Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1893-04-20

He Expects a Wonderful Development oil
Civilization in the Twentieth Century.
Annie Besant Says Social Reform or Rev
olution Is Inevitable-The Future of
Electricity.
Copyright, 1893 by American Press Associa-
toni
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 dependent-is this, "Will the tendency
toward the accumulation of wealth in the
hands of n few increase or diminishf'
While this as yet can only be answered with
an 'if," the determining element is clear,
for it depends on laws as certain as that
of gravitatiOn.
BY virtue of his physical constitution
nan is land animal, bound by the neces-
stiles of his existence to the surface of the
globe. On it he must live, and from 1t 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
. It'll -
wealth can arise in peaceful states, and adj
vance in productive power will increase the
general well being and lead to further ad-
vances. But where land is treated as the
property of some, from whom others must
purchase the privilege of living and work
ing, tendency to inequality is at once set
upwhich every advance in productive pow
er tends to increase, for, since land is in
dispensable to the eXertion of labor, no ad-
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 Il fiercer competition
with each other for the privilege of work
ing, while larger and larger share of the
production of labor passes into the hands of
those who in their monopolizaton 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 retrogression, and in violent ca
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 Columbus
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 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 over again in the worlds 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
teenth century. If they do not, then there
must befall u.s. but on far grander scale
and with a far quicker movement, what
befell ancient Rome
HENRY GEORGE.