DESTRUCTIVE PRICES.

123

Of these concurring reasons, the Western superiority in machinery has only existed for a century, in any marked degree, while the drain of silver to the East is an affair of many centuries. It must be admitted also that both Chinese and Hindoos display every required degree of industry, thrift, and endurance, when subjected to the inducements of high wages and better modes of living, in the United States and Europe.

It may be doubted, therefore, whether there is any other permanent cause for difference in prices in the Western and Eastern world, than the fact that the point of chief production of the money metals is in the two Americas, the point of their chief utilization is in the banks and exchanges of Europe, and from these they percolate but slowly and feebly into the avenues of Asiatic commerce, owing to the slowness of Oriental peoples in adopting the machinery and productive methods of Western civilization.

Whatever may be the reasons, the descending value of a day of average labor time, as we recede from the points of gold and silver production to those of their final absorption, may be stated with sufficient accuracy, as follows :

United States California, $3; Colorado, $2; Illinois, $1.75; New York, $1.50; Massachusetts, $1.25. England, $1; Belgium, 90 cents; France, 80 cents; Germany, 70 cents; Austria, 60 cents; Spain, 60 cents; Italy, 50 cents; Scandinavia, 40 to 30 cents; Russia, 20 cents; Turkey, 20 cents; Egypt, 15 cents; Arabia, 12 cents; India, 10 to 5 cents; Japan, 8 cents; China, 5 cents.

A scale of descent, in the value of labor-time, of this nature, indicates that, as to labor, every geographical area from which, for any reason of immobility, whether it be poverty, patriotism, or sluggishness, laborers refuse to migrate, in order to seek a higher price elsewhere, becomes to that extent an independent market for labor, with a tendency to impart its own scale of prices to the products of labor, or rather to cease producing all those products whose prices cease to be remunerative.

In so far, therefore, as any other country, through its greater command of capital or machinery, or low-priced human labor, or enslaved human labor, can produce a particular commodity at a money cost lower than it can be produced for in a country whose people can neither migrate nor adopt the cheaper methods of production, it is plain that the latter must exclude the cheaper product or see their own capacity to produce it destroyed by the

CHART OF PRICES OF WHEAT. (See p. 112 and note.)

Upper black line-Price of Wheat in England from 1780 to 1880, in shillings, per quarter.

Lower black line-Price of Wheat in France from 1780 to 1880, in francs, per hectolitre.

Black dotted line-Price of Flour in United States from 1798 to 1860, in dimes, per barrel.

foreign competition. Whenever low prices, obtained by importation, involve the destruction of a domestic production, which both countries have equal natural facilities for producing, the first interest of the importing country is to encourage the application, by its own people, of the artificial facilities to which the rival country owes its temporary superiority, and consequent lower prices.

These may consist of inventions, machinery, discoveries, capital, skill, low rates of interest, low rates of wages or the like. All of these any country can more wisely adopt than the low rates of wages, since a descent in rates of wages involves a degradation in the standard of living, which may react on the productivity of the labor itself, by making it less efficient, and may involve an inhumanity from which the conscience of society would revolt.

CHAPTER IV.

TITLE AND USE.

50. Title and Labor.-Title to property is vaguely associated, in many economic and in all socialistic arguments, with labor expended in producing it. It is contended that land can not justly be the subject of private ownership because it is not created by labor, or because its value is not due to the person possessing or occupying it. The value of land is due to the aggregate societary movement which brings it into demand. It is shown by that competition among purchasers for its title, and among tenants for its occupancy, which causes it to command a purchase price at the hands of the former or a rental at those of

*Henry George (“ Progress and Poverty," Lovell's Edition, p. 240) says: "As a man belongs to himself, so his labor when put in concrete form belongs to him.

“And for this reason, that which a man makes or produces is his own, as against all the world-to enjoy or to use, to destroy, to exchange, or to give. No one else can rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it involves no wrong to any one else. Thus there is to every thing produced by human exertion a clear and indisputable title to exclusive possession and enjoyment, which is perfectly consistent with justice, as it descends from the original producer, in whom it vested by natural law. The pen with which I am writing is justly mine. No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it, for in me is the title of the man who produced it. It has become mine, because transferred to me by the stationer, to whom it was transferred by the importer, who obtained the exclusive right to it by transfer from the manufacturer, in whom, by the same process of purchase, vested the right of those who dug the material from the ground and shaped it into a pen. Thus, my exclusive right of ownership in the pen springs from the natural right of the individual to the use of his own faculties.

"Now, this is not only the original source from which all ideas of exclusive ownership arise as is evident from the natural tendency of the mind to revert to it when the idea of exclusive ownership is questioned, and the manner in which social relations develop -but it is necessarily the only source.'

Mr. George here traces back his title to the steel pen with which he writes to "those who dug the material (iron ore) from the ground and shaped it into a pen," as if this were evidence that labor originated title. But it proves nothing of the kind. Those who dug the ore from the ground and shaped it into a pen may never have owned the ground, the ore, or the pen. They may have been hired servants who sold the muscular effort with which they dug the material from the ground and shaped it into the pen, in which case all they ever owned was their muscular effort, labor-time, and the wages they received in exchange for them. Their labor, as first performed, became a part

the latter. Causes of the values of land are thus reduced to the one cause, viz.: Demand, which is also the cause of the value of labor itself, of skill, of time, and of all forms of personal property.

of the materials and of the pen, and belonged in that form to their employer. But if the first diggers of the ore owned the ore when dug, they did not own it by virtue of the act of digging it, for they would not have been allowed to dig it unless they had first owned it. As well might a horse-thief claim that the act of carrying off the horse of another gave title to the horse, as an ore-digger could assert that digging ore made it his. The title to the ore like the title to any crop, depended on title to the land. Thus Mr. George's title to his pen becomes, when traced back, the identical title to the land which he uses his pen to attack. Again he says, ibid. (p. 257):

"The truth is, and from this truth there can be no escape, that there is and can be no just title to an exclusive possession of the soil, and that private property in land is a bold, bare, enormous wrong, like that of chattel slavery.

"The majority of men in civilized communities do not recognize this, simply because the majority of men do not think. With them whatever is is right, until its wrongfulness has been frequently pointed out; and in general they are ready to crucify whoever first attempts this.

"But it is impossible for any one to study political economy, even as at present taught, or to think at all upon the production and distribution of wealth, without seeing that property in land differs essentially from property in things of human production, and that it has no warrant in abstract justice."

Mr. George's uncourteous, and in the most exact sense, uncivilized remark, that the reason that the majority of men think private title to land to be just is that they do not think at all, seems to be an evidence, so far as it goes, that one can not become an admirer of the methods of savages without unconsciously adopting their manners. The study of political economy has, we think, never produced the impression upon any mind that Mr. George says it must produce upon all. We doubt if Mr. George himself did not first embrace this theory and then study political economy, after his fashion of studying it, in order to find matter in proof. On p. 227 (Love!l's Edition) he says: "So true it is that, to whomsoever the soil at any time belongs, to him belongs the fruits of it."

As all other things are immediately or ultimately "fruits of the soil," and as, according to Mr. George, the title to the fruits, i. e., to all other things, follows and is determined by title to the soil, necessarily, if no one can justly have title to the soil, he can not justly have private title to any thing. All things must be owned in common. But where all things are held in common there can be (1) no commerce or exchange, as these consist in giving that which is one's own for that which is another's; (2) no generosity, for all generosity consists in giving that which is one's own to another; (3) no rewards, for all rewards consist in obtaining from another for merit that which was his; (4) no ambition, for all ambition consists in the desire to increase the stock of one's own; (5) no production of wealth, for all production of wealth consists in bringing into being a surplus beyond our own needs for exchange, and perfect communism puts an end to exchange; (6) no industry, for no man is industrious where industry can bring no increase of comfort; (7) no comfortable living, for comfortable living can not be secured for the great mass of the world's population, without incessant industry on the part of nearly all of them, and hence to abolish private titles to land involves an intense degree of want and suffering such as would render life an unmitigated calamity to every creature.

Most of the uses of property can not be had or known at all except as they are private and exclusive, utterly unshared by any other. To till land is a use of this kind. The only absolutely communal use that can be made of land is to hunt over it as the Indians did. Even tribal ownership of land is inconsistent with Mr. George's theory that

WHERE TITLES BEGIN.

127

Demand being the cause of value, all things are produced, i.e., brought forward, because they are foreseen to possess value. Nothing is demanded merely because it has been produced. But

because man did not create or produce land therefore he can not own it. For the tribe came no nearer to creating land than the individual. Where, then, did one tribe get a greater right to exclude another than one individual has to exclude another? Nor, since the state did not produce the land, can the state own it. It simply can not be owned at all. And since, except as we own the land on which things are produced we can not own the things produced, it follows that neither the individual, the tribe, nor the state, can own any thing. Mr. George's doctrine therefore lands us in that of Pradhon, that all property is robbery." Mr. George doubtless thinks that he thinks, but the present writer can only acquit Mr. George of being destitute of the thinking faculty in the degree essential to a rational creature, by assuming that in the above extracts, and indeed throughout his work, he has been impelled by an impulse of intensely active and burning thoughtlessness. Mr. George's remedy is as follows:

"What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sovereign remedy, which will raise wages, (1) increase the earnings of capital, (2) extirpate pauperism, (3) abolish poverty, (4) give rumunerative (5) employment (6) to whoever wishes it, (7) afford free (8) scope (9) to human powers, lessen crime, (10) elevate morals, (11) and taste, (12) and intelligence, (13) purify government, (14) and carry civilization (15) to yet nobler (16) heights, is--to appropriate rent by taxation.

"In this way, the state may become (17) the universal landlord without (18) calling herself 80, and without (19) assuming a single new function. In form, the ownership of land would remain just as now (20). No owner of land need be dispossessed, (21) and no restriction need be placed (22) upon the amount of land any one could hold. For, rent being taken by the state in taxes, (23) land, no matter in whose name it stood, (24) or in what parcels it was held, (25) would be really (26) common property, and every member of the community (27) would participate in the advantages of its ownership" (28). Here are twenty-eight distinct prophecies in thirteen lines, to entertain any one of which requires, not a more profound faculty of thinking than that possessed by a majority of mankind, but only a more superb egotism, combined with the eccentric retrogression which enables a man brought up in civilization to prefer barbarism.

Two thousand years ago Aristotle (Politics, Book ii., ch. v.) said concerning this system: "This system of polity does indeed recommend itself by its good appearance and specious pretenses to humanity; and the man who hears it proposed will receive it gladly, concluding that there will be a wonderful bond of friendship between all its members, particularly when any one censures the evils which are now to be found in society, as arising from property not being in common; as for example the disputes which now happen between man and man, upon their contracts with each other, the judgments passed to punish perjury, and the flattering of the rich; none of which arise from properties being private, but from the corruption of mankind. For we see those who live in one community and have all things in common, disputing with each other oftener than those who have property separate; but we observe fewer instances of strife, because of the very small number of those who have property in common, compared with those where it is appropriated. It is also but right to mention not only the evils from which they who share property in common will be preserved, but also the advantages which they will lose; for, viewed as a whole, this manner of life will be found impracticable."

The singular fact in Henry George's mental obliquity is that he admits all the historical facts essential to justify private property in land, if he formed his opinion on a basis of historical evidence, and then denies its justice on the high metaphysical basis that its injustice has been directly revealed to him from God. For, that a policy promotes the freedom of man is to an economist its most complete vindication. Yet on p. 275 the