In that unsettled period after the Civil War, Robert G. Ingersoll, orator and agnostic, did as much as any other to mould and direct the political opinion of the Nation. He met the argument, then often urged, that slave labor would bring down the wages of free labor by saying, "If I belong to a superior race, I will not fear the competition of an inferior race."

Is there any principle or proposition less in need of elaboration less open to dispute? What, indeed, is the use of being intelligent or superior if you can't compete with the inferior? What is the test or proof of superiority? Without doubt, the swimmer who comes ashore after the race is won, the skipper who is defeated by a coat of paint, the jockey who is beaten by a nose, would urge in vain the claim of superiority.

And if it be true that the superior, the intelligent and the skillful can compete without fear with the inferior, the ignorant and the unskillful, we have completely refuted, have we not, the propaganda of the protectionist? For have they not always claimed that a protective tariff was necessary because intelligent American labor could not compete with the unintelligent pauper labor of Europe?

Yet, strange as it may seem, Ingersoll was always a protectionist. He must, therefore, have believed that there was some peculiar ingredient in foreign inferiority that differentiated it from American inferiority and placed the foreign brand in such a favorable position that it could enter into competition with the superior labor of America and excel it by producing the same goods at lower cost or better goods at the same cost.

Inferiority, you see, was not to be feared unless it was foreign inferiority; the home brand could be grappled with successfully by the superior class in the country.

If the South, for instance, had won the war that slavery caused, the principle so clearly and concisely stated by Ingersoll, instead of operating as it now does throughout the territorial limits of the Nation, would have been confined within the boundaries of the North and South respectively.

I would rather believe such a conclusion to be a mistake of Ingrsoll's rather than to think that a principle so fundamental would change its hue, chameleon-like, on the result of a war or on the crossing of an artificial boundary line.

Again, in what he called a "Lay Sermon" delivered in New York in 1886, Ingersoll expressed opinions that should lead one inevitably to the acceptance of the philosophy of the Single Tax, and yet he was unwilling to acknowledge any such doctrine. Here is what he said: "There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag and rascality a robe."

Then he puts his finger squarely on the [tnsmble]: "No man should be allowed to own any land that he does not use. Everybody knows that I do not care whether he has thousands or millions. I have owned a great deal of land but I know just as well as I know I am living that I should not be allowed to have it unless I use it."

Continuing, he says: "Now, the land belongs to the children of Nature. Nature invites into this world every babe that is born. And what would you think of me, for instance, tonight, if I had invited you here nobody had charged you anything, but you had been invited and when you got here you had found one man pretending to occupy a hundred seats, another fifty, and another seventy-five, and thereupon you were compelled to stand what would you think of the invitation? It seems to me that every child of Nature is entitled to his share of the land, and that he should not be compelled to beg the privilege to work the soil of a babe that happened to be born before him. And why do I say this? Because it is not to our interest to have a few landlords and millions of tenants."

Splendid. No one can find fault with that. If words mean anything, Ingersoll's doctrine was and it's my doctrine, too that a child born into the world must not be at a disadvantage so far as the land is concerned because others were born before it; that the earth the store- house of all wealth is the provision that Nature made for all just as the manna that fell from heaven was the provision that Jehovah made for all the Isrealites when Moses led them on that march of forty years through the wilderness and out of a certain kind of bondage.

Then, as though he had forgotten the foregoing or was unconscious of its meaning, Ingersoll proceeds: "I do not want to take, and I would not take, an inch of land from any human being that belonged to him. If we ever take it, we must pay for it condemn it and take it do not rob anybody."

Is it possible to harmonize this last paragraph with what has gone before? The fact of the matter is Ingersoll has contradicted himself in succeeding sentences. He takes on this subject both sides of the question. He affirms and denies. So he must be at least fifty per cent mistaken.

Either the ones who came early in response to his invitation had a right to monopolize the seats as they claimed to the disadvantage of those who came later, or they did not have the right. If they didn't have the right to more seats than they could use, their claim was false and it's folly to suggest that they be paid to surrender such a claim. To pay them is to acknowledge their title.

So, either the land belongs to the children of Nature or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we should pay the price of the ones who are monopolizing it if we want to use it. This means that we must humbly beg the privilege to work the soil of the babes who are holding it on such terms as they may specify. Their terms become increasingly oppressive as land is taken up until as now, we are compelled to give about everything we have for the privilege to work the land that Nature gave. Under this principle, labor is enslaved and work is everywhere regarded as a curse; idleness is respectable; those who toil most get the least; millions, plundered and discouraged, turn to crime; the President appoints a crime commission to ascertain the cause of wide-spread disrespect for law, and a civilization such as we now have is produced the necessary and natural result of such a theory.

On the other hand, if the land belongs to the children of Nature, as Ingersoll stated, all have the right to use it on equal terms, and so long as there is idle land there need be no idle men. There is ever present the opportunity to work and to obtain the full reward of the effort exerted. The means of a livelihood being within the reach of all, want and the fear of want is done away with and man is economically free. And economic freedom is the basis of all other forms of freedom.

Ingersoll proved conclusively that his thought on this subject was ill-considered and merely impromptu when he said that the land belonged to the children of Nature, but in order to get it they should pay the price exacted by the land monopolist. This is as though he were to say it doesn't belong to them at all. To pay the price exacted is to recognize the soundness of the title of the monopolist. How did he get the land, anyway? Did he make it? Can he trace his title to the maker? Of course not. It is quite evident that force and not justice is the basis of his claim of ownership.

If it is finally determined that the children of Nature are the rightful owners of the land, as Ingersoll said they were, this change in the theory of land tenure would be prejudicial to the rights of none except those holding land unused, hoping to reap the harvest that belongs to others.