Labour and the Popular Welfare

by W. H. Mallock

◆1 The men themselves would be the first to understand this.

If any one doubts that such is the case, let him imagine our three brothers beginning to quarrel amongst themselves, and Tom and Dick boasting that they were better men than Harry, on the ground that they always brought home more loaves than he. Every one can see what Harry’s retort would be, and see also that it is unanswerable. ◆¹ Of course he would say, “I am as good a man as either of you, and my labour produces quite as much as yours. Let us only change fields, and you will see that soon enough. Let Tom take mine, and let me take his, and I then will bring home fifteen loaves; and he, work as he may, will only bring home nine. It is your b——y land that produces more than mine, not you that produce more than I; and if you deny it, stand out you ——s and I’ll fight you.” We may also appeal to one of the commonest of our common phrases, in which Harry’s supposed contention is every day reiterated. If a farmer is transferred from a bad farm to a good one, and the product of his farming is thereby increased, as it will be, everybody will say, “The good farm makes all the difference.” This is merely another way of saying, the superior qualities in the soil produce all the increase, or—to continue our illustration—the increased number of loaves.

And all the world is not only asserting this truth every day, but is also acting on it; for these extra loaves, produced by the qualities peculiar to superior soils, are neither more nor less than Rent. Rent is the amount of produce which a given amount of exertion obtains from rich land, beyond what it obtains from poor land. Such is the account of rent in which all economists agree; indeed, when once it is understood, the truth of it is self-evident. Mr. Henry George’s entire doctrines are built on it; whilst Mill calls it the pons asinorum of economics. I have added nothing in the above statement of it to what is stated by all economists, except weight and emphasis to a truth which they do not so much state as imply, and whose importance they seem to have overlooked. This truth is like a note on a piano, which they have all of them sounded lightly amongst other notes. I have sounded it by itself, and have emphasised it with the loud pedal—the truth that rent is for all practical purposes not the product of Land and Human Exertion combined, but the product of Land solely, as separate from Human Exertion and distinct from it.

◆1 The above doctrine of Rent is not a landlord’s doctrine. It would hold true of a Socialistic State as well as of any other.

◆¹ And here let me pause for a moment to point out a fact which, though it illustrates the above truth further, I should not mention here if it were not for the following reason. Rent forms the subject of so much social and party prejudice that what I have just been urging may be received by certain readers with suspicion, and regarded as some special pleading on behalf of landlords. I wish therefore to point out clearly that the existence of rent and the payment of rent is not peculiar to our existing system of landlordism. Rent must arise, under any social arrangement, from all soils which are better than the poorest soil cultivated: it must be necessarily paid to somebody; and that somebody must necessarily be the owner. If a peer or a squire is the owner, it is paid to the peer or squire; if the cultivator is the owner, the cultivator pays it to himself; if the land were nationalised and the State were to become the owner, the cultivator would have to pay it away to the State.

◆1 It is easy to see how Rent arises, under any conditions, from all superior soils.

◆¹ In order that the reader may fully realise this, let us go back to our three brothers, of whom the only two who paid rent at all, paid it, according to our supposition, to themselves; and let us imagine that Harry—the brother who pays no rent to anybody, because his field produces none, has a sweetheart who lives close to Tom’s field, or who sits and sucks blackberries all day in its hedge; and that Harry is thus anxious to exchange fields with Tom, in order that he may be cheered at his work by the smiles of the beloved object. Now if Tom were to assent to Harry’s wishes without making any conditions, he would be not only humouring the desire of Harry’s heart, but he would be making him a present of six loaves daily; and this, we may assume, he certainly would not do; nor would Harry, if he knew anything of human nature, expect or even ask him to do so. If Tom, however, were on good terms with his brother, he might quite conceivably be willing to meet his wishes, could it be but arranged that he should be no loser by doing so; and this could be accomplished in one way only—namely, by arranging that, since Harry would gain six loaves each day by the exchange, and Tom would lose them, Harry should send these six loaves every day to Tom; and thus, whilst Harry was a gainer from a sentimental point of view, the material circumstances of both of them would remain what they were before. Or we may put the arrangement in more familiar terms. The loaves in question we have supposed to be worth fourpence each; so we may assume that instead of actually sending the loaves, Harry sends his brother two shillings a day, or twelve shillings a week, or thirty pounds a year. Tom’s field, as we have said, is twelve acres; therefore, Harry pays him a rent of fifty shillings an acre. And Tom’s case is the case of every landlord, no matter whether the landlord is a private person or the State—a peer who lets his land, a peasant like Tom who cultivates it, or a State which allows the individual to occupy but not to own it. Rent represents an advantage which is naturally inherent in certain soils; and whoever owns this advantage—either the State or the private person—must of necessity either take the rent, or else make a present of it to certain favoured individuals.

It should further be pointed out that this doctrine of Rent, though putting so strict a limit on the product that can be assigned to Labour, interferes with no view that the most ardent Socialist or Radical may entertain with regard to the moral rights of the labourer. If any one contends that the men who labour on the land, and who pay away part of the produce as rent to other persons, ought by rights to retain the whole produce for themselves, he is perfectly at liberty to do so, for anything that has been urged here. For the real meaning of such a contention is, not that the labourers do not already keep everything that is produced by their labour, but that they ought to own their land instead of hiring it, and so keep everything that is produced by the land as well.

◆1 The doctrine of Rent is the fundamental example of the reasoning by which to each agent in production a definite portion of the product is attributed.

This doctrine of Rent, then, which I have tried to make absolutely clear, involves no special pleading on behalf either of landlord or tenant, of rich or poor. It can be used with equal effect by Tory, Radical, or Socialist, and it would be as true of a Socialistic State as it is of any other. I have insisted on it here for one reason only. ◆¹ It illustrates, and is the fundamental example of, the following great principle—that in all cases where Human Exertion is applied to Land which yields only enough wealth to maintain the man exerting himself, practical logic compels us to attribute the entire product to his exertion, and to take the assumption that his exertion produces this much as our starting-point. But in all other cases—that is to say in all cases where the same exertion results in an increased product, we attribute the increase—we attribute the added product—not to Human Exertion, which is present equally in both cases, but to some cause which is present in the second case, and was not present in the first: that is to say, to some superior quality in the soil.