The independent. [volume] (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907, 1903-08-20

| iron ore, cotton, cheese houses, ma
/ Cflnery, etc. have no value except for
use and when one man produces 1000
| bushels OF wheat more than he can
use, it has no value unless he can ex-
change it for the labor products of
! others. such as for piano, watch,
hats, cotton cloth, etc., but when ex-
changed for these things, the result
is that the wheat-raiser has by his
labor produced wheat, piano, a
watch, some hats, and cotton cloth,
Just as truly and far more easily, than
IL he had labored directly to make each
separate article.
One might as well say that speech
and song are social products, because
they have no value except when shared
CT exchanged with ones fellOw-beings
as to say that the things produced
by the hands are socially produced.
1t is true that in the open market
these labor products often sell for
less than their true value and at times
for far more than their true value;
yet the principle remains always the
same, viz: that all labor products, un-
der a free, full and fair competition,
will usually sell or exchange at their
t! lie labor value.
A free, full and fair competition is
something commerce has never yet
tried. No government has ever ex-
listed that has not granted to a few
rlen Of influence some special privil-
eyes. Some day men will learn to be
more just with each other, and will
try the Golden Rule. Then will be
demonstrated one of the truths set
forth by Henry George that "cou1peti
tion is to the commercial world what
gravitation is to the physical"
Max Hirsch in his Democracy versus
Socialism says: Whoever produces
anything that enters the circle of ex-
changes confers favor with everyone
with whom he exchanges the results
his labor"
Exchange is one Of the modes of
production. Man is a trading animal
who has the wit, the observation, the
inventive instict to take advantage of
every variety Of soil, climate and min
eral deposit that can be used to sat
isfy the wants of man.
To say that because men can pro-
duce wealth more easily socially than
by each working alone, does not prove
that the value they produce is social
product, but rather that by so work
ing each one can, in this way, satisfy
his wants by the least exertion.
Take a complex illustration: Here |
ere men and women who work con-
stantly year after year, making boot
leels, or watch springs, or perhaps !
packing dried figs in boxes. At the
end of the year they have neither boot
heels, watch springs nor figs to show
as the result of their labor; but they
have received, in money, fair equiv
alent for their labor, and had their +
wages been just, they would each have
received full equivalent for the labor
value they had added to leather, steel
or fruit. This money (wages) these
laborers have spent for bread, pota-
toes, meat, clothing, rent, etc.
In other words, these laborers have
made bread, raised potatoes-they have
fed and clothed themselves by their
labor upon land. While doing so gov
eminent has taxed them, monopoly
has taxed them, special privileges
has taxed them, and they have been
robbed almost entirely of their share
Of the social product-ground rent
which their presence has created.
The way to raise their wages to the
full value of their production is to
r. move from them eli tax burdens,
end raise the wages of those who toll
directly upon the land, then a free ex-
change OF all labor products will do
the rest.
In another paper I would like to
speak of the social product-ground
rent, /. e., the value that is produced
socially as compared with the indi-
vidual productive value that is pro-
iuced individually, as herein de-
scribed; but I fear | have already
upon the kindness of The
Independent. Il
1t is important to understand the
money question, and it is also import
int to understand some of these rela-
ions which one mans labor bears to
another in the process of exchange.
In seeking these relations Henry {
George discovered why, in spite of in '
lpstrial progress, wages are still so '
nw, as to give but a bare subsistence '
% a majority of those who toll
1t seems well to ponder these sub
Gets, if we would earnestly strive to !