Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1888-01-21

and if he wants to dig for sassafras
root, and knows where to dig to find
it, he receives the result of his labor.
OF course, the professor doesn't say
thls-it might spoil the rest of his
article, and besides might offend the
fathers Of his pupils.
But the professor only put in the
lonely man as a sort of bOuill0n;: the
solids came afterward. SAYS the
professor
"When there is plenty for all no
question arises.
Perhaps the professor meant to
say when there is plenty for all IN
tie possession of all no question
arises. OF course, he meant that,
for every one knows, and the profess
sor knows, that there is plenty of
coal for all, and yet question has
arisen about coal of late.
TO be sure, he does not say any
thing about coal that might hit
some of his pupils fathers rather
hard. But he mentions water.
Everybody can get water and no
question has arisen. This shows
the professor is right. Water was
an excellent thing to mention in
this connection.
"While the woods are full of game,
and land means nothing but game, there
is no problem of food supply and no So
cial question. As the number of men
increases, their consumption surpasses
the natural increase of the animals and
reacts upon the number of men. We
see, therefore, that every natural agent
is natural monopoly
In the cities, for instance, game
does not fly into ones mouth, already
cooked, and it is conceivable that
somebody has got to hustle to get
something to eat.
Sometimes, in the woods, when
men increase in number, they try to
raise potatoes and breed cattle, in
order to get a supply of food, and if
they are of an economic turn of mind
they help each other IN the work.
This, however, has nothing to do
with the subject.
But nature is monopoly, or to
put it as scientiticall y AS the profess
sor, "every natural agent is a natural
monopoly"
If that don't down the anti-mon-
opolists, nothing will. Aud every
receptive mind that is, a mind that
can receive the laundering sermons
printed in the h,dependent--must
agree with the professor when he
Gays:
"Hence, it is clear how crude and fu-
tile is the notion that monopoly, or mon
opoly of land. is modern and a product
of civilization
Nature Icing an old monopolist, as
the professor has shown, monopoly
is nothing new, and not being new,
the very idea that it is modern and a
product of civilization is crude and
futile. And so the professor easily
skips over to the property question,
when he says:
1T is crude modern notion that prop
erty grows nationally and justly out of
labor. 1t does not, and every lawyer
knows that it never has. >"
And who should know better than
the lawyers that property does not
come from labor-at least not ration
ally? Or is this subtle fling of the
professors at the lawyers? But then,
perhaps the lawyers might retort and
say that what the professor don't
know about getting property without
useful labor isn't worth knowing.
No, the professor meant no slur
upon the honorable profession of the
bar, for he explains himself thus:
Every act of labor has to he preceded
by an act of appropriation in taking the
raw material out of the material product
of nature; that is, it is inevitably based
on this monopoly use of land which Is
so vehemently denounced"
Is this not plain? Does it not
show conclusively that the miners
who are striking for more pay for
what they in their dense ignorance
consider labor, are making most
unjust demand:
Taking the raw material out of
the product of nature" is
not labor-it is an act of appropria-
tion" which precedes labor. The
labor comes in when the coal is mer-