“As a guide to our footsteps the past must always be to some extent our light, our guide.”
With this I am heartily in accord. It has been rightly said:
“History keeps the grass green upon the graves of former civilizations, and stands as a beacon light to future ones. It is the ever-living Janus, peering both into the past and into the future.”
But history does not prove, as you assert, that civilization exists as a result of private ownership of land. These are your words:
In passing upon this and statements appearing in subsequent paragraphs, I think I shall have fully answered your three previous questions. When it “became a matter of self-interest for some individual to improve the land” was it because of his ownership or of his security of possession? When you admit that “as long as each individual felt that his parcel of land might go out of his possession at the next regular division there was no incentive to improvement,” you have admitted the latter. “Not until the individual became assured that the benefit of his labor would accrue to himself did the waste become a farm and the hovel a house.” What was his assurance—private ownership or security of possession? That it was not private ownership is proven by the tenant system in vogue in every civilized country in the world. Obviously it is not private ownership that impelled the landless tenant to go upon land owned by others, clear away the forest and “make the land a farm.” Then what is his assurance? Security of possession—the knowledge that he will be left unmolested to enjoy the “product of his labor.” This tenant enjoys his security of possession because of the tribute he has been compelled to pay to the owner to leave him unmolested in his possession and enjoyment. Could he not be as secure in his possession if the land were owned and the exaction made by all the people?
Therefore, “if the history of the world shows anything at all, it shows this,” that civilization has developed and progress has gone forward, not by reason of private ownership of land, but in spite of it.
“If, what is manifestly impossible,” says Mr. George, “a fair distribution of land were made among the whole population, giving each his equal share, and laws enacted which would impose a barrier to the tendency to concentration by forbidding the holding by any one of more than a fixed amount, what would become of the increase of population?”
Your assertion that there would be no improvement under such a condition as you mention is self-evident. But this, instead of being an argument against the Henry George philosophy, is, in fact, an argument in its favor.
What Mr. George does propose I shall endeavor to make clear in subsequent paragraphs when I touch upon your hypothesis regarding the primitive tribesmen.
Before passing to this, however, I desire to direct your attention to your observation that “the right of each citizen to hold as his own began with the laborer who claimed the product of his labor.” The convincing power of this statement is lacking, because you have failed to prove to us that without private ownership of land man can not “claim the products of his labor.” As a matter of fact, you can not furnish such proof because it is manifestly untrue. Before the savage, wandering in the primeval forest, ever dreamed of laying claim to any parcel of the soil as his own, did he not so lay claim to the fish and game he took? Did he not so lay claim to the fruits and berries he gathered? Did not the tribesman who followed his flocks and herds over the plains so lay claim to them as the product of his labor? Without ever a thought of the private ownership of the soil, he had produced them as truly as the stockman of today produces the cattle he sends to market, and he valiantly disputed the right of any person to any share of them. Most truly he who labors is entitled to labor’s product, but to say that in order to claim such product it is necessary to privately own land is to fly into the face of obvious fact. How many of the wage earners of today are land owners? How much is added to the wages of those few who are, by reason of this fact? You yourself raised the point that it is not necessary to own land in order to fleece the public, laborer, land-owner and all out of their earnings. If this be true how do you harmonize it with your former claim that it was private ownership of land that first made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain the product of his labor.