The Labor enquirer., 1888-04-07

strength, should be only too glad
to receive and welcome as much
of that strength and health and
life as its capacity will permit. In
a word, to be eager and thankful
to carry away as much fruit from
the common orchard as its basket
will hold. as much food as it can
crowd into the receptacle of NOR
tality, when the maid of the har-
vest, our mother earth, stands in
the field with extended and open
hands, with enough and to spare,
tor all. Why not acknowledge
the will of the Lord of the vine
yard and all have enough and
pass our lives in peace, rather
than our present maniacal and
senseless conversion of life into
death, of happiness into pain, Of
content into cArel The majority
in ceaseless strife and toll that the
few may lord over them; labor
producing wealth that idleness
may enjoy it. Men hauling and
tugging and climbing over and
tramping down men instead of
helping and raising up their nat
ural brothers.
In what blindness are men liv-
ing that they do not see, and see
ing do not perceive that they are
throwing away and wasting their
lives; and that what they call gain
is loss! Mans darkness comes
from attributing to God those
things which are but the effect of
his own adjustments. Nature
has provided abundantly for all,
but man has misapplied the gift
to the use of a few instead of the
benefit Of all. Realizing the truth,
man would awake from the stupor
of fatalism, and hopelessness, and
rouse himself to better the social
system.
No man created the earth. God
created the earth for the use of all.
No man has the right of prop
erty in land.
All men have a natural right to
use unoccupied land that has no
ualue economic and commercial
value is regulated by the law of
supply and demand).
No man has a natural right to
any land which has any value.
The community creates land-valne
which must be returned to the
community for the common use,
to satisfy justice.
Man has not a natural right to
land-values. but should pay to the
community which creates land
values, the full annual value, for
the special and exclusive privilege
of the use Of such value. In other
words, should return to the COM
munity the economic rent for the
use OF land according to its value,
since some land always possesses
advantages over other land; thus
Justice is satisfied, and equality is
secured and natural rights are
maintained. Increase in popula-
ton gives value to land, and this
is in accordance with the law of
supply and demand. Hence city
lots become more valuable than
country districts and farms. Thus
land should be taxed according
to its value, not according to its
area. For an individual to fore
stall population by buying upland,
and then expect the future COM
munity to give him the benefit of
the value it has created is relic of
the barbarous doctrine of force,
and the law that permits him to
do so, is a remnant Of the theory
of the dark ages, that might
makes right and is based on the
assumption that man has given up
his natural rights in lieu
of civil code of artificial
law. Private property in land
is a relic of the idea that the
earth was made for few, to whose
benefit the rest of the world should
contribute without any fair return.
To own land is to own men. In
the light Of natural rights, of rea-
son, and of common sense, the
system which permits private own
ership Of the planet, on which and