The Louisiana Democrat., 1891-09-16
SINGLE TAX DEPARTMENT.
GEN. WOODFORD ON THE LAND
QUESTION.

State Teachers association at ltS re-
! cent session at Albany, on ''rhe Labor
Problem" He thus spoke of the COM
| mon declaration that the interests OF
labor and capital are identical
Now. know that there Is beautiful
euphemism, in which we all delight to
indulge, that capital and labor are one.
We are all pleased to say that the inter-
| ests of capital and the interests:.of labor
are one. 1t is pleasing to state and re-
state the golden truth that capital is
| best served when labor is best reward
ed, and pleasing to state the corollary,
that labor is happiest when in union with
capital. Now all this is true, and in
some milennial age pray that the sug-
gestion of the clergyman, and the
dream Of the poet, and the euphemism
of the politician may all be realized.
But when Lazarus, working eight or
ten hours day, with back bent, goes
out on Sunday afternoon, and, walking
up one of our great city avenues, sees
where Dives lives, it is very hard to get
the poor fellow to understand practical
ly that labor and capital are one. When
he goes back to the tenement house,
and up rickety stairs and through fetid
atmosphere climbs his way to where
the wife and the babies are, brutalized
by compulsory associations with want,
or with drunkenness, or possibly with
crime, uncomfortable in the heat and
dirt, neither he nor wife nor babe url.
derstant how labor and capital are one!
They are one in the great sweep of
Gods truth They are one in the good
time coming; but to-day and now it will
be Christian, it will be wise, it will be
patriotic, for those of us who, thanks
to fathers, thanks to Providence, or
thanks to our own thrift have our own
places on the capital side of this ques-
tion-it will be well for us to under
stand that between the tenement house
and Fifth avenue there is a great gulf
fixed which you and ought to try in
some way to bridge over. And hence,
not venturing even venturing to dream
that what suggest is exact positive
truth, conscious that all thought upon
this question to-day will need contin-
uous revision, wish, in the few mo-
ments left me, to put to you three or
four simply questions. If can get
you, who are educated men and women,
to begin thinking practically about
these things, shall have more than
answered all the purpose had in COM
ing.
The general first took up the ques-
tion of great corporations, and insisted
on the vital necessity of compelling
them ''to live absolutely inside the law,
with all that this involves" He next
took up the land question and spoke as
follows:
If all wealth is produced by labor
from the earth, if the land is at the basis
of the state, should not the law hinder
every attempt to aggregate land and
transmit it in great bodies to posterity?
presume this may be startling ques-
ton to ask the conservative teachers Of
our public schools; but yet remember
that in England to-day they have reach
ed the point where the state has had to
step in between landlord and tenant
and fix the rate of rent. What would
be thought in this land of ours if there
was an attempt to tell the landlord
what he should charge either for house,
or factory, or tenement house or farm?
And yet, just as certain as that sixty
millions of people to-day mean one hun
dred millions fifty years from now; as
certain as that one hundred millions
fifty years from now means two hun
dred millions one hundred years from
now; as certain as that two hundred
millions one hundred years from now
mean ultimately population that will
startle Imagination, l tell you, my
countrymen, sooner or later we have
got to meet the problem that the men
and women to whom God gives life
shall have chance in the soil and on the
dust out of which they are made! Now,
do not misunderstood me. I am not
going to talk any wild agrarianism. !
recognize the right of a man to labor
nay, recognize and assert the duty. l
recognize the right of mau to be Sc
cured in the product of his labor, and
the duty of the state to protect him. 1
recognize that it is as natural for man
to seek home of his own as for the
bird to build it's nest pity the man
who doesn't want soil Of his own, not
owned by the state but owned by
himself, as the home for wife and chill
dren. But in our dealing with land in
our laws inherited from old England
are we not just reversing the way that
God deals with us? What is there in
which you have greater property than
in your body? Nothing. Wherever
you go that body is yours You
may take it upon any mans
farm, and while you stand there
| your body is absolutely yours, and the
use of the soil beneath your feet is
yours. You pass, you take it with you,
but when you die that which was more
your property than anything else in
the world, under the providence of God,
molders back into dust; passes into the
earth, the sky, the air. Even the at
tempt of the old Pharaoh to make a
mummy Of it and keep it forever is at
the last futile, and the body, which was
yours, God dissipates and scatters.
Under the theory of our human govern
ment, man who has accumulated one
hundred million dollars in real estate,
though he has noright to primogeniture
under our American system to entail it
it in perpetuity to the eldest son of the
eldest son, is yet permitted to pick out
the preferred son. We recognize primo
geniture of intellect, and the man with