The advocate and Topeka tribune., 1893-12-20

enough. For the men who had to live
on that land, if they lived at all, had to
come, cap in hand, to ask permission to
till the land, and under the guise of free
contract agree to give up as rent all their
labor would yield, save what even the
chattel master must leave the slave,
enough to maintain life. This is the
reason why when European slave ships
took negroes from the coast Of Africa,
they carried them to America, where
population was sparse, and did not carry
them to Ireland or England, where there
was sufficient density Of population to
make pressure for land. For there the
existence Of class OF mere lRborers,
men who, having no right to use land,
were forced into competition with eBch
other for the privilege OF living and
working reduced the wages Of mere la
Dor to point which made chsttel slsv-
cry impossible.
In this simple, obvious fact, that land
is to man the whole material universe;
that man is q land animal, who can only
live, and only produce by access to land,
is the sufficient explanation Of what is
call d the labor question; the fundR-
mental explanation of all the perplexing
social phenomena of our civilization; the
reason why with all the wonderful in
crease Of productive power that has
marked our time, the earnings Of labor
still tend to the minimum on which men
will consent to live, and that while
wealth enormously increases the strug-
gle for existence on the part Of the
masses becomes not easier, but more in
tense.
Man always is, man always must be, .
land animal. No matter what the p0lit-
ical form, no matter what the modes OF
production, labor can be exsrted only on
land, and wealth derived only from land.
We cannot make something out Of moth
ing. All our making, all our producing,
require land. Our very bodies are de-
rived from land, and to the land they re-
turn again. IL one man owned all the
land OF the world, he would be the mas
ter of all the race. And where some
men own the land Of a country and 9TH
ers are lsndless, wealth must pass into
the hands of those who do not earn it,
and the great mass Of producers must be
contented with bare living. Thus the
reason Of the widespread poverty that
exists throughout the civilized world to-
day is that, throughout the civilized
world, land is treated as private prop
erty, and has been monOpolized by q
comparative few.
In a condition where chattel slavery
existed, it would be idle to seek the
cause Of the poverty OF the slaves in any
other social adjustment than that which
deprived them of the right to their own
labor. And so, where the equal right to
the use OF land is ignored, it is idle to
look for the relief Of poverty to anything
that does not touch this fundamental in-
justice.
The fatal mistake that we Americans
have made is, that coming over here
from countries where the ownership Of
land by few had reduced the masses to
poverty we adopted the same system of
treating land as private property that ex-
listed there. We did not feel the full ef-
fecte at first; for the continent was WIDE
and there was room to spread. Nor do
we feel them fully yet. But we are be-
ginning to feel them, and with our
growth and progress the very same con-
ditions that exist in Europe are arising
here. In giving away enormous tracts
to railroad companies, in allowing specu.
lators and syndicstes, and individual
capitalists to grasp and hold great bodies
of land, we have been selling the birth
right of our children for less than mess
of potage, have been fastening the day
when labor should be as poor and de-
graded ss in the older countries. But
merely Fastening it. To enable land
lordism to enslsve labor, it Is not neces-
sary that land should at first be cut up
into great tracts aud made the property
Of few. Even if land be at first equally