When it is decided by our authorities that a new city shall be built
to meet the requirements of increasing numbers, and to establish that
convenient co-operation in branches of industry and trade which close
association affords, its location is left entirely to the judgment of a
board of government officers, of sanitary and civil engineering skill.
If, as is frequently the case, the proposed site is already occupied
by one or more tenants in rural pursuits, they are scrupulously
indemnified in all losses which result from their dispossession.
I wish to impress upon you here, that a tenant, under our government,
has even greater security of possession than your land owners.
The prevailing sense of justice, and a widespread interest, have
established the right of a renter to hold and enjoy, against all
competition, his allotment during his life. He has also the right,
under our custom, to convey its possession by will; and it is more
generally the case on our planet than on yours, that a piece of land
is held for generations in the same family. Our government exercises
some rights of interference, to the end that the size of a farm shall
conform, as near as possible, to such dimensions as to employ no great
excess of labor over that capable of being supplied by the family of
the occupant. In a general way, the tenant enjoys the same rights of
ownership which are held by your individual holders in fee, except that
he cannot convey title, and does not take to himself any emolument
arising from increased value. His rent is simply an equivalent to
your tax, with the very important difference, that its amount depends
entirely on the season’s productiveness, and is never a burden.
Once decided upon, the proposed city becomes the subject of universal
interest. Its plans are submitted and approved, just as your proposals
for a single edifice. All its parts must conform with each other; the
choice of its location chiefly depends upon drainage and water supply,
and it possesses these advantages in the highest perfection. Every
house must be erected in conformity with rules. Work is commenced by
the erection of public buildings in the center, and the laying of
drain, water, heat and electric conduits through its newly surveyed
streets. People come to it, as they come to your new cities, for the
purpose of gain in trade and industry, and locate themselves as they
choose under a fixed and uniform land rental. They erect edifices as
you do, varying them as they like in their internal structure, but
strictly conforming in their outer elevations to the style adopted
by our architectural commission, which supervises also the material
employed, and the safety and durability of the work. Any disreputable
or depraved quarter is of course impossible under this plan; nor could
such an encouragement and propagation of crime exist in one of our
cities, as they do in yours, even had we the class of tenants to people
them. It must be charged among the evils of your landlordism, that it
not only promotes vice through its tendency to impoverish your masses,
but is ready at all times to multiply it, by affording quarters for
convenient association.
The spectacle of our city in course of construction is very different
from yours. The government has set aside, what may be computed in
your way as millions of money for the institution of various works
designed for the health and comfort of the new population, and people
are arriving in thousands from all quarters to do the work. Every one
of them is impressed with that feeling and interest which can only
arise from ownership, and there is not a single one of them who is not
performing some of the work. No one of them has a hope for honor and
wealth by getting a monopoly of the land. No rich man comes with his
accumulations to get a perpetual lien upon the industries that are
just now springing up, and to hold for himself and his descendants the
privilege of exacting daily for all time a larger share of the earnings
of labor than your slaveholders derive from their human chattels. All
choose to work, because it is both honorable and profitable to do so,
and also because it is a duty, the conscious fulfillment of which is
attended with a feeling of happiness.
The systematic and regular use of the voluntary muscles, without
excessive fatigue, has not only an important influence on health, but
assists as well to develop perfect and well rounded brains, out of
which can only come those evenly balanced minds which create, out of
the power of intelligence, the blessings of human progress; whence only
come those level headed men, who are distinguished among yourselves
as being never wholly the product of learning. It is an axiom with
us, that he who does not produce has no right to consume, and this
doctrine has been so carried out in our society that physical inertia,
no matter how much attended with wealth, is exceedingly rare. As a
consequence, affluence with us is not beset with the terrible penalties
of ill health. The muscular body in all conditions of life is made to
act with the brain and nerves.
We shall suppose, now, our city has reached a period of its growth
equal in time to your decade. Its grand temple is not quite completed.
Its streets stretch away in the distance, none of them narrower than
a hundred of your feet, and some of them more than twice as wide,
to accommodate the airships and the larger warehouses. The lines of
uniform house fronts, relieved on the street corners by elevated
towers, reach out sufficiently far into the gradually changing suburbs
to give a hint of the long and beautiful perspectives that are to come.
From the center outwards there are reserved, at intervals of about a
half mile, spaces corresponding with the area of two blocks, which make
a circular belt around the whole. These are cultivated and embellished
in the highest style of gardening and landscape art. Here are located
our public baths, statues, monuments, conservatories, and arenas for
athletic sports. These pleasure grounds, so convenient and accessible,
diversify our city life with a taste and flavor of the country. Our
city grows in a solid expansion. There are no straggling suburbs, like
yours. Blocks are erected together, and always in continuation of the
appropriated space adjoining them. The intercourse and demeanor of our
population are, as you may expect, unlike yours. The general air of
serenity and contentment, the uniform politeness, and the absence of
degradation, with its frequent unpleasant and disgraceful episodes,
mark the difference between your city population and ours.
It concerns us most, however, to make a comparison of our wealth
producing agencies, and the channels of their distribution, and for
this purpose we shall take our metropolis as it stands in its maturity.
It contains, now, like your city of advanced growth, about three
hundred thousand inhabitants. Its land rentals have been subjected
to constant modification, and are in some places very much higher
than they were at first. In certain localities, where trade has
concentrated, the public fund has been increased by a considerable
advance of rent to store keepers, but there is no exorbitant demand
of rent for such favored places as there is with you. The purpose
of rent with us being only to meet the expenses of government, its
total is limited; and consequently, while in the mercantile and trade
districts, where wealth and capital are most heavily engaged, it has
been materially advanced, a corresponding reduction has taken place in
the residence portions. The direct and immediate effect, therefore,
of an appreciation of land value, is to reduce living expenses among
the masses by curtailing their rents. In the absence of any monopoly
of private ownership, there is no case, even in the most concentrated
places, where rent forms anywhere near so large a proportion of
business expense as with you. By your land ownership methods, landlords
have an access to both pockets of the tenant. Out of one they take to
the limit of their greed whatever sum they choose for the privilege of
business quarters, or a dwelling place, and from the other a tithe on
everything consumed by the enhanced cost of its distribution.
As our material wants and needs are very much like yours, it is not
hard to make a comparative estimate of the savings of industry. We
produce more wealth than you in a given time, even with our shorter
daily periods of work, because, with few exceptions, all are engaged
in the business of production. By this increased productiveness every
consumer is richer. He is able by a smaller amount of labor to procure
a greater amount of the objects of desire. Our production is more
perfect than yours, by the use of more perfect machinery. Our division
of labor is more complete than yours. Our workmen having abundant
leisure for intellectual development, all the practical advantages of
knowledge and science are immediately brought into effect. By avoiding
your great waste of capital by excessive government expenditures, it is
constantly so abundant with us that its proportion to labor makes labor
remunerative.
We have now assumed for the purpose of comparison that the two
cities, one of Mars and one of the Earth, have each three hundred
thousand inhabitants; and that, allowing for women and children not
engaged in productive industry, one hundred thousand of each city is
actively engaged in industrial pursuits. As the general prosperity
of each city depends upon the earnings of this one hundred thousand,
and the accumulations in capital and wealth upon the amount saved
by these productive classes, let us make a relative estimate of the
opportunities each possess in individual savings. Having no common
medium of exchange upon which to base our estimate, let us take the
value of a day’s labor for that purpose. The income of a city is
derived from two sources, the aggregate wages of its inhabitants,
and the combined profits of its capital. The latter, however, being
entirely derived from consumers, is largely contributed to by the
inhabitants themselves. And for the reason that all imported products,
as well as those exported, bear the profits of capital in their rates
of sale, we may safely say that an amount very nearly equal to the
whole profits of capital of a city is paid by the consumers within
its limits as capital profits. The chief source of your city’s yearly
income then is about thirty-one million days’ labor. Out of this you
must pay for expenses, under your system, two million days’ labor for
government taxes, fifteen million days’ labor for ground rent, two
million days’ labor for water, two million days’ labor for insurance,
and with the balance of ten million days’ labor you must pay the cost
of food, raiment, fuel, the portion of rent estimated in buildings,
together with the various incidentals of furniture and house lights.
You will observe that all these expenses except the first are largely
loaded with the profits of capital, so that with the income and expense
as set forth you may be in a progressive condition, as that term
is defined by you. That is to say, your capital may increase, and
your wealth may be very greatly augmented. The enormous proportion
of your earnings carried away by rent, although drawn very largely
from your business districts, is contributed equally by the whole
in the increased cost of all products consumed. Of your one hundred
thousand producers, it is safe to say that twenty thousand of them have
capital investments. Among these is divided the whole of the surplus
of the city’s earnings. The eighty thousand engaged in the business
of directly creating wealth are doomed, under your cruel system, to
sweat and toil from sun to sun without accumulations. You accept this
condition of things as inevitable, and your economists contend that the
real or natural remuneration of labor is the bare means of subsistence.
We have seen the unrighteous origin of this prodigious fund, which
absorbs one third of the earnings of labor at least: let us examine its
perpetual effects upon the interests of those who toil.
Looking upon your civilization, we find in its modern aspects a
wonderful increase in all the appliances and conditions which
accumulate wealth. Among these may be specified a better and more
economical division of labor, the discoveries of science, labor
saving inventions, and altogether as a result, greatly increased
productiveness.
Added to these contributions of knowledge and science in the interest
of the working class, you have, during the last century, experienced
the most remarkable acquisition in favor of labor that was ever known
upon your planet. I allude to the accession of new and fertile lands,
over which the boundaries of civilization have been extended, and out
of which, by the new methods and contrivances both of husbandry and
transportation, the food supplies of the Earth have been made to flow
in a steady stream toward the districts of their consumption. These
immense advantages could not fail to have, in some degree, a beneficent
effect upon your labor class. Inasmuch as your workmen of to-day are
enabled to obtain more of the comforts of life than formerly, real
wages may be said to have considerably advanced. Their share, however,
of the wealth produced is as small a portion as formerly. By the modern
necessities which custom has rendered difficult to avoid, they have
become larger consumers, which in itself has enabled your capital, with
its undue advantages, to increase its store out of all proportion to
a fair division of the wealth produced. But the greater and cheaper
food supply, and the abundant capital of your recent times, while
serving to neutralize the depressing effect of increase of population
in the labor ranks, and to institute a condition of general prosperity
in trade and mercantile pursuits, has at the same time offered to all
your monopolists of land the opportunity to extort, under the pressure
of competition, the whole surplus of the earnings of your workmen.
Precisely the same happy conditions which have brought a modicum of
prosperity to them have created a richer field for your monopolists,
and especially for those of them who by their ownership of city
land can exact from the extended demands of business, and a rapidly
multiplying population, an unfair portion of the wealth produced. The
unlimited privilege of appropriating to themselves the utmost share
of the profits of industry, gives a speculative value to the holdings
of your landlords, and serves in turn to furnish them the excuse of a
parallel in their charges for rent to the current rate of interest on
money. If industry can be forced to make over to them a third of its
earnings now, the possibilities of the future shadow golden dreams,
which promise no less to them than the power of your imaginary
Midas--dreams which encourage an easier wealth-making than was
possessed by your olden barons, who by force of arms were enabled to
hold,--what your modern law and custom equally allows,--the privilege
of sapping the industry of millions of busy hands of all else but a
bare sustenance and a shelter from the elements.
That rent does not to any great extent enter into the cost of your
agricultural products, is due to the abundance of new land coming
constantly under cultivation, and to that equalizing of situations
which your railroads promote. An increase in the demand for food,
and the promise of an advance in its price, brings under cultivation
lands of lesser fertility or those more remote from your markets. The
monopoly power of agricultural land ownership is thereby effectually
destroyed. So long as these favorable conditions exist, the cost of
your food staples will be governed by the value alone of the labor
employed. The profits of capital, therefore, take no part in them
until they leave the hands of the producer. There is no value in your
cultivated lands of the lesser fertility, except in the opportunity
they afford for labor to exchange its services for money. This class of
land fixes the price of and cheapens the food of the Earth. The value
of all lands from these upwards in degrees of fertility is estimated
by the amount of produce derived from a given amount of labor, and
except in a few favorite situations there is as yet no monopoly value
in your cultivated lands. To this, more than anything else, is due the
comparative cheapness of your food, and the steady and unrestricted
increase of your population. In time, however, for reasons to obvious
to require mention, rent must enter into the original element of cost
among your food staples, just as it now so largely takes a part in the
cost of their distribution. The fullest manifestation of the evils of
your private ownership system will then take place. The signs of what
may occur at that rapidly approaching critical period are to be seen
in the completely merciless character of your wealth holders, who, in
the face of a divine intelligence, which has so charitably provided an
even abundance to all, attempt to subvert the natural laws of trade
by unfair combinations, known among you as trusts and syndicates,
wherein the common welfare is made a sacrifice to their determined and
unscrupulous love of gain.
You have perhaps not fully considered how it has come to pass that
your wealth is so generally without the best feelings and impulses
of humanity. The desire to accumulate which pervades all classes can
accomplish nothing in the ranks of labor, except for those who possess
it in an inordinate degree. The anxiety for gain must be so intense as
to overwhelm the wish for gratifications within reach, and to produce
a fortitude of restraint which denies every dispensable want and
pleasure. Is is only the few who have this power of abstinence that
can escape a life of drudgery. The ranks of capital and wealth are
largely recruited from this body of abstainers. Under the depressing
effects of your monopolistic condition, ordinary prudence and moderate
abstemiousness are not, as a rule, capable of laying the foundation of
wealth. You have, consequently, by a natural process of selection, the
ranks of your moneyed classes filled up, for the most part, by the most
aggressively mercenary and acquisitive of your race; while the better
part of humanity, where the self-sacrificing and generous impulses most
prevail, must pay the penalty of its virtues in unrelieved dependence.
Your successful moneyed class, coming in time to that place of power
which its wealth procures for it, shapes and directs your legislation;
which, as you might expect, instead of being devoted, as it should
be, chiefly to the support of measures to equalize and ameliorate the
conditions of all classes, works the machinery for government for its
own selfish ends, making easy and comfortable paths for those schemes
which multiply its wealth.
While the wish to accumulate is acknowledged to be the fountain head of
all material progress, its accomplishment, under our system, is mostly
the reward of those qualities of the mind which are not safe lessons
for common acceptance. Your examples of material success are not good
studies, if charity and the true public spirit are to be considered as
worthy of being enlarged by precept.