Mr. Doctrinaire thinks because each tribesman would try to grab the best piece of land, there was original injustice in allowing private ownership. If he will think for a moment, he will realize that the native selfishness of man does not make against the private ownership of land to any further extent than it does to the private ownership of personal property. When the tribesmen went out to hunt, each hunter sought to bring down the finest stag. Each hunter naturally wanted to hunt where the best game was to be found. Hence those eternal wars between the Indian tribes which brought down the population on the American continent. Hence also those feuds and tribal wars which desolated the East in the times of nomad life.
We find Abraham and Lot in a bitter dispute over a certain pasture; but as to the well which Abraham “had digged” there was no resisting his claim, that well was his property. Why? Because in the quaint language of the Bible, “He had digged that well.” In other words, while nature put the water in under the soil, and while nature made the soil itself, it was Abraham’s judgment which selected the place where he could find the water, and it was Abraham’s labor that removed the earth which covered the water. In other words, Abraham made the well, in precisely the same sense that the pioneer in the wilderness makes a farm.
But, as I said, the competitive principle, each one wanting to get what is best, reveals itself in all directions. Every fisherman has always wanted the best fishing grounds. Nations have been brought to war by this cause, to say nothing of tribal disputes and individual contests.
Nowhere have I contended that it was private ownership of land that made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain the product of his labor. I could not have said that because I know quite well that personal property preceded property in land. In other words, the laborers acquired a full title to the rude garments in which they clothed themselves, the rude implements which they used in the chase, their weapons, canoes, etc., long before they ever made farms. This has been explained fully elsewhere and does not at all antagonize the statement that after a tribesman has acquired by his labor an interest in the land, the government of the tribe may be so arranged that the produce of the land will be taken away from the land-owner as fast as he produces it. Instead of robbery by taxation in land—products preceding private ownership in land—the reverse is the case. To fleece the laborer of what he produces on his farm was the after-thought of those who governed the tribe.
This is shown by the wretchedness of the peasant class in Russia today. Historians tell us that the Russian peasant formerly owned a very considerable portion of the land, just as the French peasants did, and in addition to the individual ownership which was in the Russian peasantry, there was a large quantity of communal land which belonged to each community of peasants as a whole. In the process of time, the ruling class in Russia put such burdens upon the peasant proprietor that he gradually lost his land and became a serf. Of course, Mr. Doctrinaire recalls that in 1860 the serfs of Russia were freed, and they were given a large portion of the land which had been taken away from them by the Russian nobles. They also held the communal lands. What has been the result? The ruling classes have put such heavy burdens in the way of dues and taxes upon the peasants that their ownership of the land, communal and individual, has brought them none of the blessings which they anticipated. Thus we have a striking and contemporaneous illustration of the great truth which I have sought to emphasize, namely, that the mere ownership of land does not emancipate the people.
Arthur Young, the famous “Suffolk Squire,” rode horseback over the rural districts of France, just before the Revolution broke out. He found that the French peasants owned their own farms. He made a close and sympathetic study of their condition.
And what was that condition?
Wretched to the very limit of human endurance. The king, the noble, and the priest were literally devouring the Common People. Privilege, Titles, Taxes, Feudal dues were driving the masses to despair, to desperation.
Yet the French peasant had “access to the land.”
In England, at that time, the peasants did not own land, and yet their condition was incomparably better than that of the French.