The Man and the Land
Certain good friends of mine were shocked, a few months ago, when they learned that I was one of those monsters who believe in the private ownership of land.
Some of them deplored my ignorance, and urged me to go straightway and read “Progress and Poverty.” Well, I had read Henry George’s book soon after its publication, and had once had the precious advantage of serving a term in Congress with the great Tom Johnson; yet I never had been able to see the distinction, in principle, between the private ownership of a cow and the private ownership of a cow-lot.
Some men are just that stupid, and when Ephraim gets “sot” on a thing of that kind, even Louis Post, of The Public, has to let him alone.
Certain other friends made the point on me that I did not understand Count Tolstoy. That is possible. In his various ramblings into various speculative matters, Tolstoy, like our own Emerson, gets lost, sometimes, in mazes of his own making; and he uses language which may delight professional commentators, but which is sorely vexatious to an average citizen who really wants to know what the philosophers are driving at.
Tolstoy is careful to avoid History. The flood of light which might be thrown upon the land question by the records of the human race is shut out altogether.
And this is the weak spot in the armor of every champion who enters the list against the Private Ownership of Land. If History makes any one thing plain, it is that a Civilization was never able to develop itself on any other basis than that of Private Ownership.
Like other champions of his theory, Tolstoy forgets the elemental traits of Human Nature. He forgets how unequal we are by Nature; how we differ, in character, capacity, taste and purpose; how few there are who will labor for the “good of all,” and how universal is the rule that each man labors, first of all, for himself.
He forgets that every beast of the field has its prototype in some members of the human family; he forgets that the man-tiger is now more numerous than the four-footed sort; that the man-fox is more cunning than his wild brother; that the man-wolf hunts with every human herd; that the man-sloth is marked by nature with her own indelible brand; that some men are born timid as the deer are; that some are born without fear as the lion is; that the human hog grunts and gorges, and makes himself a nauseating nuisance, on the streets, in hotels, in the Pullman cars—in fact everywhere, but most of all where people have to eat and sleep.
This is the fundamental error which doctrinaires are prone to make. They forget what Human Nature actually is, always has been, and perhaps, always will be.
They argue about ideal conditions, unmindful of the fact that ideal conditions require ideal men—and that we haven’t got the ideal men.
Every society, every state, must from necessity be made up of the Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent and the law-makers of that society, that state, will from necessity be compelled to frame laws suited to that community. Hence, the laws will not be absolutely the best, considering the question as an abstract question, but they will be the best which that community is capable of receiving.
All legislation, like all Society, is a compromise.
In a state of Nature I would be absolutely free. But I would be alone. To protect myself in person, property or family, I would have to rely upon my individual arm. My absolute freedom would be an absolute isolation and a relative helplessness.
I would find that I could not endure such a life. I would therefore seek companionship among other men who felt the same needs that I felt, and we would come together for the “good of all.” One hundred families coming together in this way form the nucleus of Society, of the State. Each man gives up a portion of his individual freedom when he enters this union of families which forms such a nucleus.
Why does he surrender a portion of his wild, natural, individual freedom? Why does he agree to be bound by the will of the Community instead of his own will? Why does he consent to be governed by the public when he had previously been his own ruler? He does it because it is to his interest to do it. He finds that, while he has surrendered much, he has gained more. The Community throws around him the protection of a hundred strong arms where previously he had but his own.
The Community, in a hundred ways, ministers to his wants, his weaknesses, his desires, his prosperity.
In other words, the Community gives more than it took.
Association which improves the Community tends to improve each member thus associated; and from this association come all those blessings which we call Civilization.
Resolve the Association back into its elements; let each individual separate from the mass; let each one say, “I’m my own man,”—and what becomes of Civilization?
It perishes, of course.
Now where will Tolstoy find the basis of Society in Nature?
In the human instinct for getting-together. And that instinct seems to grow out of our hopes, and our fears, our profound belief that we need our fellow-man, and that we are not strong enough to stand alone, no matter how much we would like to do so.
Deep down in your heart you will find the primeval, natural craving for independence, individuality, separate living, separate doing. With the great common mass of humanity this tendency has been weakened by disuse until it is not an active principle. It is like a muscle which has lost its strength from inaction. Hence, the common man goes with the herd, just as a flock of sheep follows the bell-wether.
Society, then is a matter of convention: Nature did not frame it.
Nor does Nature impose upon us the relation of Husband and Wife.
Why do we adopt the present marriage system, which differs in so many respects from Nature, and from former practices of the human race?
Simply because we believe it to be an improvement. We know it is better than the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes: we believe it to be better than Polygamy; we hope that it will some day be a more radiant success than the Divorce Courts would seem to indicate.
Now as to the land.
Undoubtedly, the earth was given to the human family as a home for the family. Undoubtedly, Nature teaches that the earth belongs in common to the entire human race.
Thus it was in the beginning. But, just as the wild horse became the property of the bold tribesman who caught it and tamed it; just as the natural fruit of the forest belonged to him who gathered it; just as the cave or hollow tree became the dwelling of the first occupant, so the well in the thirsty plain became the property of him that had dug down to the waters; and the pasturage which one had taken up might not be taken away from him by another.
Mine was the bark hut which my labor had built; mine the canoe which my hands had hollowed out; mine the bow and arrows which I had fashioned; mine the herds and flocks, the goats and asses which I had tamed and reared and cared for till they had multiplied.
Should the idler, or the thief of the tribe, take from me that which my labor had produced? Must my canoe belong to the whole tribe? Must my garment which I had made out of the skins of the wild beast belong to the sloth who loafed in the tent while I risked my life in the woods?
Nature said, no!
Nature, speaking through elemental instinct said: “That which your labor made is yours.”
Yours the hut, yours the canoe, yours the garment of skins, yours the bow and arrows—and that was the beginning of Private Property in Personalty.
But look again at the ways of Nature and of the tribe.
Pasturage failed after awhile; natural fruits were no longer sufficient to sustain life; game disappeared from the forest; fish grew scarce in the streams. Something had to be done to make good the shortage. The soil was there, suggesting cultivation. The products of Nature must be supplemented by human industry. But before the soil could be cultivated, the trees had to be cut away; cattle and wild beasts had to be fenced out; the virgin earth had to be made the bride of toil before the fruitful seed would bring forth harvests.
Now who was to do the work?
The Idler wouldn’t; the Feeble couldn’t; the Hunter didn’t; the strong, clear-headed Laborer made the farm.
Those who assail private ownership of land say that “the man who makes a farm doesn’t make it in the sense that one makes a basket or a chair.” They see clearly that, if they admit that the pioneer who goes into the wilderness or the swamps and creates a farm, is to be put on the same footing as the man who goes into the woods, gets material and makes a canoe, or a chair or a basket, it is “farewell world” to their theory about the land. Therefore they say that the farm was already there, waiting for the farmer. All the farmer had to do was to go there and tickle the soil with a hoe, and it laughed with the harvest.
How very absurd! You might just as well say that the willows that bent over the waters of the brook were baskets waiting for the tardy basketmaker to come and get them. You might just as well say that the hide on the cow’s back was a pair of ladies’ shoes waiting for the lady to come and fit them to her dainty feet.
Must we get rid of our common sense, our practical knowledge, before we can argue a case of this sort? Do not these doctrinaires know that they are denying physical facts, plain everyday experience, when they say that a piece of wild land in the desert, in the swamps, on the mountain side, or in the woody wilderness is a farm waiting for the farmer? Sheer nonsense never went further. But they are compelled to this extent because of the necessities of their case. They see at once that if ever they admit my position that the laborer takes raw materials with which nature supplies him, and out of those raw materials creates something that did not exist before, then the laborer is entitled to that which his labor creates.
Now, do you mean to tell me, that for thousands of years there were farms waiting the pioneers here in North America? Consider for a moment what the New England, or the Southern, or the Western farmer had to do before he had made a farm. He had to go into the woods with an axe in one hand and a rifle in the other. Very frequently he was shot down before he could make his farm, just as Abraham Lincoln’s grandfather was killed. Very frequently he died from the fever engendered in the woods before he had made his farm, just as Andrew Jackson’s father did, in the effort to make a farm in the wilderness of North Carolina. Supposing the farmer was able to snatch up his gun quick enough to shoot the Indian who was trying to shoot him, and supposing that his constitution was strong enough to resist the malarial atmosphere in which he had to labor while creating that farm, what was the process through which he went in making that farm? He had to cut off an enormous growth of timber. He had to grub up stumps and roots. He had to plow and cross-plow the soil until it had become a seed bed. He had to inclose the farm to keep out the wild animals which would have devoured his crop. If in a rocky section, he had to remove the stones which encumbered the ground. If in a damp, swampy section, he had to exercise skill, as well as labor, in draining the soil. After four or five years, the laborer had made a farm—something as different from the wild land which he found in the woods as the pine tree is from the lumber which lies upon the lumber-yard; as different as the wool on the sheep’s back is from the coat which you wear; something as different as the willow and the bamboo are from the chairs and the baskets which are made from them.
Now, the doctrinaires say that it would be a sufficient reward to that laborer to give him the crop that he made on the land. Would it? For what length of time will you give him those crops? If you ask the laborer, he will say, “I made this farm; I risked my life in the work: I shortened my days by the labor, the exposure, the drudgery of making this farm. I never would have gone to this amount of toil if I had not believed that society would secure me in the possession of the farm after I made it.”
Having established him in his security of possession, which I say is tantamount to title, suppose that laborer wants to change his farm for a stock of manufactured goods, or for silver and gold, or for horses, or for another piece of land, do you mean to say he shall not have the right to do it? If so, you limit his title, and you have not the right to do so. That which he made he ought to have the right to dispose of on such terms as please him. His title having originated in the sacred rights of labor, you should not limit his enjoyment or his disposition of that which his labor created. If you recognize his right to exchange one product of his labor for another, you recognize his right to exchange all products of his labor for others. In other words, by plain course of reasoning, you arrive at the principle that the bargain and sale of lands is founded upon the right of the laborer to exchange the product of his labor with those who may have product of labor which he could use to better advantage than he can use his own.
Now, let us see. The laborer who made the farm dies. What shall become of it? Away back in the origin of property, occupancy was the first title recognized. As long as one individual, or one tribe, occupied a certain spot their right to use it was recognized, but no longer. When possession was abandoned, the next individual, or the next tribe who occupied that spot, had the right of possession. When tribes ceased to wander about, the occupancy of the spot which the tribe had taken possession of became permanent.
Therefore, the title to that spot grew up in the tribe along with permanent possession. No civilization was ever created by wandering tribes. It is only when the tribe fixes its permanent residence in some particular spot, recognized as exclusively its own, that there is any such thing as law and order and civilization. It is clear enough when we consider one tribe in its relations to other tribes. Let us consider the tribe in its relations to its members. Each individual in the beginning had a title by occupancy to the spot which he cultivated, and this security of possession lasted so long as the occupancy lasted. If the tribesman abandoned his spot of land, with the intent to surrender the same, then the next fortunate tribesman who came along could take possession of it and hold it. But, in the course of time, this created great inconvenience, because, as favored spots became more desirable, the competition to get them was fiercer. Hence, there were feuds, bloody struggles, disorders in the tribe. Consequently, by natural evolution society was forced, first, to recognize the right of the individual as long as he wished to occupy the spot which he had taken possession of; second to provide for the succession to that title when the spot became vacant.
The learned men tell us that, at the death of the occupant, his own family, his own children, being naturally the first who would know that he was dead, were naturally the first who would take possession after his death. Therefore, the sons of the deceased tenant always became the first occupants of the vacant land which had been left vacant by the death of their father. This succession of the sons to the fathers becoming universal, was finally recognized by the law of the tribe; and in the course of time it was recognized further in the law which allowed the tenant to make a will and to say who should take his property after his death.
Thus by slow and almost imperceptible degrees, the tribe recognized, first, the right of the man who had made a farm to hold it as long as he lived; second, the right of his children to follow in his footsteps and to receive the benefit of that which their father had created by his labor; third, and last, came the law of wills and testaments which allowed the tribesman to say what should go with his property after his death.
If the occupant died without heirs and without having made a will, the land went back to the tribe, or the state, to be disposed of as public property. This principle is recognized to this day in the doctrine of escheats.
Property in land differs in nowise from property in horses and cows. The law of property is the same naturally in real estate as in personal estate, and I can conceive of no revenue in any community which is so just as that which lays itself with an equal burden upon all kinds of property in proportion to the amount thereof. In the beginning, one tribesman, like Abraham or Lot, might have his cattle browsing upon a thousand hills, while another tribesman might have made a little farm in some secluded valley, or upon some thirsty, rocky mountain-side where vines were planted, or where olive trees bore their fruit to the industrious citizen who had year in and year out watched and tended their growth. Would there be any justice in compelling those little farmers to supply the revenue for the common purpose of the tribe, and not compel a contribution pro rata from the men who owned “exceeding many flocks and herds”?
The trouble about these doctrinaires is that they start at the present day and reason backward, while I start at the fountain head and reason down. I take things as history shows them to have been; they take things as they think they ought to have been.
The doctrinaire further says that if the tribesman who made a farm had been satisfied to fence in his farm, only, the common would have remained after all had been supplied. In this country, we have millions of acres of “commons” now waiting any one “member of the tribe” who wants to go and take his share. The truth of it is, the doctrinaire doesn’t want to go out into the wild land and make a farm. He wants to stay where he is, and take one that some other fellow has made. Especially doth he crave a slice of the Astor estate, which doctrinaires have talked of so much that they can almost identify their shares therein.
One of the doctrinaires quotes the following from “Progress and Poverty”: “If a fair distribution of land were made among the whole population, giving to each his equal share, and laws enacted which would impose a barrier to the tendency to concentration, by forbidding the holding by anyone of more than a fixed amount, what would become of the increased population?”
I do not consider it any part of my task to assail the position taken in “Progress and Poverty,” but I think it a satisfactory answer to the foregoing question to say that in the very nature of things posterity must be the heirs-at-law of the conditions of those who went before. To say that we can so frame a social fabric as flexibly and automatically to give an equal share of everything to every child born into the world hereafter, regardless of whether that child’s parents were thrifty, industrious, virtuous people, or, on the other hand, were thriftless, indolent, vicious people, seems to me to be one of the wildest dreams that ever entered the human mind. No matter how equal material conditions might be made today by legislation, the inherent inequality in the capacities of men, physically, mentally, spiritually, would evolve differences tomorrow. There is no such thing as equality among men, and no law will ever give it to them. What the father gains the children lose; and the grandchildren may regain. While one man runs the race of life and wins it; another man, equally tall and strong will run the race and lose it. Just why, it is, in some cases, difficult to tell.
Some men naturally lead; some naturally follow; some naturally command; others naturally obey: some are naturally strong; others are naturally weak. The law of life to some is activity; others say that they were born tired; and there is a certain pathos in their excuse for indolence, for they were born tired. One man is naturally brave—physically, morally—and he will venture. Another man is naturally a coward—physically or morally—and he will not venture. A dozen different traits, or combination of traits, make failure or success in life, and to say that success or failure, vice and virtue, good and bad, are the results of environment and social conditions, is as misleading, as a general statement of fundamental facts, as to say that the dove and the hawk, the tiger and the sheep, the rattlesnake and the harmless “black runner” are the results of environment. Nature in its act of creation made the difference between the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea, the men and women who inhabit the earth. From the remotest ages, of which we have record, human nature has been the same that it is today. Paganism presented precisely the same types of man in its savagery and its civilization that Christianity now presents in its savagery and civilization. “There is nothing new under the sun,” and the very theories which the doctrinaires now think are matters of modern discovery, unknown to our ancestors, and which would have been adopted had our ancestors been as wise as we, were discussed in the days of Aristotle and had the very best thought of the sages of antiquity.
Let it be remembered, however, that I have always qualified the Private Ownership of Land by acknowledging the supremacy of the State. The tribe, the community, the State, the Government holds supreme power over the life and liberty of citizens, and over the ownership of the soil. The State calls for me to give up my individual pursuits, my individual liberty, my individual preference, and to take my place as a soldier in the ranks of the army. I am compelled to obey; that is an obligation which rests upon me as a member of society. Thus the State can demand my life of me whenever the State declares that it is necessary for the defence of the State. In like manner, the State can restrain me of my liberty. For instance, in times of epidemics, we have shotgun quarantine which destroys my liberty of movement. I would be shot down like a dog if I sought to break through the lines of quarantine, although to make such an escape might mean my individual salvation, whereas obedience to law amounts to sentence of death. In this case, as in the other, the State practically demands my life as an individual as a sacrifice for the good of the greater number of citizens. So, as to property, no man holds an absolute title to land as against the State. The Government, acting for all the tribe, for all the people, can tear down or burn my house to stop the spread of fire. It can confiscate my property for public purposes, when the public need requires it. It can take my land for public buildings, for canals, for railroads, or for new dirt roads through the country. My rights in the premises would be recognized in the payment to me of damages. My individual rights would be assessed in so many dollars and cents. Thus my home, which might be almost as dear to me as my life, would be coldly valued in money, and although I left it with bitter regrets, even with bitter tears and a bitter sense of wrong, I would have to surrender my individual preference to what is supposed to be by constituted authorities the necessity of the State. This right of the public to take away any portion of the soil from the individual, and to dedicate it to the use of the public, is called the right of Eminent Domain, and is a remnant of the old system which recognized that the title to all the lands was in the King. Of course the King stood for the State. Centered in the personal sovereign were those sovereign rights which belong to the people as a whole, and the people as a whole, represented by the King, were admitted to be the owners of the ultimate fee in the land, and could compel any individual to surrender his individual holdings for the benefit of the entire people, just compensation having first been paid to the individual. It is in that sense that I say private ownership of land is just as holy a principle, just as equitable, as private ownership in the basket which I made from the rushes I gathered along the stream, or from the splints which I rived out from the white oak; just as sacred as my right to the boat which I hollowed out from the forest tree, or the bark hut, or the hut of skins, which my labor erected to shelter me and my family.
The doctrinaire asks: “Could he not be as secure in his possession if the land were owned and exaction made by all the people?” Certainly. That is my contention. The whole tribe did exercise dominion over the land, but to encourage the individual member of the tribe to improve a particular portion of the wild land, the tribe agreed to protect the individual in that which his labor had created, namely a farm. My contention now is that the ultimate ownership of the land is in all the people; but society had a perfect right to divide it on such terms as were thought best and to guarantee to each individual “security of possession,” or title, to that which he had produced. The great trouble with Mr. Doctrinaire is that he does not begin at the beginning. If he would study the condition of the human race as it gradually evolved from the patriarchal state, the tribal state, the nomad state, into that fixed and complex status which we now call “Christian Civilization,” he would readily understand how private ownership of land was the axis upon which the improvement of the conditions of the individual and of the State turned. As long as tribes wandered about from province to province, with their herds of goats, or sheep, or cattle, nibbling the grass which nature put up, and moving onward to another pasture as fast as one was exhausted, there could be nothing but tent life, nothing but personal property. The house had to move every time the family moved. Therefore, when the herds devoured the grass in one place, and the tribe had to move to another, tents were struck, the few household goods were packed on the backs of the wives, or on the backs of other beasts of burden, and the family moved. When man and beast multiplied to such an extent that nature no longer supplied a sufficiency of food, it became necessary for the tribe to settle down, and to divide the territory upon which they settled among the various members of the tribe. That was done in Germany, as well as in various other countries, but I take Germany because the German tribes were our own ancestors. They divided the lands every year. It was seldom the case that the same tribesman occupied the same home for more than one year. Like the Methodist preachers of today, their homes were always on the go. The farmer’s home in those days was precisely like the Methodist preachers’ homes today—a matter to be fixed at the annual conference. The Methodist preacher who today is preaching in the town may next year be sent into the remote rural precincts: the mountain parson may next year be sent to the seaboard. The church is fixed and the parsonage is stationary, but the preacher and his wife and his children are forever moving. Now in precisely the same manner the tribesmen of the German tribes used to be going from farm to farm, and there were no considerable improvements made while that state of affairs existed. Why? Because we are just so constituted that we do not care to build houses for other people to live in, if we know it. When we start out to beautify a home, we may never enjoy it, but we expect to do so at the time, and without that expectation there would be no beautiful homes.
Mr. Doctrinaire thinks because each tribesman would try to grab the best piece of land, there was original injustice in allowing private ownership. If he will think for a moment, he will realize that the native selfishness of man does not make against the private ownership of land to any further extent than it does to the private ownership of personal property. When the tribesmen went out to hunt, each hunter sought to bring down the finest stag. Each hunter naturally wanted to hunt where the best game was to be found. Hence those eternal wars between the Indian tribes which brought down the population on the American continent. Hence also those feuds and tribal wars which desolated the East in the times of nomad life.
We find Abraham and Lot in a bitter dispute over a certain pasture; but as to the well which Abraham “had digged” there was no resisting his claim, that well was his property. Why? Because in the quaint language of the Bible, “He had digged that well.” In other words, while nature put the water in under the soil, and while nature made the soil itself, it was Abraham’s judgment which selected the place where he could find the water, and it was Abraham’s labor that removed the earth which covered the water. In other words, Abraham made the well, in precisely the same sense that the pioneer in the wilderness makes a farm.
But, as I said, the competitive principle, each one wanting to get what is best, reveals itself in all directions. Every fisherman has always wanted the best fishing grounds. Nations have been brought to war by this cause, to say nothing of tribal disputes and individual contests.
Nowhere have I contended that it was private ownership of land that made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain the product of his labor. I could not have said that because I know quite well that personal property preceded property in land. In other words, the laborers acquired a full title to the rude garments in which they clothed themselves, the rude implements which they used in the chase, their weapons, canoes, etc., long before they ever made farms. This has been explained fully elsewhere and does not at all antagonize the statement that after a tribesman has acquired by his labor an interest in the land, the government of the tribe may be so arranged that the produce of the land will be taken away from the land-owner as fast as he produces it. Instead of robbery by taxation in land—products preceding private ownership in land—the reverse is the case. To fleece the laborer of what he produces on his farm was the after-thought of those who governed the tribe.
This is shown by the wretchedness of the peasant class in Russia today. Historians tell us that the Russian peasant formerly owned a very considerable portion of the land, just as the French peasants did, and in addition to the individual ownership which was in the Russian peasantry, there was a large quantity of communal land which belonged to each community of peasants as a whole. In the process of time, the ruling class in Russia put such burdens upon the peasant proprietor that he gradually lost his land and became a serf. Of course, Mr. Doctrinaire recalls that in 1860 the serfs of Russia were freed, and they were given a large portion of the land which had been taken away from them by the Russian nobles. They also held the communal lands. What has been the result? The ruling classes have put such heavy burdens in the way of dues and taxes upon the peasants that their ownership of the land, communal and individual, has brought them none of the blessings which they anticipated. Thus we have a striking and contemporaneous illustration of the great truth which I have sought to emphasize, namely, that the mere ownership of land does not emancipate the people.
Arthur Young, the famous “Suffolk Squire,” rode horseback over the rural districts of France, just before the Revolution broke out. He found that the French peasants owned their own farms. He made a close and sympathetic study of their condition.
And what was that condition?
Wretched to the very limit of human endurance. The king, the noble, and the priest were literally devouring the Common People. Privilege, Titles, Taxes, Feudal dues were driving the masses to despair, to desperation.
Yet the French peasant had “access to the land.”
In England, at that time, the peasants did not own land, and yet their condition was incomparably better than that of the French.
Why? Because they were not ground down by Taxes and Feudal dues.
Could you ask a more convincing illustration?
Mr. Doctrinaire makes the point that when one member of the tribe decided to undertake the arduous task of making a farm out of a few acres of the millions which belonged to the tribe, this industrious member of the community “robbed” all the others when he claimed as his own that which his hands had made. I can see no more “robbery” in this case than in that of another tribesman who went and cut down one of the millions of forest trees which belonged to the tribe, and with painful labor hollowed out this tree and created a canoe. At the time the one tribesman made the canoe, every other tribesman had the same chance to do the same thing. At the time the one tribesman went into the woods and made a farm every other tribesman had the same right. If Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the first occupant of any particular spot did not have the right to locate a farm, he might as well say that the first finder of the cavern, or the hollow tree, did not have the right to occupy that which he had first found, and yet he knows perfectly well that this right of discovery and occupancy was always recognized from the beginning of time and that from the very nature of things it had to be recognized to prevent the bloodiest feuds in every tribe. (A curious survival of this Right of Discovery is to be seen even now in the claim to the “Bee Tree” by the first to find it.)
Mr. Doctrinaire says, impliedly, that if the tribesman had fenced in no more than the spot out of which he had made a farm, injustice would not have been done to the tribe: but he says the tribesman went further and fenced in a great deal more—“vast areas,” which he could not use, and also “claimed” these as his own. How does Mr. Doctrinaire know that? I did not state anything of the sort. Nor does the historian state anything of the sort. I was tracing title to land to its origin, and I contended that the origin of title to land was labor. Consequently, my contention was that the tribesman fenced in that which his labor had redeemed from the wilderness—his original purpose in fencing it in being partly to identify what was his own, partly to assert his exclusive possession, but chiefly to protect his crop from the ravages of the wild animals that were still roaming at large in the forest. Mr. Doctrinaire must remember that the fencing of the farm was one of the most tremendous difficulties that the pioneer met with. He had no barbed wire; he had no woven wire, he had no convenient sawmill from which he could haul plank. No; he had to cut down enormous trees, and by the hardest labor known to physical manhood, he had to split those trees into rails, and with these rails fence in that little dominion which he rescued from “the wild,” that little oasis in a great desert of savagery.
To put up the fence was heroic work. To keep it up was just as heroic, for forest fires destroyed it from time to time, and the pioneer had to replace the barrier against the encroachment of animal life and the inroads of savagery with as great a tenacity and as sublime a courage as that of the people of Holland, who tore their country from the clutches of the ocean and barred out the sea with dikes. Tell me, that after the pioneer had created this little paradise of his—rude though it might have been—amidst the terrors and the toils and sacrifices of that life in the wilderness, it should be taken from him by the first man who coveted it, and who said, “here, take your crop, that is all you are entitled to: take your crop and give me your farm!” Would that have been right, at the time private property was first recognized by our people in Germany? Would that have been right at the time our pioneer farmers in New England and Virginia created their farms, endured difficulties and dangers which make them stand out in heroic outline on the canvas of history? No, by the splendor of God! It would have been robbery and nothing less than robbery for the tribe to have confiscated the farm which the pioneer of America had made—partly with his rifle, partly with his axe, partly with his spade—and throw it into the common lot where the idler and the criminal would have just as much benefit from it as the pioneer who had made the farm.
As to the abuse of land ownership, that is an entirely different question. I agree that there should be no monopoly of land for speculative purposes. The platform of the People’s Party has constantly kept that declaration as a part of its creed. The abuse of land ownership is quite a different thing from land ownership itself. I am not defending any of its abuses. I am simply saying that the principle is sound. All those things which belong to the class of private utilities should be left to private ownership, because I believe in individualism; but all those things which partake of the nature of public utilities should belong to the public.
Mr. Doctrinaire says that railroads have their power based in the fixed principle of private ownership of land. I deny this utterly. It was always necessary for the civilized community to have public roads. Even the Indians had their great trails which were in the nature of public roads. A public road never of itself did anything injurious to a community. The taking of land for a public road confers a benefit upon the entire community. It is for that reason it is laid out. The amount of land which is taken for a road, whether you cover it with blocks of stone, as the Romans did, or whether you cover it with iron rails, as modern corporations do, can inflict no injury whatever upon the community unless you go further. For instance, if you erect toll gates on the public highways and vest in some corporation the right to charge toll on freight and passengers at those toll rates, then you have erected a tyranny which can rob the traveler and injure the community. In that case, you can clearly see it is not the road, it is not the land over which the road passes, that is hurting the individual and the public. The thing which hurts is that franchise which empowers the corporation to tax the citizens and the property of the citizens as they pass along that highway. In like manner, the road which the transportation companies use could never have inflicted harm upon individuals or communities. The thing which hurts is the franchise which empowers the corporation to rob the people with unjust freight and passenger tolls as they pass along the highway.
Mr. Doctrinaire mires up badly in trying to evade the point which I made about Italy. I contended that while it was true that great estates were the ruin of Italy, there had to be some general cause at work, injurious to the average man, before the soil could be concentrated into these great estates. This is very obvious to anyone who will stop to think a moment. Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the great estates in Italy were acquired by simply claiming the land and fencing it in, by “each individual claiming far more than he could use.” If all the land of Italy had been claimed and enclosed, the power that these land claimers had over subsequent comers is obvious; but how did “the claimers” get the lands? The most superficial knowledge of Roman History ought to convince Mr. Doctrinaire that Italy was cut up into small holdings until one branch of the government, the aristocracy, represented by the Senate, gathered into its own hands by persistent encroachment all the powers of the State. After that had been done, they fixed the machinery of government so that the aristocracy were almost entirely exempt from public burdens, whereas the common people had to bear not only their just portion, but also the portion which the aristocracy shirked. The ruling class, the patricians, not only escaped their burdens in upholding the State but they appropriated to themselves the revenue which the Roman State exacted from the lower class, the plebeians. The result was that the Italian peasant found himself unable to sustain the burdens which the government put upon him and he abandoned his farm, just as the French peasant quit the land, for the same reason, prior to the French Revolution. In other words, the small proprietor had to sell out to the patrician, and the patricians got these great estates in the same manner that Rockefeller, for instance, got the estate which he now holds at Tarrytown. The Standard Oil King did not simply stretch his wires and “claim” land. He bought out the people who found themselves unable or unwilling to hold their lands. Rockefeller stood relatively on the same ground of advantage held by the Roman patricians. Governmental favoritism, and special privilege, the power of money which he had attained through unjust laws, made him more able to buy than the individual owners around him were to hold. Therefore he absorbed the small estates, and his estate became the “great estate,” just as such great estates were created in Italy.
Mr. Doctrinaire can see the process going on around us. He can see how great estates absorb small estates. Our legislation for one hundred years has been in the interest of capital against labor. A plutocracy which enjoys the principal benefits of government, and contributes almost nothing to the support of the government, has been built up: charters have been granted by which large corporations exploit the public; and in this way great estates, whether in stocks or bonds, or gold, or land, have been created.
The same principles, the same favoritism, the same privilege, working in different ways, brought about the same results in France before the Revolution, in Rome before its downfall, in Egypt, in Persia, in the Babylonian Empire. If there is any one word which can be appropriately used as an epitaph for all the dead nations of antiquity, that word is “privilege.” The government was operated by a ruling class for the benefit of that class, and the result was national decay, national death.
Mr. Doctrinaire asks me: “How did the ruling class at Rome come to control the money?” I might answer by asking him: “How did the controlling class in the United States come into control of the money?” He would certainly admit that they have got control of it. How did they get it? They took into their own hands, in the days of Alexander Hamilton, the control of governmental machinery. They erected a tariff system to give special privileges to manufacturers. Out of this has come the monopoly which the manufacturers enjoy of the American market, and the natural evolution of the tariff act which Alexander Hamilton put upon our statute book more than one hundred years ago, produced The Trusts.
Again, the power to create a circulating medium to be used as money and to expand and contract this circulating medium, thereby controlling the rise and fall of markets, was a vicious principle embedded into our system by, Alexander Hamilton, more than one hundred years ago.
Again, the granting of charters to private companies to exploit public utilities is another means by which our patrician class has secured the control of money. Now at Rome there was a similar process. Instrumentalities were different, the names of things were different, but the ruling class at Rome had the power of fixing the taxes, and they appropriated to themselves the proceeds of these taxes. They had the power of legislation in their hands and exploited the public for their own benefit. In this way they secured, of course, the control of money. The one advantage of paying no tax themselves and of appropriating to themselves the taxes which they levied upon the plebeians was sufficient to give them not only the control of money, but the control of the land and of the man. In fact that tremendous power, to fix the taxes and to appropriate the public revenue, is all that the ruling class of any country need have in order to establish an intolerable despotism over the unfavored classes.
Mr. Doctrinaire has the fatal habit of crawling backwards with his logic. He says that the Roman Patrician could not have controlled the money until he got control of the land. The slightest reflection ought to convince him that this cannot be true. No class of men ever secured the control of money by merely controlling the land. Just the reverse is the universal truth. Without any exception whatsoever governmental machinery, the taxing system, usury, expansion and contraction of the currency hold the land-owner at their mercy. The land-owner, as such, never had them at his mercy and he never will.
Another instance of the crawl-backwards method of reasoning is given when Mr. Doctrinaire says that usury grew out of land monopoly instead of land monopoly growing out of usury. When a man gets himself into such a state of mind that he can deliberately write a statement of that sort for publication, he is beyond reach of any ordinary process of conviction and conversion. My statement was that usury is a vulture that has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since the beginning of time. Mr. Doctrinaire says this is not true. On the other hand, he says that land monopoly came first, and then usury. If the rich people got all the land first, so that they had a land monopoly, upon whom did they practice usury? How could they fatten on those who had nothing? If Mr. Doctrinaire is at all familiar with the trouble between the Russians and the Jews in Russia he knows that one of the accusations brought by the Russian against the Jew is that the Russian land-owner has been devoured by the money-lending Jew. If he knows anything about our agricultural troubles in the South and in the West, he knows that the Southern and Western farmer complains that he has been devoured by usury. If he knows anything about the history of the Russian serf, he knows that the money-lending patricians made serfs out of the small land-owners by usury. If he will study the subject, he will find that in Rome, Egypt and Assyria the small land-owner was devoured by usury, had to part with his property and thus surrender to those who were piling up great fortunes by governmental privilege and by the control of money.
Take the Rothschild family for an example. Did they have a land monopoly which made it possible for them to wield the vast powers of usury? Theirs is a typical case. Study it a moment. A small Jewish dealer and money-lender in Frankfort is chosen by a rascally ruler of one of the German States as a go-between in a villainous transaction whereby the little German ruler sells his subjects into military service to the King of England. These soldiers, who were bought, are known to history as the Hessians, and they fought against us in the Revolutionary War. This was the beginning of the Rothschild fortune, the transaction having been very profitable to the Rothschild who managed it. Later, during the Napoleonic Wars, the character of a Rothschild for trustworthiness became established among princes and kings who were confederated against Napoleon and many of the financial dealings of that day were made through him. Of course, these huge financial transactions were profitable to the Rothschild. Again, a certain German ruler, during those troublesome times, entrusted all of his cash to the safe-keeping of a Rothschild, the purpose being to put the money where Napoleon would not get it. For many years the Rothschild had the benefit of this capital, and he put it out to the very best advantage in loans and speculations, here and there. By the time Napoleon was overthrown at Waterloo the Rothschild family had become so rich and strong that it spread over the European world. One member of the family took England, another France, another Austria, another Belgium, the parent house remaining in Germany, and to this day the Rothschild family is the dominant financial influence of the European world. In other words, by the power of money and the power of usury, they were able to make a partition of Europe and they are more truly the rulers of nations than are the Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, the Romanoffs, or any other one dynasty which nominally wields the sceptre.
Now, can Mr. Doctrinaire ask for a better illustration of the truth of my statement that the power of money is not based upon the monopoly of land; and that the monopoly of land is the fruitage of the tree of usury? Originally, the Rothschilds owned no land. It was only after they had become so rich that they were compelled to look around for good investments that they began to buy real estate. Their vast fortune, which staggers the human mind in the effort to comprehend it, was not the growth of land monopoly, but was the growth of usury. What the Rothschilds have done in modern times, men of like character did in ancient times, and just as the modern world will decay and collapse if these evil accumulations be not prevented, so in ancient times people went to decay and extinction because no method of reform was found in time to work salvation.
Mr. Doctrinaire asks me what is the cause of the Standard Oil monopoly. I thought that if there was any one thing we all agreed about it was that the Standard Oil monopoly had its origin in violations of law, in the illegal use of those public roads which are called transportation lines, the secret rebate, the discriminating service, the favoritism which the transportation company can exercise in favor of one shipper against all others, to the destruction of competition. You might end land monopoly, but as long as the railroad franchises exist, the Standard Oil monopoly will exist, if they can get the favored illegal treatment which they got in the building up of their monopoly and which they still have in sustaining it. The power of Privilege in securing money, and the power of money in destroying competition, was never more strikingly evident than in the colossal growth of Standard Oil. Mr. Doctrinaire might own half the oil wells in America, but unless he made terms with the Standard he would never get his oil on the market at a profit. The Big-Pistol is not the ownership of the oil-well. The Big-Pistol is the mis-use of franchises.
With all the power that is in me, I am fighting the frightful conditions which beset us, but I know, as well as I know anything, that the principle of the private ownership of land has had nothing whatever to do with our trouble.
Repeal the laws which grant the Privileges that lead to Monopoly; equalize the taxes; make the rich support the government in proportion to their wealth; restore public utilities to the public; put the power of self-government back into the hands of the people by Direct Legislation; restore our Constitutional system of finance; pay off the National debt and wipe out the National banking system; quit giving public money to pet banks for private benefit; remove all taxes from the necessaries of life; establish postal savings banks; return to us the God-given right to freedom of trade.
With these reforms in operation, millionaires would cease to multiply and fewer Americans would be paupers. Trusts would not tyrannize over the laborer and the consumer, Corporations could not plunder a people whose political leaders they have bought. Some statesman might again declare as Legaré declared twenty years before the Civil War: “We have no poor.”
English travelers might have no occasion to say, as Rider Haggard said last year, that our condition was becoming so intolerable that there must be reform or revolution. On the contrary, the English travelers might say once more, as Charles Dickens said in 1843, that an Angel with a flaming sword would attract less attention than a beggar in the streets.
And with these reforms accomplished any man in America who wanted to work a farm of his own could do it.
I cannot promise that he would get one of the corner lots of the Astor estate, but I have no doubt whatever that if he really wanted a farm, and were willing to take it a few miles outside of the city, town, or village, he could get just as much land as he cared to work.