Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 2, April, 1906

by Various

“Society” (did not) “as a matter of self-preservation admit the principle of private ownership of land.” It admitted it because it did not know a better plan—because it did not know the Laws of Rent and of Compensation.

You deny that “great estates were the ruin of Italy.” “Before a few could buy up all the land there must have been some great cause at work, some advantage which the few held at the expense of the many.” “What was that advantage?” you ask. No better answer can be given to this query than to refer you back to your own illustration of the farmer tribesman. Did he buy the land? You say he “fenced it in and claimed it as his own.” In like manner did all land pass into private control, each individual claiming far more than he could use. After all the land of Italy had been “claimed” and enclosed, or that of any given community thereof, the power that these land claimers held over subsequent comers is obvious. The only asset of the individual without material wealth is his labor, which is only one—the active—factor in production. Under circumstances such as the foregoing, he is debarred from the passive factor—land—and can apply his labor to it only by paying tribute to those who have claimed it.

In the circle of the human family, those endowed with keen, unerring foresight are comparatively few. It cannot be gainsaid that those few, knowing that land is fixed in quantity—which cannot be expanded as population increases, and as demand for it increases—saw in the early periods, as they see today, what a powerful advantage they could wield over their fellows by “fencing in” all the available land—by fencing out, not only the cattle, as you put it, but also their fellow-men. Is it not plain that this was the source of the power of which you complain? Was it not this that furnished the advantage you name? Can you not see the stream of unearned tribute wrung from the hands of honest labor constantly flowing into the coffers of these land owners? And seeing it, can you then maintain that great estates were not the ruin of Italy?

What made the “ruling class of Rome, that had concentrated into their own hands all the tremendous powers of the State?” What gave them the power to “fix the taxes” and enact the “infernal laws” which you rightly contend ought to have been repealed? “Ah!” you say,“they controlled the money.” By what power did they come to control the money? Was it by a power inherent within themselves, or was it not the power which they derived from the corner which they held upon the natural revenue which they diverted from the public treasury into their own coffers, thus making it necessary to provide for the common expense by unjust taxes upon the products of labor?

“They controlled the money.” But what is money? Is it the means or the end? Is it not merely a labor-saving invention to facilitate trade? Is it not money only by common consent? Is it not merely a commodity converted for convenience into a medium of exchange? You make the point that by controlling the money, they controlled commodities. But if they had not controlled the land, which is the source of all commodities—even the money itself—how could they have controlled the money?

Can you not see that men divorced from the toil and permitted to produce only on the terms of some other person are forced into the labor market, to vie with each other in a competition that grows keener and more vicious as a population increases?

You say that “the power to fix taxes is the power to confiscate.” The very opposite is true. The power to confiscate is the power to tax. Give that power to one class and what more does it want? Let that class confiscate land values, which you agree are naturally common property, and you give it the power to rob its victim, not merely to the “limit of their capacity to pay,” but to literal starvation, if they choose to carry the principle of private ownership of land to its logical conclusion. For certainly to recognize the right to private property in land is to recognize the owner’s right to do with his land what he pleases. To recognize this is to recognize the land-owner’s right to deny to the landless either the use of his land, or any of its products, on any terms whatsoever. Thus, in carrying the principle of private ownership of land to its logical conclusion, and recognizing it as a just principle, is to sanction literal murder. Can a system that has this for its ultimate, be other than a vicious system, even though it may never be carried to that extent? It is by means of this vicious system that human sufferings are augmented by a thousand fold and the sum of human happiness is correspondingly diminished.

Do not the foregoing facts prove to you that your statement that “usury is the vulture that has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since the dawn of time,” is economically untrue? Is it not clear that usury is only an effect of a deeper-seated cause inherent in land monopoly?

As proof that the universal condition of inequality is not inherent in land monopoly, you say that the Rothschilds and other “kings of high finance” do not “buy up vast domains that they may be served by a lot of tenants.” But when touching upon this phase of the question, you should always bear in mind that all land is not farm land. The power of the coal barons to exploit does not arise so much from the fact that they own large tracts of land, as from the fact that it bears large deposits of coal. Nor does their power to exploit affect merely the miners of coal. Coal is a public necessity, and the ownership by these barons of a comparatively small area of land places them in a position to place—by reason of unreasonable prices—a tax upon every user of coal.