THAT, as declared by the French Assembly, public 
misfortunes and corruptions of government spring 
from ignorance, neglect or contempt of human rights, 
may be seen from whatever point we look. 

Consider this matter of " over-production " of which we 
hear so much -to which is so commonly attributed dullness 
of trade and the difficulty of finding employment. 
What, when we come to think of it, can be more preposterous 
that to speak in any general sense of over -production ? 
Over-production of wealth when there is everywhere 
a passionate struggle for more wealth; when so many 
must stint and strain and contrive, to get a living; when 
there is poverty and actual want among large classes ! 
Manifestly there cannot be over-production, in any general 
and absolute sense, until desires for wealth are all 
satisfied ; until no one wants more wealth. 

Relative over-production, of course, there may be. The 
production of certain commodities may be so far in excess 
of the proper proportion to the production of other 
commodities that the whole quantity produced cannot be 
exchanged for enough of those other commodities to give 
the usual returns to the labor and capital engaged in 
bringing them to market. But this relative over-production 
is merely disproportionate production. It may proceed 
from increased production of things of one kind, or from 
decreased production of things of other kinds. 

Thus, what we would call an over -production of watches 
-meaning not that more watches had been produced 
than were wanted, but that more had been produced than 
could be sold at a remunerative price-would be purely 
relative. It might arise from an increase in the production 
of watches, outrunning the ability to purchase 
watches; or from a decrease in the production of other 
things, lessening the ability to purchase watches. No 
matter how much the production of watches were to 
increase, within the limits of the desire for watches, it 
would not be over-production, if at the same time the
production of other things increased sufficiently to allow 
a proportionally increased quantity of other things to be 
given for the increased quantity of watches. And no 
matter how much the production of watches might be 
decreased, there would be relative over-production, if at 
the same time the production of other things were 
decreased in such proportion as to diminish in greater
degree the ability to give other things for watches. 

In short, desire continuing, the over-production of 
particular commodities can be only relative to the production 
of other commodities, and may result from unduly in- 
creased production in some branches of industry , or from 
the' checking of production in other branches. But while 
the phenomena of over-production may thus arise from 
causes directly operating to increase production, or from 
causes directly operating to check production, just as the 
equipoise of a pair of scales may be disturbed by the 
addition or the removal of a weight, there are certain symptoms 
by which we may determine from which of these two 
kinds of causes any disturbance', proceeds. For while to 
a limited extent, and in a limited field, these diverse causes 
may produce similar effects, their general effects will be 
widely different. The increase of production in any branch 
of industry tends to the general increase of production ; 
the checking of production in any branch of industry 
tends to the general checking of production. 

This may be seen from the different general effects 
which follow increase or diminution of production in the 
same branch of industry. Let us suppose that from the 
discovery of new mines, the improvement of machinery, 
the breaking up of combinations that control it, or any 
other cause, there is a great and rapid increase in the 
production of coal, out of proportion to the increase of 
other production. In a free market the price of coal 
therefore falls. The effect is to enable all consumers of 
coal somewhat to increase their consumption of coal, and 
somewhat to increase their consumption of other things, 
and to stimulate production, by reducing cost, in all those 
branches of industry into which the use of coal directly or 
indirectly enters. Thus the general effect is to increase 
production, and to beget a tendency to reestablish the 
equilibrium between the production of coal and the 
production of other things, by raising the aggregate production. 

But let the coal operators and syndicates, as they 
frequently do, determine to stop or reduce the production or 
coal in order to raise prices. At once a large body of men 
engaged in producing coal find their power of purchasing 
cut off or decreased. Their demand for commodities they 
habitually use thus falls off ; demand and production in 
other branches of industry are lessened, and other 
consumers, in turn, are obliged to decrease their demands. 
At the same time the enhancement in the price of coal 
tends to increase the cost of production in all branches of 
industry in which coal is used, and to diminish the amount 
both of coal and of other things which the users of coal 
can call for. Thus the check to production is perpetuated 
through all branches of industry, and when the reestablish- 
ment of equilibrium between the production of coal and 
the production of other things is effected, it is on a 
diminished scale of aggregate production. 

All trade, it is to be remembered, is the exchange of 
commodities for commodities -money being merely the 
measure of values and the instrument for conveniently 
and economically effecting exchanges. Demand (which is 
a different thing from desire, as it involves purchasing 
power) is the asking for things in exchange for an equivalent 
value of other things. Supply is the offering of things 
in exchange for an equivalent value of other things. These 
terms are therefore relative j demand involves supply, and 
supply involves demand. Whatever increases the quantity 
of things offered in exchange for other things at once 
increases supply and augments demand. And, reversely, 
whatever checks the bringing of things to market at once 
reduces supply and decreases demand. 

Thus, while the same primary effect upon the relative 
supply of and demand for any particular commodity or 
group of commodities may be caused either by augmentation 
of the supply of such commodities, or by reduction 
in the supply of other commodities-in the one case, the 
general effect will be to stimulate trade, by calling out 
greater supplies of other commodities, and increasing 
aggregate demand j and in the other case, to depress trade, 
by lessening aggregate demand and diminishing supply. 
The equation of supply and demand between agricultural 
productions and manufactured goods might thus be altered 
in the same direction and to the same extent by such 
prosperous seasons or improvements in agriculture as 
would reduce the price of agricultural productions as 
compared with manufactured goods, or by such restrictions 
upon the production or exchange of manufactured goods 
as would raise their price as compared with agricultural 
productions. But in the one case, the aggregate produce 
of the community would be increased. There would be 
not only an increase of agricultural products, but the 
increased demand thus caused would stimulate the 
production of manufactured goods; while this prosperity in 
manufacturing industries, by enabling those engaged in 
them to increase their demand for agricultural productions, 
would react upon agriculture. In the other case, the 
aggregate produce would be decreased. The increase in 
the price of manufactured goods would compel farmers to 
reduce their demands, and this would in turn reduce the 
ability of those engaged in manufacturing to demand farm 
products. Thus trade would slacken, and production be 
checked in all directions. That this is so, we may see from 
the different general effects which result from good crops 
and poor crops, though to an individual farmer high prices 
may compensate for a poor yield. 

To recapitulate: Relative over-production may proceed 
from causes which increase, or from causes which diminish, 
production. But increased production in any branch of 
industry tends to increase production in all ; to stimulate 
trade and augment the general prosperity; and any 
disturbance of equilibrium thus caused must be speedily 
readjusted. Diminished production in any branch of 
industry, on the other hand, tends to decrease production 
in all ; to depress trade and lessen the general prosperity; 
and depression thus produced tends to perpetuate itself 
through larger circles, as in one branch of industry after 
another the check to production reduces the power to 
demand the products of other branches of industry. 

Whoever will consider the wide-spread phenomena 
which are currently attributed to over-production can have 
no doubt from which of these two classes of causes they' 
spring. He will see that they are symptoms, not of the 
excess of production, but of the restriction and 
strangulation of production. 

There are with us many restrictions of production, direct 
and indirect ; for production, it must be remembered, 
involves the transportation and exchange as well as the 
making of things. And restrictions imposed upon 
commerce or any of its instruments may operate to discourage 
prodl1ction as fully as restrictions imposed upon agriculture 
or manufactures. The tariff which we maintain for 
the express purpose of hampering our foreign commerce, 
and restricting the free exchange of our own productions 
for the productions of other nations, is in effect a 
restriction upon production. The monopolies which we have 
created or permitted to grow up, and which levy their toll 
upon internal commerce, or by conspiracy and combination 
diminish supply and artificially enhance prices, restrict 
production in the same way ; while the taxes levied upon 
certain manufactures by our internal revenue system 
directly restrict production.* 

*Whether taxes upon liquor and tobacco can be defended upon 
other grounds is not here in question. What Adam Smith says upon 
this point may, however, be worth quoting :

"If we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a 
cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. The inhabitants of the 
wine countries are in general the soberest people in Europe ; witness 
the Spaniards, the Italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces 
of France. People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their 
daily fare. Nobody affects the character of liberality and good 
fellowship, by being profuse of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer 
On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat 
or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear, and 
a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice, as among the northern 
nations, and all those who live between the tropics -the negroes, for 
example, on the coast of Guinea. When a French regiment comes 
from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is somewhat 
dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, 
the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at first 
debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine ; but after a few
months' residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the 
rest of the inhabitants. Were the duties upon foreign wines, and 
the excises upon malt, beer, and ale, to be taken away all at once, 
it might, in the same manner. occasion in Great Britain a pretty 
general and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior 
ranks of people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent 
and almost universal sobriety. At present, drunkenness is by 
no means the vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily 
afford the most expensive liquors. A gentleman drunk with ale has 
scarce ever been seen among us. The restraints upon the wine trade 
in Great Britain, besides, do not so much seem calculated to hinder 
the people from going, if I may say so, to the ale -house, as from 
going where they can buy the best and cheapest liquor."- Wealth of 
Nations, Book IV., Chapter III.

So, too, is production dcouraged by the direct taxes
levied by our States, counties and municipalities, which in 
the aggregate exceed the taxation of the Federal government. 
These taxes are generally levied upon all property, 
real and personal, at the same rate, and fall partly on land, 
which is not the result of production, and partly on things 
which are the result of production; but insomuch as buildings 
and improvements are not only thus taxed, but the 
land so built upon and improved is universally rated at a 
much higher assessment, and generally at a very much 
higher assessment, than unused land of the same quality,*
* This arises from the widely spread but utterly false notion that 
property should pay taxes only in proportion to the income it yields. 
In Great Britain, this is carried to such a pitch of absurdity that 
unused land pays no taxes. no matter how valuable it may be.
even the taxation that falls upon land values largely 
operates as a deterrent to production. 

To produce, to improve, is thus fraught with a penalty. 
We, in fact, treat the man who produces wealth, or accumulates 
wealth, as though he had done something which 
public policy calls upon us to discourage. If a house is 
erected, or a steamship or a factory is built, down comes 
the tax-gatherer to fine the men who have done such things. 
If a farmer go upon vacant land, which is adding nothing 
to the wealth of the community, reclaim it, cultivate it, 
cover it with crops, or stock it with cattle, we not only 
make him pay for having thus increased wealth, but, as 
an additional discouragement to the doing of such things, 
we tax him very much more on the value of his land than 
we do the man who holds an equal piece idle. So, too, if 
a man saves, our taxes operate to punish him for his thrift. 
Thus is production checked in every direction. 

But this is not all. 
There is with us a yet greater check to production. 

If there be in this universe superior intelligences 
engaged, with higher powers, in the study of its infinite 
marvels, who sometimes examine the speck we tenant with 
such studious curiosity as our microscopists watch the 
denizens of a drop of water, the manner in which, in such 
a country as this, population is distributed, must greatly 
puzzle them. In our cities they find people packed 
together so closely that they live over one another in 
tiers j in the country they see people separated so widely 
that they lose all the advantages of neighborhood. They 
see buildings going up in the outskirts of our towns, while 
much more available lots remain vacant. They see men 
going great distances to cultivate land while there is yet 
plenty of land to cultivate in the localities from which they 
come and through which they pass. And as these higher 
intelligences watch this process of settlement through 
whatever sort of microscopes they may require to observe 
such creatures as we, they must notice that, for the most 
part, these settlers, instead of being attracted by each 
other, leave between each other large patches of unused 
land. If there be in the universe any societies which have 
the same relation to us as our learned societies have to 
ants and animalculae, these phenomena must lead to no 
end of curious theories. 

Take in imagination such a bird's-eye view of the city 
of New York as might be had from a balloon. The houses 
are climbing heavenward -ten, twelve, even fifteen stories, 
tier on tier of people, living, one family above another, 
without sufficient water, without sufficient light or air, 
without playground or breathing-space. So close is the 
building that the streets look like narrow rifts in the brick 
and mortar, and from street to street the solid blocks 
stretch until they almost meet; in the newer districts only 
a space of twenty feet, a mere crack in the masonry 
through which at high noon a sunbeam can scarcely 
struggle down, being left to separate the backs of the 
tenements fronting on one street from the backs of those 
fronting on another street. Yet, around this city, and 
within easy access of its center, there is plenty of vacant 
land; within the city limits, in fact, not one-half the land is 
built upon; and many blocks of tall tenement-houses are 
surrounded by vacant lots. If the improvement of our 
telescopes were to show us on another planet, lakes where 
the water, instead of presenting a level surface, ruffled 
only by the action of the wind, stood up here and there in 
huge columns, it could hardly perplex ns more than these 
phenomena must perplex such extramundane intelligences 
as I have supposed. How is it, they may well speculate, 
that the pressure of population which piles families, tier 
on tier, above each other, and raises such towering 
warehouses and workshops, does not cover this vacant land 
with buildings and with homes ? Some restraining cause 
there must be; but what, it might well puzzle them to tell. 

A South Sea Islander, however-one of the old heathen 
sort, whom, in civilizing, we have well-nigh exterminated, 
might make a guess. If one of their High Chiefs tabooed 
a place or object, no one of the common sort of these 
superstitious savages dare use or touch it. He must go 
around for miles rather than set his feet on a tabooed 
path ; must parch or die with thirst rather than drink of 
a tabooed spring; must go hungry though the fruit of a 
tabooed grove rotted on the ground before his eyes. A 
South Sea Islander would say that this vacant land must 
be " taboo." And he would be not far from the truth. 
This land is vacant, simply because it is cursed by that 
form of the taboo which we superstitiously venerate under 
the names of " private property " and " vested rights." 

The invisible barrier but for which buildings would rise 
and the city would spread, is the high price of land, a 
price that increases the more certainly it is seen that a 
growing population needs the land. Thus the stronger 
the incentive to the use of land, the higher the barrier 
that arises against its use. Tenement-houses are built 
among vacant lots because the price that must be paid for 
land is so great that people who have not large means must 
economize their use of land by living one family above 
another. 

While in all of our cities the value of land, which 
increases nut merely with their growth, but with the 
expectation of growth, thus operates to check building 
and improvement, its effect is manifested through the 
country in a somewhat different way. Instead of unduly 
crowding people together it unduly separates them. The 
expectation of profit from the rise in the value of land 
leads those who take up new land, not to content them- 
selves with what they may most profitably use, but to get 
all the land they can, even though they must let a great 
part of it lie idle; and large tracts are seized upon by 
those who make no pretense of using any part of it, but 
merely calculate to make a profit out of others who in 
time will be driven to use it. Thus population is scattered, 
not only to loss of all the comforts, refinements, pleasures 
and stimulations that come from neighborhood, but to the 
great loss of productive power. The extra cost of 
constructing and maintaining roads and railways, the greater 
distances over which produce and goods must be transported, 
the difficulties which separation interposes to that 
commerce between men which is necessary even to the 
ruder forms of modern production, all retard and lessen 
production. While just as the high value of land in and 
about a great city makes more difficult the erection of 
buildings, so does increase in the value of agricultural 
land make improvement difficult. The higher the value 
of land the more capital does the farmer require if he buys 
outright; or, if he buys on instalments, or rents, the more 
of his earnings must he give up every year. Men who 
would eagerly improve and cultivate land could it be had 
for the using are thus turned away-to wander long 
distances and waste their means in looking for better 
opportunities; to swell the ranks of those seeking for 
employment as wage-workers; to go back to the cities or 
manufacturing villages in the endeavor to make a living ; 
or to remain idle, frequently for long periods, and some- 
times until they become utterly demoralized and worse 
than useless tramps. 

Thus is production checked in those vocations which 
form the foundation for all others. This check to the 
production of some forms of wealth lessens demand for 
other forms of wealth, and so the effect is propagated 
from one branch of industry to another, begetting the 
phenomena that are spoken of as over-production, but 
which are primarily due to restricted production. 

And as land values tend to rise, not merely with the 
growth of population and wealth, but with the expectation 
of that growth, thus enlisting in pushing on the upward 
movement, the powerful and illusive sentiment of hope, 
there is a constant tendency, especially strong in rapidly 
growing countries, to carry up the price of land beyond 
the point at which labor and capital can profitably engage 
in production, and the only check to this is the refusal of 
labor and capita] so to engage. This tendency becomes 
peculiarly strong in recurring periods, when the fever of 
speculation runs high, and leads at length to a 
correspondingly general and sudden check to production, 
which propagating itself (by checking demand) through all 
branches of industry, is the main cause of those paroxysms 
known as commercial or industrial depressions, and which 
are marked by wasting capital, idle labor, stocks of goods 
that cannot be sold without loss, and wide-spread want 
and suffering. It is true that other restrictions upon the 
free play of productive forces operate to promote, intensify 
and continue these dislocations of the industrial system, 
but that here is the main and primary cause I think there 
can be no doubt. 

And this, perhaps, is even more clear: That from whatever 
cause disturbance of industrial and commercial relations 
may originally come, these periodical depressions 
in which demand and supply seem unable to meet and 
satisfy each other could not become wide-spread and 
persistent did productive forces have free access to land. 
Nothing like general and protracted congestion of capital 
and labor could take place were this natural vent open. 
The moment symptoms of relative over-production manifested 
themselves in any derivative branch of industry, 
the turning of capital and labor toward those occupations 
which extract wealth from the soil would give relief. 

Thus may we see that those public misfortunes which 
we speak of as " business stagnation " and " hard times," 
those public misfortunes that in periods of intensity cause 
more loss and suffering than great wars, spring truly from 
our ignorance and contempt of human rights; 
from out disregard of the equal and 
unalienable right of all men freely to apply 
to nature for the satisfaction of their needs, 
and to retain for their own uses 
the full fruits of their labor.

Chapter 12 Social Problems 1883 by Henry George
OVER-PRODUCTION

Chapter 13 Social Problems 1883 by Henry George
UNEMPLOYED LABOR. 

HOW contempt of human rights is the essential 
element in building up the great fortunes whose growth 
is such a marked feature of our development, we have 
already seen. And just as clearly may we see that from 
the same cause spring poverty and pauperism. 
The tramp is the complement of the millionaire. 

Consider this terrible phenomenon, the tramp - an 
appearance more menacing to the Republic than that of 
hostile armies and fleets bent on destruction. What is 
the tramp ?  In the beginning, he is a man able to work, 
and willing to work, for the satisfaction of his needs; but 
who, not finding opportunity to work where he is, starts 
out in quest of it; who, failing in this search, is, in a later 
stage, driven by those imperative needs to beg or to steal, 
and so, losing self-respect, loses all that animates and 
elevates and stimulates a man to struggle and to labor ; 
becomes a vagabond and an outcast-a poisonous pariah, 
avenging on society the wrong that he keenly, but vaguely, 
feels has been done him by society. 

Yet the tramp, known as he is now from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, is only a part of the phenomenon. Behind 
him, though not obtrusive, save in what we call " hard 
times," there is, even in what we now consider normal 
times, a great mass of unemployed labor which is unable, 
unwilling, or not yet forced to tramp, but which bears to 
the tramp the same relation that the submerged part of 
an iceberg does to that much smaller part which shows 
above the surface. 

The difficulty which so many men who would gladly 
work to satisfy their needs find in obtaining opportunity 
of doing so, is so common as to occasion no surprise, nor, 
save when it becomes particularly intensified, to arouse 
any inquiry. We are so used to it, that although we all 
know that work is in itself distasteful, and that there never 
yet was a human being who wanted work for the sake of 
work, we have got into the habit of thinking and talking 
as though work were in itself a boon. So deeply is this 
idea implanted in the common mind that we maintain a 
policy based on the notion that the more work we do for 
foreign nations and the less we allow them to do for us, 
the better off we shall be; and in public and in private 
we hear men lauded and enterprises advocated because 
they " furnish employment; " while there are many who. 
with more or less definiteness, hold the idea that labor. 
saving inventions have operated injuriously by lessening 
the amount of work to be done. 

Manifestly, work is not an end, but a means; manifestly, 
there can be no real scarcity of work, which is but the 
means of .satisfying material wants, until .human wants 
are all satisfied. How, then, shall we explain the obvious 
facts which lead men to think and speak as though work 
were in itself desirable ? 

When we consider that labor is the producer of all 
wealth, the creator of all values, is it not strange that 
labor should experience difficulty in finding employment ? 
The exchange for commodities of that which gives value 
to all commodities, ought to be the most certain and easy 
of exchanges. One wishing to exchange labor for food or 
clothing, or any of the manifold things which labor produces, 
is like one wishing to exchange gold-dust for coin, 
cotton for cloth, or wheat for flour. Nay, this is hardly 
a parallel; for, as the terms upon which the exchange of 
labor for commodities takes place are usually that the labor 
is first rendered, the man who offers labor in exchange 
generally proposes to produce and render value before 
value is returned to him. 

This being the case, why is not the competition of 
employers to obtain workmen as great as the competition 
of workmen to find employment ? Why is it that we 
do not consider the man who does work as the obliging 
party, rather than the man who, as we say, furnishes 
work ? 

So it necessarily would be, if in saying that labor is the 
producer of wealth, we stated the whole case. But labor 
is only the producer of wealth in the sense of being the 
active factor of production. For the production of wealth. 
labor must have access to preexisting substance and natural 
forces. Man has no power to bring something out of 
nothing. He cannot create an atom of matter or initiate 
the slightest motion. Vast as are his powers of modifying 
matter and utilizing force, they are merely powers of 
adapting, changing, recombining, what previously exists. 
The substance of the hand with which I write these lines, 
as of the paper on which I write, has previously formed 
the substance of other men and other animals, of plants, 
soils, rocks, atmospheres, probably of other worlds and 
other systems. And so of the force which impels my pen. 
All we know of it is that it has acted and reacted through 
what seem to us eternal circlings, and appears to reach 
this planet from the sun. The destruction of matter and 
motion, as the creation of matter and motion, are to us 
unthinkable. 

In the human being, in some mysterious way which 
neither the researches of physiologists nor the speculations 
of philosophers enable us to comprehend, conscious, 
planning intelligence comes into control, for a limited 
time and to a limited extent, of the matter and motion 
contained in the human frame. The power of contracting 
and expanding human muscles is the initial force with 
which the human mind acts upon the material world. 
By the use of this power other powers are utilized, and 
the forms and relations of matter are changed in accordance 
with human desire. But how great soever be the 
power of affecting and using external nature which human 
intelligence thus obtains, - and how great this may be we 
are only beginning now to realize, - it is still only the 
power of affecting and using what previously exists. 
Without access to external nature, without the power of 
availing himself of her substance and forces, man is not 
merely powerless to produce anything, he ceases to exist 
in the material world. He himself, in physical body at 
least, is but a changing form of matter, a passing mode 
of motion, that must be continually drawn from the 
reservoirs of external nature. 

Without either of the three elements, land, air and 
water, man could not exist; but he is peculiarly a land 
animal, living on its surface, and drawing from it his 
supplies. Though he is able to navigate the ocean, and 
may some day be able to navigate the air, he can only do 
so by availing himself of materials drawn from land. 
Land is to him the great storehouse of materials and 
reservoir of forces upon which he must draw for his 
needs. And as wealth consists of materials and products 
of nature which have been secured, or modified by human 
exertion so as to fit them for the satisfaction of human 
desires,* 

* However great be its utility, nothing can be counted as wealth 
unless it requires labor for its production; nor however much labor 
has been required for its production, can anything retain the 
character of wealth longer than it can gratify desire.

labor is the active factor in the production of 
wealth, but land is the passive factor, without 
which labor can neither produce nor exist. 

All this is so obvious that it may seem like wasting space 
to state it. Yet, in this obvious fact lies the explanation 
of that enigma that to so many seems a hopeless puzzle - 
the labor question. What is inexplicable, if we lose sight 
of man's absolute and constant dependence upon land, is 
clear when we recognize it. 

Let us suppose, as well as we can, human society in a 
world as near as possible like our own, with one essential 
difference. Let us suppose this imaginary world and it.. 
inhabitants so constructed that men could support them. 
selves in air, and could from the material of the air pro- 
duce by their labor what they needed for nourishment 
and use. I do not mean to suppose a state of things in 
which men might float around like birds in the air or 
fishes in the ocean, supplying the prime necessities of 
animal life from what they could pick up. I am merely 
trying to suppose a state of things in which men as they 
are, were relieved of absolute dependence upon land for a 
standing-place and reservoir of material and forces. We 
will suppose labor to be as necessary as with us, human 
desires to be as boundless as with us, the cumulative power 
of labor to give to capital as much advantage as with us, 
and the division of labor to have gone as far as with us 
-the only difference being (the idea of claiming the air 
as private property not having been thought of) that no 
human creature would be compelled to make terms with 
another in order to get a resting-place, and to obtain 
access to the material and forces without which labor 
cannot produce. In such a state of things, no matter how 
mlinute had become the division of labor, no matter how 
great had become the accumulation of capital, or how far 
labor-saving inventions had been carried, -there could 
never be anything that seemed like an excess of the 
supply of labor over the demand for labor; there could 
never be any difficulty in finding employment; and the 
spectacle of willing men, having in their own brains and 
muscles the power of supplying the needs of themselves 
and their families, yet compelled to beg for work or for 
alms, could never be witnessed. It being in the power of 
every one able to labor to apply his labor directly to the 
satisfaction of his needs without asking leave of anyone 
else, that cutthroat competition, in which men who must 
find employment or starve are forced to bid against each 
other, could never arise. 

Variations there might be in the demand for particular 
commodities or services, which would produce variations 
in the demand for labor in different occupations, and cause 
wages in those occupations somewhat to rise above or fall 
below the general level, but the ability of labor to employ 
itself, the freedom of indefinite expansion in the primary 
employments, would allow labor to accommodate itself to 
these variations, not merely without loss or suffering, but 
so easily that they would be scarcely noticed. For 
occupations shade into one another by imperceptible degrees, 
no matter how minute the division of labor-or, rather, 
the more minute the division of labor the more insensible 
the gradation -so that there are in each occupation enough 
who could easily pass to other occupations, readily to allow 
of such contractions and expansions as might in a state of 
freedom occur. The possibility of indefinite expansion in 
the primary occupations, the ability of every one to make 
a living by resort to them, would produce elasticity 
throughout the whole industrial system. 

Under such conditions capital could not oppress labor. 
At present, in any dispute between capital and labor, 
capital enjoys the enormous advantage of being better 
able to wait. Capital wastes when not employed; but 
labor starves. Where, however, labor could always 
employ itself, the disadvantage in any conflict would be 
an the side of capital, while that surplus of unemployed 
labor which enables capital to make such advantageous 
bargains with labor would not exist. The man who 
wanted to get others to work for him would not find men 
crowding for employment, but, finding all labor already 
employed, would have to offer higher wages, in order to 
tempt them into his employment, than the men he wanted 
could make for themselves. The competition would be 
that of employers to obtain workmen, rather than that 
of workmen to get employment, and thus the advantages 
which the accumulation of capital gives in the 
production of wealth would (save enough to secure the 
accumulation and employment of capital) go ultimately 
to labor. In such a state of things, instead of thinking 
that the man who employed another was doing him 8 
favor, we would rather look upon the man who went to 
work for another as the obliging party. 

To suppose that under such conditions there could b~ 
such inequality in the distribution of wealth as we now 
see, would require a more violent presumption than we 
have made in supposing air, instead of land, to be the 
element from which wealth is chiefly derived. But sup. 
posing existing inequalities to be translated into such a 
state, it is evident that large fortunes could avail little, 
and continue but a short time. Where there is always 
labor seeking employment on any terms; where the masses 
earn only a bare living, and dismissal from employment 
means anxiety and privation, and even beggary or starvation, 
these large fortunes have monstrous power. But in 
a condition of things where there was no unemployed 
labor, where every one could make a living for himself and 
family without fear or favor, what could a hundred or 
five hundred millions avail in the way of enabling its 
possessor to extort or tyrannize ? 

The upper millstone alone cannot grind. That it may 
do so, the nether millstone as well is needed. No amount 
of force will break an egg-shell if exerted on one side 
alone. So capital could not squeeze labor as long as labor 
was free to natural opportunities, and in a world where 
these natural materials and opportunities were as free to 
all as is the air to us, there could be no difficulty in finding 
employment, no willing hands conjoined with hungry 
stomachs, no tendency of wages toward the minimum on 
which the worker could barely live. In such a world we 
would no more think of thanking anybody for furnishing 
us employment than we here think of thanking anybody 
for furnishing us with appetites. 

That the Creator might have put us in the kind of world 
I have sought to imagine, as readily as in this kind of a 
world, I have no doubt. Why he has not done so may, 
however, I think, be seen. That kind of a world would 
be best for fools. This is the best for men who will use 
the intelligence with which they have been gifted. Of 
this, however, I shall speak hereafter. What I am now 
trying to do by asking my readers to endeavor to imagine 
a world in which natural opportunities were " as free as 
air," is to show that the barrier which prevents labor from 
freely using land is the nether millstone against which 
labor is ground, the true cause of the difficulties which are 
apparent through the whole industrial organization. 

But it may be said, as I have often beard it said, " We 
do not all want land! We cannot all become farmers ! " 

To this I reply that we do all want land, though it may 
be in different ways and in varying degrees. Without 
land no human being can live ; without land no human 
occupation can be carried on. Agriculture is not the only 
use of land. It is only one of many. And just as the 
uppermost story of the tallest building rests upon land as 
truly as the lowest, so is the operative as truly a user of 
land as is the farmer. As an wealth is in the last analysis 
the resultant of land and labor, so is all production in the 
last analysis the expenditure of labor upon land. 

Nor is it true that we could not all become farmers. 
That is the one thing that we might all become. If all 
men were merchants, or tailors, or mechanics, all men 
would soon starve. But there have been, and still exist, 
societies in which all get their living directly from nature. 
The occupations that resort directly to nature are the 
primitive occupations, from which, as society progresses, 
all others are differentiated. No matter how complex the 
industrial organization, these must always remain the 
fundamental occupations, upon which all other occupations 
rest, just as the upper stories of a building rest upon the 
foundation. Now, as ever, the farmer feedeth all." And 
necessarily, the condition of labor in these first and widest 
of occupations, determines the general condition of labor, 
just as the level of the ocean determines the level of all its 
arms and bays and seas. Where there is a great demand 
for labor in agriculture, and wages are high, there must 
soon be a great demand for labor, and high wages, in all 
occupations. Where it is difficult to get employment in 
agriculture, and wages are low, there must soon be a 
difficulty of obtaining employment, and low wages, in all 
occupations. Now , what determines the demand for labor 
and the rate of wages in agriculture is manifestly the 
ability of labor to employ itself -that is to say, the ease 
with which land can be obtained. This is the reason that 
in new countries, where land is easily had, wages, not 
merely in agriculture, but in all occupations, are higher 
than in older countries, where land is hard to get. And 
thus it is that, as the value of land increases, wages fall, 
and the difficulty in finding employment arises. 

This whoever will may see by merely looking around 
him. Clearly the difficulty of finding employment, the 
fact that in all vocations, as a rule, the supply of labor 
seems to exceed the demand for labor, springs from 
difficulties that prevent labor finding employment for 
itself-from the barriers that fence labor off from land. 
That there is a surplus of labor in anyone occupation 
arises from the difficulty of finding employment in other 
occupations, but for which the surplus would be immediately 
drained off. When there was a great demand for 
clerks no bookkeeper could suffer for want of employment. 
And so on, down to the fundamental employments which 
directly extract wealth from land, the opening in which of 
opportunities for labor to employ itself would soon drain 
off any surplus in derivative occupations. Not that every 
unemployed mechanic, or operative, or clerk, could or 
would get himself a farm; but that from all the various 
occupations enough would betake themselves to the land 
to relieve any pressure for employment.

Chapter 13 Social Problems 1883 by Henry George
UNEMPLOYED LABOR

Chapter 14 Social Problems 1883 by Henry George
THE EFFECTS OF MACHINERY. 

HOW ignorance, neglect or contempt of human rights 
may turn public benefits into public misfortunes 
we may clearly see if we trace the effect of 
labor - saving inventions. 

It is not altogether from a blind dislike of innovation 
that even the more thoughtful and intelligent Chinese set 
their faces against the introduction into their dense 
population of the labor-saving machinery of Western 
civilization. They recognize the superiority which in many 
things invention has given us, but to their view this 
superiority must ultimately be paid for with too high a 
price. The Eastern mind, in fact, regards the greater 
powers grasped by Western civilization somewhat as the 
medieval European mind regarded the powers which it 
believed might be gained by the Black Art, but for which 
the user must finally pay in destruction of body and 
damnation of soul. And there is much in the present 
aspects and tendencies of our civilization to confirm the 
Chinese in this view. 

It is clear that the inventions and discoveries which 
during this century have so enormously increased the 
power of producing wealth have not proved an unmixed 
good. Their benefits are not merely unequally distributed, 
but they are bringing about absolutely injurious effects. 
They are concentrating capital. and increasing the power 
of these concentrations to monopolize and oppress; are 
rendering the workman more dependent; depriving him 
of the advantages of skill and of opportunities to acquire 
it; lessening his control over his own condition and his 
hope of improving it; cramping his mind, and in many 
cases distorting and enervating his body. 

It seems to me impossible to consider the present 
tendencies of our industrial development without feeling 
that if there be no escape from them, the Chinese philosophers 
are right, and that the powers we have called into 
our service must ultimately destroy us. We are reducing 
the cost of production; but in doing so, are stunting children, 
and unfitting women for the duties of maternity. 
and degrading men into the position of mere feeders of 
machines. We are not lessening the fierceness of the 
struggle for existence. Though we work with an intensity 
and application that with the great majority of us leaves 
time and power for little else, we have increased, not 
decreased, the anxieties of life. Insanity is increasing, 
suicide is increasing, the disposition to shun marriage is 
increasing. We are developing, on the one side, enormous 
fortunes, but on the other side, utter pariahs. These are 
symptoms of disease for which no gains can compensate. 

Yet it is manifestly wrong to attribute either necessary 
good or necessary evil to the improvements and inventions 
which are so changing industrial and social relations. 
They simply increase power-and power may work either 
good or evil as intelligence controls or fails to control it. 

Let us consider the effects of the introduction of labor. 
saving machinery-or rather, of all discoveries, inventions 
and improvements, that increase the produce a given 
amount of labor can obtain. 

In that primitive state in which the labor of each family 
supplies its wants, any invention or discovery which in- 
creases the power of supplying one of these wants will 
increase the power of supplying all, since the labor saved 
in one direction may be expended in other directions. 

When division of labor has taken place, and different 
parts in production are taken by different individuals, the 
gain obtained by any labor saving improvement in one 
branch of production will, in like manner, be averaged 
with all. If, for instance, improvements be made in the 
weaving of cloth and the working of iron, the effect will 
be that a bushel of grain will exchange for more cloth and 
more iron, and thus the farmer will be enabled to obtain 
the same quantity of all the things he wants with less 
labor, or a somewhat greater quantity with the same labor. 
and so with all other producers. 

Even when the improvement is kept a secret, or the 
inventor is protected for a time by a patent, it is only in 
part that the benefit can be retained. It is the general 
characteristic of labor - saving improvements, after at least 
a certain stage in the arts is reached, that the production 
of larger quantities is necessary to secure the economy. 
And those who have the monopoly are impelled by 
their desire for the largest profit to produce more at a 
lower price, rather than to produce the same quantity at 
the previous price, thus enabling the producers of other 
things to obtain for less labor the particular things in the 
production of which the saving has been effected, and thus 
diffusing part of the benefit, and generally the largest part, 
over the whole field of industry. 

In this way all labor-saving inventions tend to increase 
the productive power of all labor, and, except in so far as 
they are monopolized, their whole benefit is thus diffused. 
For, if in one occupation labor become more profitable 
than in others, labor is drawn to it until the net average 
in different occupations is restored. And so, where not 
artificially prevented, does the same tendency bring to a 
common level the earnings of capital. The direct effect 
of improvements and inventions which add to productive 
power is, it is to be remarked, always to increase the earnings 
of labor, never to increase the earnings of capital. 
The advantage, even in such improvements as may seem 
primarily to be rather capital-saving than labor -saving 
- as, for instance, an invention which lessens the time 
required for the tanning of hides - becomes a property 
and advantage of labor. The reason is, not to go into a 
more elaborate explanation, that labor is the active factor 
in production. Capital is merely its tool and instrument. 
The great gains made by particular capitalists in the 
utilization of improvements, are not the gains of capital, 
but generally the gains of monopoly, though sometimes 
they may be gains of adventure or of management. The 
rate of interest, which is the measure of the earnings of 
capital, has not increased with all the enormous labor. 
saving improvements of our century; on the contrary, its 
tendency has been to diminish. But the requirement of. 
larger amounts of capital, which is generally characteristic 
of labor-saving improvements, may increase the facility 
with which those who have large capitals can establish 
monopolies that enable them to intercept what would 
naturally go to labor. This, however, is an effect, rather 
than a cause, of the failure of labor to get ~he benefit of 
improvements in production. 

For the cause we must go further. While labor-saving 
improvements increase the power of labor, no improvement 
or invention can release labor from its dependence 
upon land. Labor -saving improvements only increase the 
power of producing wealth from land. And land being 
monopolized as the private property of certain persons" 
who can thus prevent others from using it, all these gains, 
which accrue primarily to labor, can be demanded from 
labor by the owners of land, in higher rents and higher 
prices. Thus, as we see it, the march of improvement and 
invention has increased neither interest nor wages, but its 
general effect has everywhere been to increase the value 
of land. Where increase of wages has been won, it has 
been by combination, or the concurrence of special causes ; 
but what of the increased productiveness which primarily 
attaches to labor has been thus secured by labor is 
comparatively trivial. Some part of it has gone to various 
other monopolies, but the great bulk has gone to the 
monopoly of the soil, has increased ground-rents and 
raised the value of land. 

The railroad, for instance, is a great labor-saving 
invention. It does not increase the quantity of grain 
which the farmer can raise, nor the quantity of goods 
which the manufacturer can turn out; but by reducing 
the cost of transportation it increases the quantity of all 
the various things which can be obtained in exchange for 
produce of either kind; which practically amounts to the 
same thing. 

These gains primarily accrue to labor; that is to say, 
the advantage given by the railroad in the district which 
it affects, is to save labor; to enable the same labor to 
procure more wealth. But as we see where railroads are 
built, it is not labor that secures the gain. The railroad 
being a monopoly -and in the United States, a practically 
unrestricted monopoly -as large a portion as possible of 
these gains, over and above the fair returns on the capital 
invested, is intercepted by the managers, who by fictitious 
costs, watered stock, and in various other ways, thinly 
disguise their levies, and who generally rob the stock. 
holders while they fleece the public. The rest of the gain 
- the advantage which, after these deductions, accrues to 
labor - is intercepted by the monopolists of land. As the 
productiveness of labor is increased, or even as there is a 
promise of its increase, so does the value of land increase, 
and labor, having to pay proportionately more for land, 
is shorn of all the benefit. Taught by experience, when a 
railroad opens a new district we do not expect wages to 
increase; what we expect to increase is the value of land. 

The elevated railroads of New York are great labor - 
saving machines, which have greatly reduced the time and 
labor necessary to take people from one end of the city to 
the other. They have made accessible to the overcrowded 
population of the lower part of the island, the vacant 
spaces at the upper. But they have not added to the 
earnings of labor, nor made it easier for the mere laborer 
to live. Some portion of the gain has been intercepted 
by Mr. Cyrus Field, Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, Mr. Jay Gould, 
and other managers and manipulators. Over and above 
this, the advantage has gone to the owners of land. The 
reduction in the time and cost of transportation has made 
much vacant land accessible to an overcrowded population, 
but as this land has been made accessible, so has its value 
risen, and the tenement-house population is as crowded as 
ever. The managers of the roads have gained some mil- 
lions; the owners of the land affected, some hundreds of 
millions; but the working-classes of New York are no 
better off. What they gain in improved transportation 
they must pay in increased rent. 

And so would it be with any improvement or material 
benefaction. Supposing the very rich men of New York 
were to become suddenly imbued with that public spirit 
which shows itself in the Astor Library and the Cooper 
Institute, and that it should become among them a passion, 
leading them even to beggar themselves in the emulation 
to benefit their fellow -citizens. Supposing such a man as 
Mr. Gould were to make the elevated roads free, were to 
assume the cost of the Fire Department, and give every 
house a free telephone connection; and Mr. Vanderbilt, 
not to be outdone, were to assume the cost of putting 
down good pavements, and cleaning the streets, and run 
ning the horse-cars for nothing; while the Astors were to 
build libraries in every ward. Supposing the fifty, twenty, 
ten, and still smaller millionaires, seized by the same passion, 
were singly or together, at their own cost, to bring 
in plentiful supplies of water; to furnish heat, light and 
power free of charge; to improve and maintain the 
schools; to open theaters and concerts to the public; to 
establish public gardens and baths and markets j to open 
stores where everything could be bought at retail for the 
lowest wholesale price ;-in short, were to do everything 
that could be done to make New York a cheap and pleasant 
place to live in ? The result would be that New York being 
so much more desirable a place to live in, more people 
would desire to live in it, and the landowners could charge 
so much the more for the privilege. All these benefactions 
would increase rent. 

And so, whatever be the character of the improvement, 
its benefit, land being monopolized, must ultimately go to 
the owners of land. Were labor-saving invention carried 
so far that the necessity of labor in the production of 
wealth were done away with, the result would be that the 
owners of land could command all the wealth that could 
be produced, and need not share with labor even what is 
necessary for its maintenance. Were the powers and 
capacities of land increased, the gain would be that of 
landowners. Or were the improvement to take place in 
the powers and capacities of labor, it would still be the 
owners of land, not laborers, who would reap the 
advantage. 

For land being indispensable to labor, those who monopolize 
land are able to make their own terms with labor ; or 
rather, the competition with each other of those who cannot 
employ themselves, yet must find employment or starve, 
will force wages down to the lowest point at which the 
habits of the laboring-class permit them to live and reproduce. 
At this point, in all countries where land is fully 
monopolized, the wages of common labor must rest, and 
toward it all other wages tend, being kept up above it 
only by the special conditions, artificial or otherwise, which 
give labor in some occupations higher wages than in 
others. And so no improvement even in the power of 
labor itself-whether it come from education, from the 
actual increase of muscular force, or from the ability to 
do with less sleep and work longer hours-could raise the 
reward of labor above this point. This we see in countries 
and in occupations where the labor of women and children 
is called in to aid the natural breadwinner in the support 
of the family. While as for any increase in economy and 
thrift, as soon as it became general it could only lessen, 
not increase, the reward of labor. 

This is the " iron law of wages," as it is styled by the 
Germans -the law which determines wages to the minimum 
on which laborers will consent to live and reproduce. 
It is recognized by all economists, though by most of them 
attributed to other causes than the true one. It is manifestly 
an inevitable result of making the land from which 
all must live the exclusive property of some. The lord of 
the soil is necessarily lord of the men who live upon it. 
They are as truly and as fully his slaves as though his 
ownership in their flesh and blood were acknowledged. 
Their competition with each other to obtain from him the 
means of livelihood must compel them to give up to him 
all their earnings save the necessary wages of slavery-to 
wit, enough to keep them in working condition and maintain 
their numbers. And as no possible increase in the 
power of his labor, or reduction in his expenses of living, 
can benefit the slave, neither can it, where land is monopolized, 
benefit those who have nothing but their labor. It 
can only increase the value of land-the proportion of the 
produce that goes to the landowner. And this being the 
case, the greater employment of machinery, the greater 
division of labor, the greater contrasts in the distribution 
of wealth, become to the working-masses positive evils 
- making their lot harder and more hopeless as material 
progress goes on. Even education adds but to the capacity 
for suffering. If the slave must continue to be a slave, it 
is cruelty to educate him. 

All this we may not yet fully realize, because the 
industrial revolution which began with the introduction 
of steam, is as yet in its first stages, while up to this time 
the overrunning of a new continent has reduced social 
pressure, not merely here, but even in Europe. But the 
new continent is rapidly being fenced in, and the 
industrial revolution goes on faster and faster.

The more carefully he examines, the more fully will he see 
that at the root of every social problem lies a social wrong, 
that " ignorance, neglect or contempt of human rights are 
the causes of public misfortunes and corruptions of government. 
Yet, in truth, no elaborate examination is necessary. 
To understand why material progress does not benefit 
the masses requires but a recognition of the self - evident 
truth that man cannot live without land; that it 
is only on land and from land that human labor can produce. 

Robinson Crusoe, as we all know, took Friday as his 
slave. Suppose, however, that instead of taking Friday 
as his slave, Robinson Crusoe had welcomed him as a man 
and a brother; had read him a Declaration of Independence, 
an Emancipation Proclamation and a Fifteenth 
Amendment, and informed him that he was a free and 
independent citizen, entitled to vote and hold office ; but 
had at the same time also informed him that that particular 
island was his (Robinson Crusoe's) private and exclusive 
property. What would have been the difference ? Since 
Friday could not fly up into the air nor swim off through 
the sea, since if he lived at all he must live on the island, 
he would have been in one case as much a slave as in the 
other. Crusoe's ownership of the island would be 
equivalent to his ownership of Friday. 

Chattel slavery is, in fact, merely the rude and primitive 
mode of property in man. It only grows up where population 
is sparse; it never, save by virtue of special circumstances, 
continues where the pressure of population gives 
land a high value, for in that case the ownership of land 
gives an the power that comes from the ownership of men, 
in more convenient form. When in the course of history 
we see the conquerors making chattel slaves of the 
conquered, it is always where population is sparse and land 
of little value, or where they want to carry off their human 
spoil. In other cases, the conquerors merely appropriate 
the lands of the conquered, by which means they just as 
effectually, and much more conveniently, compel the 
conquered to work for them. It was not until the great estates 
of the rich patricians began to depopulate Italy that the 
importation of slaves began. In Turkey and Egypt, where 
chattel slavery is yet legal, it is confined to the inmates 
and attendants of harems. English ships carried negro 
slaves to America, and not to England or Ireland, because 
in America land was cheap and labor was valuable, while 
in western Europe land was valuable and labor was cheap. 
As soon as the possibility of expansion over new land 
ceased, chattel slavery would have died out in our Southern 
States. As it is, Southern planters do not regret the abolition 
of slavery. They get out of the freedmen as tenants 
as much as they got out of them as slaves. While as for 
predial slavery -the attachment of serfs to the soil -the 
form of chattel slavery which existed longest in Europe 
it is only of use to the proprietor where there is little 
competition for land. Neither predial slavery nor absolute 
chattel slavery could have added to the Irish landlord's 
virtual ownership of men -to his power to make them 
work for him without return. Their own competition for 
the means of livelihood insured him all they possibly could 
give. To the English proprietor the ownership of slaves 
would be only a burden and a loss, when he can get 
laborers for less than it would cost to maintain them as 
slaves, and when they are become ill or infirm can turn 
them on the parish. Or what would the New England 
manufacturer gain by the enslavement of his operatives , 
The competition with each other of so-called freemen, who 
are denied all right to the soil of what is called their 
country, brings him labor cheaper and more conveniently 
than would chattel slavery . 

That a people can be enslaved just as effectually by 
making property of their lands as by making property of 
their bodies, is a truth that conquerors in all ages have 
recognized, and that, as society developed, the strong and 
unscrupulous who desired to live off the labor of others, 
have been prompt to see. The coarser form of slavery, in 
which each particular slave is the property of a particular 
owner, is fitted only for a rude state of society, and with 
social development entails more and more care, trouble 
and expense upon the owner. But by making property 
of the land instead of the person, much care, supervision 
and expense are saved the proprietors; and though no 
particular slave is owned by a particular master, yet the 
one class still appropriates the labor of the other class as 
before. 

That each particular slave should be owned by a particular 
master would in fact become, as social development 
went on, and industrial organization grew complex, a 
manifest disadvantage to the masters. They would be , 
at the trouble of whipping, or otherwise compelling the 
slaves to work; at the cost of watching them, and of 
keeping them when ill or unproductive; at the trouble of 
finding work for them to do, or of hiring them out, as at 
different seasons or at different times, the number of 
slaves which different owners or different contractors 
could advantageously employ would vary. As social 
development went on, these inconveniences might, were 
there no other way of obviating them, have led slave. 
owners to adopt some such device for the joint ownership 
and management of slaves, as the mutual convenience 01 
capitalists has led to in the management of capital. In a 
rude state of society, the man who wants to have money 
ready for use must hoard it, or, if he travels, carry it with 
him. The man who has capital must use it himself or 
lend it. But mutual convenience has, as society developed, 
suggested methods of saving this trouble. The man who 
wishes to have his money accessible turns it over to a 
bank, which does not agree to keep or hand him back that 
particular money, but money to that amount. And 
so by turning over his capital to savings -banks or trust 
companies, or by buying the stock or bonds of corporations 
he gets rid of all trouble of handling and employing it 
Had chattel slavery continued, some similar device for the 
ownership and management of slaves would in time have 
been adopted. But by changing the form of slavery - by 
freeing men and appropriating land-all the advantages 
of chattel slavery can be secured without any of the 
disadvantages which in a complex society attend the 
owning of a particular man by a particular master.

Unable to employ themselves, the nominally free la- 
borers are forced by their competition with each other to 
pay as rent all their earnings above a bare living, or to 
sell their labor for wages which give but a bare living j and 
as landowners the ex-slaveholders are enabled as before, 
to appropriate to themselves the labor or the produce of 
the labor of their former chattels, having in the value 
which this power of appropriating the proceeds of labor 
gives to the ownership of land, a capitalized value equivalent, 
or more than equivalent, to the value of their slaves. 
They no longer have to drive their slaves to work ; want 
and the fear of want do that more effectually than the 
lash. They no longer have the trouble of looking out for 
their employment or hiring out their labor, or the expense 
of keeping them when they cannot work. That is thrown 
upon the slaves. The tribute that they still wring from 
labor seems like voluntary payment. In fact, they take it 
as their honest share of the rewards of production -since 
they furnish the land! And they find so-called political 
economists, to say nothing of so-called preachers of 
Christianity, to tell them it is so. 

We of the United States take credit for having abolished 
slavery .Passing the question of how much credit the 
majority of us are entitled to for the abolition of negro 
slavery, it remains true that we have abolished only one 
form of slavery-and that a primitive form which had 
been abolished in the greater portion of the country by 
social development, and that, notwithstanding its race 
character gave it peculiar tenacity, would in time have 
been abolished in the same way in other parts of the 
country. We have not really abolished slavery ; we have 
retained it in its most insidious and wide-spread form -in 
a form which applies to whites as to blacks. So far from 
having abolished slavery, it is extending and intensifying, 
and we make no scruple of selling into it our own children 
- the citizens of the Republic yet to be. For what else are 
we doing in selling the land on which future citizens must 
live, if they are to live at all ? 

The essence of slavery is the robbery of labor. It consists 
in compelling men to work, yet taking from them all 
the produce of their labor except what suffices for a bare 
living. Of how many of our free and equal American 
citizens " is that already the lot ? And of how many more 
is it coming to be the lot ? 

In all our cities there are, even in good times, thousands 
and thousands of men who would gladly go to work for 
wages that would give them merely board and clothes 
- that is to say, who would gladly accept the wages of 
slaves. As I have previously stated, the Massachusetts 
Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Illinois Bureau of 
Labor Statistics both declare that in the majority of 
cases the earnings of wage-workers will not maintain 
their families, and must be pieced out by the earnings of 
women and children. In our richest States are to be 
found men reduced to a virtual peonage-living in their 
employers' houses, trading at their stores, and for the most 
part unable to get out of their debt from one year's end 
to the other. In New York, shirts are made for thirty-five 
cents a dozen, and women working from fourteen to sixteen 
hours a day average three dollars or four dollars a 
week. There are cities where the prices of such work are 
lower still. As a matter of dollars and cents, no master 
could afford to work slaves so hard and keep them so cheaply. 

But it may be said that the analogy between our industrial 
system and chattel slavery is only supported by the 
consideration of extremes. Between those who get but 
a bare living and those who can live luxuriously on the 
earnings of others, are many gradations, and here lies the 
great middle class. Between all classes, moreover, a constant 
movement of individuals is going on. The millionaire's 
grandchildren may be tramps, while even the poor 
man who has lost hope for himself may cherish it for his 
son. Moreover, it is not true that all the difference 
between what labor fairly earns and what labor really gets 
goes to the owners of land. And with us, in the United 
States, a great many of the owners of land are small 
owners -men who own the homesteads in which they live 
or the soil which they till, and who combine the characters 
of laborer and landowner. 

These objections will be best met by endeavoring to 
imagine a well-developed society, like our own, in which 
chattel slavery exists without distinction of race. To do 
this requires some imagination, for we know of no such 
case. Chattel slavery had died out in Europe before 
modern civilization began, and in the New World has 
existed only as race slavery, and in communities of low 
industrial development. 

But if we do imagine slavery without race distinction in 
a progressive community, we shall see that society, even 
if starting from a point where the greater part of the 
people were made the chattel slaves of the rest, could not 
tong consist of but the two classes, masters and slaves. 
The indolence, interest and necessity of the masters 
would soon develop a class of intermediaries between the 
completely enslaved and themselves. To supervise the 
labor of the slaves, and to keep them in subjection, it 
would be necessary to take, from the ranks of the slaves, 
overseers, policemen, etc.. and to reward them by more of 
the produce of slave labor than goes to the ordinary slave. 
So, too, would it be necessary to draw out special skill 
and talent. And in the course of social development a 
class of traders would necessarily arise, who, exchanging 
the products of slave labor, would retain a considerable 
portion; and a class of contractors, who, hiring slave labor 
from the masters, would also retain a portion of its produce. 
Thus, between the slaves forced to work for a bare 
living and the masters who lived without work, intermediaries 
of various grades would be developed, some of 
whom would doubtless acquire large wealth. 

And in the mutations of fortune, some slaveholders 
would be constantly falling into the class of intermediaries, 
and finally into the class of slaves, while individual slaves 
would be rising. The conscience, benevolence or gratitude 
of masters would lead them occasionally to manumit 
slaves; their interest would lead them to reward the diligence, 
inventiveness, fidelity to themselves, or treachery 
to their fellows, of particular slaves. Thus, as has often 
occurred in slave countries, we would find slaves who were 
free to make what they could on condition of paying so 
much to their masters every month or every quarter ; 
slaves who had partially bought their freedom, for a day 
or two days or three days in the week, or for certain 
months in the year, and those who had completely bought 
themselves, or had been presented with their freedom. 
And, as has always happened where slavery had not race 
character, some of these ex-slaves or their children would, 
in the constant movement, be always working their way 
to the highest places, so that in such a state of society the 
apologists of things as they are would triumphantly point 
to these examples, saying, " See how beautiful a thing is 
slavery ! Any slave can become a slaveholder himself if 
he is only faithful, industrious and prudent! It is only 
their own ignorance and dissipation and laziness that 
prevent all slaves from becoming masters! " And then 
they would indulge in a moan for human nature. " Alas! " 
they would say, " the fault is not in slavery ; it is in human 
nature" -meaning, of course, other human nature than 
their own. And if anyone hinted at the abolition of 
slavery, they would charge him with assailing the sacred 
rights of property, and of endeavoring to rob poor blind 
widow women of the slaves that were their sole dependence ; 
call him a crank and a communist; an enemy of man and 
a defier of God ! 

Consider, furthermore, the operation of taxation in an 
advanced society based on chattel slavery ; the effect of 
the establishment of monopolies of manufacture, trade and 
transportation; of the creation of public debts, etc., and 
you will see that in reality the social phenomena would be 
essentially the same if men were made property as they 
are under the system that makes land property. 

It must be remembered, however, that the slavery that 
results from the appropriation of land does not come 
suddenly, but insidiously and progressively. Where 
population is sparse and land of little value, the institution 
of private property in land may exist without its 
effects being much felt. As it becomes more and more 
difficult to get land, so will the virtual enslavement of the 
laboring -classes go on. As the value of land rises, more 
and more of the earnings of labor will be demanded for 
the use of land, until finally nothing is left to laborers 
but the wages of slavery -a bare living. 

But the degree as well as the manner in which individuals 
are affected by this movement must vary very much. 
Where the ownership of land has been much diffused, 
there will remain, for some time after the mere laborer 
has been reduced to the wages of slavery, a greater body 
of smaller landowners occupying an intermediate position, 
and who, according to the land they hold, and the relation 
which it bears to their labor, may, to make a comparison 
with chattel slavery, be compared, in their gradations, to 
the owners of a few slaves; to those who own no slaves 
but are themselves free; or to partial slaves, compelled to 
render service for one, two, three, four or five days in 
the week, but for the rest of the time their own masters. 
As land becomes more and more valuable this class will 
gradually pass into the ranks of the completely enslaved. 
The independent American farmer working with his own 
hands on his own land is doomed as certainly as two thou. 
sand years ago his prototype of Italy was doomed. He must 
disappear, with the development of the private ownership 
of land, as the English yeoman has already disappeared. 

We have abolished negro slavery in the United States. 
But how small is the real benefit to the slave. George M. 
Jackson writes me from St. Louis, under date of August 
15, 1883 : 

During the war I served in a Kentucky regiment in the Federal 
army. When the war broke out, my father owned sixty slaves. I 
had not been back to my oId Kentucky home for years until a short 
time ago, when I was met by one of my father's old negroes, who 
said tome :  Mas George, you say you sot us free; but 'fore God, 
I'm wus off than when I belonged to your father." The planters, on 
the other hand, are contented with the change. They say:  How 
foolish it was in us to go to war for slavery. We get labor cheaper 
now than when we owned the slaves." How do they get it cheaper ? 
Why, in the shape of rents they take more of the labor of the negro 
than they could under slavery, for then they were compelled to return 
him sufficient food, clothing and medical attendance to keep him 
well, and were compelled by conscience and public opinion, as well 
as by law, to keep him when he could no longer work. Now their 
interest and responsibility cease when they have got all the work out 
of him they can.

In one of his novels, Capt. Marryat tells of a school. 
master who announced that he had abandoned the use of 
the rod. When tender mothers, tempted by this announcement, 
brought their boys to his institution, he was eloquent 
in his denunciations of the barbarism of the rod; but no 
sooner had the doors closed upon them than the luckless 
pupils found that the master had only