The Yellowstone journal. [volume] (Miles City, Mont.) 1893-1901, 1893-05-02

SbNiltZAEipn III the ANe1tictE century.
Annie Ecsant Says Social Reform or Rev
~olution Is Inevitable-The Future Of
Electricity.
copyright, lsa3. by American Press Associa-
ton
OF all the questions you s,lggest as to the
changes that another century will bring in
the conditions OF cur people. the fundamen-
tai questionable: upon which all the rest
are dependencies this. will the tendency
toward the accumulation of wealth in the
hands Of Il few increase or diminish:"
While THIS us yet can only be answered with
an iii, the determining element is clear.
for it depends on laws as certain as that
of gra"itatiou.
BY virtue of his physical constitution
man is a land animal, bound by the neces-
sites of his existence to the surface of the
globe. On it he must live. and from it he
must draw for all his needs. No discovery
or invention or Improvement can rid him
of this dependence. The last man, as the
first man. must have land for is standing
place and must draw his subsistence, his
very flesh and blood. from Land. No matter
how elaborate, hcw refined, how potent
his methods of production may become,
they must always have land as their in
A1-pSAisto1S pQS4S uHu ICscINO Oh, anu IuuSU
always consist in the combination of the
matter and forces to be found only in land.
This being the case, the fundamental So
,ial relation-that which determines all
others-must be in the future what expert
apce shows it to have been in the past-tbe
tenure of land. Where the equal rights of
all men to the use of land are accorded, n
serious inequality in the distribution of
wealth can arise in peaceful states, and ed
vance in productive power will increase the
general well being and lead to further adj
vances. But where land is treated as the
property of some. from whom others must
, purchase the privilege of living and work
ing. Ii tendency to inequality j. at once set
up,which every advance in productive pow
er tends to increase, for, since land is in
dispensable to the exertion of labor, no adj
vance in the power of production can ben
eft those who have merely the power to
labor.
That of itself being useless. the growth
of population and the improvement of the
art can only drive the disinherited class Of
mere laborers into Il fiercer competition
with each other for the privilege Of work.
ing, while a larger ard larger share OF the
production Of labor passes into the hands OF
those who. in their monopolization of the
natural element of all production, have
control Of the right to work. Thus discoy-
cry, invention and iinprovement-evcry-
thing, il short. in which the material prcg.
ress of society consists-tends under this
primary injustice to increase inequality
in the distribution of wealth until at last
the monstrous inequality destroys advance
and brings retrogression. and in violent ca
tastrophe ordull dry rot inventions and dis
coveries are los; and arts and letters forget
ten.
To us OF the western world. and especial
~ to us of that new world which Columbus
opened to European civilization, the wor-
derful Improvements of the century now
closing seem naturally but the prelude to
far greater Improvements in the next. But
we must not forget that the majority Of
the human race know nothing of our i'm
provements. and that the long history of
humanity shows that advance has never
before been continuous. And already we
may see, in the massing of monstrous for
tunes on the one hand and increasing in
tensity of the struggle to live on the other.
the growth of that inequality that has over
and overagain in the world history stopped
invention and improvement and turned
progress into decline.
MOI Is there anything that can check this
tendency to inequality save the recognition
of the equal rights to the Use of the Gle
ment from which alone men can live.
Abolish all other monopoiies save that Of
land, and the ultimate result must be but
to increase the share of the production of
wealth that can be taken by land owners.
1t cannot raise wages or make 1t easier for
mere laborers to live. Nor can any diffusion
OF education, or publication of govern
ment. or doing away with middlemen
prevent the widening of the gulf betwes
the rich and the poor, SO long as land
treated as subject to that individual right
Of property that rightfully belongs to the
things that human eXertion brings into
being. As to charity, that is hopeless, and
than hopeless when not based on
Therefore it is that the conditions which
will exist in this country when the children
OF children yet to be born celebrate the fifth
centenary of the discovery of the great
Genoese must depend upon whether, while
they yet have power. the masses of our peo-
pie accept oi reject the one great reform
which is embedded in the single tax propo-
sition. If they do, and | now believe they
will, then the Twentieth century may see
the development of a civilization that
transcends the Imagination Of the Nine
century. If they do not, then there
must befall us, but on a far grander scale
and with a far quicker movement, what
befell ancient Rome.
HENRY GEORGE.