FEW MEN, LESS FOOD.

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---from the cattle on a thousand hills, and the flocks and herds which are one day to be his own. The apple, known only in Siberia, is not yet a fruit, but a mere berry, and stings the mouth with its acrid flavor. The potato, known only in Brazil, is poison. Indian corn, unknown to Europe, Asia, or Africa, is an unnoticed Mexican weed, dwindling beside the spindling dahlia, in whose single whorl of colored leaves no botanist would foresee the present beautiful flower. Wheat was, perhaps, a bold and confident style of grass, which a few thousand years of culture in Egypt would develop into a valuable grain.* Even if it were fully equal to modern wheat it would be useless to our nomad, as he would not know how to grind or cook it. All things are so void of utility that only among the date groves, and naturally fruited jungles of Africa, could he survive long enough to learn the utilities of any thing.

94. Fewer Producers-Less Production.-But in this wretched nomad state, how are all values magnified! A bead, or an inch of cloth, would be worn around his neck to charm away evil spirits. A master, who would promise him protection from hourly danger, and furnish him a daily brisket of raw beef, would be hailed with the gratitude due to a descended god, loved as Friday loved Crusoe, adored as a dog adores his master. The richest boon he could desire would be well-fed slavery. He would kiss, as ornaments, those iron chains in which the philanthropy of later epochs, when money had become abundant, would see only degradation. In slavery begins his slow upward march, for at last he is a part of organized labor. Each day teaches him some new utility in metal, plant, flower, fruit, or animal. A million things become useful which either did not exist or were useless to him of old. The labor, that he would gladly have expended for a bead, would buy his successor a house. At first even labor is useless, for it has nothing to work with (tools), nothing to work for (motive), nothing to work upon (job or employment), and lacks the knowledge how to work (skill), except as snatching the things he would consume (appropriation) is work. Hence, though the world at no time needs so much labor as when man is in his savage state, yet there is no stage in which it is so little worth one's while to work, or when so large a proportion of men

* The student will emphasize the "perhaps." It is not meant here to affirm that any traces of an evolution from a less perfect form have yet been observed in wheat. On the contrary, history opens with wheat as perfect as to-day.

are idle, and despise work. Mr. Carey points out that, security being so much more important than fertility, cultivation begins in the high easily defensible positions, among the rocky cliffs, and on the poor soils. It is a sort of adjunct to the chief business, viz., intrenchment, fortification, and war. All arts begin with the poorest implements. Grain is pounded between two stones to make flour. Wool is spun first with the hand alone, then with a wheel. Sewing skins develops into weaving cloth, and the needle becomes a shuttle. Soon the canoe hoists a sail. Iron arrowheads, tempered toward steel, supersede flint. As machinery takes the place of muscle, more men are willing to work, and the rewards of industry slowly begin to exceed the rewards of crime. Virtue, conscience, honor are born. As new and better soils, new and better implements, new and better sciences develop, man becomes free in body-in government-in social action. Steam engines are set to work printing books and drawing railway trains, and man the victor rides and reads by the toil of those same elements which at first he dreaded. The supply of the means of subsistence is on the whole greater in large and compact populations than in small and sparse, and greater in each country when its population is many than when it is few. In short, everywhere profits and wages depend on the activity and success with which human industry supplies all human wants. While in each individual enterprise, wages tends to obtain a continually increasing share of the joint product, in the aggregate of enterprises at any time existing, the division is made proximately even by the fact that capital and enterprise are continually on the lookout for new fields, in which, or new modes by which, the share of labor shall be relatively less, and that of profit more.

95. Wages Are also Capital.-Is the ascendency of capital over labor an accident of a particular period? Can it, by proper arrangements, be dispensed with? Or is it inherent in the nature of things, and therefore indispensable, except as the laborer may buy the capital that hires him.*

*Bastiat* says truly: "Sentimental philanthropists, who see in this a frightful inequality which they desire to get rid of by artificial, sometimes by unjust and violent means, do not consider that after all we can not change the nature of things. Anterior labor (capital) must necessarily have more security than present labor, simply for this reason, that products already created, must always present more certain resources than products which are as yet to be created; that services already rendered, received, and estimated, present a more solid foundation for the future than services which are still in the state of supply. If you are not surprised that of two fisherHarmonies of Political Economy," 377.

WAGES ARE SMALL CAPITALS.

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The instant that capital loses its power over labor, wages must lose their power over means of subsistence. Money, and wealth of every kind, in any form or quantity in which the laborer now seeks to possess them, must lose their power to command whatever comforts the laborer now commands by means of his wages. Capital and money being one thing, can only lose its power in the hands of him who has much of it, by simultaneously losing its power in the hands of him who has but little of it. The twenty-five cents,

men the one who, having long labored and saved, possesses lines, nets, boats, and some previous supply of flsh, is more at ease as regards his future than the other, who has nothing but his willingness to take part in the work, why should you be astonished that the social order presents, to a certain extent, the same differences? In order to justify the envy, the jealousy, the absolute spitefulness, with which the laborer regards the capitalist, it would be necessary to conclude that the relative stability of the one is caused by the inability of the other. But it is the reverse which is true. It is precisely the capital which pre-exists in the hands of one man which is the guarantee of the wages of another, however insufficient that guarantee may appear. But for that capital the uncertainty of the laborer would be still greater and more striking. Would the increase, and the extension to all, of that uncertainty be any advantage to the laborer ? The questions which the workman ought to ask himself are not, 'Does my labor give me much? Does it give me little? Does it give me as much as it gives to another? Does it give me what I desire?' The questions he should ask himself are these : 'Does my labor give me less because I employ it in the service of the capitalist? Would it give me more if I worked in a state of isolation, or if I associated my labor with that of other men as destitute as myself? I am ill situated, but would I be better off were there no such thing as capital in the world? If the part which I obtain in consequence of my arrangement with capital is greater than that which I would obtain without that arrangement, what reason have I to complain? If it be indisputably established that the presence of capital is favorable to my interests, and that its absence would be death to me, am I very prudent or well advised in calumniating it, frightening it away, and forcing its dissipation or flight... Take the first workman you meet with on the streets of Paris-and thus address him. "We are about to annihilate capital and all its works; and I am going to place you in the midst of a hundred thousand acres of the most fertile land, which I shall give you in full property and possession, with every thing above and below ground. You will not be elbowed by any capitalists. You will have the full enjoyment of the four natural rights of hunting, fishing, reaping the fruits, and pasturing the land. True, you will have no capital; for if you had you would be in precisely the situation you censure in the case of others. But you will no longer have reason to complain of landlordism, capitalism, individualism, usurers, stock-jobbers, bankers, monopolists. The land will be absolutely and entirely yours. Think if you would like to accept this position.'

This workman would no doubt imagine at first that he had obtained the fortune of a monarch. On reflection, however, he would probably say: 'Well, let us calculate. Even when a man possesses a hundred thousand acres of land, he must live. Now, how does the bread account stand in the two situations? At present I earn half a crown a day. At the present price of corn (wheat) I can have three bushels a week, just as if I myself sowed and reaped. Were I the proprietor of a hundred thousand acres of land, at the utmost I could not, without capital, produce three bushels of corn in two years, and in the interim I might die of famine. I shall therefore stick to my wages."

with which a laborer buys a meal, must lose its potency to induce the restaurant-keeper to sell the meal, at the same instant as the $25,000,000 with which a syndicate proposes to build a railway will lose its potency to induce laborers to work at the railway. The poor live by capital and wealth as well as the rich. To abolish the power of capital is to abolish the power of wages and put an end to all human association and co-operation.

CHAPTER VII.

LAND.

96. Values of Land.-Before labor can be perforned, or man can exist, there must be space for him to live and work in. This space will, by reason of the changes in the societary movement, be left in many places, as now at Icy Cape in Alaska, unsought for and utterly undesired. In those places all efforts at profitable production would, at least at first, result in loss, owing to the commodity produced being too far removed from the demand. In others every foot of available space is eagerly bought up and paid for. The title is taken of whomsoever will show the best chain of transfer from the first appropriator, accompanied by possession in the same chain of persons in whom the title has existed, from the first appropriator to the present holder. The rate, at which space will be paid for, depends upon the number and value of the uses which compete for its possession, and these in turn depend upon its location, or centrality, with reference to the social plexus, current, or sum of activities, which we call human society.

As we have heretofore seen, in our chapter on "Title and Use," all working and living space, or as it is usually styled land, is, in the contemplation of economic science, every moment exposed at auction to whomsoever will pay, or forego, more than any other for its possession. If he already possesses it, he foregoes what the highest bidder would offer him, in order to keep it. If he does not possess it, and desires it, he pays more than any other bidder to obtain it. All land, therefore, is at all times, except in so far as law may trammel its transfer, economically in possession of the highest bidder. The sum thus bid, for the possession of land, is called the value of the land, where land is purchased in fee, or by a title that is absolute except against the right of eminent domain by the state, and it is called economic rent, in communities where land is held by large proprietors, and occupied chiefly by tenants for terms of years. The value of land is the capitalization of its economic rent, or, in other words, the price at which it will sell is the principal, on which the sum,