Such, in outline, are the intermingled political and economic conditions common to all American industrial centres. But above every other fact, one salient fact appears: On the wage-workers falls the burthen of class law. On what, then, depends the wiping out of such law? Certainly on nothing else so much as on the force of the wage-workers themselves. To deprive their opponents of unjust legal advantages, and to invest themselves with just rights of which they have been deprived, is a task, outside their labor organizations, to be accomplished mainly by the wage-workers. It is their task as citizens—their political task. With direct legislation and local self-government, it is, in considerable degree, a feasible, even an easy, task. The labor organizations might supply the framework for a political party, as was done in New York city in 1886. Then, as was the case in that campaign, when the labor party polled 68,000 votes, even non-unionists might throw in the reinforcement of their otherwise hurtful strength. Success once in sight, the organized wage-workers would surely find citizens of other classes helping to swell their vote. And in the straightforward politics of direct legislation, the labor leaders who command the respect of their fellows might, without danger to their character and influence, go boldly to the front.
The Wage-Workers as a Political Majority.
Suppose that as far as possible our industrial city of 50,000 inhabitants should exercise self-government with direct legislation. Various classes seeking to reform common abuses, certain general reforms would immediately ensue. If the city should do what the Swiss have done, it would speedily rid its administration of unnecessary office-holders, reduce the salaries of its higher officials, and rescind outstanding franchise privileges. If the municipality should have power to determine its own methods of taxation, as is now in some respects the case in Massachusetts towns, and toward which end a movement has begun in New York, it would probably imitate the Swiss in progressively taxing the higher-priced real estate, inheritances, and incomes. If the wage-workers, a majority in a direct vote, should demand in all public work the short hour day, they would get it, perhaps, as in the Rockland town meeting, without question. Further, the wage-workers might vote anti-Pinkerton ordinances, compel during strikes the neutrality of the police, and place judges from their own ranks in at least the local courts. These tasks partly under way, a change in prevailing social ideas would pass over the community. The press, echo, not of the widest spread sentiments, but of controlling public opinion, would open its columns to the wage-working class come to power. And, as is ever so when the wage-workers are aggressive and probably may be dominant, the social question would burn.
The Entire Span of Equal Rights.
The social question uppermost, the wage-workers—now in political ascendency, and bent on getting the full product of their labor—would seek further to improve their vantage ground. Sooner or later they would inevitably make issue of the most urgent, the most persistent, economic evil, local as well as general, the inequality of rights in the land. They would affirm that, were the land of the community in use suitable to the general needs, the unemployed would find work and the total of production be largely increased. They would point to the vacant lots in and about the city, held on speculation, commonly in American cities covering a greater area than the land improved, and denounce so unjust a system of land tenure. They could demonstrate that the price of the land represented for the most part but the power of the owners to wring from the producers of the city, merely for space on which to live and work, a considerable portion of their product. They could with reason declare that the withholding from use of the vacant land of the locality was the main cause of local poverty. And they would demand that legal advantages in the local vacant lands should forthwith cease.
In bringing to an end the local land monopoly, however, justice could be done the landholders. Unquestionably the fairest measure to them, and at the same time the most direct method of giving to city producers, if not free access to land, the next practicable thing to it, would be for the municipality to convert a part of the local vacant land into public property, and to open it in suitable plots to such citizens as should become occupiers. Sufficient land for this purpose might be acquired through eminent domain. The purchase money could be forthcoming from several sources—from progressive taxation in the direct forms already mentioned, from the city's income from franchises, and from the savings over the wastes of administration under present methods.
From the standpoint of equal rights there need be no difficulty in meeting the arguments certain to be brought against this proposed course—such sophistical arguments as that it is not the business of a government to take property from some citizens to give to others. If the unemployed, propertyless wage-worker has a right to live, he has the right to sustain life. To sustain life independently of other men's permission, access to natural resources is essential. This primary right being denied the wage-workers as a class, any or all of whom, if unemployed, might soon be propertyless, they might in justice proceed to enforce it. To enforce it by means involving so little friction as those here proposed ought to win, not opposition, but approval.
Equal rights once conceded as just, this reasoning cannot be refuted. Discussed in economic literature since before the day of Adam Smith, it has withstood every form of assault. If it has not been acted on in the Old World, it is because the wage-workers there, ignorant and in general deprived of the right to vote, have been helpless; and if not in the New, because, first, until within recent years the free western lands, attracting the unemployed and helping to maintain wages, in a measure gave labor access to nature, and, secondly, since the practical exhaustion of the free public domain the industrial wage-workers have not perceived how, through politics, to carry out their convictions on the land question.
Our reasoning is further strengthened by law and custom in state and nation. In nearly every state, the constitution declares that the original and ultimate ownership of the land lies with all its people; and hence the method of administering the land is at all times an open public question. As to the nation at large, its settled policy and long-continued custom support the principle that all citizens have inalienable rights in the land. Instead of selling the national domain in quantities to suit purchasers, the government has held it open free to agricultural laborers, literally millions of men being thus given access to the soil. Moreover, in thirty-seven of the forty-four states, execution for debt cannot entirely deprive a man of his homestead, the value exempt in many of the states being thousands of dollars. Thus the general welfare has dictated the building up and the securing of a home for every laboring citizen.
In line, then, with established American principles is the proposition for municipal lands. And if municipalities have extended to capitalists privileges of many kinds, even granting them gratis sites for manufactories, and for terms of years exempting such real estate from taxation, why not accord to the wage-workers at least their primary natural rights? If any property be exempted from taxation, why not the homesite below a certain fixed value? And if, for the public benefit, municipalities provide parks, museums, and libraries, why not give each producer a homesite—a footing on the earth? He who has not this is deprived of the first right to do that by which he must live, namely, labor.