The
Land Question - PROPERTY IN LAND
[62] find crowded together families who (some of them, lest they
might offend the deer) have been driven from their native soil
into the great city to compete with each other for employment at
any price, to have their children debauched by daily contact with
all that is vile. Let him some Saturday evening leave the districts
where the richer classes live, wander for a while through the streets
tenanted by working-people, and note the stunted forms, the pinched
features. Vice, drunkenness, the recklessness that comes when hope
goes, he will see too. How should not such conditions produce such
effects? But he will also see, if he chooses to look, hard, brave,
stubborn struggling—the workman, who, do his best, cannot
find steady employment the breadwinner stricken with illness; the
widow straining to keep her children from the workhouse. Let the
Duke observe and reflect upon these things, and then apply the “reduction
to iniquity.”
Or, let him go to Edinburgh, the “modem
Athens,” of which Scotsmen speak with pride, and in buildings
from whose roofs a bowman might strike the spires of twenty churches,
he will find human beings living as he would not keep his meanest
dog. Let him toil up the stairs of one of those monstrous buildings,
let him enter one of those “dark houses,” let him close
the door, and in the blackness think what life must be in such
a place. Then let him try the “reduction to iniquity.” And
if he go to that good charity (but alas, how futile is Charity
without Justice!) where little children are kept while their mothers
are at work, and children are fed who would otherwise go hungry,
he may see infants whose limbs are shrunken from want of nourishment.
Perhaps they may tell him, as they told me of that little girl,
barefooted, ragged, and hungry, who, when they gave her bread,
raised her eyes and clasped her hands, and thanked our Father in
Heaven for his bounty to her. They who told me that never [63]
dreamed, I think, of its terrible meaning. But I ask the Duke of
Argyll, did that little child, thankful for that poor dole, get
what our Father provided for her? Is he so niggard? If not, what
is it who is it that stands between such children and our Father’s
bounty? If it be an institution, is it not our duty to God and
to our neighbor to rest not till we destroy it? If it be a man,
were it not better for him that a millstone were hanged about his
neck and he were cast into the depths of the sea?
There can be no question of overpopulation—no pretense
that Nature has brought more men into being than she has made provision
for. Scotland surely is not overpopulated. Much land is unused;
much land is devoted to lower uses, such as the breeding of game
and the raising of cattle, that might be devoted to higher uses;
there are mineral resources untouched; the wealth drawn from the
sea is but a small part of what might be drawn. But it is idle
to argue this point. Neither in Scotland, nor in any other country,
can any excess of population over the power of Nature to provide
for them be shown. The poverty so painful in Scotland is manifestly
no more due to overpopulation than the crowding of two-thirds of
the families into houses of one or two rooms is due to want of
space to build houses upon. And just as the crowding of people
into insufficient lodgings is directly due to institutions which
permit men to hold vacant land needed for buildings until they
can force a monopoly price from those wishing to build, so is the
poverty of the masses due to the fact that they are in like manner
shut out from the opportunities Nature has provided for the employment
of their labor in the satisfaction of their wants.
Take the Island of Skye as illustrating on a small scale the
cause of poverty throughout Scotland. The people of Skye are poor—very
poor. Is it because there are too [64] many of them? An explanation
lies nearer—an explanation which would account for poverty
no matter how small the population. If there were but one man in Skye,
and if all that he produced, save enough to give him a bare living,
were periodically taken from him and carried off, he would necessarily
be poor. That is the condition of the people of Skye. With a population
of some seventeen thousand there are, if my memory serves me, twenty-four
landowners. The few proprietors who live upon the island, though
they do nothing to produce wealth, have fine houses, and live luxuriously,
while the greater portion of the rents are carried off to be spent
abroad. It is not merely that there is thus a constant drain upon
the wealth produced; but that the power of producing wealth is
enormously lessened. As the people are deprived of the power to
accumulate capital, production is carried on in the most primitive
style, and at the greatest disadvantage.
If there are really too many people in Scotland, why not have
the landlords emigrate? They are not merely best fitted to emigrate,
but would give the greatest relief. They consume most, waste most,
carry off most, while they produce least. As landlords, in fact,
they produce nothing. They merely consume and destroy. Economically
considered, they have the same effect upon production as bands
of robbers or pirate fleets. To national wealth they are as weevils
in the grain, as rats in the storehouse, as ferrets in the poultry-yard.
The Duke of Argyll complains of what he calls my “assumption
that owners of land are not producers, and that rent does not represent,
or represents in a very minor degree, the interest of capital.” The
Duke will justify his complaint if he will show how the owning
of land can produce anything. Failing in this, he must admit that
though the same person may be a laborer, capitalist, and [65] landowner,
the owner of land, as an owner of land, is not a producer. And
surely he knows that the term “rent” as used in political
economy, and as I use it in the books he criticizes, never represents
the interest on capital, but refers alone to the sum paid for the
use of the inherent capabilities of the soil.
As illustrating the usefulness of landlords, the Duke says:
My own experience now extends over a period
of the best part of forty years. During that time I have built
more than fifty homesteads complete for man and beast; I have
drained and reclaimed many hundreds, and inclosed some thousands,
of acres. In this sense I have “added
house to house and field to field,” not—as pulpit orators
have assumed in similar cases—that I might “dwell alone
in the land,” but that the cultivating class might live more
comfortably, and with better appliances for increasing the produce
of the soil.
And again he says that during the last four years he has spent
on one property £40,000 in the improvement of the soil.
I fear that in Scotland the Duke of Argyll
has been “hiding
his light under a bushel,” for his version of the way in
which he has “added house to house and field to field” differs
much from that which common Scotsmen give. But this is a matter
into which I do not wish to enter. What I would like to ask the
Duke is, how he built the fifty homesteads and reclaimed the thousands
of acres? Not with his own hands, of course; but with his money.
Where, then, did he get that money? Was it not taken as rent from
the cultivators of the soil? And might not they, had it been left
to them, have devoted it to the building of homesteads and the
improvement of the soil as well as he? Suppose the Duke spends
on such improvements all he draws in rent, minus what it costs
him to live, is not the cost of his living so much waste so far
asthe improvement of the land is concerned? Would
[66] there not be a considerably greater fund to devote to this
purpose if the Duke got no rent, and had to work for a living!
But all Scottish landholders are not even such improvers as the
Duke. There are landlords who spend their incomes in racing, in
profligacy, in doing things which when not injurious are quite
as useless to man or beast as the works of that English Duke, recently
dead, who spent millions in burrowing underground like a mole.
What the Scottish landlords call their “improvements” have,
for the most part, consisted in building castles, laying out pleasure-grounds,
raising rents, and evicting their kinsmen. But the encouragement
given to agriculture, by even such improving owners as the Duke
of Argyll, is very much like the encouragement given to traffic
by the Duke of Bedford, who keeps two or three old men and women
to open and shut gates he has erected across the streets of London.
That much the greater part of the incomes drawn by landlords is
as completely lost for all productive purposes as though it were
thrown into the sea, there can be no doubt. But that even the small
part which isdevoted to reproductive
improvement is largely wasted, the Duke of Argyll himself clearly
shows in stating, what I have learned from other sources, that
the large outlays of the great landholders yield little interest,
and in many cases no interest at all. Clearly, the stock of wealth
would have been much greater had this capital been left in the
hands of the cultivators, who, in most cases, suffer from lack
of capital, and in many eases have to pay the most usurious interest.
In fact, the plea of the landlords that they, as landlords, assist
in production, is very much like the plea of the slaveholders that
they gave a living to the slaves. And I am convinced that if the
Duke of Argyll will consider the matter as a philosopher rather
than as a landlord, he [67] will see the gross inconsistency between
the views he expresses as to negro slavery and the position he
assumes as to property in land.
In principle the two systems of appropriating the labor of other
men are essentially the same. Since it is from land and on land
that man must live, if he is to live at all, a human being is as
completely enslaved when the land on which he must live is made
the property of another as when his own flesh and blood are made
the property of that other. And at least, after a certain point
in social development is reached, the slavery that results from
depriving men of all legal right to land is, for the very reason
that the relation between master and slave is not so direct and
obvious, more cruel and more demoralizing than that which makes
property of their bodies.
And turning to facts, the Duke must see, if he will look, that
the effects of the two systems are substantially the same. He is,
for instance, an hereditary legislator, with power in making laws
which other Scotsmen, who have little or no voice in making laws,
must obey under penalty of being fined, imprisoned, or hanged.
He has this power, which is essentially that of the master to compel
the slave, not because any one thinks that Nature gives wisdom
and patriotism to eldest sons more than to younger sons, or to
some families more than to other families, but because as the legal
owner of a considerable part of Scotland, he is deemed to have
greater rights in making laws than other Scotsmen, who can live
in their native land only by paying some of the legal owners of
Scotland for the privilege.
That power over men arises from ownership of land as well as
from ownership of their bodies the Duke may see in varied manifestations
if he will look. The power of the Scottish landlords over even
the large farmers, and, in the smaller towns, over even the well-to-do
shopkeepers [68] and professional men, is enormous. Even where
it is the custom to let on lease, and large capital is required,
competition, aided in many cases by the law of hypothec, enables
the landlord to exert a direct power over even the large farmer.
That many substantial farmers have been driven from their homes
and ruined because they voted or were supposed to have voted against
the wishes of their landlords is well known. A man whose reputation
was that of the best farmer in Scotland* was driven from his home
in this way a few years since for having politically offended his
landlord. In Leeds ( England) I was told of a Scottish physician
who died there lately. He had been in comfortable practice in a
village on the estate of a Scottish duke. Because he voted for
a Liberal candidate, word was given by the landlord’s agent
that he was no longer to be employed, and as the people feared
to disobey the hint, he was obliged to leave. He came to Leeds,
and not succeeding in establishing himself, pined away, and would
have died in utter destitution but that some friends he had made
in Leeds wrote to the candidate for supporting whom he had been
boycotted, who came to Leeds provided for his few days of life,
and assumed the care of his children. I mention to his honor the
name of that gentleman as it was given to me. It was Sir Sydney
Waterlow.
* John Hope
of Fenton Barns.
During a recent visit to the Highlands I was over and over again
told by well-to-do men that they did not dare to let their opinions
be known or to take any action the landlords or their agents might
dislike. In one town** such men came to me by night and asked me
to speak, but telling me frankly that they did not dare to apply
for a hall, requested me to do that for myself, as I was beyond
[69] the tyranny they feared. If this be the condition of the well-to-do,
the condition of the crofters can be imagined. One of them said
to me, “We have feared the landlord more than we have feared
God Almighty; we have feared the factor more than the landlord,
and the ground officer more than the factor.” But there is
a class lower still even than the crofters—the cotters—who,
on forty-eight hours’ notice, can be turned out of what by
courtesy are called their homes, and who are at the mercy of the
large farmers or tacksmen, who in turn fear the landlord or agent.
Take this class, or the class of farm-servants who are kept in
bothies. Can the Duke tell me of any American slaves who
were lodged and fed as these white slaves are lodged and fed, or
who had less of all the comforts and enjoyments of life?
**Portree, Isle of Skye.
The slaveholders of the South never, in any case that I have
heard of, interfered with the religion of the slaves, and the Duke
of Argyll will doubtless admit that this is a power which one man
ought not to have over another. Yet he must know that at the disruption
of the Scottish Church, some forty years ago, Scottish proprietors
not merely evicted tenants who joined the Free Church (and in many
cases eviction meant ruin and death), but absolutely refused sites
for churches and even permission for the people to stand upon the
land and worship God according to the dictates of their conscience.
Hugh Miller has told, in “The Cruise of the Betsy,” how
one minister, denied permission to live on the land, had to make
his home on the sea in a small boat. Large congregations had to
worship on mountain roadsides without shelter from storm and sleet,
and even on the sea-shore, where the tide flowed around their knees
as they took the communion. But perhaps the slavishness which has
been engendered in Scotland by land monopoly is not better illustrated
than in the case where, after keeping them off [70] his land for
more than six years, a Scottish duke allowed a congregation the
use of a gravel-pit for purposes of worship, whereupon they sent
him a resolution of thanks!
In the large cities tyranny of this
kind cannot, of course, be exercised, but it is in the large cities
that the slavery resulting from the reduction of land to private
ownership assumes the darkest shades. Negro slavery had its horrors,
but they were not so many or so black as those constantly occurring
in such cities. Their own selfish interests, if not their human
sympathies or the restraint of public opinion, would have prevented
the owners of negro slaves from lodging and feeding and working
them as many of the so-called free people in the centers of civilization
are lodged and fed and worked.
With all allowance for the prepossessions
of a great landlord, it is difficult to understand how the Duke
of Argyll can regard as an animating scene the history of agricultural
improvement in Scotland since 1745. From the date mentioned, and
the fact that he is a Highlander, I presume that he refers mainly
to the Highlands. But as a parallel to calling this history “animating,” I
can think of nothing so close as the observation of an economist
of the Duke’s school, who, in an account of a visit to Scotland,
a generation or so ago, spoke of the pleasure with which, in a
workhouse, he had seen “both sexes and all ages, even to
infants of two and three years, earning their living by picking
oakum,” or as the expression of pride with which a Polish
noble, in the last century, pointed out to an English visitor some
miserable-looking creatures who, he said, were samples of the serfs,
any one of whom he could kick as he pleased!
“Thousands
and thousands of acres,” says the Duke, “have been
reclaimed from barren wastes; ignorance has given place to science,
and barbarous customs of immemorial strength have been replaced
by habits of intelli- [71] gence and business.” This is one
side of the picture, but unfortunately there is another side—chieftains
taking advantage of the reverential affection of their clansmen,
and their ignorance of a foreign language and a foreign law, to
reduce those clansmen to a condition of virtual slavery; to rob
them of the land which by immemorial custom they had enjoyed; to
substitute for the mutual tie that bound chief to vassal and vassal
to chief, the cold maxims of money-making greed; to drive them
from their homes that sheep might have place, or to hand them over
to the tender mercies of a great farmer.
“There has been grown,” says the Duke, “more
corn, more potatoes, more turnips; there has been produced more
milk, more butter, more cheese, more beef, more mutton, more pork,
more fowls and eggs.” But what becomes of them? The Duke
must know that the ordinary food of the common people is meal and
potatoes; that of these many do not get enough; that many would
starve outright if they were not kept alive by charity. Even the
wild meat which their fathers took freely, the common people cannot
now touch. A Highland poor-law physician, whose district is on
the estate of a prominent member of the Liberal party, was telling
me recently of the miserable poverty of the people among whom his
official duties lie, and how insufficient and monotonous food was
beginning to produce among them diseases like the pellagra in
Italy. When I asked him if they could not, despite the gamekeepers,
take for themselves enough fish and game to vary their diet, “They
never think of it,” he replied; “they are too cowed.
Why, the moment any one of them was even suspected of cultivating
a taste for trout or grouse, he would be driven off the estate
like a mad dog.”
Besides the essays and journals referred to by the Duke of Argyll,
there is another publication, which any one [72] wishing to be
informed on the subject may read with advantage, though not with
pleasure. It is entitled “Highland Clearances,” and
is published in Inverness by A. McKenzie. There is nothing in savage
life more cold-bloodedly atrocious than the warfare here recorded
as carried on against the clansmen by those who were their hereditary
protectors. The burning of houses; the ejection of old and young;
the tearing down of shelters put up to shield women with child
and tender infants from the bitter night blast; the threats of
similar treatment against all who should give them hospitality;
the forcing of poor helpless creatures into emigrant ships which
carried them to strange lands and among a people of whose tongue
they were utterly ignorant, to die in many cases like rotten sheep
or to be reduced to utter degradation. An animating scene truly!
Great districts once peopled with a race, rude it may be and slavish
to their chiefs, but still a race of manly virtues, brave, kind,
and hospitable—now tenanted only by sheep or cattle, by grouse
or deer! No one can read of the atrocities perpetrated upon the
Scottish people, during what is called “the improvement of
the Highlands,” without feeling something like utter contempt
for men who, lions abroad, were such sheep at home that they suffered
these outrages without striking a blow, even if an ineffectual
one. But the explanation of this reveals a lower depth in the “reduction
to iniquity.” The reason of the tame submission of the Highland
people to outrages which should have nerved the most timid is to
be found in the prostitution of their religion. The Highland people
are a deeply religious people, and during these evictions their
preachers preached to them that their trials were the visitations
of the Almighty and must be submitted to under the penalty of eternal
damnation!
[73] I met accidentally in Scotland, recently, a lady of the
small landlord class, and the conversation turned upon the poverty
of the Highland people. “Yes, they are poor,” she said, “but
they deserve to be poor; they are so dirty. I have no sympathy
with women who won’t keep their houses neat and their children
tidy.”
I suggested that neatness could hardly be expected from women
who every day had to trudge for miles with creels of peat and seaweed
on their backs.
“Yes,” she said, “they do have to work hard.
But that is not so sad as the hard lives of the horses. Did you
ever think of the horses? They have to work all their lives—till
they can’t work any longer. It makes me sad to think of it.
There ought to be big farms where horses should be turned out after
they had worked some years, so that they might have time to enjoy
themselves before they died.”
“But the people?” I interposed. “They, too,
have to work till they can’t work longer.”
“Oh, yes!” she replied, “but the people have
souls, and even if they do have a hard time of it here, they will,
if they are good, go to heaven when they die, and be happy hereafter.
But the poor beasts have no souls, and if they don’t enjoy
themselves here, they have no chance of enjoying themselves at
all. It is too bad!”
The woman was in sober earnest. And I question if she did not
fairly represent much that has been taught in Scotland as Christianity.
But at last, thank God! the day is breaking, and the blasphemy
that has been preached as religion will not be heard much longer.
The manifesto of the Scottish Land Restoration League, calling
upon the Scottish people to bind themselves together in solemn
league and covenant for the extirpation of the sin and shame of
landlordism is a lark’s note in the dawn.
[74]
As in Scotland so elsewhere. I have spoken particularly of Scotland
only because the Duke does so. But everywhere that our civilization
extends the same primary injustice is bearing the same evil fruits.
And everywhere the same spirit is rising, the same truth is beginning
to force its way.
PART III
THE
CONDITION OF LABOR
an open letter to Pope Leo XIII
by Henry George
with
encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII
on the condition of labor
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