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Author's Foreword

In this Volume it was pointed out that although the Trusts at the time of the writing were beneficial rather than injurious, nevertheless these giants, born of avarice and built up in self-interest, would eventually become a menace, "a danger to the people and their interests. We have reached that time, and many are realizing that the danger is upon us. Nothing evil may be done so long as the machinery is working well and under control; but when, the moment shall come that the interests of the managers and capitalists will be in the reverse direction from the interests of their employees and the public, then look out! Remember the inspired Word-that this is to be "a Time of Trouble such as never was since there was a nation."

How glad we are that man's extremity in this Time of Trouble will be the Lord's opportunity! He is waiting to be gracious. He is wishing to pour out upon mankind the blessings of the Millennial Kingdom for one thousand years, for their uplift out of sin and death conditions back, to the image and likeness of God. He foreknows that they must first have their lessons. He has shown this already to those who have seeing eyes, by granting more than forty years of the dawning period - which, however, instead of bringing blessings and happiness to the world, have brought more and more of discontent. The Lord will allow mankind now to go their length in carrying out their own plans and schemes,.. He .will allow them to. demonstrate the futility of all these schemes, and that nothing but Divine interposition will save them from wrecking the entire fabric of Society. Indeed, He will permit the wreck, and then reorganize humanity under Messiah; for He promises that His Kingdom shall be "the desire of all nations." -- Haggai 2:7.

Your servant in the Lord, Charles T. Russell (Brooklyn, N.Y., October 1, 1916)

THE SINGLE TAX REMEDY

Doubtless because he saw the effects of Communism and Nationalism and Socialism, as pointed out above, Mr. Henry George devised a scheme of some merit, known as the " Single Tax Theory.'' This may be said to be the reverse of Socialism in some respects. It is Individualism in many important features. It leaves the individual to the resources of his own character, efforts and environment; except that it would preserve to each an inalienable right to share, as the common blessings of the Creator, - air, water and land. It proposes very little direct alteration of the present social system. Claiming that the present inequalities of fortune, so far as they are oppressive and injurious, are wholly the results of private ownership of the land, this theory proposes that all lands become once more the property of Adam's race as a whole; and claims that thus the evils of our present social system would speedily right themselves. It proposes that this re-distribution of the land shall be accomplished, not by dividing it proportionately among the human family, but by considering it all as one vast estate, and permitting each person as a tenant to use as much as he may choose of what he now possesses, and to collect a laud-tax or rental from each occupant proportional to the value of the land (aside from the value of the buildings or other improvements thereon). Thus a vacant lot would be assessed as heavy a rental or tax as an adjoining lot, built upon, and the untilled field as much as the adjoining fruitful one. The tax thus raised would constitute a fund for every purpose for the general welfare; - for schools, streets, roads, water, etc., and for local and general government; - hence the name of the theory, "Single Tax."

The effect would of course be to open to actual settlement thousands of town lots and barren fields now held for speculative purposes; because all taxes being consolidated into one, and being removed from cattle, machinery, business and improvements of every kind, and all concentrated upon the land would make the land-tax quite an item; - graduated, however, so as to show no favoritism, poor farm lands or remote from transportation being taxed less in proportion than better lands, and those nearer to transportation. City lots similarly would be assessed according to value, location and surroundings considered.

Such a law, made to become operative ten years after its passage, would have the immediate effect of reducing real estate values, and by the time it would become operative millions of acres and thousands of town-lots would be open to any one who could make use of them and pay the assessed rents. Mr. Henry George took advantage of the fact that Pope Leo XIII issued an Encyclical on Labor, to publish a pamphlet in reply, entitled, "An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII.," etc. As it contains some good thoughts along the lines of our topic and besides is a further statement of the theory under discussion, we make liberal extracts as follows: -

An Extract from an Open Letter by Henry George to Pope Leo XIII, in Answer to the Latter's Encyclical on the Perplexing Labor Questsion.

"It seems to us that your Holiness misses its real significance in intimating that Christ, in becoming the son of a carpenter and himself working as a carpenter, showed merely that 'there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking one's bread by labor.' To say that is almost like saying that by not robbing people he showed that there is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty? If you will consider how true in any large view is the classification of all men into workingmen, beggarmen and thieves, you will see that it was morally impossible that Christ, during his stay on earth, should have been anything else than a workingman, since he who came to fulfil the law must by deed as well as word obey God's law of labor.

"See how fully and how beautifully Christ's life on earth illustrated this law. Entering our earthly life in the weakness of infancy, as it is appointed that all should enter it, He lovingly took what in the natural order is lovingly rendered, the sustenance, secured by labor, that one generation owes to its immediate successors. Arrived at maturity he earned his own subsistence by that common labor in which the majority of men must and do earn it. Then passing to a higher - to the very highest - sphere of labor, he earned his subsistence by the teaching of moral and spiritual truths, receiving its material wages in the love offerings of grateful hearers, and not refusing the costly spikenard with which Mary anointed his feet. So, when he chose his disciples, he did not go to land owners or other monopolists who live on the labor of others, but to common laboring men. And when he called them to a higher sphere of labor and sent them out to teach moral and spiritual truths, he told them to take, without condescension on the one hand, or sense of degradation on the other, me loving return for such labor, saying to them that the laborer is worthy of his hire,' thus showing, what we hold, that all labor does not consist in what is called manual labor, but that whoever helps to add to the material, intellectual, moral or spiritual fullness of life is also a laborer.[1]

"In assuming that laborers, even ordinary manual laborers, are naturally poor, you ignore the fact that labor is the producer of wealth, and attribute to the natural law of the Creator an injustice that comes from man's impious violation of his benevolent intention. In the rudest state of the arts it is possible, where justice prevails, for all well men to earn a living. With the labor-saving appliances of our time it should be possible for all to earn much more. And so, in saying that poverty is no disgrace, you convey an unreasonable implication. For poverty ought to be a disgrace, because in a condition of social justice, it would, where un-imposed by unavoidable misfortune, imply recklessness or laziness.

"The sympathy of your Holiness seems exclusively directed to the poor, the workers. Ought this to be so? Are not rich idlers to be pitied also? By the word of the Gospel it is the rich rather than the poor who call for pity. And lazily one who believes in a future life, the condition of him who wakes to find his cherished millions left behind must seem pitiful. But even in this life, how really pitiable are the rich. The evil is not in wealth in itself - in its command over material things; it is in the possession of wealth while others are steeped in poverty; in being raised above touch with the life of humanity, from its work and its struggles, its hopes arid its fears, and above all, from the love that sweetens life, and the kindly sympathies and generous acts that strengthen faith in man and trust in God. Consider how the rich see the meaner side of human nature; how they are surrounded by flatterers and sycophants; how they find ready instruments not only to gratify vicious impulses, but to prompt and stimulate them; how they must constantly be on guard lest they be swindled; how often they must suspect an ulterior motive behind kindly deed or friendly word; how if they try to be generous they are beset by shameless beggars and scheming impostors; how often the family affections are chilled for them, and their deaths anticipated with the ill-concealed joy of expectant possession. The worst evil of poverty is not in the want of material things, but in the stunting and distortion of the higher qualities. So, though in another way, the possession of unearned wealth likewise stunts and distorts what is noblest in man.

"God's commands cannot be evaded with impunity. If it be God's command that men shall earn their bread by labor, the idle rich must suffer. And they do. See the utter vacancy of the lives of those who live for pleasure; see the loathsome vices bred in a class who, surrounded by poverty, are sated with wealth. See that terrible punishment of ennui of which the poor know so little that they cannot understand it; see the pessimism that grows among the wealthy classes - that shuts out God, that despises men, that deems existence in itself an evil, and fearing death yet longs for annihilation.

"When Christ told the rich young man who sought him to sell all he had and to give it to the poor, he was not thinking of the poor, but of the young man. And I doubt not that among the rich, and especially among the self-made rich, there are many who at times at least feel keenly the folly of their riches and fear for the dangers and temptations to which these expose their children. But the strength of long habit, the promptings of pride, the excitement of making and holding what has become for them the counters in a game of cards, the family expectations that have assumed the character of rights, and the real difficulty they find in making any good use of their wealth, bind them to their burden, like a weary donkey to his pack, till they stumble on the precipice that bounds this life.

"Men who are sure of getting food when they shall need it eat only what appetite dictates. But with the sparse tribes who exist on the verge of the habitable globe, life is either a famine or a feast. Enduring hunger for days, the fear of it prompts them to gorge like anacondas when successful in their quest of game. And so, what gives wealth its curse is what drives men to seek it, what makes it so envied and admired - the fear of want. As the unduly rich are the corollary of the unduly poor, so is the soul-destroying quality of riches but the reflex of the want that embrutes and degrades. The real evil lies in the injustice from which unnatural possession and unnatural deprivation both spring.

" But this injustice can hardly be charged on individuals or classes. The existence of private property in land is a great social wrong from which society at large suffers, and of which the very rich and the very poor are alike victims, though at the opposite extremes. Seeing this, it seems to us like a violation of Christian charity to speak of the rich as though they individually were responsible for the sufferings of the poor. Yet, while you do this, you insist that the cause of monstrous wealth and degrading poverty shall not be touched. Here is a man with a disfiguring and dangerous excrescence. One physician would kindly, gently, but firmly remove it. Another insists that it shall not be removed, but at the same time holds up the poor victim to hatred and ridicule. Which is right?

"In seeking to restore all men to their equal and natural rights we do not seek the benefit of any class, but of all. For we both know by faith and see by fact that injustice can profit no one and that justice must benefit all.

"Nor do we seek any 'futile and ridiculous equality.' . . . The equality we would bring about is not the equality of fortune, but the equality of natural opportunity. . . .

"And in taking for the uses of society what we clearly see is the great fund intended for society in the divine order, we would not levy the slightest tax on the possessors of wealth, no matter how rich they might be. Not only do we deem such taxes a violation of the right of property, but we see that by virtue of beautiful adaptations in the economic laws of the Creator it is impossible for any one honestly to acquire wealth, without at the same time adding to the wealth of the world. . . .

"Your Holiness in the Encyclical gives an example of this. Denying the equality of right to the material basis of life, and yet conscious that there is a right to live, you assert the right of laborers to employment, and their right to receive from their employers a certain indefinite wage. No such rights exist. No one has a right to demand employment of another, or to demand higher wages than the other is willing to give, or in any way to put pressure on another to make him raise such wages against his will. There can be no better moral justification for such demands on employers by workingmen than there would be for employers to demand that workingmen shall be compelled to work for them when they do not want to and to accept wages lower than they are willing to take. Any seeming justification springs from a prior wrong, the denial to working-men of their natural rights. . . .

" Christ justified David, who when pressed by hunger committed what ordinarily would be sacrilege, by taking from the temple the loaves of proposition. But in this he was far from saying that the robbing of temples was a proper way of getting a living.

"In the Encyclical, however, you commend the application to the ordinary relations of life, under normal conditions, of principles that in ethics are only to be tolerated ounder extraordinary conditions. You are driven to this assertion of false rights by your denial of true rights. The natural right which each man has is not that of demanding employment or wages from another man; but that of employing himself - that of applying by his own labor to the inexhaustible storehouse which the Creator has in the land provided for all men. Were that storehouse open, as by the single tax we would open it, the natural demand for labor would keep pace with the supply, the man who sold labor and the man who bought it would become free exchangers for mutual advantage, and all cause for dispute between workman and employer would be gone. For then, all being free to employ themselves, the mere opportunity to labor would cease to seem a boon; and since no one would work for another for less, all things considered, than he could earn by working for himself, wages would necessarily rise to their full value, and the relations of workman and employer be regulated by mutual interest and convenience.

"This is the only way in which they can be satisfactorily regulated.

"Your Holiness seems to assume that there is some just rate of wages that employers ought to be willing to pay and that laborers should be content to receive, and to imagine that if this were secured there would be an end of strife. This rate you evidently think of as that which will give workingmen a frugal living, and perhaps enable them by hard work and strict economy to lay by a little something.

"But how can a just rate of wages be fixed without the 'higgling of the market' any more than the just price of corn or pigs or ships or paintings can be so fixed? And would not arbitrary regulation in the one case as in the other check that interplay that most effectively promotes the economical adjustment of productive forces? Why should buyers of labor any more than buyers of commodities, be called on to pay higher prices than in a free market they are compelled to pay? Why should the sellers of labor be content with anything less than in a free market they are compelled to pay? Why should workingmen be content with frugal fare when the world is so rich? Why should they be satisfied with a life-time of toil and stinting, when the world is so bountiful? Why should not they also desire to gratify the higher instincts, the finer tastes? Why should they be forever content to travel in the steerage when others find the cabin more enjoyable?

"Nor will they. The ferment of our time does not arise merely from the fact that workingmen find it harder to live on the same scale of comfort. It is also, and perhaps still more largely, due to the increase of their desires with an improved scale of comfort. This increase of desire must continue; for workingmen are men, and man is the unsatisfied animal.

" He is not an ox, of whom it may be said, so much grass, so much grain, so much water, and a little salt, and he will be content. On the contrary, the more man gets the more ht craves. When he has enough food, then he wants better food. When he gets a shelter, then he wants a more commodious and tasty one. When his animal needs are satisfied, then mental and spiritual desires arise.

"This restless discontent is of the nature of man - of that nobler nature that raises him above the animals by so immeasurable a gulf, and shows him. to be indeed created in the likeness of God. It is not to be quarreled with, for it is the motor of all progress. It is this that has raised St. Peter's dome, and on dull, dead canvass made the angelic face of the Madonna to glow; it is this that has weighed suns and analyzed stars, and opened page after page of the wonderful works of creative intelligence; it is this that has narrowed the Atlantic to an ocean ferry and trained the lightning to carry our messages to the remotest lands; it is this that is opening to us possibilities beside which all that our modern civilization has as yet accomplished seem small. Nor can it be repressed save by degrading and imbruting men; by reducing Europe to Asia.

"Hence, short of what wages may be earned when all restrictions on labor are removed, and access to natural opportunities on equal terms secured to all, it is impossible to fix any rate of wages that will be deemed just, or any rate of wages that can prevent workingmen striving to get more. So far from it making workingmen more contented to improve their condition a little, it is certain to make them more discontented.

"Nor are you asking justice when you ask employers to pay their workingmen more than they are compelled to pay - more than they could get others to do the work for. You are asking charity. For the surplus that the rich employer thus gives is not in reality wages, it is essentially alms.

"In speaking of the practical measures for the improvement of the condition of labor which your Holiness suggests, I have not mentioned what you place much stress upon - charity. But there is nothing practical in such recommendations as a cure for poverty, nor will any one so consider them. If it were possible for the giving of alms to abolish poverty there would be no poverty in Christendom.

" Charity is indeed a noble and beautiful virtue, grateful to man and approved by God. But charity must be built on justice. It cannot supersede justice.

"What is wrong in the condition of labor through the Christian world is that labor is robbed. And while you justify the continuance of that robbery it is idle to urge charity. To do so - to commend charity as a substitute for justice, is indeed something akin in essence to those heresies, condemned by your predecessors, that taught that the gospel had superseded the law, and that the love of God exempted men from moral obligations.

"All that charity can do where injustice exists is here and there to somewhat mollify the effects of injustice. It cannot cure them. Nor is even what little it can do to mollify the effects of injustice without evil. For what may be called the superimposed, as in this sense, secondary virtues, work evil where the fundamental or primary virtues are absent. Thus sobriety is a virtue, and diligence is a virtue. But a sober and diligent thief is all the more dangerous. Thus patience is a virtue. But patience under wrong is the condoning of wrong. Thus it is a virtue to seek knowledge and to endeavor to cultivate the mental powers. But the wicked man becomes more capable of evil by reason of his intelligence. Devils we always think of as intelligent.

"And thus that pseudo charity that discards and denies justice works evil. On the one side it demoralizes its recipients, outraging that human dignity, which, as you say, 'God himself treats with reverence," and turning into beggars and paupers men who, to become self-supporting, self-respecting citizens, only need the restitution of what God has given them. On the other side it acts as an anodyne to the consciences of those who are living on the robbery of their fellows, and fosters that moral delusion and spiritual pride that Christ doubtless had in mind when he said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. For it leads men, steeped in injustice, and using their money and their influence to bolster up injustice, to think that in giving alms they are doing something more than their duty towards man and deserve to be very well thought of by God, and in a vague way to attribute it to their own goodness what really belongs to God's goodness. For consider: Who is the All-provider? Who is it that as you say, 'owes to man a storehouse that shall never fail,' and which 'he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth.' Is it not God? And when, therefore, men, deprived of the bounty of theft God, are made dependent on the bounty of their fellow-creatures, are not these creatures, as it were, put in the place of God, to take credit to themselves for paying obligations that you yourself say God owes?

"But worse, perhaps, than all else is the way in which this substituting of vague injunctions to charity for the clear-cut demands of justice opens an easy means for the professed teachers of the Christian religion of all branches and communions to placate Mammon while persuading themselves that they are serving God. . . .

"No, your Holiness, as faith without works is dead, as men cannot give to God his due while denying to their fellows the rights he gave them, so charity, unsupported by justice, can do nothing to solve the problem of the existing condition of labor. Though the rich were to "bestow all their goods to feed the poor and give their bodies to be burned,' poverty would continue while property in land continues.

"Take the case of the rich man to-day who is honestly desirous of devoting his wealth to the improvement of the condition of labor. What can he do?

"Bestow his wealth on those who need it? He may help some who deserve it, but he will not improve general conditions. And against the good he may do will be the danger of doing harm.

"Build churches? Under the shadow of churches poverty festers, and the vice that is born of it breeds.

"Build schools and colleges? Save as it may lead men to see the iniquity of private property in land, increased education can effect nothing for mere laborers, for as education is diffused the wages of education sink.

"Establish hospitals? Why, already it seems to laborers that there are too many seeking work, and to save and prolong life is to add to the pressure.

Build model tenements? Unless he cheapens house accommodations he but drives further the class he would benefit, and as lie cheapens house accomodations he brings more to seek employment and cheapens wages.

"Institute laboratories, scientific schools, workshops for physical experiments? He but stimulates invention and discovery, the very forces that, acting on a society based on private property in land, are crushing labor as between the upper and the nether millstone.

"Promote emigration from places where wages are low to places where they are somewhat higher? If he does, even those whom he at first helps to emigrate will soon turn on him to demand that such emigration shall be stopped, as it is reducing their wages.

"Give away what land he may have, or refuse to take rent for it, or let it at lower rents than the market price? He will simply make new land owners or partial land owners; he may make some individuals the richer, but he will do nothing to improve the general condition of labor.

"Or bethinking himself of those public-spirited citizens of classic times who spent great sums in improving their native cities, shall he try to beautify the city of his birth or adoption? Let him widen and straighten narrow and crooked streets, let him build parks and erect fountains, let him open tramways and bring in railroads, or in any way make beautiful and attractive his chosen city, and what will be the result? Must it not be those who appropriate God's bounty will take his also? Will it not be that the value of land will go up, and that the net result of his benefactions will be an increase of rents and a bounty to land owners? Why, even the mere announcement that he is going to do such things will start speculation and send up the value of land by leaps and bounds.

"What, then, can the rich man do to improve the condition of labor?

"He can do nothing at all except to use his strength for the abolition of the great primary wrong that robs men of their birthright. The justice of God laughs at the attempts of men to substitute anything else for it."

"While within narrow lines trades unionism promotes the idea of the mutuality of interests, and often helps to raise courage and further political education, and while it has enabled limited bodies of .workingmen to improve somewhat their condition, and gain, as it were, breathing space, yet it takes no note of the general causes that determine the conditions of labor, and strives for the elevation of only a small part of the great body by means that cannot help the rest. Aiming at the restriction of competition - the limitation of the right to labor, its methods are like those of an army, which even in a righteous cause are subversive of liberty and liable to abuse, while its weapon, the strike, is destructive in its nature, both to combatants and non-combatants, being a form of passive war. To apply the principle of trades unions to all industry, as some dream of doing, would be to enthrall men in a caste system.

"Or take even such moderate measures as the limitation of working hours and of the labor of women and children They are superficial in looking no further than to the eagerness of men and women and little children to work unduly, and in proposing forcibly to restrain overwork while utterly ignoring its cause, the sting of poverty that forces human beings to it. And the methods by which these restraints must be enforced, multiply officials, interfere with personal liberty, tend to corruption and are liable to abuse.

"As for thorough going socialism, which is the more to be honored as having the courage of its convictions, it would carry these vices to full expression. Jumping to conclusions without effort to discover causes, it fails to see that oppression does not come from the nature of capital, but from the wrong that robs labor of capital by divorcing it from land, and that creates a fictitious capital that is really capitalized monopoly. It fails to see that it would be impossible for capital to oppress labor were labor free to the natural material of production; that the wage system it itself springs from mutual convenience, being a form of cooperation in which one of the parties prefers a certain to a contingent result; and that what it calls the 'iron law of wages' is not the natural law of wages, but only the law of wages in that unnatural condition in which men are made helpless by being deprived of the material for life and work. It fails to see that what it mistakes for the evils of competition are really the evils of restricted competition - are due to a one-sided competition to which men are forced when deprived of land; while its methods, the organization of men into industrial armies, the direction and control of all production and exchange by governmental or semi-governmental bureaus, would, if carried to full expression, mean Egyptian despotism.

"We differ from the Socialists in our diagnosis of the evil, and we differ from them as to remedies. We have no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden of labor; we look on interest in itself as natural and just; we would set no limit to accumulation, nor impose on the rich any burden that is not equally placed on the poor; we see no evil in competition, but deem unrestricted competition to be as necessary to the health of the industrial and social organism as the free circulation of the blood is to the health of the bodily organism - to be the agency whereby the fullest cooperation is to be secured. We would simply take for the community what belongs to the community; the value that attaches to land by the growth of the community; leave sacredly to the individual all that belongs to the individual ; and, treating necessary monopolies as functions of the state, abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those required for public health, safety, morals and convenience.

"But the fundamental difference - the difference I ask your Holiness specially to note, is in this: Socialism in all its phases looks on the evils of our civilization as springing from the inadequacy or inharmony of natural relations, which must be artificially organized or improved. In its idea there devolves on the state the necessity of intelligently organizing the industrial relations of men; the construction, as it were, of a great machine whose complicated parts shall properly work together under the direction of human intelligence. This is the reason why socialism tends toward atheism. Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural law, it fails to recognize God.

"On the other hand, we who call ourselves Single Tax Men (a name which expresses merely our practical propositions) see in the social and industrial relations of men not a machine which requires construction, but an organism which needs only to be suffered to grow. We see in the natural, social and industrial laws such harmony as we see in the adjustments of the human body, and that as far transcends the power of man's intelligence to order and direct as it is beyond man's intelligence to order and direct the vital movements of his frame. We see in these social and industrial laws so close a relation to the moral law as must spring from the same Authorship, and that proves the moral law to be the sure guide of man, where his intelligence would wander and go astray. Thus, to us, all that is needed to remedy the evils of our time is to do justice and give freedom. This is the reason why our beliefs tend towards, nay, are indeed the only beliefs consistent with a firm and reverent faith in God, and with the recognition of his law as the supreme law which men must follow if they would secure prosperity and avoid destruction. This is the reason why to us political economy only serves to show the depth of wisdom in the simple truths which common people heard from the lips of Him of whom it was said with wonder, 'Is not this the Carpenter of Nazareth?'

"And it is because that in what we propose - the securing to all men of equal natural opportunities for the exercise of their powers and the removal of all legal restriction on the legitimate exercise of those powers - we see the conformation of human law to the moral law, that we hold with confidence, not merely that this is the sufficient remedy for all the evils you so strikingly portray, but that it is the only possible remedy.

"Nor is there any other. The organization of man is such, his relations to the world in which he is placed are such -that is to say, the immutable laws of God are such - that it is beyond the power of human ingenuity to devise any way by which the evils born of the injustice that robs men of their birthright can be removed otherwise than by doing justice, by opening to all the bounty that God has provided for all.

"Since man can only live on land and from land, since land is the reservoir of matter and force from which man's body itself is taken, and on which he must draw for all that he can produce, does it not irresistibly follow that to give the land in ownership to some men and to deny to others all right to it is to divide mankind into the rich and the poor, the privileged and the helpless? Does it not follow that those who have no rights to the use of land can live only by selling their power to labor to those who own the land? Does it not follow that what the Socialists call 'the iron law of wages,' what the political economists term 'the tendency of wages to a minimum,' must take from the landless masses - the mere laborers, who of themselves have no power to use their labor - all the benefits of any possible advance or improvement that does not alter this unjust division of land? For, having no power to employ themselves, they must, either as labor-sellers or land-renters, compete with one another for permission to labor. This competition with one another of men, shut out from God's inexhaustible storehouse, has no limit but starvation, and must ultimately force wages to their lowest point, the point at which life can just be maintained and reproduction carried on.

"This is not to say that all wages must fall to this point, but that the wages of that necessarily largest stratum of laborers who have only ordinary knowledge, skill and aptitude must so fall. The wages of special classes, who are fenced off from competition by peculiar knowledge, skill or other causes, may remain above that ordinary level. Thus, where the ability to read and write is rare, its possession enables a man to obtain higher wages than the ordinary laborer. But as the diffusion of education makes the ability to read and write general, this advantage is lost. So, when a vocation requires special training or skill, or is made difficult of access by artificial restrictions, the checking of competition tends to keep wages in it at a higher level. But as the progress of invention dispenses with peculiar skill, or artificial restrictions are broken down, these higher wages sink to the ordinary level. And so, it is only so long as they are special that such qualities as industry, prudence and thrift can enable the ordinary laborer to maintain a condition above that which gives a mere living. Where they become general, the law of competition must reduce the earnings or savings of such qualities to the general level - which, land being monopolized and labor helpless, can be only that at which the next lowest point is the cessation of life.

"Or, to state the same thing in another way: land being necessary to life and labor, its owners will be able, in return for permission to use it, to obtain from mere laborers all that labor can produce, save enough to enable such of them to maintain life as are wanted by the land-owners and their dependents.

"Thus, where private property in land has divided society into a land-owning class and a landless class, there is no possible invention or improvement, whether it be industrial, social or moral, which, so long as it does not affect the ownership of land, can prevent poverty or relieve the general condition of mere laborers. For whether the effect of any invention or improvement be to increase what labor can produce or to decrease what is required to support the laborer, it can, so soon as it becomes general, result only in increasing the income of the owners of land, without at all benefiting the mere laborers. In no events can those possessed of the mere ordinary power to labor, a power utterly useless without the means necessary to labor, keep more of their earnings than enough to enable them to live.

"How true this is we may see in the facts of to-day. In our own time invention and discovery have enormously increased the productive power of labor, and at the same time greatly reduced the cost of many things necessary to the support of the laborer. Have these improvements anywhere raised the earnings of the mere laborer? Have not their benefits mainly gone to the owners of land - enormously increased land values?

"I say mainly, for some part of the benefit has gone to the cost of monstrous standing armies and warlike preparations; to the payment of interest on great public debts; and, largely disguised as interest on fictitious capital, to the owners of monopolies other than that of land. But improvements that would do away with these wastes would not benefit labor; they would simply increase the profits of land owners. Were standing armies and all their incidents abolished, were all monopolies other than that of land done away with, were governments to become models of economy, were the profits of speculators, of middlemen, of all sorts of exchangers saved, were every one to become so strictly honest that no policemen, no courts, no prisons, no precautions against dishonesty would be needed - the result would not differ from that which has followed the increase of productive power.

"Nay, would not these very blessings bring starvation to many of those who now manage to live? Is it not true, that if there were proposed to-day, what all Christian men ought to pray for, the complete disbandment of all the armies of Europe, the greatest fears would be aroused for the consequences of throwing on the labor market so many unemployed laborers?

"The explanation of this and of similar paradoxes that in our time perplex on every side may be easily seen. The effect of all inventions and improvements that increase productive power, that save waste and economize effort, is to lessen the labor required for a given result, and thus to save labor, so that we speak of them as labor-saving inventions or improvements. Now, in a natural state of society where the rights of all to the use of the earth are acknowledged, labor-saving improvements might go to the very utmost that can be imagined without lessening the demand for men, since in such natural conditions the demand for men lies in their own enjoyment of life and the strong instincts that the Creator has implanted in the human breast. But in that unnatural state of society where the masses of men are disinherited of all but the power to labor when ^opportunity to labor is given them by others, there the demand for them becomes simply the demand for their services by those who hold this opportunity, and man himself becomes a commodity. Hence, although the natural effect of labor-saving improvement is to increase wages, yet in the unnatural condition which private ownership of the land begets, the effect, even of such moral improvements as the disbandment of armies and the saving of the labor that vice entails, is by lessening the commercial demand, to lower wages and reduce mere laborers to starvation or pauperism. If labor-saving inventions and improvements could be carried to the very abolition of the necessity for labor, what would be the result? Would it not be that land owners could then get all the wealth the land is capable of producing, and would have no need at all for laborers, who must then either starve or live as pensioners on the bounty of the land owners?

"Thus, so long as private property in land continues - so long as some men are treated as owners of the earth and other men can live on it only by their sufferance - human wisdom can devise no means by which the evils of our present condition may be avoided."

This theory of free land (except for taxes thereon) is a broad and a just theory which we would be pleased to see put into operation at once, although we would not profit by it personally. It would doubtless prove, a temporary relief to society, although its destruction of land values would create as much or more of a shock than Socialism proposes, unless graduated, as above suggested, by previous announcement. It would readily combine with the more moderate features of Socialism and would give them greater lasting quality; because, the land, one source of wealth, being in the hands of all the people on such conditions, it never would be necessary for healthy, industrious people to starve: all could at least grow crops sufficient to feed themselves. While this, we believe, would be a wise and just measure, and one in accordance with the divine law, as very ably shown by Mr. George, yet it would not be the panacea for all the ills of humanity. The groaning creation would still groan until righteousness and truth are fully established in the earth and all hearts are brought into accord with it, and selfishness would still find opportunity to take all the cream, and leave only enough skimmed milk for the barest necessities of others.

As a proof that a single tax upon land would not alone meet the exigencies of the social and financial trouble, nor avert the coming disaster and social wreck, we cite an instance of its marked failure. India, for long centuries, has had a single tax, a land-tax only, - the soil being held in common and operated under village control. As a result about two-thirds of its population are agriculturalists - a larger proportion than with any other people in the world. Only of late years has private ownership of land been introduced there by the English, and thus far over a very limited area only. The people of India may be said to be contented and comfortable; but it certainly is not because they are rich and supplied with luxuries and conveniences. Modern machinery is speedily revolutionizing their affairs and cutting down their already meagre earnings and compelling them to live on still less or else starve. We have already quoted good authority showing that the poor masses can but seldom afford to eat the plainest food to satisfaction. - See page 381.

When we grant that the single tax or free land proposition would prove to be only one factor of a temporary relief, it is all that we can grant; for if selfishness be thwarted in one direction it will only break out in another: nothing will effectually avail but "new hearts" and "right spirits;" and these neither the Single Tax theory nor any other human theory can produce.

Suppose, for instance, that the people had the land; it would be an easy matter for a combination of capital to refuse to purchase the farm produces except at their own figures, - barely enough to permit the producers to live - and on the other hand to control and fix high prices upon all the agriculturalist needs to purchase, - from the farm fertilizer and farm implements to his family clothing and home furnishments.

This very condition is surely approaching - the Law of Supply and Demand operates too slowly to satisfy the greed for wealth to-day. Labor cannot stop the operation of this law, and is crowded both by machinery and growing population; but Capital can counteract it at least partially by forming Trusts, Combines, Syndicates, etc., for nearly or quite controlling supplies and prices. The Coal Combine is an illustration.

Of what avail, we ask, would Single Tax be against this spirit of selfishness? It would be powerless!

But suppose that the free land and single tax proposition were to go into operation to-morrow; suppose that tilled lands were exempted from all taxes; that each farm were provided with a house, horse, cow, plow and other necessities; suppose this meant the doubling of the present area of cultivation and doubling of present crops. It would insure plenty of corn and wheat and Vegetables for the healthy and thrifty to eat; but the great overplus would bring so small a price that it would not pay to send it to market, except under favorable conditions. It is sometimes .so, even under present conditions: thousands of bushels of potatoes and cabbage being left to rot, because it does not pay to handle them. The first year might draw from the cities to the aforesaid farms thousands of strong and willing men anxious to serve themselves: this would free the city labor market and temporarily raise the wages of those who would remain in the cities, but it would last only one year. The farmers, finding that they could not make clothing and household necessities out of corn and potatoes, either directly or by exchange, would quit fanning and go back to the cities and compete vigorously for whatever they could get that would provide more for them than mere sustenance; - for whatever would grant them a share of life's comforts and luxuries.

No; free land is food as a preventive of starvation, and it is a proper condition in view of the fact that our bountiful Creator gave the land to Adam and his family as a common inheritance; and it would greatly help our present difficulties, if the whole world had a Jubilee of restitution of the land and remission of debts every fifty years, as the Jews had. But such things would be merely palliatives now, as they were with the Jews, and as they still are in India. The only real cure is the great antitypical Jubilee which will be established by earth's coming King - Immanuel.

NOTES

1. "Nor should it be forgotten that the investigator, the philosopher, the teacher, the artist, the poet, the priest, though not engaged in the production of wealth, are not only engaged in the production of utilities and satisfactions to which the production of wealth is only a means, but by acquiring and diffusing knowledge, stimulating mental powers and elevating the moral sense, may greatly increase the ability to produce wealth. For man does not live by bread alone. ... He who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the aggregate of enjoyable wealth increases the sum of human knowledge, or gives to human life higher elevation or greater fullness - he is, in the large meaning of the words, a " producer," a "working man," a "laborer," and is honestly earning honest wages. But he who without doing aught to make mankind o richer, -wiser better, happier, lives on the toil of others - he, no matter by what name of honor he may be called, or how lustily the priests of Mammon may swing their censers before him, is in the last analysis but a beggarman or a thief."