The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1893-06-30
THAT PORTENTOUS II.
If All Goes Well the World Will
Be Better IN 1905.
A FORECAST by HENRY GEORGE.

lie Expects n Wonderful Development of
Civilization in the Twentieth Century.
Annie Resant Says socia, Reform or Rev.
o.ution Is Inevitabie-The Future of
Electricity.
| copyright. 1893, by American Press Assoca-
tion.l
OF all the questions you suggest as to the
changes that another century will bring in
the conditions of our people, the fundamen-
tai question-that upon which all the rest
are DEPENDENTS this, Twill the tendency
toward the accumulation of wealth in the
hands of a few increase or diminish"
While this as yet can only be answered with
an IF, :" the determining element is clear,
for it depends on laws as certain rs that
of graytation.
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 his standing
place and must draw his subsistence, his
very flesh and blood, from land. No matter
how elaborate, how refined, how potent
his methods of production may become,
they must always have land as their in
dispensable basis and reservoir, and must
always consist in the combination of the
matter and forces to be found only in land.
This being the case, the fundamental So
| cial relation-that which determines all
others-must be in the future what expert
ence shows it to have been in the past-the
tenure of land. Where the equal rights of
all men to the use of land are accorded, no
serious inequality in the distribution of
wealth can arise in peaceful states, and adj
vance in productive power will increase the
general we'll 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, a tendency to inequality is at once set
up,which every advance in productive pow
err tends to increase, for, since land is in
dispensabe 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
arts can only drive the disinherited class of
mere laborers into a fiercer competition
with each other for the privilege of work
y,
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 discov-
cry, invention and improvement-every-
thing, in short, in which the material prog
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 rctrogression, and in violent ca
tastrophe or dull dry rot inventions and dis
| coveries are lost and arts and letters forgot
| ten.
To us of the western world, and especial
ly to us of that new world which COlum bus
opened to European civilization, the Won
| 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 inn
| provements, and that the long history of
humanity shows that advance has never
before been continuous And already we
may sec, 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 over again in the world history stopped
invention and improvement and turned
progress into decline.
Nor is there anything that can check this
tendency to inequality save the recognition
of the equal rights to the use of the ele-
ment from which alone men can live.
! Abolish all other monopolies 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 it 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 between
the rich and the poor, so long as land is
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
worse than hopeless when not based on
justice.
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 or reject the one great reform
which is embodied in the single tax propo-
sition. If they do, and / now believe they
will then the Twentieth century may see
the development Of civilization that
transcends the imagination of the Nine
tcenth century If they do not, then there
must befall us, but on far grander scale
and with far quicker movement, what
befell ancient Rome.
HENRY GEORGE.