producing the misery they only shelter; the vast inequalities of fortune, which prevail in cities, are set down as due to the fact that those, who have never had any productive power adequate to their maintenance, have been in some way despoiled of the good living they are assumed to be entitled to, by those whose fortunes are in excess of their means of consumption, or even of adequate consideration. It is, however, because of this very overflow of surplus wealth, that the incompetent and unproductive find it easier to survive in the vicinity of the very rich, than to endure anywhere else.*

Hence the scene of greatest diversity of industries, and most rapid circulation of money, is at once that in which industrial freedom rises highest, and yet in which the pecuniarily helpless swarm in greatest numbers, not because they are here reduced by competition to poverty, but because they are here enabled to survive longest on the smallest endowment of productive energy.

49. Countries of Low and High Prices.-Prices of commodities generally, and especially of labor, seem to descend at each stage as we pass from the silver and gold producing centers, viz., North and South America, and Australia, through the countries which have usually made most use of specie, viz., England, France, and Germany, towards those oriental countries, China and India, where labor is very largely in surplus, and silver, especially, is hardly produced at all, but is finally absorbed. It would seem as though the precious metals gain in purchasing power as they recede from the point of their production, until, amidst the reputed six hundred millions of people dwelling in India, China, Siam, and Japan, their average purchasing power as applied to land, labor, and commodities which do not admit of export, reaches its maximum. This apparent difference of prices is aided by two other causes. The lower relative use of machine power in Asiatic countries renders the actual product of labor less there than in Western peoples when the same degree of effort is put forth; and the simpler, less animal, and less nerve-stimulating diet of Eastern races, together with their inert and supine characters, renders them indisposed to put forth an equivalent effort in industry for purposes of accumulation after the present wants of the body are satisfied

* In Yorkshire it is said that woolen rags to the amount of $260,000,000 a year are manufactured into useful articles. (Tooke, "Wool Production," 196.) In Paris 4,000 persons make a living from what they pick up in the streets. Roscher, "Pol, Econ.," vol. ii, p. 220.

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

foreign competition. Whenever low prices, obtained by importa tion, 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.

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.

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 dag 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 (Lovell'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