Unfortunately from an economic point of view the system is utterly condemned. Agriculture is an industry like any other—one is always obliged to repeat this fact, because when one alludes to it this evident truth always seems forgotten. Now, in the present day, all industries are concentrated. Factories diminish in number but increase in importance. Those who cannot or will not submit to this necessity, disappear. A farm is a factory of meat and corn. Now, if all other things were equal, a large farm would always produce more economically than a small one, because, as a rule, its expenses are less, and it has a more perfect apparatus for doing the necessary work. The smaller ones must therefore disappear.
And they are disappearing everywhere, even amongst us. In my opinion this is not even doubtful. The other day M. Yves Guyot asserted it in the Chamber of Deputies. He was right; property in France is becoming concentrated; we have but to look round us to be convinced of the fact. I may be answered that according to the returns of the tax-collectors the number of properties does not seem to be decreasing. This argument is not worth anything. How many landowners are there possessing property in fifteen or twenty communes? How many are there who, having by degrees bought ten or twelve lots in the same commune, ever gave themselves the trouble of uniting them in one return? The truth is that in all agricultural countries the peasants have ceased to buy land, and they are selling it wherever they find a great landowner willing to buy it. I, of course, except the vine districts from this statement.
The same phenomenon is noticeable in America, and still more conspicuously. The Government does everything in its power to form and maintain small properties; it distributes land to the emigrants by lots of 160 acres, forbidding them to sell it under five years. As soon as the five years are over the emigrants hasten to sell their lands, which are never seriously cultivated until twenty or forty lots are united in the same hands. Every American economist observes this tendency; it is universal. Wherever the laws do not intervene large estates are rapidly absorbing the smaller ones, because the small ones cannot compete with the large, and if the laws intervene they are only efficacious in diminishing production. Except in a few privileged countries small farms must therefore disappear. Can Ireland boast of being one of the fortunate exceptions? Most evidently not! Then why create small farms in Ireland? or rather, since they already exist with all their drawbacks, why endeavour to maintain them by founding small estates, as the Land League is trying to do? It is aiming at impossibilities, for they can only succeed by destroying steamers, railways, and agricultural machinery all over the world.
We will now resume the discussion at the point where we left it. I said that only two systems of agriculture are known—the small and the great. Facility of transport and the perfection we have reached in agricultural tools have rendered small cultivation impossible nearly everywhere. Only the great remains. Let us now see under what conditions it is working. It requires great capital; besides, it evidently, like every other industry, has more chance of success when it is directed by competent men. Now the most competent men not being always those who have the most capital, the countries where agriculture would flourish best would be those, of course if all other things were equal, where a combination had been discovered which placed large capital at the disposal of the most competent men—those, to use a modern expression, where agricultural credit would be the best organised.
This question has attracted great attention. It is very difficult to solve, because no combination can be discovered which ensures that the capital directed into agricultural channels would find sufficient securities and interest. But the real reason is that agriculture is already burdened with a first mortgage, for from time immemorial it has had recourse to credit, and if it has been able to struggle on until these latter times in spite of all the charges which crush it in countries belonging to the old civilisation, it is because there is an institution which has provided it with capital in such abundance and at such low rates of interest, that naturally no other organisation of agricultural credit can live by making needless repetition of its arrangements; this institution is rent. If it has so many detractors in the present day, it is because the people believe it to be of feudal origin, and above all because they do not consider the conditions under which it is working, nor the fate of agriculturists in countries where renting land is little or never practised.
Some weeks ago I was in a smoking compartment of the express train which goes from Chicago to New York. It was just at the time when Mr. Henry George, the celebrated Socialist, had offered himself as candidate for the New York mayoralty. The news had produced a great impression all over the United States. Mr. George, has, in fact, used his talent as a writer, which is really very great, for the diffusion of the most advanced opinions. He considers that since the soil has no value except through the labour that is spent upon it all the fruit of the soil should return to the labourer, the rent of the land, if there is one, being acquired as a right from the State. His system therefore leads to the absolute suppression of landed property, since the owner would soon tire of being only cashier to the State.
One of our travelling companions, a barrister from Minneapolis, commenced to talk. From his first words it was easy to see that we were listening to an ardent partisan of Mr. George’s doctrines.
“Gentlemen,” said he, as he ended a long speech intended to celebrate the advantages of Socialism, “you know how all European nations are now situated. In England, in a great part of France, and particularly in Ireland, unfortunate wretches work like slaves to win harvests from the earth, harvests of which they are only allowed to retain just the amount absolutely necessary to keep them from dying of starvation, all the rest goes to maintain in idleness people who have only had the trouble of being born. It is private estates that have caused it all. It is because the earth, the common property of all mankind, has been unjustly monopolised by a few, that these infamous things have taken place. You will tell me that these things are only seen in Europe amongst nations of backward civilisation, but these private estates also exist amongst us, and if we do not guard against it we shall also feel the fatal consequences of the system here. Our agriculturists are already in the hands of capitalists, who will now only advance them money at fabulous interest.”
I had just finished my cigar, and thought that a discussion with the good man might be amusing.
“Excuse me,” I commenced, interrupting him, “in which State do you live then?”