A country is over-populated when its soil cannot yield food for its people. At present our population is about 40,000,000 and our soil would support more than double the number.
The country, then, is not over-populated; it is badly governed.
There are, let us say, more shoemakers and tailors than there is employment for. But are there no bare feet and ill-clothed backs? Certainly. The bulk of our workers are not properly shod or clothed. It is not, then, true to say that we have more tailors and shoemakers than we require; but we ought to say instead that our tailors and shoemakers cannot live by their trades because the rest of the workers are too poor to pay them. Now, why are the rest of the workers too poor to buy boots and clothing? Is it because there are too many of them? Let us take an instance: the farm labourer. He cannot afford boots. Why? He is too poor. Why? Not because there are too many farm labourers,—for there are too few,—but because the wages of farm labourers are low. Why are they low? Because agriculture is neglected, and because rents are high. So we come back to my original statement, that the evil is due to the private ownership of land.
The many are poor because the few are rich.
But, again, it may be asserted that we have always about half a million of men unemployed, and that these men prove the existence of superfluous labour.
Not at all. There are half a million of men out of work, but there are many millions of acres idle. Abolish private ownership of land, and the nation, being now owner of all land, can at once find work for that so-called "superfluous labour."
All wealth comes from the land. All wealth must be got from the land by labour. Given a sufficient quantity of land, one man can produce from the land more wealth than one man can consume. Therefore, as long as there is a sufficiency of land there can be no such thing as "superfluous labour," and no such thing as over-population. Given machinery and combination, and probably one man can produce from the land enough wealth for ten to consume. Why, then, should there be any such thing as poverty?
One fundamental truth of economics is that every able-bodied and willing worker is worth more than his keep.
There is such a thing as locked-out labour, but there is no such thing in this country as useless labour. While we have land lying idle, and while we have to import our food, how can we be so foolish as to call a man who is excluded from the land superfluous? He is one of the factors of wealth, and land is the other. Set the man on the land and he will produce wealth. At present he is out of work and the land out of use. But are either of them superfluous? No; we need both.