The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1918-01-17
FOOD QUESTION
INVOLVED IN
LAND QUESTION

working class quarters of the city
for food, and committee represent
ing sixty of the largest settlement
houses in the city insist on "ade-
quate and immediate relief" through
the buying and selling of food by
the municipality. Not soul cries
Socialism," and the City Market
Commissioner adopts the plan, so
great is the peoples need.
And yet--prominent bankers and
government officials exhort the
masses to "save and lend your money
to the Government" And, accord
ing to Albert Jay Mock, writing in
the Christmas number of The Cen
fury Magazine:
"At this moment of hue and cry
for increased production, with the
papers forecasting drastic food
control, drastic rationing, price-fix-
ing, when people spade up tennis
courts and lawns, and even the poor
politically Exploited school-children
languidly poke about in the rubbish
laden vacant lots--at this moment
there are four hundred million acres
of idle land in the United States of
America! Seventy-three per cent of
the arabic land of the country is
therefore idle. Forty-five per cent
of the actual laid-out farmland -
nearly half-is idle"
"One feels" continues Mr.. Mock,
''like dissenting to the slang of the
street and asking, can you beat it
There is only one inference to make I;
anyone would make it Drop a man
down from the moon into the midst
of that state of things and the mo-
ment he set eyes on it he would say:
There is country with first-class
problem of land-tenure on its hands.
"The result of all this is that the
subject Of land-tenure is now very
much to the fore. Even some of the
college professors are writing about
it, and one could scarcely say more
than this"
There is no mystery about it. Mr..
Mock writes:
"For approximately thirty years,
land in the United States has not
been priced according to its earning
capacity, but according to it's specu-
lative value. Farmland in the West
has not been bought for farming
purposes; bless you, no, farming was
never thought of except as bait on a
prospectus. 1t was bought as an
investment. .From 1900 to 1910, for
example, while available acreage in
the United States increased per
cent, and the number of farmers in
creased q trifle under II per cent,
the value of farmland increased one
hundred and eighteen per cent. 80. go.
"That tells the story so completely
that any enlargement on it is mere
verbiage. These land values are in
creasing at the rate of per cent a
year or better, and their ownership
is concentrated into very few hands.
Three per cent of the population own
nearly all the land values in the
United States.
"As soon as one gets sense of
this clearly in mind there is no trou-
BILE about explaining this phenomenon
of idle land. 1t seems like the
acme of absurdity to say so, but as
an industry there is not one cent of
money in farming. All the profits
are in the rise of land values. No
matter, therefore, how great the
pressure on production, these i'm
mense stretches Of land remain idle
because it does not pay to cultivate
them. They are held at monopoly
price so far ahead of their earning
capacity that the capital charges eat
up too much of the income. Obvious
ly, too, this is quite irrespective of
the price of farm-products, for as
prices go up, land values go up ahead
of them; thus any attempt to make
farming profitable by raising prices
like the proposal for three-dollar
wheat-becomes the proverbial game
of outrunning the constable.
observed that California, for instance,
has carried collective bargaining to
a point far beyond most of the West,
and her agricultural industries are
in position to command good prices
and get them, yet good land is priced
there at $500 and $1,000 an acre,
which no one can possibly pretend
is capital measure of its earning
capacity or anything like it. 1t is
a monopoly price based on specula-
tive value. Therefore one propos-
ing to become a working farmer even
in California cannot make his land
earn fair returns on what he pays
for it.
"In other words, farming as an