one

side, and for evasions and frauds on the other.

The methods by which the bulk of our revenues are collected are

condemned on this ground, if on no other. The gross corruptions and

fraud occasioned in the United States by the whisky and tobacco taxes

are well known; the constant undervaluations of the Custom House, the

ridiculous untruthfulness of income tax returns, and the absolute

impossibility of getting anything like a just valuation of personal

property, are matters of notoriety. The material loss which such taxes

inflict—the item of cost which this uncertainty adds to the amount

paid by the people but not received by the government—is very great.

When, in the days of the protective system of England, her coasts

were lined with an army of men endeavoring to prevent smuggling, and

another army of men were engaged in evading them, it is evident that

the maintenance of both armies had to come from the produce of labor

and capital; that the expenses and profits of the smugglers, as well as

the pay and bribes of the Custom House officers, constituted a tax upon

the industry of the nation, in addition to what was received by the

government. And so, all douceurs to assessors; all bribes to customs

officials; all moneys expended in electing pliable officers or in

procuring acts or decisions which avoid taxation; all the costly modes

of bringing in goods so as to evade duties, and of manufacturing so as

to evade imposts; all moieties, and expenses of detectives and spies;

all expenses of legal proceedings and punishments, not only to the

government, but to those prosecuted, are so much which these taxes take

from the general fund of wealth, without adding to the revenue.

Yet this is the least part of the cost. Taxes which lack the element

of certainty tell most fearfully upon morals. Our revenue laws as a

body might well be entitled, “Acts to promote the corruption of public

officials, to suppress honesty and encourage fraud, to set a premium

upon perjury and the subornation of perjury, and to divorce the idea

of law from the idea of justice.” This is their true character, and

they succeed admirably. A Custom House oath is a by-word; our assessors

regularly swear to assess all property at its full, true, cash value,

and habitually do nothing of the kind; men who pride themselves on

their personal and commercial honor bribe officials and make false

returns; and the demoralizing spectacle is constantly presented of the

same court trying a murderer one day and a vendor of unstamped matches

the next!

So uncertain and so demoralizing are these modes of taxation that the

New York Commission, composed of David A. Wells, Edwin Dodge and George

W. Cuyler, who investigated the subject of taxation in that State,

proposed to substitute for most of the taxes now levied, other than

that on real estate, an arbitrary tax on each individual, estimated on

the rental value of the premises he occupied.

But there is no necessity of resorting to any arbitrary assessment. The

tax on land values, which is the least arbitrary of taxes, possesses

in the highest degree the element of certainty. It may be assessed

and collected with a definiteness that partakes of the immovable and

unconcealable character of the land itself. Taxes levied on land may

be collected to the last cent, and though the assessment of land

is now often unequal, yet the assessment of personal property is

far more unequal, and these inequalities in the assessment of land

largely arise from the taxation of improvements with land, and from

the demoralization that, springing from the causes to which I have

referred, affects the whole scheme of taxation. Were all taxes placed

upon land values, irrespective of improvements, the scheme of taxation

would be so simple and clear, and public attention would be so directed

to it, that the valuation of taxation could and would be made with

the same certainty that a real estate agent can determine the price a

seller can get for a lot.

_IV.—As to Equality._

Adam Smith’s canon is, that “The subjects of every state ought to

contribute toward the support of the government as nearly as possible

in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion

to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of

the state.” Every tax, he goes on to say, which falls only upon rent,

or only upon wages, or only upon interest, is necessarily unequal. In

accordance with this is the common idea which our systems of taxing

everything vainly attempt to carry out—that every one should pay taxes

in proportion to his means, or in proportion to his income.

But, waiving all the insuperable practical difficulties in the way of

taxing every one according to his means, it is evident that justice

cannot be thus attained.

Here, for instance, are two men of equal means, or equal incomes, one

having a large family, the other having no one to support but himself.

Upon these two men indirect taxes fall very unequally, as the one

cannot avoid the taxes on the food, clothing, etc., consumed by his

family, while the other need pay only upon the necessaries consumed by

himself. But, supposing taxes levied directly, so that each pays the

same amount. Still there is injustice. The income of the one is charged

with the support of six, eight, or ten persons; the income of the other

with that of but a single person. And unless the Malthusian doctrine be

carried to the extent of regarding the rearing of a new citizen as an

injury to the state, here is a gross injustice.

But it may be said that this is a difficulty which cannot be got over;

that it is Nature herself that brings human beings helpless into

the world and devolves their support upon the parents, providing in

compensation therefor her own sweet and great rewards. Very well, then,

let us turn to Nature, and read the mandates of justice in her law.

Nature gives to labor; and to labor alone. In a very Garden of Eden

a man would starve but for human exertion. Now, here are two men of

equal incomes—that of the one derived from the exertion of his labor,

that of the other from the rent of land. Is it just that they should

equally contribute to the expenses of the state? Evidently not. The

income of the one represents wealth he creates and adds to the general

wealth of the state; the income of the other represents merely wealth

that he takes from the general stock, returning nothing. The right of

the one to the enjoyment of his income rests on the warrant of nature,

which returns wealth to labor; the right of the other to the enjoyment

of his income is a mere fictitious right, the creation of municipal

regulation, which is unknown and unrecognized by nature. The father

who is told that from his labor he must support his children must

acquiesce, for such is the natural decree; but he may justly demand

that from the income gained by his labor not one penny shall be taken,

so long as a penny remains of incomes which are gained by a monopoly of

the natural opportunities which Nature offers impartially to all, and

in which his children have as their birthright an equal share.

Adam Smith speaks of incomes as “enjoyed under the protection of the

state;” and this is the ground upon which the equal taxation of all

species of property is commonly insisted upon—that it is equally

protected by the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that the

enjoyment of property is made possible by the state—that there is a

value created and maintained by the community, which is justly called

upon to meet community expenses. Now, of what values is this true?

Only of the value of land. This is a value that does not arise until

a community is formed, and that, unlike other values, grows with the

growth of the community. It exists only as the community exists.

Scatter again the largest community, and land, now so valuable, would

have no value at all. With every increase of population the value of

land rises; with every decrease it falls. This is true of nothing else

save of things which, like the ownership of land, are in their nature

monopolies.

The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all

taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar

and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit

they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the

community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It

is the application of the common property to common uses. When all

rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will

the equality ordained by nature be attained. No citizen will have an

advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry,

skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns.

Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital

its natural return.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] Following the habit of confounding the exclusive right granted by

a patent and that granted by a copyright as recognitions of the right

of labor to its intangible productions, I in this fell into error which

I subsequently acknowledged and corrected in the _Standard_ of June

23, 1888. The two things are not alike, but essentially different. The

copyright is not a right to the exclusive use of a fact, an idea, or

a combination, which by the natural law of property all are free to

use; but only to the labor expended in the thing itself. It does not

prevent any one from using for himself the facts, the knowledge, the

laws or combinations for a similar production, but only from using

the identical form of the particular book or other production—the

actual labor which has in short been expended in producing it. It

rests therefore upon the natural, moral right of each one to enjoy the

products of his own exertion, and involves no interference with the

similar right of any one else to do likewise.

The patent, on the other hand, prohibits any one from doing a similar

thing, and involves, usually for a specified time, an interference

with the equal liberty on which the right of ownership rests. The

copyright is therefore in accordance with the moral law—it gives to

the man who has expended the intangible labor required to write a

particular book or paint a picture security against the copying of

that identical thing. The patent is in defiance of this natural right.

It prohibits others from doing what has been already attempted. Every

one has a moral right to think what I think, or to perceive what I

perceive, or to do what I do—no matter whether he gets the hint from me

or independently of me. Discovery can give no right of ownership, for

whatever is discovered must have been already here to be discovered.

If a man make a wheelbarrow, or a book, or a picture, he has a moral

right to that particular wheelbarrow, or book, or picture, but no right

to ask that others be prevented from making similar things. Such a

prohibition, though given for the purpose of stimulating discovery and

invention, really in the long run operates as a check upon them.

CHAPTER IV.

INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS.

The grounds from which we have drawn the conclusion that the tax on

land values or rent is the best method of raising public revenues have

been admitted expressly or tacitly by all economists of standing, since

the determination of the nature and law of rent.

Ricardo says (Chap. X), “a tax on rent would fall wholly on landlords,

and could not be shifted to any class of consumers,” for it “would

leave unaltered the difference between the produce obtained from the

least productive land in cultivation and that obtained from land of

every other quality. * * * A tax on rent would not discourage the

cultivation of fresh land, for such land pays no rent and would be

untaxed.”

McCulloch (Note XXIV to “Wealth of Nations”) declares that “in a

practical point of view taxes on the rent of land are among the

most unjust and impolitic that can be imagined,” but he makes this

assertion solely on the ground of his assumption that it is practically

impossible to distinguish in taxation between the sum paid for the use

of the soil and that paid on account of the capital expended upon it.

But, supposing that this separation could be effected, he admits that

the sum paid to landlords for the use of the natural powers of the soil

might be entirely swept away by a tax without their having it in their

power to throw any portion of the burden upon any one else, and without

affecting the price of produce.

John Stuart Mill not only admits all this, but expressly declares the

expediency and justice of a peculiar tax on rent, asking what right

the landlords have to the accession of riches that comes to them from

the general progress of society without work, risk, or economizing on

their part, and although he expressly disapproves of interfering with

their claim to the present value of land, he proposes to take the whole

future increase as belonging to society by natural right.

Mrs. Fawcett, in the little compendium of the writings of her husband,

entitled “Political Economy for Beginners,” says: “The land tax,

whether small or great in amount, partakes of the nature of a rent paid

by the owner of land to the state. In a great part of India the land is

owned by the government and therefore the land tax is rent paid direct

to the state. The economic perfection of this system of tenure may be

readily perceived.”

In fact, that rent should, both on grounds of expediency and justice,

be the peculiar subject of taxation, is involved in the accepted

doctrine of rent, and may be found in embryo in the works of all

economists who have accepted the law of Ricardo. That these principles

have not been pushed to their necessary conclusions, as I have pushed

them, evidently arises from the indisposition to endanger or offend the

enormous interest involved in private ownership in land, and from the

false theories in regard to wages and the cause of poverty which have

dominated economic thought.

But there has been a school of economists who plainly perceived,

what is clear to the natural perceptions of men when uninfluenced

by habit—that the revenues of the common property, land, ought to

be appropriated to the common service. The French Economists of the

last century, headed by Quesnay and Turgot, proposed just what I

have proposed, that all taxation should be abolished save a tax upon

the value of land. As I am acquainted with the doctrines of Quesnay

and his disciples only at second hand through the medium of the

English writers, I am unable to say how far his peculiar ideas as to

agriculture being the only productive avocation, etc., are erroneous

apprehensions, or mere peculiarities of terminology. But of this I am

certain from the proposition in which his theory culminated—that he

saw the fundamental relation between land and labor which has since

been lost sight of, and that he arrived at practical truth, though,

it may be, through a course of defectively expressed reasoning. The

causes which leave in the hands of the landlord a “produce net” were

by the Physiocrats no better explained than the suction of a pump was

explained by the assumption that nature abhors a vacuum, but the fact

in its practical relations to social economy was recognized, and the

benefit which would result from the perfect freedom given to industry

and trade by a substitution of a tax on rent for all the impositions

which hamper and distort the application of labor was doubtless as

clearly seen by them as it is by me. One of the things most to be

regretted about the French Revolution is that it overwhelmed the

ideas of the Economists, just as they were gaining strength among

the thinking classes, and were apparently about to influence fiscal

legislation.

Without knowing anything of Quesnay or his doctrines, I have reached

the same practical conclusion by a route which cannot be disputed, and

have based it on grounds which cannot be questioned by the accepted

political economy.

The only objection to the tax on rent or land values which is to be

met with in standard politico-economic works is one which concedes

its advantages—for it is, that from the difficulty of separation, we

might, in taxing the rent of land, tax something else. McCulloch,

for instance, declares taxes on the rent of land to be impolitic

and unjust because the return received for the natural and inherent

powers of the soil cannot be clearly distinguished from the return

received from improvements and meliorations, which might thus be

discouraged. Macaulay somewhere says that if the admission of the

attraction of gravitation were inimical to any considerable pecuniary

interest, there would not be wanting arguments against gravitation—a

truth of which this objection is an illustration. For admitting

that it is impossible invariably to separate the value of land from

the value of improvements, is this necessity of continuing to tax

_some_ improvements any reason why we should continue to tax _all_

improvements? If it discourage production to tax values which labor and

capital have intimately combined with that of land, how much greater

discouragement is involved in taxing not only these, but all the

clearly distinguishable values which labor and capital create?

But, as a matter of fact, the value of land can always be readily

distinguished from the value of improvements. In countries like the

United States there is much valuable land that has never been improved;

and in many of the States the value of the land and the value of

improvements are habitually estimated separately by the assessors,

though afterward reunited under the term real estate. Nor where ground

has been occupied from immemorial times, is there any difficulty in

getting at the value of the bare land, for frequently the land is owned

by one person and the buildings by another, and when a fire occurs

and improvements are destroyed, a clear and definite value remains in

the land. In the oldest country in the world no difficulty whatever

can attend the separation, if all that be attempted is to separate

the value of the clearly distinguishable improvements, made within a

moderate period, from the value of the land, should they be destroyed.

This, manifestly, is all that justice or policy requires. Absolute

accuracy is impossible in any system, and to attempt to separate all

that the human race has done from what nature originally provided would

be as absurd as impracticable. A swamp drained or a hill terraced by

the Romans constitutes now as much a part of the natural advantages of

the British Isles as though the work had been done by earthquake or

glacier. The fact that after a certain lapse of time the value of such

permanent improvements would be considered as having lapsed into that

of the land, and would be taxed accordingly, could have no deterrent

effect on such improvements, for such works are frequently undertaken

upon leases for years. The fact is, that each generation builds and

improves for itself, and not for the remote future. And the further

fact is, that each generation is heir, not only to the natural powers

of the earth, but to all that remains of the work of past generations.

An objection of a different kind may however be made. It may be said

that where political power is diffused, it is highly desirable that

taxation should fall not on one class, such as land owners, but on

all; in order that all who exercise political power may feel a proper

interest in economical government. Taxation and representation, it will

be said, cannot safely be divorced.

But however desirable it may be to combine with political power the

consciousness of public burdens, the present system certainly does not

secure it. Indirect taxes are largely raised from those who pay little

or nothing consciously. In the United States the class is rapidly

growing who not only feel no interest in taxation, but who have no

concern in good government. In our large cities elections are in great

measure determined not by considerations of public interest, but by

such influences as determined elections in Rome when the masses had

ceased to care for anything but bread and the circus.

The effect of substituting for the manifold taxes now imposed a single

tax on the value of land would hardly lessen the number of conscious

taxpayers, for the division of land now held on speculation would

much increase the number of land holders. But it would so equalize

the distribution of wealth as to raise even the poorest above that

condition of abject poverty in which public considerations have no

weight; while it would at the same time cut down those overgrown

fortunes which raise their possessors above concern in government. The

dangerous classes politically are the very rich and very poor. It is

not the taxes that he is conscious of paying that gives a man a stake

in the country, an interest in its government; it is the consciousness

of feeling that he is an integral part of the community; that its

prosperity is his prosperity, and its disgrace his shame. Let but the

citizen feel this; let him be surrounded by all the influences that

spring from and cluster round a comfortable home, and the community may

rely upon him, even to limb or to life. Men do not vote patriotically,

any more than they fight patriotically, because of their payment of

taxes. Whatever conduces to the comfortable and independent material

condition of the masses will best foster public spirit, will make the

ultimate governing power more intelligent and more virtuous.

But it may be asked: If the tax on land values is so advantageous

a mode of raising revenue, how is it that so many other taxes are

resorted to in preference by all governments?

The answer is obvious: The tax on land values is the only tax of any

importance that does not distribute itself. It falls upon the owners of

land, and there is no way in which they can shift the burden upon any

one else. Hence, a large and powerful class are directly interested in

keeping down the tax on land values and substituting, as a means for

raising the required revenue, taxes on other things, just as the land

owners of England, two hundred years ago, succeeded in establishing

an excise, which fell on all consumers, for the dues under the feudal

tenures, which fell only on them.

There is, thus, a definite and powerful interest opposed to the

taxation of land values; but to the other taxes upon which modern

governments so largely rely there is no special opposition. The

ingenuity of statesmen has been exercised in devising schemes of

taxation which drain the wages of labor and the earnings of capital as

the vampire bat is said to suck the lifeblood of its victim. Nearly

all of these taxes are ultimately paid by that indefinable being, the

consumer; and he pays them in a way which does not call his attention

to the fact that he is paying a tax—pays them in such small amounts and

in such insidious modes that he does not notice it, and is not likely

to take the trouble to remonstrate effectually. Those who pay the money

directly to the tax collector are not only not interested in opposing a

tax which they so easily shift from their own shoulders, but are very

frequently interested in its imposition and maintenance, as are other

powerful interests which profit, or expect to profit, by the increase

of prices which such taxes bring about.

Nearly all of the manifold taxes by which the people of the United

States are now burdened have been imposed rather with a view to

private advantage than to the raising of revenue, and the great

obstacle to the simplification of taxation is these private interests,

whose representatives cluster in the lobby whenever a reduction of

taxation is proposed, to see that the taxes by which they profit are

not reduced. The fastening of a protective tariff upon the United

States has been due to these influences, and not to the acceptance of

absurd theories of protection upon their own merits. The large revenue

which the civil war rendered necessary was the golden opportunity of

these special interests, and taxes were piled up on every possible

thing, not so much to raise revenue as to enable particular classes

to participate in the advantages of tax-gathering and tax-pocketing.

And, since the war, these interested parties have constituted the

great obstacle to the reduction of taxation; those taxes which cost

the people least having, for this reason, been found easier to abolish

than those taxes which cost the people most. And, thus, even popular

governments, which have for their avowed principle the securing of

the greatest good to the greatest number, are, in a most important

function, used to secure a questionable good to a small number, at the

expense of a great evil to the many.

License taxes are generally favored by those on whom they are imposed,

as they tend to keep others from entering the business; imposts upon

manufactures are frequently grateful to large manufacturers for

similar reasons, as was seen in the opposition of the distillers to

the reduction of the whisky tax; duties on imports not only tend to

give certain producers special advantages, but accrue to the benefit

of importers or dealers who have large stocks on hand; and so, in the

case of all such taxes, there are particular interests, capable of

ready organization and concerted action, which favor the imposition of

the tax, while, in the case of a tax upon the value of land, there is a

solid and sensitive interest steadily and bitterly to oppose it.

But if once the truth which I am trying to make clear is understood by

the masses, it is easy to see how a union of political forces strong

enough to carry it into practice becomes possible.

BOOK IX.

EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY.

CHAPTER I.—OF THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH.

CHAPTER II.—OF THE EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND THENCE UPON PRODUCTION.

CHAPTER III.—OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES.

CHAPTER IV.—OF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WROUGHT IN SOCIAL

ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE.

I cannot play upon any stringed instrument; but I can tell you how of

a little village to make a great and glorious city.—_Themistocles._

* * * * *

Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the

brier shall come up the myrtle tree.

And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant

vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another

inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.—_Isaiah._

CHAPTER I.

OF THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH.

The elder Mirabeau, we are told, ranked the proposition of Quesnay, to

substitute one single tax on rent (the _impôt unique_) for all other

taxes, as a discovery equal in utility to the invention of writing or

the substitution of the use of money for barter.

To whomsoever will think over the matter, this saying will appear an

evidence of penetration rather than of extravagance. The advantages

which would be gained by substituting for the numerous taxes by

which the public revenues are now raised, a single tax levied upon

the value of land, will appear more and more important the more they

are considered. This is the secret which would transform the little

village into the great city. With all the burdens removed which now

oppress industry and hamper exchange, the production of wealth would

go on with a rapidity now undreamed of. This, in its turn, would lead

to an increase in the value of land—a new surplus which society might

take for general purposes. And released from the difficulties which

attend the collection of revenue in a way that begets corruption and

renders legislation the tool of special interests, society could assume

functions which the increasing complexity of life makes it desirable to

assume, but which the prospect of political demoralization under the

present system now leads thoughtful men to shrink from.

Consider the effect upon the production of wealth.

To abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting, now hampers every

wheel of exchange and presses upon every form of industry, would be

like removing an immense weight from a powerful spring. Imbued with

fresh energy, production would start into new life, and trade would

receive a stimulus which would be felt to the remotest arteries. The

present method of taxation operates upon exchange like artificial

deserts and mountains; it costs more to get goods through a custom

house than it does to carry them around the world. It operates upon

energy, and industry, and skill, and thrift, like a fine upon those

qualities. If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while

you have been contented to live in a hovel, the tax-gatherer now comes

annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry, by

taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am mulct,

while you are exempt. If a man build a ship we make him pay for his

temerity, as though he had done an injury to the state; if a railroad

be opened, down comes the tax-collector upon it, as though it were a

public nuisance; if a manufactory be erected we levy upon it an annual

sum which would go far toward making a handsome profit. We say we want

capital, but if any one accumulate it, or bring it among us, we charge

him for it as though we were giving him a privilege. We punish with a

tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we fine him

who puts up machinery, and him who drains a swamp. How heavily these

taxes burden production only those realize who have attempted to follow

our system of taxation through its ramifications, for, as I have before

said, the heaviest part of taxation is that which falls in increased

prices. But manifestly these taxes are in their nature akin to the

Egyptian Pasha’s tax upon date-trees. If they do not cause the trees to

be cut down, they at least discourage the planting.

To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of

taxation from productive industry. The needle of the seamstress and the

great manufactory; the cart-horse and the locomotive; the fishing boat

and the steamship; the farmer’s plow and the merchant’s stock, would be

alike untaxed. All would be free to make or to save, to buy or to sell,

unfined by taxes, unannoyed by the tax-gatherer. Instead of saying to

the producer, as it does now, “The more you add to the general wealth

the more shall you be taxed!” the state would say to the producer, “Be

as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose, you shall

have your full reward! You shall not be fined for making two blades of

grass grow where one grew before; you shall not be taxed for adding to

the aggregate wealth.”

And will not the community gain by thus refusing to kill the goose that

lays the golden eggs; by thus refraining from muzzling the ox that

treadeth out the corn; by thus leaving to industry, and thrift, and

skill, their natural reward, full and unimpaired? For there is to the

community also a natural reward. The law of society is, each for all,

as well as all for each. No one can keep to himself the good he may do,

any more than he can keep the bad. Every productive enterprise, besides

its return to those who undertake it, yields collateral advantages to

others. If a man plant a fruit-tree, his gain is that he gathers the

fruit in its time and season. But in addition to his gain, there is a

gain to the whole community. Others than the owner are benefited by

the increased supply of fruit; the birds which it shelters fly far and

wide; the rain which it helps to attract falls not alone on his field;

and, even to the eye which rests upon it from a distance, it brings a

sense of beauty. And so with everything else. The building of a house,

a factory, a ship, or a railroad, benefits others besides those who get

the direct profits. Nature laughs at a miser. He is like the squirrel

who buries his nuts and refrains from digging them up again. Lo! they

sprout and grow into trees. In fine linen, steeped in costly spices,

the mummy is laid away. Thousands and thousands of years thereafter,

the Bedouin cooks his food by a fire of its encasings, it generates the

steam by which the traveler is whirled on his way, or it passes into

far-off lands to gratify the curiosity of another race. The bee fills

the hollow tree with honey, and along comes the bear or the man.

Well may the community leave to the individual producer all that

prompts him to exertion; well may it let the laborer have the full

reward of his labor, and the capitalist the full return of his capital.

For the more that labor and capital produce, the greater grows the

common wealth in which all may share. And in the value or rent of land

is this general gain expressed in a definite and concrete form. Here

is a fund which the state may take while leaving to labor and capital

their full reward. With increased activity of production this would

commensurately increase.

And to shift the burden of taxation from production and exchange to the

value or rent of land would not merely be to give new stimulus to the

production of wealth; it would be to open new opportunities. For under

this system no one would care to hold land unless to use it, and land

now withheld from use would everywhere be thrown open to improvement.

The selling price of land would fall; land speculation would receive

its deathblow; land monopolization would no longer pay. Millions and

millions of acres from which settlers are now shut out by high prices

would be abandoned by their present owners or sold to settlers upon

nominal terms. And this not merely on the frontiers, but within what

are now considered well settled districts. Within a hundred miles of

San Francisco would be thus thrown open land enough to support, even

with present modes of cultivation, an agricultural population equal

to that now scattered from the Oregon boundary to the Mexican line—a

distance of 800 miles. In the same degree would this be true of most of

the Western States, and in a great degree of the older Eastern States,

for even in New York and Pennsylvania is population yet sparse as

compared with the capacity of the land. And even in densely populated

England would such a policy throw open to cultivation many hundreds

of thousands of acres now held as private parks, deer preserves, and

shooting grounds.

For this simple device of placing all taxes on the value of land would

be in effect putting up the land at auction to whomsoever would pay the

highest rent to the state. The demand for land fixes its value, and

hence, if taxes were placed so as very nearly to consume that value,

the man who wished to hold land without using it would have to pay very

nearly what it would be worth to any one who wanted to use it.

And it must be remembered that this would apply, not merely to

agricultural land, but to all land. Mineral land would be thrown open

to use, just as agricultural land; and in the heart of a city no one

could afford to keep land from its most profitable use, or on the

outskirts to demand more for it than the use to which it could at the

time be put would warrant. Everywhere that land had attained a value,

taxation, instead of operating, as now, as a fine upon improvement,

would operate to force improvement. Whoever planted an orchard, or

sowed a field, or built a house, or erected a manufactory, no matter

how costly, would have no more to pay in taxes than if he kept so much

land idle. The monopolist of agricultural land would be taxed as much

as though his land were covered with houses and barns, with crops and

with stock. The owner of a vacant city lot would have to pay as much

for the privilege of keeping other people off of it until he wanted

to use it, as his neighbor who has a fine house upon his lot. It would

cost as much to keep a row of tumble-down shanties upon valuable

land as though it were covered with a grand hotel or a pile of great

warehouses filled with costly goods.

Thus, the bonus that wherever labor is most productive must now be paid

before labor can be exerted would disappear. The farmer would not have

to pay out half his means, or mortgage his labor for years, in order

to obtain land to cultivate; the builder of a city homestead would not

have to lay out as much for a small lot as for the house he puts upon

it; the company that proposed to erect a manufactory would not have to

expend a great part of their capital for a site. And what would be paid

from year to year to the state would be in lieu of all the taxes now

levied upon improvements, machinery, and stock.

Consider the effect of such a change upon the labor market. Competition

would no longer be one-sided, as now. Instead of laborers competing

with each other for employment, and in their competition cutting down

wages to the point of bare subsistence, employers would everywhere be

competing for laborers, and wages would rise to the fair earnings of

labor. For into the labor market would have entered the greatest of

all competitors for the employment of labor, a competitor whose demand

cannot be satisfied until want is satisfied—the demand of labor itself.

The employers of labor would not have merely to bid against other

employers, all feeling the stimulus of greater trade and increased

profits, but against the ability of laborers to become their own

employers upon the natural opportunities freely opened to them by the

tax which prevented monopolization.

With natural opportunities thus free to labor; with capital and

improvements exempt from tax, and exchange released from restrictions,

the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labor into the things

they are suffering for would become impossible; the recurring paroxysms

which paralyze industry would cease; every wheel of production would

be set in motion; demand would keep pace with supply, and supply with

demand; trade would increase in every direction, and wealth augment on

every hand.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND THENCE UPON PRODUCTION.

But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a transference of

all public burdens to a tax upon the value of land cannot be fully

appreciated until we consider the effect upon the distribution of

wealth.

Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of wealth which

appears in all civilized countries, with a constant tendency to greater

and greater inequality as material progress goes on, we have found it

in the fact that, as civilization advances, the ownership of land, now

in private hands, gives a greater and greater power of appropriating

the wealth produced by labor and capital.

Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, direct and

indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent, would be, as far as it

went, to counteract this tendency to inequality, and, if it went so far

as to take in taxation the whole of rent, the cause of inequality would

be totally destroyed. Rent, instead of causing inequality, as now,

would then promote equality. Labor and capital would then receive the

whole produce, minus that portion taken by the state in the taxation of

land values, which, being applied to public purposes, would be equally

distributed in public benefits.

That is to say, the wealth produced in every community would be divided

into two portions. One part would be distributed in wages and interest

between individual producers, according to the part each had taken in

the work of production; the other part would go to the community as a

whole, to be distributed in public benefits to all its members. In

this all would share equally—the weak with the strong, young children

and decrepit old men, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, as well as

the vigorous. And justly so—for while one part represents the result

of individual effort in production, the other represents the increased

power with which the community as a whole aids the individual.

Thus, as material progress tends to increase rent, were rent taken by

the community for common purposes the very cause which now tends to

produce inequality as material progress goes on would then tend to

produce greater and greater equality. Fully to understand this effect,

let us revert to principles previously worked out.

We have seen that wages and interest must everywhere be fixed by the

rent line or margin of cultivation—that is to say, by the reward

which labor and capital can secure on land for which no rent is paid;

that the aggregate amount of wealth, which the aggregate of labor and

capital employed in production will receive, will be the amount of

wealth produced (or rather, when we consider taxes, the net amount),

minus what is taken as rent.

We have seen that with material progress, as it is at present going

on, there is a twofold tendency to the advance of rent. Both are to

the increase of the proportion of the wealth produced which goes as

rent, and to the decrease of the proportion which goes as wages and

interest. But the first, or natural tendency, which results from the

laws of social development, is to the increase of rent as a quantity,

without the reduction of wages and interest as quantities, or even with

their quantitative increase. The other tendency, which results from

the unnatural appropriation of land to private ownership, is to the

increase of rent as a quantity by the reduction of wages and interest

as quantities.

Now, it is evident that to take rent in taxation for public purposes,

which virtually abolishes private ownership in land, would be to

destroy the tendency to an absolute decrease in wages and interest, by

destroying the speculative monopolization of land and the speculative

increase in rent. It would be very largely to increase wages and

interest, by throwing open natural opportunities now monopolized and

reducing the price of land. Labor and capital would thus not merely

gain what is now taken from them in taxation, but would gain by the

positive decline in rent caused by the decrease in speculative land

values. A new equilibrium would be established, at which the common

rate of wages and interest would be much higher than now.

But this new equilibrium established, further advances in productive

power, and the tendency in this direction would be greatly accelerated,

would result in still increasing rent, not at the expense of wages and

interest, but by new gains in production, which, as rent would be taken

by the community for public uses, would accrue to the advantage of

every member of the community. Thus, as material progress went on, the

condition of the masses would constantly improve. Not merely one class

would become richer, but all would become richer; not merely one class

would have more of the necessaries, conveniences, and elegancies of

life, but all would have more. For, the increasing power of production,

which comes with increasing population, with every new discovery in

the productive arts, with every labor-saving invention, with every

extension and facilitation of exchanges, could be monopolized by none.

That part of the benefit which did not go directly to increase the

reward of labor and capital would go to the state—that is to say, to

the whole community. With all the enormous advantages, material and

mental, of a dense population, would be united the freedom and equality

that can now be found only in new and sparsely settled districts.

And, then, consider how equalization in the distribution of wealth

would react upon production, everywhere preventing waste, everywhere

increasing power.

If it were possible to express in figures the direct pecuniary loss

which society suffers from the social mal-adjustments which condemn

large classes to poverty and vice, the estimate would be appalling.

England maintains over a million paupers on official charity; the

city of New York alone spends over seven million dollars a year in a

similar way. But what is spent from public funds, what is spent by

charitable societies and what is spent in individual charity, would,

if aggregated, be but the first and smallest item in the account. The

potential earnings of the labor thus going to waste, the cost of the

reckless, improvident and idle habits thus generated; the pecuniary

loss, to consider nothing more, suggested by the appalling statistics

of mortality, and especially infant mortality, among the poorer

classes; the waste indicated by the gin palaces or low groggeries

which increase as poverty deepens; the damage done by the vermin

of society that are bred of poverty and destitution—the thieves,

prostitutes, beggars, and tramps; the cost of guarding society against

them, are all items in the sum which the present unjust and unequal

distribution of wealth takes from the aggregate which, with present

means of production, society might enjoy. Nor yet shall we have

completed the account. The ignorance and vice, the recklessness and

immorality engendered by the inequality in the distribution of wealth

show themselves in the imbecility and corruption of government; and the

waste of public revenues, and the still greater waste involved in the

ignorant and corrupt abuse of public powers and functions, are their

legitimate consequences.

But the increase in wages, and the opening of new avenues of employment

which would result from the appropriation of rent to public purposes,

would not merely stop these wastes and relieve society of these

enormous losses; new power would be added to labor. It is but a truism

that labor is most productive where its wages are largest. Poorly paid

labor is inefficient labor, the world over.

What is remarked between the efficiency of labor in the agricultural

districts of England where different rates of wages prevail; what

Brassey noticed as between the work done by his better paid English

navvies and that done by the worse paid labor of the continent; what

was evident in the United States as between slave labor and free

labor; what is seen by the astonishing number of mechanics or servants

required in India or China to get anything done, is universally true.

The efficiency of labor always increases with the habitual wages of

labor—for high wages mean increased self-respect, intelligence, hope,

and energy. Man is not a machine, that will do so much and no more; he

is not an animal, whose powers may reach thus far and no further. It is

mind, not muscle, which is the great agent of production. The physical

power evolved in the human frame is one of the weakest of forces, but

for the human intelligence the resistless currents of nature flow, and

matter becomes plastic to the human will. To increase the comforts,

and leisure, and independence of the masses is to increase their

intelligence; it is to bring the brain to the aid of the hand; it is

to engage in the common work of life the faculty which measures the

animalcule and traces the orbits of the stars!

Who can say to what infinite powers the wealth-producing capacity

of labor may not be raised by social adjustments which will give

to the producers of wealth their fair proportion of its advantages

and enjoyments! With present processes the gain would be simply

incalculable, but just as wages are high, so do the invention and

utilization of improved processes and machinery go on with greater

rapidity and ease. That the wheat crops of Southern Russia are

still reaped with the scythe and beaten out with the flail is simply

because wages are there so low. American invention, American aptitude

for labor-saving processes and machinery are the result of the

comparatively high wages that have prevailed in the United States. Had

our producers been condemned to the low reward of the Egyptian fellah

or Chinese coolie, we would be drawing water by hand and transporting

goods on the shoulders of men. The increase in the reward of labor and

capital would still further stimulate invention and hasten the adoption

of improved processes, and these would truly appear, what in themselves

they really are—an unmixed good. The injurious effects of labor-saving

machinery upon the working classes, that are now so often apparent, and

that, in spite of all argument, make so many people regard machinery as

an evil instead of a blessing, would disappear. Every new power engaged

in the service of man would improve the condition of all. And from the

general intelligence and mental activity springing from this general

improvement of condition would come new developments of power of which

we as yet cannot dream.

But I shall not deny, and do not wish to lose sight of the fact, that

while thus preventing waste and thus adding to the efficiency of labor,

the equalization in the distribution of wealth that would result from

the simple plan of taxation that I propose, must lessen the intensity

with which wealth is pursued. It seems to me that in a condition of

society in which no one need fear poverty, no one would desire great

wealth—at least, no one would take the trouble to strive and to strain

for it as men do now. For, certainly, the spectacle of men who have

only a few years to live, slaving away their time for the sake of dying

rich, is in itself so unnatural and absurd, that in a state of society

where the abolition of the fear of want had dissipated the envious

admiration with which the masses of men now regard the possession of

great riches, whoever would toil to acquire more than he cared to use

would be looked upon as we would now look on a man who would thatch

his head with half a dozen hats, or walk around in the hot sun with an

overcoat on. When every one is sure of being able to get enough, no one

will care to make a pack-horse of himself.

And though this incentive to production be withdrawn, can we not

spare it? Whatever may have been its office in an earlier stage

of development, it is not needed now. The dangers that menace

our civilization do not come from the weakness of the springs of

production. What it suffers from, and what, if a remedy be not applied,

it must die from, is unequal distribution!

Nor would the removal of this incentive, regarded only from the

standpoint of production, be an unmixed loss. For, that the aggregate

of production is greatly reduced by the greed with which riches are

pursued, is one of the most obtrusive facts of modern society. While,

were this insane desire to get rich at any cost lessened, mental

activities now devoted to scraping together riches would be translated

into far higher spheres of usefulness.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES.

When it is first proposed to put all taxes upon the value of land, and

thus confiscate rent, all land holders are likely to take the alarm,

and there will not be wanting appeals to the fears of small farm and

homestead owners, who will be told that this is a proposition to rob

them of their hard-earned property. But a moment’s reflection will show

that this proposition should commend itself to all whose interests

as land holders do not largely exceed their interests as laborers or

capitalists, or both. And further consideration will show that though

the large land holders may lose relatively, yet even in their case

there will be an absolute gain. For, the increase in production will

be so great that labor and capital will gain very much more than will

be lost to private land ownership, while in these gains, and in the

greater ones involved in a more healthy social condition, the whole

community, including the land owners themselves, will share.

In a preceding chapter I have gone over the question of what is due to

the present land holders, and have shown that they have no claim to

compensation. But there is still another ground on which we may dismiss

all idea of compensation. They will not really be injured.

It is manifest, of course, that the change I propose will greatly

benefit all those who live by wages, whether of hand or of

head—laborers, operatives, mechanics, clerks, professional men of

all sorts. It is manifest, also, that it will benefit all those

who live partly by wages and partly by the earnings of their

capital—storekeepers, merchants, manufacturers, employing or

undertaking producers and exchangers of all sorts—from the peddler or

drayman to the railroad or steamship owner—and it is likewise manifest

that it will increase the incomes of those whose incomes are drawn from

the earnings of capital, or from investments other than in lands, save

perhaps the holders of government bonds or other securities bearing

fixed rates of interest, which will probably depreciate in selling

value, owing to the rise in the general rate of interest, though the

income from them will remain the same.

Take, now, the case of the homestead owner—the mechanic, storekeeper,

or professional man who has secured himself a house and lot, where he

lives, and which he contemplates with satisfaction as a place from

which his family cannot be ejected in case of his death. He will not

be injured; on the contrary, he will be the gainer. The selling value

of his lot will diminish—theoretically it will entirely disappear. But

its usefulness to him will not disappear. It will serve his purpose as

well as ever. While, as the value of all other lots will diminish or

disappear in the same ratio, he retains the same security of always

having a lot that he had before. That is to say, he is a loser only

as the man who has bought himself a pair of boots may be said to be a

loser by a subsequent fall in the price of boots. His boots will be

just as useful to him, and the next pair of boots he can get cheaper.

So, to the homestead owner, his lot will be as useful, and should he

look forward to getting a larger lot, or having his children, as they

grow up, get homesteads of their own, he will, even in the matter of

lots, be the gainer. And in the present, other things considered,

he will be much the gainer. For though he will have more taxes to

pay upon his land, he will be released from taxes upon his house and

improvements, upon his furniture and personal property, upon all that

he and his family eat, drink, and wear, while his earnings will be

largely increased by the rise of wages, the constant employment, and

the increased briskness of trade. His only loss will be, if he wants

to sell his lot without getting another, and this will be a small loss

compared with the great gain.

And so with the farmer. I speak not now of the farmers who never touch

the handles of a plow, who cultivate thousands of acres and enjoy

incomes like those of the rich Southern planters before the war; but

of the working farmers who constitute such a large class in the United

States—men who own small farms, which they cultivate with the aid of

their boys, and perhaps some hired help, and who in Europe would be

called peasant proprietors. Paradoxical as it may appear to these

men until they understand the full bearings of the proposition, of

all classes above that of the mere laborer they have most to gain by

placing all taxes upon the value of land. That they do not now get as

good a living as their hard work ought to give them, they generally

feel, though they may not be able to trace the cause. The fact is that

taxation, as now levied, falls on them with peculiar severity. They are

taxed on all their improvements—houses, barns, fences, crops, stock.

The personal property which they have cannot be as readily concealed

or undervalued as can the more valuable kinds which are concentrated

in the cities. They are not only taxed on personal property and

improvements, which the owners of unused land escape, but their land

is generally taxed at a higher rate than land held on speculation,

simply because it is improved. But further than this, all taxes imposed

on commodities, and especially the taxes which, like our protective

duties, are imposed with a view of raising the prices of commodities,

fall on the farmer without mitigation. For in a country like the

United States, which exports agricultural produce, the farmer cannot be

protected. Whoever gains, he must lose. Some years ago the Free Trade

League of New York published a broadside containing cuts of various

articles of necessity marked with the duties imposed by the tariff, and

which read something in this wise: “The farmer rises in the morning

and draws on his pantaloons taxed 40 per cent. and his boots taxed 30

per cent., striking a light with a match taxed 200 per cent.,” and so

on, following him through the day and through life, until, killed by

taxation, he is lowered into the grave with a rope taxed 45 per cent.

This is but a graphic illustration of the manner in which such taxes

ultimately fall. The farmer would be a great gainer by the substitution

of a single tax upon the value of land for all these taxes, for the

taxation of land values would fall with greatest weight, not upon the

agricultural districts, where land values are comparatively small, but

upon the towns and cities where land values are high; whereas taxes

upon personal property and improvements fall as heavily in the country

as in the city. And in sparsely settled districts there would be hardly

any taxes at all for the farmer to pay. For taxes, being levied upon

the value of the bare land, would fall as heavily upon unimproved as

upon improved land. Acre for acre, the improved and cultivated farm,

with its buildings, fences, orchard, crops, and stock could be taxed

no more than unused land of equal quality. The result would be that

speculative values would be kept down, and that cultivated and improved

farms would have no taxes to pay until the country around them had been

well settled. In fact, paradoxical as it may at first seem to them,

the effect of putting all taxation upon the value of land would be to

relieve the harder working farmers of all taxation.

But the great gain of the working farmer can be seen only when the

effect upon the distribution of population is considered. The

destruction of speculative land values would tend to diffuse population

where it is too dense and to concentrate it where it is too sparse; to

substitute for the tenement house, homes surrounded by gardens, and

fully to settle agricultural districts before people were driven far

from neighbors to look for land. The people of the cities would thus

get more of the pure air and sunshine of the country, the people of the

country more of the economies and social life of the city. If, as is

doubtless the case, the application of machinery tends to large fields,

agricultural population will assume the primitive form and cluster in

villages. The life of the average farmer is now unnecessarily dreary.

He is not only compelled to work early and late, but he is cut off by

the sparseness of population from the conveniences, the amusements, the

educational facilities, and the social and intellectual opportunities

that come with the closer contact of man with man. He would be far

better off in all these respects, and his labor would be far more

productive, if he and those around him held no more land than they

wanted to use.[56] While his children, as they grew up, would neither

be so impelled to seek the excitement of a city nor would they be

driven so far away to seek farms of their own. Their means of living

would be in their own hands, and at home.

In short, the working farmer is both a laborer and a capitalist, as

well as a land owner, and it is by his labor and capital that his

living is made. His loss would be nominal; his gain would be real and

great.

In varying degrees is this true of all land holders. Many land

holders are laborers of one sort or another. And it would be hard to

find a land owner not a laborer, who is not also a capitalist—while

the general rule is, that the larger the land owner the greater the

capitalist. So true is this that in common thought the characters are

confounded. Thus to put all taxes on the value of land, while it would

be largely to reduce all great fortunes, would in no case leave the

rich man penniless. The Duke of Westminster, who owns a considerable

part of the site of London, is probably the richest land owner in the

world. To take all his ground rents by taxation would largely reduce

his enormous income, but would still leave him his buildings and all

the income from them, and doubtless much personal property in various

other shapes. He would still have all he could by any possibility

enjoy, and a much better state of society in which to enjoy it.

So would the Astors of New York remain very rich. And so, I think, it

will be seen throughout—this measure would make no one poorer but such

as could be made a great deal poorer without being really hurt. It

would cut down great fortunes, but it would impoverish no one.

Wealth would not only be enormously increased; it would be equally

distributed. I do not mean that each individual would get the same

amount of wealth. That would not be equal distribution, so long as

different individuals have different powers and different desires.

But I mean that wealth would be distributed in accordance with the

degree in which the industry, skill, knowledge, or prudence of each

contributed to the common stock. The great cause which concentrates

wealth in the hands of those who do not produce, and takes it from the

hands of those who do, would be gone. The inequalities that continued

to exist would be those of nature, not the artificial inequalities

produced by the denial of natural law. The non-producer would no longer

roll in luxury while the producer got but the barest necessities of

animal existence.

The monopoly of the land gone, there need be no fear of large fortunes.

For then the riches of any individual must consist of wealth, properly

so-called—of wealth, which is the product of labor, and which

constantly tends to dissipation, for national debts, I imagine, would

not long survive the abolition of the system from which they spring.

All fear of great fortunes might be dismissed, for when every one gets

what he fairly earns, no one can get more than he fairly earns. How

many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Besides the enormous increase in the productive power of labor

which would result from the better distribution of population, there

would be also a similar economy in the productive power of land. The

concentration of population in cities fed by the exhaustive cultivation

of large, sparsely populated areas, results in a literal draining into

the sea of the elements of fertility. How enormous this waste is may

be seen from the calculations that have been made as to the sewage of

our cities, and its practical result is to be seen in the diminishing

productiveness of agriculture in large sections. In a great part of the

United States we are steadily exhausting our lands.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WROUGHT IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL

LIFE.

We are dealing only with general principles. There are some matters

of detail—such as those arising from the division of revenues between

local and general governments—which upon application of these

principles would come up, but these it is not necessary here to

discuss. When once principles are settled, details will be readily

adjusted.

Nor without too much elaboration is it possible to notice all the

changes which would be wrought, or would become possible, by a change

which would readjust the very foundation of society, but to some main

features let me call attention.

Noticeable among these is the great simplicity which would become

possible in government. To collect taxes, to prevent and punish

evasions, to check and countercheck revenues drawn from so many

distinct sources, now make up probably three-fourths, perhaps

seven-eighths of the business of government, outside of the

preservation of order, the maintenance of the military arm, and the

administration of justice. An immense and complicated network of

governmental machinery would thus be dispensed with.

In the administration of justice there would be a like saving of

strain. Much of the civil business of our courts arises from disputes

as to ownership of land. These would cease when the state was virtually

acknowledged as the sole owner of land, and all occupiers became

practically rent-paying tenants. The growth of morality consequent

upon the cessation of want would tend to a like diminution in other

civil business of the courts, which could be hastened by the adoption

of the common sense proposition of Bentham to abolish all laws for

the collection of debts and the enforcement of private contracts. The

rise of wages, the opening of opportunities for all to make an easy

and comfortable living, would at once lessen and would soon eliminate

from society the thieves, swindlers, and other classes of criminals who

spring from the unequal distribution of wealth. Thus the administration

of the criminal law, with all its paraphernalia of policemen,

detectives, prisons, and penitentiaries, would, like the administration

of the civil law, cease to make such a drain upon the vital force and

attention of society. We should get rid, not only of many judges,

bailiffs, clerks and prison keepers, but of the great host of lawyers

who are now maintained at the expense of producers; and talent now

wasted in legal subtleties would be turned to higher pursuits.

The legislative, judicial, and executive functions of government would

in this way be vastly simplified. Nor can I think that the public

debts and the standing armies, which are historically the outgrowth

of the change from feudal to allodial tenures, would long remain

after the reversion to the old idea that the land of a country is the

common right of the people of the country. The former could readily be

paid off by a tax that would not lessen the wages of labor nor check

production, and the latter the growth of intelligence and independence

among the masses, aided, perhaps, by the progress of invention, which

is revolutionizing the military art, must soon cause to disappear.

Society would thus approach the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, the

promised land of Herbert Spencer, the abolition of government. But of

government only as a directing and repressive power. It would at the

same time, and in the same degree, become possible for it to realize

the dream of socialism. All this simplification and abrogation of the

present functions of government would make possible the assumption

of certain other functions which are now pressing for recognition.

Government could take upon itself the transmission of messages by

telegraph, as well as by mail; of building and operating railroads,

as well as of opening and maintaining common roads. With present

functions so simplified and reduced, functions such as these could be

assumed without danger or strain, and would be under the supervision

of public attention, which is now distracted. There would be a great

and increasing surplus revenue from the taxation of land values, for

material progress, which would go on with greatly accelerated rapidity,

would tend constantly to increase rent. This revenue arising from

the common property could be applied to the common benefit, as were

the revenues of Sparta. We might not establish public tables—they

would be unnecessary; but we could establish public baths, museums,

libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and dancing halls, theaters,

universities, technical schools, shooting galleries, play grounds,

gymnasiums, etc. Heat, light, and motive power, as well as water,

might be conducted through our streets at public expense; our roads

be lined with fruit trees; discoverers and inventors rewarded,

scientific investigations supported; and in a thousand ways the

public revenues made to foster efforts for the public benefit. We

should reach the ideal of the socialist, but not through governmental

repression. Government would change its character, and would become the

administration of a great co-operative society. It would become merely

the agency by which the common property was administered for the common

benefit.

Does this seem impracticable? Consider for a moment the vast changes

that would be wrought in social life by a change which would assure to

labor its full reward; which would banish want and the fear of want;

and give to the humblest freedom to develop in natural symmetry.

In thinking of the possibilities of social organization, we are apt to

assume that greed is the strongest of human motives, and that systems

of administration can be safely based only upon the idea that the fear

of punishment is necessary to keep men honest—that selfish interests

are always stronger than general interests. Nothing could be further

from the truth.

From whence springs this lust for gain, to gratify which men tread

everything pure and noble under their feet; to which they sacrifice all

the higher possibilities of life; which converts civility into a hollow

pretense, patriotism into a sham, and religion into hypocrisy; which

makes so much of civilized existence an Ishmaelitish warfare, of which

the weapons are cunning and fraud?

Does it not spring from the existence of want? Carlyle somewhere

says that poverty is the hell of which the modern Englishman is most

afraid. And he is right. Poverty is the open-mouthed, relentless hell

which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough. The

Vedas declare no truer thing than when the wise crow Bushanda tells

the eagle-bearer of Vishnu that the keenest pain is in poverty. For

poverty is not merely deprivation; it means shame, degradation; the

searing of the most sensitive parts of our moral and mental nature as

with hot irons; the denial of the strongest impulses and the sweetest

affections; the wrenching of the most vital nerves. You love your wife,

you love your children; but would it not be easier to see them die than

to see them reduced to the pinch of want in which large classes in

every highly civilized community live? The strongest of animal passions

is that with which we cling to life, but it is an everyday occurrence

in civilized societies for men to put poison to their mouths or pistols

to their heads from fear of poverty, and for one who does this there

are probably a hundred who have the desire, but are restrained by

instinctive shrinking, by religious considerations, or by family ties.

From this hell of poverty, it is but natural that men should make

every effort to escape. With the impulse to self-preservation and

self-gratification combine nobler feelings, and love as well as fear

urges in the struggle. Many a man does a mean thing, a dishonest thing,

a greedy and grasping and unjust thing, in the effort to place above

want, or the fear of want, mother or wife or children.

And out of this condition of things arises a public opinion which

enlists, as an impelling power in the struggle to grasp and to keep,

one of the strongest—perhaps with many men the very strongest—springs

of human action. The desire for approbation, the feeling that urges

us to win the respect, admiration, or sympathy of our fellows, is

instinctive and universal. Distorted sometimes into the most abnormal

manifestations, it may yet be everywhere perceived. It is potent

with the veriest savage, as with the most highly cultivated member

of the most polished society; it shows itself with the first gleam

of intelligence, and persists to the last breath. It triumphs over

the love of ease, over the sense of pain, over the dread of death. It

dictates the most trivial and the most important actions.

The child just beginning to toddle or to talk will make new efforts

as its cunning little tricks excite attention and laughter; the dying

master of the world gathers his robes around him, that he may pass

away as becomes a king; Chinese mothers will deform their daughters’

feet by cruel stocks, European women will sacrifice their own comfort

and the comfort of their families to similar dictates of fashion; the

Polynesian, that he may excite admiration by his beautiful tattoo,

will hold himself still while his flesh is torn by sharks’ teeth; the

North American Indian, tied to the stake, will bear the most fiendish

tortures without a moan, and, that he may be respected and admired as

a great brave, will taunt his tormentors to new cruelties. It is this

that leads the forlorn hope; it is this that trims the lamp of the pale

student; it is this that impels men to strive, to strain, to toil, and

to die. It is this that raised the pyramids and that fired the Ephesian

dome.

Now, men admire what they desire. How sweet to the storm-stricken seems

the safe harbor; food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, warmth to

the shivering, rest to the weary, power to the weak, knowledge to him

in whom the intellectual yearnings of the soul have been aroused. And

thus the sting of want and the fear of want make men admire above all

things the possession of riches, and to become wealthy is to become

respected, and admired, and influential. Get money—honestly, if you

can, but at any rate get money! This is the lesson that society is

daily and hourly dinning in the ears of its members. Men instinctively

admire virtue and truth, but the sting of want and the fear of want

make them even more strongly admire the rich and sympathize with the

fortunate. It is well to be honest and just, and men will commend it;

but he who by fraud and injustice gets him a million dollars will have

more respect, and admiration, and influence, more eye service and lip

service, if not heart service, than he who refuses it. The one may have

his reward in the future; he may know that his name is writ in the

Book of Life, and that for him is the white robe and the palm branch

of the victor against temptation; but the other has his reward in the

present. His name is writ in the list of “our substantial citizens;”

he has the courtship of men and the flattery of women; the best pew

in the church and the personal regard of the eloquent clergyman who

in the name of Christ preaches the Gospel of Dives, and tones down

into a meaningless flower of Eastern speech the stern metaphor of the

camel and the needle’s eye. He may be a patron of arts, a Mæcenas to

men of letters; may profit by the converse of the intelligent, and be

polished by the attrition of the refined. His alms may feed the poor,

and help the struggling, and bring sunshine into desolate places; and

noble public institutions commemorate, after he is gone, his name and

his fame. It is not in the guise of a hideous monster, with horns and

tail, that Satan tempts the children of men, but as an angel of light.

His promises are not alone of the kingdoms of the world, but of mental

and moral principalities and powers. He appeals not only to the animal

appetites, but to the cravings that stir in man because he is more than

an animal.

Take the case of those miserable “men with muckrakes,” who are to be

seen in every community as plainly as Bunyan saw their type in his

vision—who, long after they have accumulated wealth enough to satisfy

every desire, go on working, scheming, striving to add riches to

riches. It was the desire “to be something;” nay, in many cases, the

desire to do noble and generous deeds, that started them on a career of

money getting. And what compels them to it long after every possible

need is satisfied, what urges them still with unsatisfied and ravenous

greed, is not merely the force of tyrannous habit, but the subtler

gratifications which the possession of riches gives—the sense of power

and influence, the sense of being looked up to and respected, the sense

that their wealth not merely raises them above want, but makes them men

of mark in the community in which they live. It is this that makes the

rich man so loath to part with his money, so anxious to get more.

Against temptations that thus appeal to the strongest impulses of our

nature, the sanctions of law and the precepts of religion can effect

but little; and the wonder is, not that men are so self-seeking, but

that they are not much more so. That under present circumstances men

are not more grasping, more unfaithful, more selfish than they are,

proves the goodness and fruitfulness of human nature, the ceaseless

flow of the perennial fountains from which its moral qualities are fed.

All of us have mothers; most of us have children, and so faith, and

purity, and unselfishness can never be utterly banished from the world,

howsoever bad be social adjustments.

But whatever is potent for evil may be made potent for good. The change

I have proposed would destroy the conditions that distort impulses in

themselves beneficent, and would transmute the forces which now tend to

disintegrate society into forces which would tend to unite and purify

it.

Give labor a free field and its full earnings; take for the benefit

of the whole community that fund which the growth of the community

creates, and want and the fear of want would be gone. The springs of

production would be set free, and the enormous increase of wealth would

give the poorest ample comfort. Men would no more worry about finding

employment than they worry about finding air to breathe; they need

have no more care about physical necessities than do the lilies of the

field. The progress of science, the march of invention, the diffusion

of knowledge, would bring their benefits to all.

With this abolition of want and the fear of want, the admiration of

riches would decay, and men would seek the respect and approbation

of their fellows in other modes than by the acquisition and display

of wealth. In this way there would be brought to the management of

public affairs, and the administration of common funds, the skill, the

attention, the fidelity, and integrity that can now be secured only

for private interests, and a railroad or gas works might be operated

on public account, not only more economically and efficiently than

as at present, under joint stock management, but as economically and

efficiently as would be possible under a single ownership. The prize

of the Olympian games, that called forth the most strenuous exertions

of all Greece, was but a wreath of wild olive; for a bit of ribbon men

have over and over again performed services no money could have bought.

Shortsighted is the philosophy which counts on selfishness as the

master motive of human action. It is blind to facts of which the world

is full. It sees not the present, and reads not the past aright. If

you would move men to action, to what shall you appeal? Not to their

pockets, but to their patriotism; not to selfishness, but to sympathy.

Self-interest is, as it were, a mechanical force—potent, it is true;

capable of large and wide results. But there is in human nature

what may be likened to a chemical force; which melts and fuses and

overwhelms; to which nothing seems impossible. “All that a man hath

will he give for his life”—that is self-interest. But in loyalty to

higher impulses men will give even life.

It is not selfishness that enriches the annals of every people with

heroes and saints. It is not selfishness that on every page of the

world’s history bursts out in sudden splendor of noble deeds or sheds

the soft radiance of benignant lives. It was not selfishness that

turned Gautama’s back to his royal home or bade the Maid of Orleans

lift the sword from the altar; that held the Three Hundred in the Pass

of Thermopylæ, or gathered into Winkelried’s bosom the sheaf of spears;

that chained Vincent de Paul to the bench of the galley, or brought

little starving children, during the Indian famine, tottering to the

relief stations with yet weaker starvelings in their arms. Call it

religion, patriotism, sympathy, the enthusiasm for humanity, or the

love of God—give it what name you will; there is yet a force which

overcomes and drives out selfishness; a force which is the electricity

of the moral universe; a force beside which all others are weak.

Everywhere that men have lived it has shown its power, and to-day, as

ever, the world is full of it. To be pitied is the man who has never

seen and never felt it. Look around! among common men and women, amid

the care and the struggle of daily life, in the jar of the noisy street

and amid the squalor where want hides—every here and there is the

darkness lighted with the tremulous play of its lambent flames. He who

has not seen it has walked with shut eyes. He who looks may see, as

says Plutarch, that “the soul has a principle of kindness in itself,

and is born to love, as well as to perceive, think, or remember.”

And this force of forces—that now goes to waste or assumes perverted

forms—we may use for the strengthening, and building up, and ennobling

of society, if we but will, just as we now use physical forces that

once seemed but powers of destruction. All we have to do is but to

give it freedom and scope. The wrong that produces inequality; the

wrong that in the midst of abundance tortures men with want or harries

them with the fear of want; that stunts them physically, degrades them

intellectually, and distorts them morally, is what alone prevents

harmonious social development. For “all that is from the gods is full

of providence. We are made for co-operation—like feet, like hands, like

eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.”

There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any

better state of society than that which now exists—who imagine that the

idea that there could be a state of society in which greed would be

banished, prisons stand empty, individual interests be subordinated to

general interests, and no one seek to rob or to oppress his neighbor,

is but the dream of impracticable dreamers, for whom these practical

level-headed men, who pride themselves on recognizing facts as they

are, have a hearty contempt. But such men—though some of them write

books, and some of them occupy the chairs of universities, and some of

them stand in pulpits—do not think.

If they were accustomed to dine in such eating houses as are to be

found in the lower quarters of London and Paris, where the knives

and forks are chained to the table, they would deem it the natural,

ineradicable disposition of man to carry off the knife and fork with

which he has eaten.

Take a company of well-bred men and women dining together. There is

no struggling for food, no attempt on the part of any one to get

more than his neighbor; no attempt to gorge or to carry off. On the

contrary, each one is anxious to help his neighbor before he partakes

himself; to offer to others the best rather than pick it out for

himself; and should any one show the slightest disposition to prefer

the gratification of his own appetite to that of the others, or in any

way to act the pig or pilferer, the swift and heavy penalty of social

contempt and ostracism would show how such conduct is reprobated by

common opinion.