the value of the land in relation to which those demands can be enforced. The man who emigrates to the West obtains his land for little money, but his horses, his cattle, his wagon, and his furniture have cost him five times more. Obliged to send his produce to the distant market, he pays for the use of other horses and wagons, cars and engines, drays, horses, and ships the cost of all this circulating capital being so great, that his land continues of little value. The blacksmith, the carpenter, the miller, the millwright, the spinner, and the weaver, however, come nearer to him; and now he finds a more instant market for his products -giving to his land a value thrice greater than that of all the movables of which he is possessed.* Looking to the East in early days, we see the heavy caravan passing through lands abounding in all the metallic treasures of the earth, which yet were valueless. Examining Africa, in all ages, we find cafilas of slaves, and trains of camels laden with gold-dust and ivory, coming from the higher and poorer lands, while the richest soils remain unappropriated and unimproved. Turning to Cuba, Brazil, or Carolina, we see that nearly the whole wealth of the planter is of a movable character-consisting of slaves, furniture, and raw products in various stages of preparation for a distant market. The earlier and better days of Attica were marked by a daily increasing tendency to the development of the mineral treasures of the land, accompanied by diminution in the proportion of movable to fixed property-resulting from extensive enfranchisements of men who had been enslaved. Later, the whole energies of the community were given to increasing the quantity of ships, arms, and other movable property-men becoming re-enslaved, and land as nearly valueless as it had been in the earliest days of Greece. *The Red River hunters number 2000 men: their women and children number 3000 souls. They have 1800 carts, and range with them from the Moose River Valley to the Red River of the North; and in each year-in June and July, and again in October and November carry off to the settlement at Pembina, and in the English territory, at least 2,500,000 pounds of buffalo-meat, dried, or in the form of pemmican. There is here no fixed property, whatsoever; and this is the ordinary condition of semi-barbarous life. In early Italy, the chief property of the Campagna consisted in its lands, and then its people were prosperous and free. Century after century, the aristocracy of the central city were engaged in increasing the proportion of the movable property, until slaves at length came to constitute almost the entire capital of the community- the land having lost its value. Tyre and Carthage, Venice and Genoa, devoted their energies to the acquisition of movable property; and the more its proportions grew, the more were the people enslaved, and the weaker became the state. So, too, with Spain, which expelling the men who cultivated its richest lands applied its powers to the creation of fleets and armies, swords and guns, while land so much declined, that it became almost wholly worthless. Of all the countries of Europe, there was none whose policy, during a long series of centuries, was so adverse to the growth of value in land, or to the fixing of capital in any form, as was that of France the result exhibiting itself in the fact that, at the opening of the eighteenth century, the total annual value of the land was but 850,000,000 francs-giving, at twenty years' purchase, a capital of 17,000,000,000 $3,400,000,000.* Adding to this, the houses in towns and cities, and all other fixed property, the total amount would, probably, be less than $4,000,000,000. In 1821, it had reached 39,514,000,000 franes, or less than $8,000,000,000 having little more than doubled in a hundred and twenty years. Since then, the progress has been a wonderfully accelerated one a valuation made in 1851 having given no less than 83,744,000,000 francs, or more than $16,000,000,000 † - being twice the amount at which it stood in 1821, and quadruple that of 1700. Taking the movable property at $2,000,000,000 -a sum that it cannot well exceed -its proportion is only as 1 to 8; whereas, in the earlier period, it was probably as 1 to 2, or 24. The capital of England, in the days of the Plantagenets, con * See ante, vol. ii. p. 60. Journal des Economistes, November, 1856. The reader will bear in mind that the price of all finished commodities tends steadily to fall, as that of land tends upward. The quantity of movable property now required to give a money value of $2,000,000,000, would therefore be thrice greater than, in the earlier period above referred to, would have represented a value of $1,700,000,000. sisted, in large proportion, of its flocks and herds. The markets being distant, produce accumulated in one part of the kingdom, while in another, men perished for want of food. Land and man were then cheap, but cloth was dear. Now, the value of fixed property probably thrice exceeds that of the floating capital; a result obtained in despite of a policy based upon the idea, that ships, wagons, and other machinery of trade, are far more profitable than land, the machinery of production.* Looking to Ireland, India, Portugal, Turkey, or Jamaica — countries whose policy tends towards trade. we see a growing dependence on floating capital, attended by decline in the value of labor and land. Turning thence to Belgium, Germany, and the North of Europe generally, we find the proportion of movable capital steadily diminishing, while the value of labor and land as steadily increases. In the former, the movement of society becomes less steady from year to year; while, in the latter, steadiness advances with daily accelerated pace. The policy of the United States, as a rule, has been adverse to the creation of fixed property; and for the reason, that it has tended everywhere to the exhaustion of the soil, to the abandonment of the land, and to the dispersion of the people. Time and again, mills and furnaces have been built, and mines have been sunk; but only, as a rule, to produce the ruin of the parties to whose efforts the community had owed such works. In no country is so much capital applied to the scholastic development of human faculty; but in no civilized community has there been exhibited a more pertinacious determination to prevent the application of the faculties thus developed, to any purpose other than those of law, medicine, speculation, and trade. The consequences of this are seen in the fact, that the unfixed property bears to that which is fixed, the proportion of 3 to 5 being a larger proportion than that of any other community claiming The real property of Great Britain was assessed, in 1848, at £85,000,000 at twenty-five years' purchase, to £2,125,000,000. The personal property in 1845 was estimated (PORTER: Progress of the Nation, page 600) at £2,200,000,000. In this, however, is included £800,000,000 of the national debt, which constitutes no property of the nation; also, the whole amount of mortgages and settlements, representing portions of the landed property. Taking these at £500,000,000, and adding thereto, railroad shares and other items of fixed property, we obtain a total of not less than £1,500,000,000deducting which from the sum given above, we have £700,000,000 for floating capital; and it is probably even less than this. to be held as civilized.* As a further result of this it is, that there exists throughout the country a vast mass of half-developed intelligence, fitted to be advanced by practice to excellence in all the pursuits of life; but which, by reason of the policy of the country, is kept in a floating state- always ready for any employment, abroad or at home, that will give to its owners food and clothing. Hence it is, that Mexico and California, the West Indies and Central America, have been, and are, the seats of so many piratical operations. † The first desire and greatest want of man, is that of association with his fellow-men. The more perfect the facility of combination, the greater will be the development of the individual faculties, and the greater the power to reduce to man's service * The total value of property returned under the last census was as follows: The true valuation, as given in De Bow's Compendium, p. 190, was $7,066,562,966. What is the proper division of this additional thousand millions is not explained, but the following must be a near approximation to the true division of the total sum: Real estate......... Total........ $4,466,000,000 the latter being, as stated in the text, nearly as 3 to 5. The following extract from the report of the English Commissioner to the New York Exhibition, is far more correct as regards the capabilities of the American people, than in relation to the extent to which those powers are, or can be, applied, under a system that scatters all the skilled hands of the country at intervals of half a dozen years- thus annihilating a capital that would be worth more, annually, than all the cloth they import in half a century : "We have a few great engineers and mechanics, and a large body of clever workmen; but the Americans seem likely to become a whole nation of such people. Already, their rivers swarm with steamboats; their valleys are becoming crowded with factories; their towns, surpassing those of every state of Europe, except Belgium, Holland, and England, are the abodes of all the skill which now distinguishes a town population; and there is scarcely an art in Europe not carried on in America with equal or greater skill than in Europe, though it has been here cultivated and improved through ages. A whole nation of Franklins, Stevensons, and Watts in prospect, is something wonderful for other nations to contemplate. In contrast with the comparative inertness and ignorance of the bulk of the people of Europe, whatever may be the superiority of a few well-instructed and gifted persons, the great intelligence of the whole people of America is the circumstance most worthy of public attention." the great forces by which he is everywhere surrounded; the greater will be the tendency to pass from the poor to the more fertile soils, and from the mere appropriation of materials found on the surface of the land, to the development of the coal, the iron, copper, and other ores, the lime, the marl, and other treasures concealed within the earth; the greater will be the return to labor; the less will be the time required to elapse between production and consumption; and the more rapid will be the accumulations of society; with constant increase in the proportion of that rapidly accumulating quantity, borne by fixed to floating capital. With every step in that direction, the power of the soldier and the trader tends to decline, with constant increase in the power of those who live by labor of body, or of mind, to determine for whom they will work, and what shall be their reward -freedom and commerce growing thus together. Such is the present course of things in all the countries following in the lead of France; while directly the reverse of this is found in those which follow in the lead of England. §5. Civilization grows with the growth of the proportion borne by fixed to floating capital. Fixed capital tends to increase in its proportion as the circulation becomes more rapid-production and consumption following more closely on each other. The circulation increases in rapidity as the prices of commodities tend more and more to approximate land, labor, and raw materials rising in price, and finished commodities as regularly falling. In proof of this, we once more offer to the reader's examination, the diagram that has already twice been placed before himdoing this, because of being desirous that he should remark the universality of the application of the simple principle that is there exhibited : Paper. |
