HI)4853 
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 Harry Llewelyn Davies Memorial Edition 
 
 OF 
 
 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 Being an abridgment of 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOUR 
 
 By 
 
 HENRY GEORGE 
 
 Published by 
 
 The United Committee for the Taxation of Land 
 Values, ll.Tothill Street, London. S.W.I. 
 
iBteto gorfe 
 
 S>tate College of Agriculture 
 
 iat Cornell ^nibetsfitp 
 
 Hifirarp 
 
Mrs . Henry George , Junr , 
 
 //, SToMM i^B^ SSync/o^. y. W-/ 
 
 HD 4853.01™"""'™"'""*"^ 
 
 Harry Llewelyn Oavies memorial edition o 
 
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 UNITED COMMITTEE FOR THE TAXATION OF LAND VALUES. 
 11, TOTHILL STREET, LONDON, S.W.I. 
 
THE 
 
 LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 BEING AN ABRIDGMENT OF 
 
 HENRY GEORGE'S 
 
 CONDITION OF LABOUR 
 
 HARRY LLEWELYN DAVIES 
 
 NXWVv 
 
 ^'People do not ar^ue with the teacliing of Gearge." 
 ." They simply do not know it." 
 
 " Those who become acquainted with it cannot but agree." 
 " The teaching of George is irresistibly convincing in its 
 sifiiplicity and clearness." , 
 
 — Tolstoy. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE 
 
 UNITED COMMITTEE p-ORTHE TAXATION OF LAND VALUES 
 11, Tothill Street, Westminster, London, S.W.I. 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013720721 
 
HARRY LLEWELYN DAVIES 
 ^ I 866-1923 
 
 To whom the Reader is indebted for this abridgment 
 of " The Condition of Labour " by Henry George, 
 
 HARRY DAVIES' first introduction to the doctrines of 
 Henry George was on the occasion when as an apprentice 
 at Napier's works in Glasgow he attended a meeting of the 
 Henry George Qub at which he had been invited to read a 
 paper. He was at that time immersed in Fabianism and eager 
 to impart his knowledge and faith to others. In later years he 
 used to enjoy teUing of his experience on that occasion. How 
 he stood up and confidently proclaimed the truth as he saw it 
 and how, when he had finished, his hearers tore all his pet 
 theories to pieces so that not a shred was kft ! 
 
 But for all that he did not desert his position ; in fact, the 
 very strength of the opposition he met with roused the fighter 
 in him, and only after weeks and months of nighdy discussions 
 did he come to doubt the eflScacy of Fabianism as a means 
 
of solving social problems. Then once the old faith was gone 
 something else had to take its place and he set himself to study 
 the ideas of Henry George. Gradually he became convinced 
 of the rightness and truth of these ideas and he made them his 
 own and they became a reUgion to him. Later on he made a 
 pilgrimage to America to visit Hemy George whom he regarded 
 as an inspired prophet, and this religion entered into all his work 
 and all his dealings with men. 
 
 In 1901 he became managing director of an engineering 
 works in the south of Scotland, a post which he held up 
 to the time of his death in 1923. He came to his work 
 with no knowledge of business or business management ; but 
 he always kept clearly before him the idea that the works 
 were to be carried on so as to be a benefit to aU concerned and 
 to that end he strove with all his might. He realised that 
 sympathetic understanding and friendly co-operation between 
 employers and employed were the first considerations ; 
 it was in that spirit that he met all the difficulties that are 
 inevitable in such undertakings. 
 
 Inspectors and visitors to the works frequently remark on 
 the general atmosphere of good fellowship and keenness over work 
 which is apparent during a walk through the shops, and they 
 sometimes ask how such a state of things is brought about. Had 
 they known the personality of Harry Davies, the spirit which 
 animated him and his power of communicating that spirit to 
 others, they would have understood. 
 
 He truly loved his fellow men and his deep human sympathy 
 and love of liberty and truth and justice inspired him with the 
 belief that these could be reached if only people would faith- 
 fully follow the light of reason. He believed that a better 
 understanding among men was possible, and longed for it 
 passionately, and strove for it in all his activities. 
 
lU 
 
 His struggle at the works was not merely to make his own 
 living in his own way, but to win conditions under which all 
 concerned in the works might co-operate to the utmost of their 
 ability in freedom and justice. What was achieved was achieved 
 only because of his beUef in a wider emancipation, which could 
 only be reached by eliminating monopoly from industry according 
 to the principles of Henry George. 
 
 Under existing economic conditions the conilict between 
 capital and labour was a dog fight in which each side, ignoring 
 the fact that both were hampered and oppressed and robbed 
 by . monopoly, turned on one another ; and instead of freeing 
 themselves from the common enemy of land monopoly, 
 employers and employed attempted to arm themselves for their 
 mutual conflict with similar weapons of restriction and 
 tyranny. 
 
 While such conditions remained, the works were carried on 
 so as to mitigate them as far as possible in that corner of the 
 vineyard, and to show the possibilities which could be reaUsed 
 under the fuller economic freedom. Without the fundamental 
 economic change those possibilities could not be secured any- 
 where because nowhere could they be complete or sure until 
 they were universal. Free access to, and utilisation of, the 
 natural resources of our country and of the world was the 
 requisite justice which would enable men to co-operate in 
 prosperity and good will. 
 
 The understanding of this economic analysis and the 
 moral obligation to establish the social conditions to which it 
 pointed, and the belief in human nature which would be set free 
 to develop under those conditions, was the key to all Harry's 
 strivings. Side by side with the successful effort to found 
 freedom and justice at the works, so far as conditions would 
 allow, was the constant effort to spread an understanding of the 
 
IV 
 
 economic changes which must be brought about by applying 
 the principles of Henry George in politics as the foundation 
 of abetter Society. 
 
 From boyhood those principles had taken possession of his 
 mind with a completeness which can only be appreciated by 
 those who have a similar understanding of them, and know 
 how they work out through every tangje of social problems 
 which has to be explored. 
 
 A. LI. D. 
 
 March, 1926. 
 
 The Abridgment of " The Condition of Labour " which 
 first appeared in 1907 has since gone through many editions, 
 and been widely circulated at home and abroad. It was the 
 work of Harry Davies, and from the first has met with a glad 
 reception by his colleagues and co-workers in the movement 
 for the Taxation of Land Values. 
 
 This further edition of the pamphlet is issued in memory 
 of a. true disciple and in the belief that it is as urgently 
 required to-day as it was when he first published it nineteen 
 years ago. 
 
 Copies of this pamphlet in stiff paper cover are available at 
 3d. each and at 20s. per 100 carriage paid. 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 BEING AN ABRIDGMENT OF 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOUR 
 
 By HENRY GEORGE 
 
 I. 
 
 First Principles. 
 
 This world is the creation of God. The men brought into 
 it for the brief period of their earthly lives are the equal 
 creatures of His bounty, the equal subjects of His provident 
 care. 
 
 By his constitution man is beset by physical wants, on 
 the satisfaction of which depend not only the maintenance 
 of his physical life but also the development of his intellectual 
 and spiritual life. 
 
 God has made the satisfaction of these wants dependent 
 on man's own exertions, giving him the power and lajdng 
 on him the injunction to labour — a power that of itself raises 
 him far above the brute, since we may reverently say that 
 it enables him to become, as it were, a helper in the creative 
 work 
 
 God has not put on man the task of making bricks with- 
 out straw. With the need for labour and the power to labour 
 He has also given to man the material for labour. This 
 material is land — man physically being a land animal, who 
 can live only on and from land, and can use other elements 
 such as air, sunshine, and water only by the use of land. 
 
 Being the equal creatures of the Creator, equally entitled 
 under His providence to live their lives and satisfy their 
 needs, men are equally entitled to the use of land, and any 
 
2 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 adjustment that denies this equal use of land is morally 
 wrong. 
 
 The True Rightjof Property. 
 
 Being created individuals, with individual wants and 
 powers, men are individually entitled (subject, of course, 
 to the moral obligations that arise from such relations as 
 that of the family) to the use of their own powers and the 
 enjoyment of the results. 
 
 There thus arises, anterior to human law, and deriving 
 its validity from the law of God, a right of private ownership 
 in things produced by labour — a right that the possessor 
 may transfer, but of which to deprive him without his will 
 is theft. 
 
 This right of property, originating in the right of the 
 individual to himself, is the only full and complete right of 
 property. It attaches to things produced by labour, but 
 cannot attach to things created by God. 
 
 Thus if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires a 
 right of property in that fish, which exclusive right he may 
 transfer by sale or gift. But he cannot obtain a similar right 
 of property in the ocean, so that he may sell it or give it or 
 forbid others to use it. 
 
 Or, if he set up a windmill he acquires a right of property 
 in the things such use of wind enables him to produce. 
 But he cannot claim a right of property in the wind itself, 
 so that he may sell it or forbid others to use it. 
 
 Or, if he cultivate grain he acquires a right of property 
 in the grain his labour brings forth. But he cannot obtain 
 a similar right of property in the sun which ripened it or the 
 soil on which it grew. 
 
 For these things are of the continuing gifts of God to all 
 generations of men, which all may use but none may claim 
 as his alone. 
 
 To attach to things created by God the same right of 
 private ownership that justly attaches to things produced by 
 labour is to impair and deny the true rights of property. For 
 a man who out of the proceeds of his labour is obliged to pay 
 another man for the use of ocean or air or sunshine or soil — 
 all of which are to men involved in the single term land — 
 is in this deprived of his rightful property and thus robbed. 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 3 
 
 Private Possession o£ Land different from Private 
 Ownership. 
 
 While the right of ownership that justly attaches to 
 things produced by labour cannot attach to land, there may 
 attach to land a right of possession. God has not granted the 
 earth to mankind in general in the sense that all without 
 distinction can deal with it as they please, and regulations 
 necessary for its best use may be fixed by human laws. But 
 such regulations must conform to the moral law — ^must secure 
 to all equal participation in the advantages of God's general 
 bounty. The principle is the same as where a human father 
 leaves property equally to a number of children. Some of 
 the things thus left may be incapable of common use or of 
 specific division. Such things may properly be assigned to 
 some of the children, but only under condition that the 
 equality of benefit among them all be preserved. 
 
 In the rudest social state, while industry consists in 
 hunting, fishing and gathering the spontaneous fruits of the 
 earth, private possession of land is not necessary. But as 
 men begin to cultivate the ground and expend their labour 
 in permanent works, private possession of the land on which 
 labour is thus expended is needed to secure the right of 
 property in the products of labour. For who would sow if 
 not assured of the exclusive possession needed to enable 
 him to reap ? Who would attach costly works to the soil 
 without such exclusive possession of the soil as would enable 
 him to secure the benefit ? 
 
 This right of private possession in things created by God 
 is, however, very different from the right of private ownership 
 in things produced by labour. The one is limited, the other 
 unlimited, save in cases when the dictate of self-preservation 
 terminates all other rights. The purpose of the one, the 
 exclusive posses.sion of land, is merely to secure the other, 
 the exclusive ownership of the products of labour ; and 
 it can never rightfully be carried so far as to impair or deny 
 this. While anyone may hold exclusive possession of land 
 so far as it does not interfere with the equal rights of others, 
 he can rightfully hold it no further. 
 
 Thus Cain and Abel, were there only two men on earth, 
 might by agreement divide the earth between them. Under 
 this compact each might claim exclusive right to his share 
 
4 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 as against the other. But neither could rightfully continue 
 such claim against the next man bom. For since no one 
 comes into the world without God's permission, his presence 
 attests his equal right to the use of God's bounty. For them 
 to refuse him any use of the earth which they have divided 
 between them would therefore be for them to commit murder. 
 And for them to refuse him any use of the earth, unless by 
 labouring for them or by giving them part of the products 
 of his labour he bought it off them, would be for them to 
 commit theft. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Application of First Principles. 
 
 God's laws do not change. Though their applications 
 may alter with altering conditions, the same principles of 
 right and wrong that hold when men are few and industry 
 is rude also hold amid teeming populations and complex 
 industries. In our cities of millions, and our States of scores 
 of millions, in a civilisation where the division of labour 
 has gone so far that large numbers are hardly conscious that 
 they are land users, it still remains true that we are all land 
 animals and can live only on land, and that land is God's 
 bounty to aU, of which no one can be deprived without 
 being murdered, and for which no one can be compelled to 
 pay another without being robbed. But even in a state of 
 society where the elaboration of industry and the increase 
 of permanent improvements have made the need for private 
 possession of land widespread, there is no difficulty in con- 
 forming individual possession with the equal right to land. 
 
 Land Values. 
 
 For as soon as any piece of land will yield to the possessor 
 a larger return than is had by similar labour on other land, 
 a value attaches to it which is shown when it is sold or rented. 
 Thus, the value of the land itself, irrespective of the value 
 of any improvements in or on it, always indicates the precise 
 value of the benefit to which all are entitled in its use, as 
 distinguished from the value which as producer or successor 
 of a producer belongs to the possessor in individual right. 
 
 To combine the advantages of private possession with the 
 justice of common ownership it is only necessary, therefore, 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 5 
 
 to take for common uses what value attaches to land irrespec- 
 tive of any exertion of labour on it. The principle is the 
 same as in the case referred to, where a human father leaves 
 equally to his children things not susceptible of specific division 
 or common use. In that case, such things would be sold or 
 rented and the value equally applied. 
 
 Out Proposal. 
 
 It is on this common-sense principle that we who term 
 ourselves single tax men would have the community act. 
 
 We do not propose to assert equal rights to land by keeping 
 land common, letting any one use any part of it at any time. 
 We do not propose the task, impossible in the present state 
 of society, of dividing land in equal shares ; still less the yet 
 more impossible task of keeping it so divided. 
 
 We propose leaving land- in the private possession of 
 individuals, with full liberty on their part to give, sell, or 
 bequeath it ; simply to levy on it for public uses a tax that 
 shall equal the annual value of the land itself, irrespective 
 of the use made of it or the improvements on it. And since 
 this would provide amply for the need of public revenues, 
 we would accompany this tax on land values with the repeal 
 of all taxes now levied on the products and processes of 
 industry — ^which taxes, since they take from the earnings of 
 labour, we hold to be infringements of the right of property. 
 
 This we propose not as a cunning device of human 
 ingenuity, but as a conforming of human regulations to the 
 will of God. 
 
 State Revenue and the Moral Law. 
 
 No sooner does the State arise than, as we all know, it 
 needs revenues. This need for revenues is small at first, 
 while population is sparse, industry rude, and the functions 
 of the State few and simple. But with growth of population 
 and advance of civilisation the functions of the State 
 increase, and larger and larger revenues are needed. Now, 
 the raising of public revenues must accord with the moral 
 law. 
 
 Hence : 
 
 It must not take from individuals what rightfully belongs 
 to individuals. 
 
 B 2 
 
6 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 It must not give some an advantage over others, as by 
 increasing the prices of what some have to sell and others 
 must buy. 
 
 It must not lead men into temptation by requiring trivial 
 oaths, by making it profitable to lie, to swear falsely, to bribe 
 or to take bribes. 
 
 It must not confuse the distinctions of right and wrong, 
 and weaken the sanctions of religion and the State by creating 
 crimes that are not sins and punishing men for doing what 
 in itself they have an undoubted right to do. 
 
 It must not repress industry. It must not check com- 
 merce. It must not punish thrift. It must offer no impedi- 
 ment to the largest production and the fairest division of 
 wealth. 
 
 Existing Taxes Violate the Moral Law. 
 
 Consider the taxes on the processes and products 
 of industry by which, through the civilised world, public 
 revenues are collected — the monstrous Customs duties that 
 hamper intercourse between so-called Christian States ; the 
 taxes on occupations, on earnings, on investments, on the 
 building of houses, on the cultivation of fields, on industry 
 and thrift in all forms. 
 
 All these taxes violate the moral law. They take by 
 force what belongs to the individual alone ; they give to the 
 unscrupulous an advantage over the scrupulous ; they have 
 the effect, nay, are largely intended to increase the price 
 of what some have to sell and others must buy ; they corrupt 
 government ; they make oaths a mockery ; they shackle 
 commerce ; they fine industry and thrift ; they lessen the 
 wealth that men might enjoy, and enrich some by impoverish- 
 ing others. 
 
 Yet what most strikingly shows how opposed to Christian- , 
 ity is this system of raising public revenues is its influence 
 on thought. 
 
 Christianity teaches us that all men are brethren ; that 
 their true interests are harmonious, not antagonistic. It 
 gives us, as the golden rule of life, that we should do to 
 others as we would have others do to us. But out of the 
 system of taxing the products and processes of labour, and 
 out of its effects in increasing the price of what some have 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 7 
 
 to sell and others must buy, has grown the theory of " pro- 
 tection," which denies this gospel, which holds Christ ignorant 
 of political economy and proclaims laws of national weU- 
 being utterly at variance with His teaching. This theory 
 sanctifies national hatreds ; it inculcates a universal war 
 of hostile tariffs; it teaches peoples that their prosperity 
 lies in imposing on the productions of other people restric- 
 tions they do not wish imposed on their own ; and instead 
 of the Christian doctrine of man's brotherhood it makes 
 injury of foreigners a civic virtue. 
 
 III. 
 
 Land Value Taxation Conforms to Moral Law. 
 
 But to consider what we propose — the raising of public 
 revenues by a single tax on the value of land irrespective 
 of improvements — is to see that in all respects this does 
 conform to the moral law. 
 
 The value we propose to tax, the value of land irrespective 
 of improvements, does not come from any exertion of labour 
 or investment of capital on or in it — the values produced 
 in this way being values of improvement, which we would 
 exempt. 
 
 Land Values due to Social Progress. 
 
 The value of land irrespective of improvement is the 
 value that attaches to land by reason of increasing population 
 and social progress. This is a value that always goes to the 
 owner as owner, and never does and never can go to the user ; 
 for if the user be a different person from the owner he must 
 always pay the owner for it in rent or in purchase money ; 
 while if the user be also the owner, it is as owner, not as 
 user, that he receives it, and by selling or renting the land 
 he can, as owner, continue to receive it after he ceases to be 
 a user. 
 
 Thus, taxes on land irrespective of improvement cannot 
 lessen the rewards of industry, nor add to prices, nor in any 
 way take from the individual what belongs to the individual. 
 They can only take the value that attaches to land by growth 
 of the community, and which therefore belongs to the com- 
 munity as a whole. 
 
8 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 Taxation of Land Values would relieve Labour. 
 
 To take land values for the State, abolishing all taxes on 
 the products of labour, would therefore leave to the labourer 
 the full produce of labour ; to the individual all that right- 
 fully belongs to the individual. It would impose no burden 
 on industry, no check on commerce, no punishment on thrift ; 
 it would secure the largest production and the fairest dis- 
 tribution of wealth, by leaving men free to produce and to 
 exchange as they please, without any artificial enhancement 
 of prices ; and by taking for pubUc purposes a value that 
 cannot be carried off, that cannot be hidden, that of all values 
 is most easily ascertained and most certainly and cheaply 
 collected, it would enormously lessen the nimiber of officials, 
 dispense with oaths, do away with temptations to bribery 
 and evasion, and abolish man-made crimes in themselves 
 innocent. 
 
 Growth of Population. 
 
 In that primitive condition, ere the need for the State 
 arises, there are no land values. The products of labour 
 have value, but in the sparsity of population no value as yet 
 attaches to land itself. But as increasing density of popula- 
 tion and increasing elaboration of industry necessitate the 
 organisation of the State, with its need for revenues, value 
 begins to attach to land. As population stiU increases and 
 industry grows more elaborate, so the needs for public 
 revenues increase. And at the same time, and from the same 
 causes, land values increase. The connection is invariable. 
 The value of things produced by labour tends to decline with 
 social developments, since the larger scale of production 
 and the improvement of processes tend steadily to reduce 
 their cost. But the value of land on which population 
 centres goes up and up. Take Rome, or Paris, or London, 
 or New York, or Melbourne. Consider the enormous value 
 of land in such cities as compared with the value of land 
 in sparsely settled parts of the same countries. To what is 
 this due ? Is it not due to the density and activity of the 
 populations of those cities — to the very causes that require 
 great public expenditure for streets, drains, public buildings, 
 and all the many things needed for the health, convenience, 
 and safety of such great cities ? See how with the growth 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 9 
 
 of such cities the one thing which steadily increases in value 
 is land ; how the opening of roads, the building of railways, 
 the making of any public improvement, adds to the value 
 of land. 
 
 Taxation of Land Values makes for Social Equality. 
 
 Here is a natural law by which, as society advatices, the 
 one thing that increases in value is land — a natural law by 
 virtue of which all growth of population, aU advance of the 
 arts, all general improvements of whatever kind, add to a 
 fund that both the commands of justice and the dictates of 
 expediency prompt us to take for the common uses of 
 society. Now, since increase in the fund available for the 
 common uses of society is increase in the gain that goes 
 equally to each member of society, is it not clear that the law 
 by which land values increase with social advance while 
 the value of the products of labour do not increase, tends, 
 with the advance of civilisation, to make the share that goes 
 equally to each member of society more and more important 
 as compared with what goes to him from his individual earn- 
 ings, and thus to make the advance of civilisation lessen 
 relatively the differences that in a ruder social state must 
 exist between the strong and the weak, the fortunate and the 
 unfortunate ? 
 
 That the value attaching to land with social growth is 
 intended for social needs is shown by the final proof. 
 
 Other Alternatives make for Injustice. 
 
 For refusal to take for public purposes the increasing 
 values that attach to land with spcial growth is to necessitate 
 the getting of public revenues by taxes that lessen production, 
 distort distribution, and corrupt society. It is to leave 
 some to take what justly belongs to all ; it is to forego the 
 only means by which it is possible in an advanced civilisation 
 to combine the security of possession that is necessary to 
 improvement with the equality of natural opportunity that 
 is the most important of all natural rights. It is thus at the 
 basis of all social life to set up an unjust inequality between 
 man and man, compelling some to pay others for the privilege 
 of living, for the chance of working, for the advantages of 
 civilisation, for the gifts of God. But it is even more than 
 
10 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 this. The very robbery that the masses of men thus suffer 
 gives rise in advancing communities to a new robbery. 
 
 Land Speculation and Industrial Depression. 
 
 For the value that with the increase of population and 
 social advance attaches to land being suifered to go to 
 individuals who have secured ownership of the land, it prompts 
 to a forestalling of and speculation in land wherever there 
 is any prospect of advancing population or of coming improve- 
 ment, thus producing an artificial scarcity of the natural 
 elements of life and labour, and a strangulation of production 
 that shows itself in recurring spasms of industrial depression 
 as disastrous to the world as destructive wars. It is this 
 that is driving men from the old countries to the new countries, 
 only to bring there the same curses. It is this that causes 
 our material advance not merely to fail to improve the con- 
 dition of the mere worker, but to make the condition of large 
 classes positively worse. It is this that in our richest Christian 
 countries is giving us a large population whose lives are 
 harder, more hopeless, more degraded, than those of the 
 veriest savages. 
 
 The Simple Rule of Right. 
 
 The darkness in light, the weakness in strength, the 
 poverty amid wealth, the seething discontent foreboding 
 civil strife that characterise our civilisation of to-day, are the 
 natural, the inevitable results of oiu: rejection of God's 
 beneficence, of our ignoring of His intent. Were we, on the 
 other hand, to follow His clear, simple rule of right, leaving 
 scrupulously to the individual all that individual labour 
 produces, and taking for the community the value that 
 attaches to land by the growth of the community itself, not 
 merely could evil modes of raising public revenues be dispensed 
 with, but all men would be placed on an equal level of oppor- 
 tunity with regard to the boimty of their Creator, on an 
 equal level of opportunity to exert their labour and to enjoy 
 its fruits. And then, without drastic or restrictive measures, 
 the forestalling of land would cease. For then the possession 
 of land would mean only security for the permanence of its 
 use, and there would be no object for anyone to get land or to 
 keep land except for use ; nor would his possession of better 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 11 
 
 land than others had confer any unjust advantage on him, 
 or unjust deprivation on them, since the equivalent of the 
 advantage would be taken by the State for the benefit of all. 
 
 We see thus that the law of justice, the law of the Golden 
 Rule, is not a mere counsel of perfection, but indeed the law 
 of social life. We see that if we were only to observe it 
 there would be work for all, leisure for aU, abundance for all ; 
 and that civilisation would tend to give to the poorest not 
 only necessaries, but all comforts and reasonable luxuries 
 as well. We see that Christ was not a mere dreamer when 
 He told men that if they would seek the kingdom of God 
 and its right-doing they might no more worry about material 
 things than do the lilies of the field about their raiment ; 
 but that He was only declaring what political economy in the 
 light of modern discovery shows to be a sober truth. 
 
 IV. 
 
 There are many who, feeling bitterly the monstrous 
 wrongs of the present distribution of wealth, are animated only 
 by a blind hatred of the rich and a fierce desire to destroy 
 existing social adjustments. This class is indeed only less 
 dangerous than those who proclaim that no social improve- 
 ment is needed or is possible. But it is not fair to confound 
 with them those who, however mistakenly, propose definite 
 schemes of remedy. 
 
 Socialism. 
 
 The Socialists, as I understand them, and as the term 
 has come to apply to anything like a definite theory and not 
 to be vaguely and improperly used to include all who desire 
 social improvement, do not seek the abolition of all private 
 property. Those who do this are properly called Com- 
 munists. What the Socialists seek is the State assumption 
 of capital (in which they vaguely and erroneously include 
 land), or, more property speaking, of large capitals, and 
 State management and direction of at least the larger opera- 
 tions of industry. In this way they hope to abolish interest, 
 which they regard as wrong and an evil ; to do away with 
 the gains of exchangers, speculators, contractors, and middle- 
 men, which they regard as waste ; to do away with the wage 
 
12 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 system and secure general co-operation ; and to prevent 
 competition, which they deem the fundamental cause of the 
 impoverishment of labour. The more moderate of them, 
 without going so far, go in the same direction, and seek some 
 remedy or palliation of the worst forms of poverty by govern- 
 ment regulation. The essential character of Socialism is that 
 it looks to the extension of the functions of the State for the 
 remedy of social evils ; that it would substitute regulation 
 and direction for competition ; and intelligent control by 
 organised society for the free play of individual desire and 
 effort. 
 
 Trades Unionists and Protectionists. 
 
 Though not usually classed as Socialists both the Trades 
 Unionists and the Protectionists have the same essential 
 character. The Trades Unionists seek the increase of wages, 
 the reduction of working hours, and the general improve- 
 ment in the condition of wage-workers, by organising them 
 into guilds or associations which shall fix the rates at which 
 they will sell their labour ; shaU deal as one body with 
 employers in case of dispute ; shall use on occasion their 
 necessary weapon, the strike ; and shall accumulate funds 
 for such purposes and for the purpose of assisting members 
 when on strike, or (sometimes) when out of employment. 
 The Protectionists seek by governmental prohibitions or 
 taxes on imports to regulate the industry and control the 
 exchanges of each country, so, as they imagine, to. diversify 
 home industries and prevent the competition of people of 
 other countries. 
 
 Anarchists. 
 
 At the opposite extreme are the Anarchists, a term which, 
 though frequently applied to mere violent destructionists, 
 refers also to those who, seeing the many evils of too much 
 government, regard government in itself as evil, and believe 
 that in the absence of coercive power the mutual interests 
 of men would secure volimtarily what co-operation is needed. 
 
 Our Views. 
 
 Differing from all these are those for whom I would speak. 
 Beheving that the rights of true property are sacred, we 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 13 
 
 would regard forcible Communism as robbery that would 
 bring destruction. But we would not be disposed to deny 
 that voluntary Communism might be the highest possible 
 state of which men can conceive. Nor de we say that it 
 cannot be possible for mankind to attain it, since among the 
 early Christians and among the religious orders of the Catholic 
 Church we have examples of Communistic Societies on a 
 small scale. Knowing these things, we cannot take it on 
 ourselves to say that a social condition may not be possible 
 in which an aU-embracing love shaU have taken the place 
 of all other motives. But we see that Communism is only 
 possible where there exists a general and intense religious 
 faith, and we see that such a state can be reached only through 
 a state of justice. For before a man can be a saint he must 
 first be an honest man. 
 
 The Social and Individual Natures of Man. 
 
 With both Anarchists and Socialists we, who for want 
 of a better term have come to caU ourselves Single Tax men, 
 fundamentally differ. We regard them as erring in opposite 
 directions — ^the one in ignoring the social nature of man, 
 the other in ignoring his individual nature. While we see 
 that man is primarily an individual, and that nothing but 
 evil has come or can come from the interference by the State 
 with things that belong to individual action, we also see that 
 he is a social being, or, as Aristotle called him, a political 
 animal, and that the State is requisite to social advance, 
 having an indispensable place in the natural order. Looking 
 on the bodily organism as the analogue of the social organism, 
 and on the proper functions of the State as akin to those that 
 in the human organism are discharged by the conscious in- 
 telligence, while the play of individual impulse and interest 
 performs functions akin to those discharged in the bodily 
 organism by the unconscious instincts and involuntarily 
 motions, the Anarchists seem to us like men who would 
 try to get along without heads, and the Socialists like men 
 \vho would try to rule the wonderfully complex and delicate 
 internal relations of their frames by conscious will. 
 
 The philosophical Anarchists of whom I speak are few in 
 number, and of little practical importance. It is with 
 Socialism, in its various phases, that we have to do battle. 
 
14 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 With the Socialists we have some points of agreement, 
 for we recognise fully the social nature of man, and believe 
 that all monopolies should be held and governed by the 
 State. In these, and in directions where the general health, 
 knowledge, comfort, and convenience might be improved, 
 we, too, would extend the fimctions of the State. 
 
 The Vice of Socialism. 
 
 But it seems to us the vice of Socialism in aU its degrees 
 is its want of Radicalism, of going to the root. It takes its 
 theories from those who have sought to justify the impoverish- 
 ment of the masses, and its advocates generally teach the 
 preposterous and degrading doctrine that slavery was the 
 first condition of labour. It assumes that the tendency 
 of wages to a minimum is the natural law, and seeks to abolish 
 wages ; it assumes that the natural result of competition is 
 to grind down workers, and seeks to abolish competition 
 by restrictions, prohibitions and extensions of governing 
 power. Thus, mistaking effects for causes, and childishly 
 blamiug the stone for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving 
 for remedies that when not worse are futile. Associated 
 though it is in many places with democratic aspiration, yet 
 its essence is the same delusion to which the Children of Israel 
 yielded when, against the protest of their prophet, they in- 
 sisted on a king ; the delusion that has everywhere corrupted 
 democracies and enthroned t5T:ants — that power over the 
 people can be used for the benefit of the people ; that there 
 may be devised machinery that through human agencies 
 will secure for the management of individual affairs more 
 wisdom and more virtue than the people themselves 
 possess. 
 
 This superficiahty and this tendency may be seen in all 
 phases of Socialism. 
 
 Protectionism. 
 
 Take, for instance, Protectionism. What support it has, 
 beyond the mere selfish desire of sellers to compel buyers 
 to pay them more than their goods are worth, springs from 
 such superficial ideas as that production, not consumption, 
 is the end of effort ; that money is more valuable than money's 
 worth, and to sell more profitable than to buy ; and above 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 15 
 
 all, from a desire to limit competition, springing from an 
 unanalysmg recognition of the phenomena that necessarily 
 loliow when men who have the need to labour are deprived 
 by monopoly of access to the natural and indispensable 
 element of aU labour. Its methods involve the idea that 
 governments can more wisely direct the expenditure of labour 
 and the mvestment of capital than can labourers and capitalists, 
 and that the men who control governments will use this 
 power for the general good and not in their own interests, 
 rhey tend to multiply officials, restrict liberty, invent crimes. 
 They promote perjury, fraud and corruption. And they 
 would, were the theory carried to its logical conclusion, destroy 
 civilisation and reduce mankind to savagery. 
 
 Trades Unionism, 
 
 Take Trades Unionism. While within narrow lines 
 Trades Unionism promotes the idea of the mutuality of inter- 
 ests, and often helps to raise courage and further political 
 education, and while it has enabled limited bodies of working- 
 men to improve somewhat their condition, and gain, as it 
 were, breathing space, yet it takes no note of the general 
 causes that determine the conditions of labour, and strives 
 for the elevation of only a small part of the great body by 
 means that cannot help the rest. Aiming at the restriction 
 of competition — the limitation of the right to labour — its 
 methods are like those of an army which, even in a righteous 
 cause, are subversive of liberty and liable to abuse ; while 
 its weapon, the strike, is destructive in its nature, both to 
 combatants and non-combatants, being a form of passive 
 war. To apply the principle of trades unions to all industry, 
 as some dream of doing, would be to enthral men in a caste 
 system. 
 
 Or take even such moderate measures as the limitation of 
 working hours and of the labour of women and children. 
 They are superficial in looking no further than to the eagerness 
 of men and women and little children to work unduly, and 
 in proposing forcibly to restrain overwork while utterly 
 ignoring its cause, the sting of poverty that forces human 
 beings to it. And the methods by which these restraints 
 must be enforced multiply officials, interfere with personal 
 liberty, tend to corruption, and are liable to abuse. 
 
16 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 Thorough-going Socialism. 
 
 As for thorough-going Socialism, which is the more to be 
 honoured as having the courage of its convictions, it would 
 carry these vices to full expression. Jumping to conclusions 
 without effort to discover causes, it fails to see that oppression 
 does not come from the nature of capital, but from the wrong 
 that robs labour of capital by divorcing it from land, and that 
 creates a fictitious capital that is really capitalised monopoly. 
 It fails to see that it would be impossible for capital to oppress 
 labour were labour free to the natural material of production ; 
 that the wage system in itself springs from mutual con- 
 venience, being a form of co-operation in which one of the 
 parties prefers a certain to a contingent result ; and that 
 what it calls the " iron law of wages " is not the natural 
 law of wages, but only the law of wages in that unnatural 
 condition in which men are made helpless by being deprived 
 of the materials for life and work. It fails to see that what it 
 mistakes for the evils of competition are really the evils of 
 restricted competition — are due to a one-sided competition 
 to which men are forced when deprived of land. While its 
 methods, the organisation of men into industrial armies, the 
 direction and control of all production and exchange by 
 governmental or semi-governmental bureaus would, if carried 
 to full expression, mean Egyptian despotism. 
 
 Difference as to Remedies. 
 
 We differ from the Socialists in our diagnosis of the evil, 
 and we differ from them as to remedies. We have no fear 
 of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden of labour ; 
 we look on interest in itself as natural and just ; we would 
 set no limit to accumulation, nor impose on the rich any 
 burden that is not equally placed on the poor ; we see no evil 
 in competition, but deem unrestricted competition to be as 
 necessary to the health of the industrial and social organism 
 as the free circulation of the blood is to the health of the 
 bodily organism — to be the agency whereby the fullest co- 
 operation is to be secured. We would simply take for the 
 community what belongs to the community, the value that 
 attaches to land by the growth of the community ; leave 
 sacredly to the individual all that belongs to the individual ; 
 and, treating necessary monopolies as fimctions of the State, 
 abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those required 
 for public health, safety, morals, and convenience. 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 17 
 
 The Fundamental Difference. 
 
 But the fundamental difference is in this : Socialism in 
 aU its phases looks on the evil of our civilisation as springing 
 from the inadequacy or inharmony of natural relations, 
 which must be artificially organised or improved. In its idea 
 there devolves on the State the necessity of intelligently 
 organising the industrial relations of men ; the construction, 
 as it were, of a great machine whose complicated parts shall 
 properly work together under the direction of human intelli- 
 gence. This is the reason why Socialism tends towards 
 Atheism. Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural 
 law, it fails to recognise God. 
 
 On the other hand, we who call ourselves Single Tax men 
 (a name which expresses merely our practical propositions) 
 see in the social and industrial relations of men not a machine 
 which requires construction, but an organism which needs 
 only to be suffered to grow. We see in the natural, social, 
 aiid industrial laws such harmony as we see in the adjust- 
 ments of the human body, and that as far transcends the power 
 of man's intelligence to order and direct as it is beyond 
 man's intelligence to order and direct the vital movements 
 of his frame. We see in these social and industrial laws 
 so close a relation to the moral law as must spring from the 
 same Authorship, and that proves the moral law to be the 
 sure guide of man where his intelligence would wander and 
 go astray. Thus, to us, all that is needed to remedy the evils 
 of our time is to do justice and give freedom. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Remedy for the Condition of Labour 
 
 And it is because that in what we propose — the securing 
 to all men of equal natural opportunities for the exercise 
 of their powers and the removal of all legal restriction on the 
 legitimate exercise of those powers — ^we see the conformation 
 of human law to the moral law, that we hold with con- 
 fidence not merely that this is a sufficient remedy for 
 the present condition of ' labour, but that it is the only 
 possible remedy. 
 
18 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 The Iron Law of Wages. 
 
 Since man can live only on land and from land, since 
 land is the reservoir of matter and force from which man's 
 body itself is taken, and on which he must draw for all that 
 he can produce, does it not irresistibly foUow that to give 
 the land in ownership to some men and to deny to others all 
 right to it is to divide mankind into the rich and the poor, 
 the privOeged and the helpless ? Does it not follow that 
 those who have no rights to the use of land can live only 
 by selling their power to labour to those who own the land ? 
 Does it not follow that what the Socialists call " the iron 
 law of wages," what the political economists term " the 
 tendency of wages to a minimum," must take from the 
 landless masses — the mere labourers, who of themselves 
 have no power to use their labour — all the benefits of any 
 possible advance or improvement that does not alter this 
 unjust division of land. For having no power to employ 
 themselves, they must, either as labour sellers or land renters, 
 compete with one another for permission to laboiir. This 
 competition with one another of men shut out from God's 
 inexhaustible storehouse has no Umit but starvation, and must 
 ultimately force wages to their lowest point, the point at 
 which life can just be maintained and reproduction carried on. 
 
 This is not to say that all wages must fall to this point, 
 but that the wages of that necessarily largest stratum of 
 labourers who have only ordinary knowledge, skiU and 
 aptitude must so fall. The wages of special classes, who are 
 fenced off from the pressure of competition by peculiar 
 knowledge, skUl, or other causes, may remain above that 
 ordinary level. Thus, where the ability to read and write 
 is rare, its possession enables a man to obtain higher wages 
 than the ordinary labourer. But as the diffusion of education 
 makes the ability to read and write general, this advantage 
 is lost. So when a vocation requires special training or skill, 
 or is made difficult of access by artificial restrictions, the 
 checking of competition tends to keep wages in it at a higher 
 level. But as the progress of invention dispenses with peculiar 
 skUl, or artificial restrictions are broken down, these higher 
 wages sink to the ordinary level. And so, it is oiily so long 
 as they are special that such quaUties as industry, prudence 
 and thrift can enable the ordinary labourer to maintain a 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 19 
 
 condition above that which gives a mere living. Where they 
 become general, the law of competition must reduce the 
 earnings or savings of such qualities to the general level — 
 which, land being monopolised and labour helpless, can be 
 only that at which the next lowest point is the cessation of life. 
 
 Labour's Store-house. 
 
 Or, to state the same thing in another way : Land being 
 necessary to life and labour, its owners will be able, in return 
 for permission to use it, to obtain from mere labourers all that 
 labour can produce, save enough to enable such of them 
 to maintain life as are wanted by the landowners and their 
 dependents. 
 
 Thus, where private property in land has divided society 
 into a land-owning class and a landless class, there is no 
 possible invention or improvement, whether it be industrial, 
 .social, or moral, which, so long as it does not affect the owner- 
 ship of land, can prevent poverty or relieve the general 
 conditions of mere labourers. 
 
 Labour-saving Improvements. 
 
 For whether the effect of any invention or improvement 
 be to increase what labour can produce or to decrease what 
 is required to support the labourer, it can, so soon as it 
 becomes general, result only in increasing the income of the 
 owners of land, without at all benefiting the mere labourers. 
 In no event can those possessed of the mere ordinary power 
 to labour, a power utterly useless without the means necessary 
 to labour, keep more of their earnings than enough to enable 
 them to live. 
 
 How true this is we may see in the facts of to-day. In 
 our own time invention and discovery have enormously 
 increased the productive power of labour, and at the same 
 time greatly reduced the cost of many things necessary 
 to the support of the labourer. Have these improvements 
 anywhere raised the earnings of the mere labourer ? 
 
 Where has the benefit gone P 
 
 Have not their benefits mainly gone to the owners of 
 land — enormously increased land values ? 
 
20 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 I say mainly, for some part of the benefit has gone to the 
 cost of monstrous standing armies and warlike preparations ; 
 to the payment of interest on great public debts ; and, largely 
 disguised as interest on fictitious capital, to the owners of 
 monopoUes other than that of land. But improvements 
 that would do away with these wastes would not benefit 
 labour ; they would simply increase the profits of landowners. 
 Were standing armies and all their incidents abolished, 
 were all monopolies other than that of land done away with, 
 were governments to become models of economy, were 
 the profits of speculators, of middlemen, of all sorts of 
 exchangers saved, were every one to become so strictly honest 
 that no policemen, no courts, no prisons, no precautions 
 against dishonesty would be needed — the result would not 
 differ from that which has followed the increase of productive 
 power. 
 
 The Paradox. 
 
 Nay, would not these very blessings bring starvation to 
 many of those who now manage to live ? Is it not true that if 
 there were proposed to-day, what all Christian men ought 
 to pray for, the complete disbandment of all the armies of 
 Europe, the greatest fears would be aroused for the conse- 
 quences of throwing on the labour market so many unem- 
 ployed labourers ? 
 
 The explanation of this and of similar paradoxes that in 
 our time perplex on every side may be easily seen. The 
 effect of all inventions and improvements that increase pro- 
 ductive power, that save waste and economise effort, is to 
 lessen the labour required for a given result, and thus to save 
 labour, so that we speak of them as labour-saving inventions 
 or improvements. Now, in a natural state of society where 
 the rights of all to the use of the earth are acknowledged, 
 labour-saving improvements might go to the very utmost 
 that can be imagined without lessening demand for men, 
 since in such natural conditions the demand for men lies 
 in their own enjoyment of life and the strong instincts that 
 the Creator has implanted in the human breast. 
 
 Disinherited from the Earth. 
 
 But in that unnatural state of society where the masses 
 of men are disinherited of all but the power to labour when 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 21 
 
 opportunity to labour is given them by others, thers the 
 demand for them becomes simply the demand for their 
 services by those who hold this opportunity, and man himself 
 becomes a commodity. Hence, although the natural effect 
 of labour-saving improvement is to increase wages, yet 
 in the unnatural condition which private ownership of the 
 land begets, the effect, even of such moral improvements as the 
 disbandment of armies and the saving of the labour that vice 
 entails, is, by lessening the commercial demand, to lower 
 wages and reduce mere labourers to starvation or pauperism. 
 If labour-saving inventions and improvements could be 
 carried to the very abolition of the necessity for labour, 
 what would be the result ? Would it not be that landowners 
 could then get aU the wealth that the land was capable of 
 producing, and would have no need at all for labourers, who 
 must then either starve or live as pensioners on the bounty 
 of the landowners ? 
 
 Natural Bounty Unavailing. 
 
 Thus, so long as private property in land continues— 
 so long as some men are treated as owners of the earth and 
 other men can live on it only by their sufferance — human 
 wisdom can devise no" means by which the evils of our present 
 condition may be avoided. 
 
 Nor yet could the wisdom of God. 
 
 By the light of that right reason of which St. Thomas 
 speaks we may see that even He, the Almighty, so long as 
 His laws remain what they are, could do nothing to prevent 
 poverty and starvation while property in land continues. 
 
 How eould He ? Should He infuse new vigour into the 
 sunhght, new virtue into the air, new fertility into the soil, 
 would not all this new bounty go to the owners of the land, 
 and work not benefit, but rather injury, to mere labourers ? 
 Should He open the minds of men to the possibilities of new 
 substances, new adjustments, new powers, could this do any 
 more to relieve poverty than steam, electricity, and all the 
 numberless discoveries and inventions of our time have done ? 
 Or if He were to send down from the heavens above or cause 
 to gush up from the subterranean depths, food, clothing, 
 aU the things that satisfy man's material desires, to whom 
 under our laws would aU these belong ? So far from benefiting 
 
22 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 man, would not this increase and extension of His bounty 
 prove but a curse, enabling the privileged class more riotoush' 
 to roU in wealth, and bringing the disinherited class to more 
 widespread starvation or pauperism ? 
 
 VI. 
 
 Since labour must find its workshop and reservoir in land, 
 the labour question is but another name for the land question. 
 
 The most important of all the material relations of man 
 is his relation to the planet he inhabits, and by virtue of the 
 law "unto whom much is given, from him much is required," 
 the very progress of civilisation makes the evils produced 
 by private property in land more widespread and intense. 
 
 The Root of the Evil. 
 
 What is producing throughout the civilised world the 
 present condition of things is not this and that local error 
 or minor mistake. It is nothing less than the progress of 
 civilisation itself ; nothing less than the intellectual advance 
 and the material growth in which our country has been so 
 pre-eminent, acting in a state of society based on private 
 property in land. 
 
 How Blessings are turned into Corses. 
 
 The discoveries of science, the gains of invention have 
 given to us in this wonderful century more than has been 
 given to men in any time before ; and, in a degree so rapidly 
 accelerating as to suggest geometrical progression, are placing 
 in our hands new material powers. But with the benefit 
 comes the obligation. In a civilisation beginning to pulse 
 with steam and electricity, where the sun paints pictures 
 and the phonograph stores speech, it wiU not do to be merely 
 as just as were our fathers. Intellectual advance and material 
 advance require corresponding moral advance. Knowledge 
 and power are neither good nor evil. They are not ends 
 but means — evolving forces that if not controlled in orderly 
 relations must take disorderly and destructive forms. The 
 deepening pain, the increasing perplexity, the growing dis- 
 content, mean nothing less than that forces of destruction 
 swifter and more terrible than those that have shattered every 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 23 
 
 preceding civilisation are already v menacing ours — that if it 
 does not quickly rise to a higher moral level, if it does not 
 become in deed as in word a Christian civilisation, on the wall 
 of its splendour must flame the doom of Babylon : " Thou 
 art weighed in the balance and found wanting ! " 
 
 Factory Laws. 
 
 I have already referred generally to the defects that attach 
 to all Socialistic remedies for the evil condition of labour, 
 and of these the widest and strongest are that the State 
 should restrict the hours of labour, the employment of women 
 and children, the unsanitary conditions of workshops, etc. 
 Yet how little may in this way be accomplished ? 
 
 A strong, absolute ruler might hope by such regulations 
 to alleviate the conditions of chattel slaves. But the tendency 
 of our times is towards democracy, and democratic States 
 are necessarily weaker in paternalism, while in the industrial 
 slavery, growing out of private ownership of land, that pre- 
 vails in Christendom to-day, it is not the master who forces 
 the slave to labour, but the slave who urges the master to 
 let him labour. Thus the greatest difficulty in enforcing 
 such regulations comes from those whom they are intended 
 to benefit. It is not, for instance, the masters who make it 
 difficult to enforce restrictions on child labour in factories 
 but the mothers, who, prompted by poverty, misrepresent 
 the ages of their children even to the masters, and teach 
 the children to misrepresent. 
 
 But while in large factories and mines regulations as 
 to hours, ages, etc., though subject to evasion and offering 
 opportunities for extortion and corruption, may be to some 
 extent enforced, how can they have any effect in those far 
 wider branches of industry where the labourer works for 
 himself or for small employers ? 
 
 Not Remedies but only Palliatives. 
 
 All such remedies are of the nature of the remedy for 
 overcrowding that is generally prescribed with them — the 
 restriction under penalty of the number who may occupy 
 a room, and the demolition of unsanitary buildings. Since 
 these measures have no tendency to increase accommo- 
 dation or to augment ability to pay for it, the overcrowding 
 
24 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 that is forced back in some places goes on in other places, 
 and to a worse degree. All such remedies begin at the 
 wrong end. They are like putting on brake and bit to hold 
 in quietness horses that are being lashed into frenzy ; they 
 are like trying to stop a locomotive by holding its wheels 
 instead of shutting off steam ; like attempting to cure small- 
 pox by driving back its pustules. Men do not overwork 
 themselves because they like it ; it is not in the nature of the 
 mother's heart to send children to work when they ought 
 to be at play ; it is not of choice that labourers will work 
 in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. These things, like 
 overcrowding, come from the sting of poverty. And so long 
 as the poverty of which they are expression is left untouched, 
 such restrictions can have only partial and evanescent results. 
 The cause remaining, repression in one place can only bring 
 out its effects in other places, and the task assigned to the 
 State is as hopeless as to ask it to lower the level of the ocean 
 by bailing out the sea. 
 
 State Regulation of Wages Impossible. 
 
 Nor can the State cure poverty by regulating wages. It 
 is as much beyond the power of the State to regulate wages 
 as it is to regulate the rates of interest. Usury laws have been 
 tried again and again, but the only effect they have ever had 
 has been to increase what the poorer borrowers must pay, 
 and for the same reasons, that all attempts to lower by 
 regulation the price of goods have always resulted merely 
 in increasing them. The general rate of wages is fixed by 
 the ease or difficulty with which labour can obtain access 
 to land, ranging from the full earnings of labour, where land 
 is free, to the least on which labourers can live and reproduce, 
 where land is fuUy monopolised. Thus, where it has been 
 comparatively easy for labourers to get land, as in the United 
 States and in Australasia, wages have been higher than in 
 Europe, and it has been impossible to get European labourers 
 to work there for wages that they would gladly accept at 
 home ; while, as monopolisation goes on under the influence 
 of private property in land, wages tend to fall, and the social 
 conditions of Europe to appear. Thus, under the partial 
 yet substantial recognition of common rights to land, of 
 which I have spoken, the many attempts of the British 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 25 
 
 Parliaments to reduce wages by regulation failed utterly. 
 And so, when the institution of private property in land 
 had done its work in England, all attempts of Parliament 
 to raise vvages proved unavailing. In the beginning of this 
 century it was even attempted to increase the earnings 
 of labourers by grants in aid of wages. But the only 
 result was to lower commensurately what wages employers 
 paid. 
 
 The State could only maintain wages above the tendency 
 of the market (for, as I have shown, labour deprived of land 
 becomes a commodity) by offering employmeiit to all who 
 wish it ; or by lending its sanction to strikes and supporting 
 them with its funds. Thus it is that the thorough-going 
 Socialists who want the State to take all industry into its 
 hands are much more logical than those timid Socialists 
 who propose that the State should regulate private industry— 
 but only a little. 
 
 Peasant Proprietorship no Salvation. 
 
 The same hopelessness attends the suggestion that 
 working people should be encouraged by the State in obtaining 
 a share of the land. It is proposed that, as is now being 
 attempted in Ireland, the State diall buy out large landowners 
 in favour of small ones, establishing what is known as peasant 
 proprietors. Supposing that this can be done even to a 
 considerable extent, what wiU be accomplished save to sub- 
 stitute a larger privileged class for a smaller privileged class ? 
 What wUl be done for the stiU larger class that must remain, 
 the labourers of the agricultural districts, the workmen 
 of the towns, the proletarians of the cities ? Is it not true, 
 as Professor De Laveleye says, that in such countries as 
 Belgium, where peasant proprietary exists, the tenants (for 
 there still exist tenants) are rack-rented with a merciless- 
 ness unknown in Ireland. Is it not true that in such countries 
 as Belgium the condition of the mere labourer is even worse 
 than it is in Great Britain, where large ownerships obtain ? 
 And if the State attempts to buy up land for peasant pro- 
 prietors will not the effect be, what is seen to-day in Ireland, 
 to increase the market value of land, atid thus make it more 
 difficult for those not so favoured, and for those who wiU 
 come after, to get land ? 
 
26 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 Subsidised Industries Unjustifiable. 
 
 How, moreover, is it possible to justify State aid to one 
 man to buy a bit of land without also insisting on State aid 
 to another man to buy a donkey, to another to buy a shop, 
 to another to buy the materials of a trade — State aid, in short, 
 to everybody who may be able to make good use of it or 
 thinks that he could ? And is not this Communism ? — 
 not the Communism of the early Christians and of the religious 
 orders, but Communism that uses the coercive power of the 
 State to take rightful property by force from those who 
 have to give to those who have not. For the State has no 
 purse of Fortunatus ; the State cannot repeat the miracle 
 of the loaves and fishes ; all that the State can give it must 
 get by some form or other of the taxing power. And whether 
 it gives or lends money, or gives or lends credit, it cannot 
 give to those who have not without taking from those who 
 have. 
 
 Small Holdings Futile. 
 
 But aside from all this, any scheme of dividing up land 
 while maintaining private property in land is futile. Small 
 holdings cannot co-exist with the treatment of land as private 
 property where civilisation is materially advancing and 
 wealth augments. We may see this in the economic tendencies 
 that in ancient times were the main cause that transformed 
 world-conquering Italy from a land of small farms to a land 
 of great estates. We may see it in the fact that while two 
 centuries ago the majority of English farmers were owners of 
 the land they tilled, tenancy has been for a long time the 
 all but universal condition of the English farmer. And now 
 the mighty forces of steam and electricity have come to mrge 
 concentration. It is in the United States that we may see 
 on the largest scale how their power is operating to turn a 
 nation of landowners into a nation of tenants. The principle 
 is clear and irresistible. Material progress makes land 
 more valuable, and when this increasing value is left to 
 private owners, land must pass from the ownership of the 
 poor into the ownership of the rich, just as diamonds so 
 pass when poor men find them. What the British Govern- 
 ment is attempting in Ireland is to build snow houses in 
 the Arabian desert ! to plant bananas in Labrador ! 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 27 
 
 The Only Way. 
 
 There is one way, and only one way, in which working 
 people in our civilisation may be secured a share in the land 
 of their country, and that is the way that we propose — 
 the taking of the profits of land ownership for the com- 
 munity. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Trade Societies. 
 
 Again, working-men's associations may promote fra- 
 ternity, extend social intercourse, and provide assurance 
 in case of sickness or death, but if they go no further they are 
 powerless to affect wages, even among their members. As to 
 trades unions proper, the attitude of many good people may, 
 perhaps, best be stated as one of warm approbation, provided 
 that they do not go too far. For these good people object 
 to strikes ; they reprehend societies that " do their best 
 to get into their hands the whole field of labour and to force 
 working-men either to join them or to starve " ; they dis- 
 countenance the coercing of employers, and seem to think 
 that arbitration might take the place of strikes. 
 
 The Strike and the Boycott. 
 
 They use expressions and assert principles that are aU 
 that the trades unionist would ask, not merely to justify the 
 strike and the boycott, but even the use of violence where 
 only violence would suffice. For they speak of the insufficient 
 wages of workmen as due to the greed of rich employers ; 
 they assume the moral right of the workman to obtain emploj'- 
 ment from others at wages greater than those others are 
 willing freely to give ; and they deny the right of anyone 
 to work for such wages as he pleases, in such a way as to 
 give the impression that " blacklegging," i.e., the working 
 for less than union wages, is a crime. 
 
 To men conscious of bitter injustice, to men steeped in 
 poverty yet mocked by flaunting wealth, such words mean 
 more than I can think is realised. 
 
 When fire shall be cool and ice be warm, when armies 
 shall* throw away lead and iron to try conclusions by the 
 pelting of rose leaves, such labour associations as these 
 good people are thinking of may be possible. But not till then. 
 
28 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 Coercion. 
 
 For labour associations can do nothing to raise wages but 
 by force. It may be force applied passively, or force applied 
 actively, or force held in reserve, but it must be force. They 
 must coerce or hold the power to coerce employers ; they 
 must coerce those among their own members disposed to 
 straggle ; they must do their best to get into their hands 
 the whole field of labour they seek to occupy and to force 
 other working-men either to join them or to starve. Those 
 who speak of trades unions bent on raising wages by moral 
 suasion alone are like those who would tell you of tigers that 
 live on oranges. 
 
 The Closed Door. 
 
 The condition of the masses to-day is that of men pressed 
 together in a hall where ingress is open and more are con- 
 stantly coming, but where the doors for egress are closed. 
 If forbidden to relieve the general pressure by throwing 
 open those doors, whose bars and bolts are private property 
 in land, they can only mitigate the pressure on themselves 
 by forcing back others, and the weakest must be driven to the 
 wall. This is the way of labour unions and trade guilds. 
 Even the most peaceable societies would, in their efforts 
 to find employment for their own members, necessarily 
 displace others. 
 
 Philanthropy Helpless. 
 
 For even the philanthropy which, recognising the evil 
 of trying to help labour by alms, seeks to help men to help 
 themselves by finding them work, becomes aggressive in the 
 blind and bitter struggle that private property in land entails, 
 and in helping one set of men injures others. Thus to 
 minimise the bitter complaints of taking work from others 
 and lessening the wages of others in providing their own 
 beneficiaries with work and wages, benevolent societies 
 are forced to devices akin to the digging of holes and filling 
 them up again. 
 
 Who is the Blackleg P 
 
 Labour associations of the nature of trades guilds or 
 unions are necessarily selfish ; by the law of their being they 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 29 
 
 must fight for their own hand, regardless of who is hurt; 
 they ignore and must ignore the teaching of Christ that we 
 should do to others as we would have them do to us, which 
 a true political economy shows is the only way to the full 
 emancipation of the masses. They must do their best to 
 starve workmen who do not join them, they must by all 
 means in their power force back the " blackleg "—as the 
 soldier in battle must shoot down his mother's son if in the 
 opposing ranks. And who is the blackleg? A fellow- 
 creature seeking work — a feUow-creature in all probability 
 more pressed and starved than those who so bitterly denounce 
 him, and often with the hungry pleading faces of wife and 
 child behind him. 
 
 Labour Trusts. 
 
 And, in so far as they succeed, what is it that trades 
 guUds and unions do but to impose more restrictions on 
 natural rights ; to create " trusts " in labour ; to add to 
 privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes ; and 
 to press the weaker closer to the wall ? 
 
 I speak without prejudice against trades unions, of which 
 for years I was an active member. 
 
 Violation of Natural Bight. 
 
 And in pointing out that their principle is selfish and 
 incapable of large and permanent benefits, and that their 
 methods violate natural rights and work hardship and injustice, 
 I am only saying what, both in my books and by word of 
 mouth, I have said over and over again to them. Nor is 
 what I say capable of dispute. Intelligent Trades Unionists 
 know it, and the less intelligent vaguely feel it. And even 
 those of the classes of wealth and leisure who, as if to head 
 off the demand for natural rights, are preaching Trades 
 Unionism to working-men, must needs admit it. 
 
 The Great London Dock Strike. 
 
 All will remember the great London Dock strike of two 
 years ago. In a volume called The Story of the Dockers' Strike, 
 written by Messrs. Llewelljm Smith and Vaughan Nash, 
 with an introduction by Sydney Buxton, M.P., which advo- 
 cates Trades Unionism as the solution of the labour question. 
 
30 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 and of which a large number were sent to Australia as a sort 
 of official recognition of the generous aid received from 
 there by the strikers, I find in the summing up, on pages 
 164-5, the following : — 
 
 " If the settlement lasts, work at the docks wiU be more 
 regular, better paid, and carried on under better conditions 
 than ever before. All this wiU be an unqualified gain to 
 those who get the benefit from it. But another result will 
 undoubtedly be to contract the field of employment and lessen 
 the number of those for whom work can he found. The lower 
 class casual wiU, in the end, find his position more precarious 
 than ever before, in proportion to the increased regularity 
 of work which the ' fitter ' of the labourers will secure. The 
 effect of the organisation of dock labour, as of all classes of 
 labour, will be to squeeze out the residuum. The loafer, 
 the cadger, the failure in the industrial race — the members 
 of ' Class B ' of Mr. Charles Booth's hierarchy of social 
 classes — ^wiU be no gainers by the change, but will rather 
 find another door closed against them, and this in many cases 
 the last door to employment." 
 
 Pharisees. 
 
 I am far from wishing that any of my readers should 
 join in that pharisaical denunciation of trades unions common 
 among those who, while quick to point out the injustice of 
 trades unions in denying to others the equal right to work, 
 are themselves supporters of that more primary injustice that 
 denies the equal right to the standing place and natural 
 material necessary to work. What I wish to point out is 
 that Trades Unionism, while it may be a partial palliative, 
 is not a remedy ; that it has not that moral character which 
 could alone justify one in urging it as good in itself. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Wage-workers who are often Forgotten. 
 
 It is often assumed that the labour question is a question 
 between wage-workers and their employers. But working 
 for wages is not the primary or exclusive occupation of 
 labour. Primarily men work for themselves without the 
 intervention of an employer. And the primary source of 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 31 
 
 wages is in the earnings of labour, the man who works for 
 himself and consumes his own products receiving his wages 
 m the fruits of his labour. Are not fishermen, boatpien, 
 cab-drivers, pedlars, working farmers — all, in short, of the 
 many workers who get their wages directly by the sale of 
 their services or products without the medium of an employer 
 — as much labourers as those who work for the specific wages 
 of an employer ? In considering remedies these workers 
 are very seldom thought of. Yet in reahty the labourers 
 who work for themselves are the first to be considered, since 
 what men will be willing to accept from employers depends 
 manifestly on what they can get by working for themselves. 
 
 Employers. 
 
 It is assumed that all employers are rich men, who might 
 raise wages much higher were they not so grasping. But 
 is it not the fact that the great majority of employers are 
 in reality as much pressed by competition as their workmen, 
 many of them constantly on the verge of failure ? Such 
 employers could not possibly raise the wages they pay, 
 however they might wish to, unless all others were compelled 
 to do so. 
 
 Rich and Poor. 
 
 It is assumed that there are in the natural order two 
 classes, the rich and the poor, and that labourers naturally 
 belong to the poor. It is true that there are differences in 
 capacity, in diligence, in health and in strength, that may 
 produce differences in fortune. These, however, are not 
 the differences that divide men into rich and poor. The 
 natural differences in powers and aptitudes are certainly not 
 greater than are natural differences in stature. But while 
 it is only by selecting giants and dwarfs that we can find 
 men twice as tall as others, yet in the difference between rich 
 and poor that exists to-day we find some men richer than 
 other men by the thousandfold and the miUionfold. 
 
 Those who Hold the Toll Gates, and those who Pay Toll. 
 
 Nowhere do these differences between wealth and poverty 
 coincide with differences in individual powers and aptitudes. 
 The real difference between rich and poor is the difference 
 
32 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 between those who hold the toll gates and those who pay 
 toll ; between tribute receivers and tribute yielders. 
 
 To assume that labourers, even ordinary manual labourers, 
 are naturally poor, is to ignore the fact that labour is the 
 producer of wealth, and attribute to the natural law of the 
 Creator an injustice that comes from man's impious violation 
 of His benevolent intention. In the rudest stage of the 
 arts it is possible, where justice prevails, for all well men 
 to earn a living. With the labour-saving appliances of our 
 time, it should be possible for all to earn much more. And 
 so, to say that poverty is no disgrace is to convey an im- 
 reasonable implication. For poverty ought to be a disgrace, 
 since in a condition of social justice it would, where unsought 
 from religious motives or unimposed by unavoidable mis- 
 fortune, imply recklessness or laziness. 
 
 Sympathy often seems to be exclusively directed to the 
 poor, the workers. Ought this to be so ? Are not the rich, 
 the idlers, to be pitied also ? 
 
 The Poor Rich ! 
 
 By the word of the Gospel it is the rich rather than 
 the poor who call for pity, for' the presumption is that they 
 will share the fate of Dives. And to any one who believes 
 in a future life, the condition of him who wakes to find 
 his cherished millions left behind must seem pitiful. But 
 even in this life, how really pitiable are the rich. The evil is 
 not in wealth in itself — in its command over material things ; 
 it is in the possession of wealth while others are steeped in 
 poverty; in being raised 'above touch with the life of 
 humanity, from its work and its struggles, its hopes and its 
 fears, and, above all, from the love that sweetens life, and 
 the kind sympathies and generous acts that strengthen faith 
 in man and trust in God. Consider how the rich see the 
 meaner side of human nature ; how they are surrounded 
 by flatterers and sycophants ; how they find ready instru- 
 ments not only to gratify vicious impulses, but to prompt 
 and stimulate them ; how they must constantly be on guard 
 lest they be swindled ; how often they must suspect an ulterior 
 motive behind kindly deed or friendly word ; how, if they 
 try to be generous, they are beset by shameless beggars 
 and scheming imposters ; how often the family affections 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 33 
 
 are chilled for them, and their deaths anticipated with the 
 ill-concealed joy of expectant possession. The worst evil 
 of poverty is not in the want of material things, but in the 
 stunting and distortion of the higher qualities: So, though 
 in another, way, the possession of unearned wealth likewise 
 stunts and distorts what is noblest in man. 
 
 God's commands cannot be evaded with impunity. If 
 it be God's command that men shall earn their bread by 
 labour, the idle rich must suffer. And they do. See the 
 utter vacancy of the lives of those who live for pleasure ; 
 see the loathsome vices bred in a class who, surrounded by 
 poverty, are sated with wealth. See that terrible punishment 
 of ennui, of which the poor know so little that they cannot 
 understand it ; see the pessimism that grows among the 
 wealthy classes — that shuts out God, that despises men, 
 that deems existence in itself an evil, and fearing death yet 
 longs for annihilation. 
 
 The Rich Young Man. 
 
 When Christ told the rich young man who sought Him 
 to sell all he had and to give it to the poor. He was not thinking 
 of the poor, but of the young man. And I doubt not that 
 among the rich, and especially among the self-made rich, 
 there are many who at times at least feel keenly the foUy of 
 their riches, and fear for the dangers and temptations to which 
 these expose their children. But the strength of long habit, 
 the promptings of pride, the excitement of making and holding 
 what has become for them the counters in a game of cards, 
 the family expectations that have assumed the character of 
 rights, and the real difficulty they find in making any good 
 use of their wealth, bind them to their burden like a weary 
 . donkey to his pack, till they stumble on the precipice that 
 that bounds this life. 
 
 Men who are sure of getting food when they shall need it 
 eat only what appetite tfictates. But with the sparse tribes 
 who exist on the verge of the habitable globe life is either 
 a famine or a feast. Enduring hunger for days, the fear of it 
 prompts them to gorge like anacondas when successful in 
 their quest of game. And so, what gives wealth its curse 
 is what drives men to seek it, what makes it so envied and 
 admired — the fear of want. As the™unduly rich are the 
 
34 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 corollary of the unduly poor, so is the soul-destroying quality 
 of riches but the reflex of the want that embrutes and degrades. 
 The real evU lies in the injustice from which unnatural pos- 
 session and unnatural deprivation both spring. 
 
 Rich and Poor are alike Victims. 
 
 But this injustice can hardly be charged on individuals 
 or classes. The existence of private property in land is a 
 great social wrong from which society at large suffers, and of 
 which the very rich and the very poor are alike victims, 
 though at the opposite extremes. Seeing this, it seems to 
 us like a violation of Christian charity to speak of the rich 
 as though they individually were responsible for the sufferings 
 of the poor. Yet many do this, while at the same time 
 insisting that the cause of monstrous wealth and degrading 
 poverty shall not be touched. Here is a man with a dis- 
 figuring and dangerous excrescence. One physician would 
 kindly, gently, but firmly remove it. Another insists that 
 it shaU not be removed, but at the same time holds up the 
 poor victim to hatred and ridicule. Which is right ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 In seeking to restore all men to their equal and natural 
 rights we do not seek the benefit of any class, but of all. 
 For we both know by faith and see by fact that injustice 
 can profit no one, and that justice must benefit all. 
 
 Equality of Opportunity. 
 
 Nor do we seek any "futile and ridiculous equality." 
 We recognise that there must always be differences and 
 inequalities. In so far as these are in conformity with the 
 moral law, in so far as they do not violate the command, 
 " Thou shall not steal," we are content. We do not seek 
 to better God's work ; we seek only to do His will. The 
 equality we would bring about is not the equality of fortune, 
 but the equality of natural opportunity ; the equality that 
 reason and religion alike proclaim — the equality in usufruct 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 35 
 
 of all His children to the bounty of " Our Father who art in 
 Heaven." 
 
 And in taking for the uses of society what we clearly 
 see is the great fund intended for society in the divine order, 
 we would not levy the slightest tax on the possessors of 
 wealth, no matter how rich they might be. Not only do we 
 deem .such taxes a violation of the right of property, but we 
 see that by virtue of beautiful adaptations in the economic 
 laws of the Creator it is impossible for any one honestly to 
 acquire wealth without at the same time adding wealth to 
 the world. 
 
 The Bight to Life. 
 
 To persist in a wrong, to refuse to undo it, is always to 
 become involved in other wrongs. Those who defend private 
 property in land, and thereby deny the first and most im- 
 portant of all human rights, the equal right to the material 
 substratum of life, are compelled to one of two courses. 
 Either they must, as do those whose gospel is " Devil take the 
 hindermost," deny the equal right to life, and by some theory 
 like that to which the English clerg5niian Malthus has given 
 his name, assert that nature (they do venture to say God) 
 brings into the world more men than there is provision for ; 
 or, they must, as do. the Socialists, assert as rights .what in 
 themselves are wrongs. 
 
 There are ihany who deny the equality of right to the 
 material basis of life, and yet, conscious that there is a right 
 to live, assert the right of labourers to emplojnnent and their 
 right to receive from their employers a certain indefinite 
 wage. 
 
 Mistaken Bights. 
 
 No such rights exist. No one has a right to demand 
 employment of another, or to demand higher wages than 
 the other is willing to give, or in any way to put pressure 
 on another to make him raise such wages against his wiU. 
 There can be no better moral justification for such demand 
 on employers by working-men than there would be for 
 employers demanding that working-men shall be compelled 
 to work for them when they do not want to, and to accept 
 wages lower than they are wiUing to take. Any seeming 
 
36 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 justification springs from a prior wrong, the denial to working- 
 men of their natural rights, and can in the last analysis only 
 rest on that supreme dictate of self-preservation that under 
 extraordinary circumstances makes pardonable what in itself 
 is theft, or sacrilege, or even murder. 
 
 Rights in Extremes. 
 
 A iugitive slave with the bloodhounds of his pursuers 
 baying at his heels would in true Christian morals be held 
 blameless if he seized the first horse he came across, even 
 though to take it he had to knock down the rider. But 
 this is not to justify horse-stealing as an ordinary means of 
 travelling. 
 
 When His disciples were hungry Christ permitted them 
 to pluck corn on the Sabbath Day. But He never denied 
 the sanctity of the Sabbath by asserting that it was, under 
 ordinary circumstances, a proper time to gather corn. 
 
 He justified David, who when pressed by hunger com- 
 mitted what ordinarily would be sacrilege, by taking from 
 the temple the loaves of proposition. But in this He was 
 far from saying that the robbing of temples was a proper 
 way of getting a living. 
 
 The True Natural Right. 
 
 The natural right which each man has is not that of 
 demanding employment or wages from another man ; but 
 that of employing himself — that of applying his own labour 
 to the inexhaustible storehouse which the Creator has in the 
 land provided for all men. Were that storehouse open, as 
 by the single tax we would open it, the natural demand for 
 labour would keep pace with the supply, the man who sold 
 labour and the man who bought it would become free ex- 
 changers for mutual advantage, and all cause for dispute 
 between workman and employer would be gone. 
 
 The Only Just Rate of Wages. 
 
 For then, all being free to employ themselves, the mere 
 opportunity to labour would cease to seem a boon ; and 
 since no one would work for another for less, aU things 
 considered, than he could earn by working for himself^ wages 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 37 
 
 would necessarily rise to their full value, and the relations 
 of workman and employer be regulated by mutual interest 
 and convenience. 
 
 This is the only way in which they can be satisfactorily 
 regulated. 
 
 It is often assumed that there is some just rate of wages 
 that employers ought to be willing to pay and that labourers 
 should be content to receive, and it is supposed that if this 
 were secured there would be an end of strife. This rate is 
 that which will give working-men a frugal living and perhaps 
 enable them by hard work and strict economy to lay by a 
 little something. 
 
 But how can a just rate of wages be fixed without the 
 " higgling of the market " any more than the just price of 
 corn, or pigs, or ships, or paintings can be so fixed ? And 
 would not arbitrary regulation in the one case as in the other 
 check that interplay that most effectively promotes the 
 economical adjustment of productive forces ? Why should 
 buyers of labour, any more than buyers of commodities, 
 be called on to pay higher prices than in a free market they 
 are compelled to pay ? Why should sellers of labour be con- 
 tent with anything less than in a free market they can obtain ? 
 Why should working-men be content with frugal fare when 
 the world is so rich ? Why should they be satisfied with a 
 lifetime of toil and stinting when the world is so beautiful ? 
 Why should not they also desire to gratify the higher instincts, 
 the finer tastes ? Why should they be for ever content to 
 travel in the steerage when others find the cabin more 
 enjoyable ? 
 
 Animal Needs. 
 
 Nor will they. The ferment of our time does not arise 
 merely from the fact that working-men find it harder to live 
 on the same scale of comfort. It is also, and perhaps still 
 more largely, due to the increase of their desires with an 
 improved scale of comfort. This increase of desire must 
 continue. For working-men are men ; and man is the 
 unsatisfied animal. 
 
 He is not an ox, of whom it may be said, so much grass, 
 so much grain, so much water, and a little salt, and he will 
 be content. On the contrary, the more he gets the more he 
 
38 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 craves. When he has enough food, then he wants better 
 food. When he gets a shelter, then he wants a more com- 
 modious and tasty one. 
 
 Mental and Spiiitual Desires. 
 
 When his animal needs are satisfied, then mental and 
 spiritual desires arise. This restless discontent is of the 
 nature of man — of that nobler nature that raises him above 
 the animals by so immeasurable a gulf, and shows him to be 
 indeed created in the likeness of God. It is not to be 
 quarrelled with, for it is the motor of all progress. It is this 
 that has raised St. Peter's dome, and on dull, dead canvas 
 made the angelic face of the Madonna to glow ; it is this 
 that has weighed suns and analysed stars, and opened page 
 after page of the wonderful works of creative intelligence ; 
 it is this that has narrowed the Atlantic to an ocean ferry 
 and trained the lightning to carry our messages to other 
 lands ; it is this that is opening to us possibilities beside 
 which aU that our modern civilisation has as yet accom- 
 plished seem small. Nor can it be repressed, save by degrading 
 and imbruting men, by reducing Europe to Asia. 
 
 Not Charity, but Justice. 
 
 Hence, short of what wages may be earned when all 
 restrictions on labour are removed and access to natural 
 opportunities on equal terms secured to all, it is impossible 
 to fix any rate of wages that will be deemed just, or any rate 
 of wages that can prevent working-men striving to get more. 
 So far from it making working-men more contented to 
 improve their condition a little, it is certain to make them 
 more discontented. 
 
 Nor is it asking justice when employers are asked to pay 
 their working-men more than they are compelled to pay — 
 more than they could get others to do the work for. It is 
 asking charity. For the surplus that the rich employer thus 
 gives is not in reality wages, it is essentially alms. 
 
 X. 
 
 Charity cannot Cure Poverty. 
 
 In speaking of the practical measures for the improve- 
 ment of the condition of labour, I have not mentioned charity. 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 39 
 
 But there is nothing practical in such recommendations as a 
 cure for poverty, nor will any one so consider them. If it 
 were possible for the giving of alms to abolish poverty, there 
 would be no poverty in Christendom. 
 
 Charity is indeed a noble and beautiful virtue, grateful 
 to man and approved by God. But charity must be built 
 on justice. It cannot supersede justice. 
 
 What is wrong with the condition of labour through the 
 Christian world is that labour is robbed. And while the 
 continuance of that robbery is sanctioned it is idle to urge 
 charity. 
 
 All that charity can do where injustice exists is here and 
 there to somewhat mollify the effects of injustice. It cannot 
 cure them. Nor is even what little it can do to mollify the 
 effects of injustice without evil. For what may be called 
 the superimposed, and in this sense, secondary virtues, 
 work evil where the fundamental or primary virtues are 
 absent. Thus sobriety is a virtue, and diligence is a virtue ; 
 but a sober and diligent thief is all the more dangerous. 
 Thus patience is a virtue ; but patience under wrong is the 
 condoning of wrong. Thus it is a virtue to seek knowledge 
 and to endeavour to cultivate the mental powers ; but the , 
 wicked man becomes more capable of evil by reason of his 
 intelligence. Devils we always think of as intelligent. 
 
 Charity Based upon Injustice Works Evil. 
 
 And thus that pseudo-charity that discards and denies 
 justice works evil. On the one side, it demoralises its 
 recipients, outraging human dignity and turning into beggars 
 and paupers men who, to become self-supporting, self- 
 respecting citizens, only need the restitution of what God 
 has given them. On the other side, it acts as an anodyne 
 to the consciences of those who are living on the robbery 
 of their fellows, and fosters that moral delusion and spiritual 
 pride that Christ doubtless had in mind when He said it 
 was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. For 
 it leads men steeped in injustice, and using their money 
 and their influence to bolster up injustice, to think that in 
 giving alms they are doing something more than their duty 
 towards man and deserve to be very well thought of by God, 
 
40 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 and in a vague way to attribute to their own goodness what 
 really belongs to God's goodness. 
 
 The Churches and Charity. 
 
 But worse perhaps than all else is the way in which this 
 substituting of vague injunctions to charity for the clear-cut 
 demands of justice opens an easy means for the professed 
 teachers of the Christian religion of all branches and com- 
 munions to placate Mammon while persuading themselves 
 that they are serving God. Had the English clergy not 
 subordinated the teaching of justice to the teaching of charity 
 — to go no further in illustrating a principle of which the whole 
 history of Christendom from Constantine's time to our 
 own is witness — the Tudor tyranny would never have arisen, 
 and the separation of the Church been averted ; had the 
 clergy of France never substituted charity for justice, the 
 monstrous iniquities of the ancient regime would never have 
 brought the horrors of the Great Revolution ; and in my own 
 country, had those who should have preached justice not 
 satisfied themselves with preaching kindness, chattel slavery 
 could never have demanded the holocaust of our civU war. 
 
 No ; ELS faith without works is dead, as men cannot give 
 to God His due while denying to their fellows the rights He 
 gave them, so charity unsupported by justice can do nothing 
 to solve the problem of the existing condition of labour. 
 Though the rich were to " bestow aU their goods to feed 
 the poor and give their bodies to be burned," poverty would 
 continue while property in land continues. 
 
 What can the Rich Man do? 
 
 Take the case of the rich man to-day who is honestly 
 desirous of devoting his wealth to the improvement of the 
 condition of labour. What can he do ? Bestow his wealth 
 on those who need it ? He may help some who deserve it, 
 but wiU not improve general conditions. And against the 
 good he may do will be the danger of doing harm. 
 
 Build churches ? Under the shadow of churches poverty 
 festers and the vice that is born of it breeds. 
 
 Build schools and colleges ? Save as it may lead men 
 to see the iniquity of private property in land, increased 
 education can effect nothing for mere labourers, for as educa- 
 tion is diffused the wages of education sink. 
 
THE LABOUR QUESTION 41 
 
 Establish hospitals ? Why, already it seems to labourers 
 that there are too many seeking work, arid to save and prolong 
 life is to add to the pressure. 
 
 Build model tenements ? Unless he cheapens house 
 accommodation he but drives further the class he would 
 benefit, and as he cheapens house accommodation he brings 
 more to seek employment and cheapen wages. 
 
 Institute laboratories, scientific schools, workshops for 
 physical experiments ? He but stimulates invention and 
 discovery, the very forces that, acting on a society based 
 on private property in land, are crushing labour as between 
 the upper and the nether millstone. 
 
 Promote emigration from places where wages are low 
 to places where they are somewhat higher ? If he does, 
 even those whom he at first helps to emigrate will soon turn 
 on him to demand that such emigration shall be stopped 
 as reducing their wages. 
 
 Give away what land he may have, or refuse to take rent 
 for it, or let it at lower rents than the market price ? He 
 will simply make new landowners or partial landowners ; 
 he may make some individuals the richer, but he will do 
 nothing to improve the general condition of labour. 
 
 Or, bethinking himself to those public-spirited citizens 
 of classic times who spent great sums in improving their 
 native cities, shall he try to beautify the city of his birth 
 or adoption ? Let him widen and straighten narrow and 
 crooked streets, let him build parks and erect fountains, let 
 him open tramways and bring in. railways, or in any way make 
 beautiful and attractive his chosen city, and what wiU be the 
 result ? Must it not be that those who appropriate God's 
 bounty will take his also ? Will it not be that the value 
 of land will go up, and that the net result of his benefactions 
 will be an increase of rents and a bounty to landowners ? 
 Why, even the mere announcement that he is going to do 
 such things will start speculation and send up the value of 
 land by leaps and bounds. 
 
 What, then, can the rich man do to improve the con- 
 dition of labour ? 
 
 He can do nothing at all except to use his strength for 
 the abolition of the great primary wrong that robs men of 
 their birthright. The justice of God laughs at the attempts 
 of men to substitute anything else for it. 
 
42 THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 The Industrial Revolution of To-day. 
 
 The truth for which we stand has now made such progress 
 in the minds of men that it must be heard ; that it can never 
 be stifled ; that it must go on conquering and to conquer. 
 Far-off Australia leads the van, and has already taken the 
 first steps towards the single tax. In Great Britain, in the 
 United States, and in Canada, the question is on the verge 
 of practical politics and soon wUl be the burning issue of the 
 time. Continental Europe cannot long linger behind. Faster 
 than ever the world is moving. 
 
 Forty years ago slavery seemed stronger in the United 
 States than ever before, and the market price of slaves — 
 both working slaves and breeding slaves — was higher than 
 it had ever been before, for the title of the owner seemed 
 growing more secure. In the shadow of the Hall where the 
 equal rights of man had been solemnly proclaimed, the 
 manacled fugitive was dragged back to bondage, and on 
 what to American tradition was our Marathon of freedom, 
 the slave master boasted that he would yet call the roll of 
 his chattels. 
 
 Yet forty years ago, though the party that was to place 
 Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential chair had not been 
 formed, and nearly a decade was yet to pass ere the signal 
 gun was to ring out, slavery, as we may now see, was doomed. 
 
 To-day a wider, deeper, more beneficent revolution is 
 brooding, not over one country, but over the world. God's 
 truth impels it, and forces mightier than He has ever before 
 given to man urge it on. It is no more in the power of 
 vested wrongs to stay it than it is in man's power to stay 
 the sun. The stars in their coiurses fight against Sisera, and 
 in the ferment of to-day, to him who hath ears to hear, the 
 doom of industrial slavery is sealed. 
 
 The Condition of Labour, by Henry George, from which 
 The Labour Question is abridged, was first published in 
 September 1891. 
 
 Vacher & Sons, Ltd., Westminster House, S.W.i. — 29959. 
 
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