Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887: Volume 1, Number 1
Philosophy
Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887: Volume 1, Number 1
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
We shall have ample discussions of this subject. Mr. George has given
us "Progress and Poverty" (cloth, $1.00; paper, 20 cents); "Social
Problems," at the same price; "The Land Question" (paper, 10 cents);
"Property in Land" (paper, 15 cents); "Protection or Free Trade"
(cloth, $1.50). At Baltimore a volume has been issued as one of the
Johns Hopkins University studies in political and historical science,
written by Shosuke Sato, Ph. D., Special Commissioner of the Colonial
Department of Japan. N. Murray is the publishing agent, and the price
in paper is $1.00. This work is a "History of the Land Question in the
United States," and describes the formation of the public domain by
purchase and cession, and the entire administration of the land system
of the United States. The land laws of early times and of other
countries are stated in the introduction. Another very instructive
work recently issued is entitled, "Labor, Land, and Law; a Search for
the Missing Wealth of the Working Poor," by William A. Phillips;
published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Mr. Phillips has been
a member of Congress from Kansas, and his work is an extensive view of
the land question in other countries as well as the United States.
In the near future this must be the burning question of politics and
statesmanship, as it is at present in Great Britain. The agitations in
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have long been on the verge of bloody
conflict, and a Land League has been formed in Germany at Berlin, of
which Dr. A. Theodor Stamm is president, having for its object the
transfer of land ownership from individuals to the State. A newspaper
at Berlin is devoted to its objects.
A few facts show how inevitable the conflict that is coming, while the
agricultural classes of all Europe are being driven by American
competition deeper and deeper into poverty and inability to pay rent,
which can never be again what it has been. The New York _Evening Post_
very justly says: "The truth is, we are witnessing in Ireland the
gradual disappearance of rent. The land is no longer able to support
anybody but the actual cultivator. To make this process peaceful, and
as far as possible harmless to all parties, ought to be the chief
concern of the Government." Landlordism in Great Britain has small
claims upon our sympathy, for the great body of the land is held by
titles which have no other basis than the robbery of old by military
power. According to John Bright, in England and Wales one hundred
persons own 4,000,000 acres; in Scotland twelve persons own 4,346,000
acres, and seventy persons own the half of Scotland; nine tenths of
all the land in Scotland belongs to 1,700 persons, the rest of the
population having only one tenth. In Ireland less than 800 persons own
half of all the land, and 330 persons own two thirds of all the land
in Scotland; 402 members of the House of Lords hold 14,240,912 acres,
with a rental of $56,865,637.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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