Yes! But he has other "rights." He has the right to combine to defeat attempts to rob him of work or to lower his wages; he has the right to vote for parliamentary and municipal candidates who will alter the laws and the conditions of society which enable a few greedy and heartless men to disorganise the industries of the nation, to keep the Briton off the land which is his birthright, to exploit the brain and the sinew of the people, and to condemn millions of innocent and helpless women and children to poverty, suffering, ignorance, and too often to disgrace or early death. A man, John Smith, has the right to _be a man_, and, if he is a Briton, has a right to be a free man. It is to persuade every man in Britain to exercise this right, and to do his duty to the children and the women of his class and family, that I am publishing this book. "The right to do work if he can get it," John, and to starve if he cannot get it. How long will you allow these insolent market-men to insult you? How long will you allow a mob of money-lending, bargain-driving, dividend-snatching parasites to live on you, to scorn you, and to treat you as "live stock"? How long? How long? I shall have to write a book for the women, John. CHAPTER XV THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE Many non-Socialists believe that the cause of poverty is "surplus labour," or over-population, and they tell us that if we could reduce our population we should have no poor. If this were true, we should find that in thinly populated countries the workers fare better than in countries where the population is more dense. But we do not find anything of the kind. The population of Ireland is thin. There are more people in London than in all Ireland. Yet the working people of Ireland are worse off than the working people of England. The population of Scotland is thinner than that of England, but wages rule higher in England. In Australia there is a large country and a small population, but there is plenty of poverty. In the Middle Ages the entire population of England would only be a few millions--say four or five millions--whereas it is now nearly thirty millions. Yet the working classes are very much better off to-day than they were in the eighth and ninth centuries. Reduce the population of Britain to one million and the workers would be in no better case than they are now. Increase the population to sixty millions and the workers will be no worse off--at least so far as wages are concerned. I will give you the reason for this in a few words, using an illustration which used to serve me for the same purpose in one of my lectures. No one will deny that all wealth--whether food, tools, clothing, furniture, machines, arms, or houses--comes from _the land_.