Equal rights once conceded as just, this reasoning cannot be refuted. Discussed in economic literature since before the day of Adam Smith, it has withstood every form of assault. If it has not been acted on in the Old World, it is because the wage-workers there, ignorant and in general deprived of the right to vote, have been helpless; and if not in the New, because, first, until within recent years the free western lands, attracting the unemployed and helping to maintain wages, in a measure gave labor access to nature, and, secondly, since the practical exhaustion of the free public domain the industrial wage-workers have not perceived how, through politics, to carry out their convictions on the land question. Our reasoning is further strengthened by law and custom in state and nation. In nearly every state, the constitution declares that the original and ultimate ownership of the land lies with all its people; and hence the method of administering the land is at all times an open public question. As to the nation at large, its settled policy and long-continued custom support the principle that all citizens have inalienable rights in the land. Instead of selling the national domain in quantities to suit purchasers, the government has held it open free to agricultural laborers, literally millions of men being thus given access to the soil. Moreover, in thirty-seven of the forty-four states, execution for debt cannot entirely deprive a man of his homestead, the value exempt in many of the states being thousands of dollars. Thus the general welfare has dictated the building up and the securing of a home for every laboring citizen. In line, then, with established American principles is the proposition for municipal lands. And if municipalities have extended to capitalists privileges of many kinds, even granting them gratis sites for manufactories, and for terms of years exempting such real estate from taxation, why not accord to the wage-workers at least their primary natural rights? If any property be exempted from taxation, why not the homesite below a certain fixed value? And if, for the public benefit, municipalities provide parks, museums, and libraries, why not give each producer a homesite--a footing on the earth? He who has not this is deprived of the first right to do that by which he must live, namely, labor. _Effects of Municipal Land._ A city public domain, open to citizen occupiers under just stipulations, would in several directions have far-reaching results.