“All men have an equal right to live, and as no man can live without land, it follows that all men have an equal right to the use of the land that is necessary to sustain their existence.” Notwithstanding this, land still remains private property; the private owner is supreme in regard to it; he can exclude everyone from it with dire economic results. Only under State ownership, says the Nationalization Society, can this be remedied. (_c_) The _Socialists_, that is to say, the National Guildists and Syndicalists, found their scheme on both the foregoing assumptions, the Syndicalists in addition claiming that no rent should be paid even to the State, but that the land should belong outright to, and be distributed among, the people. As a matter of practical politics the State purchase scheme of the Nationalization Society is of chief moment. Although the Georgites and the Socialists are active and vociferous, their respective schemes are of much less relative importance. Even assuming that the land was originally acquired by private persons by robbery or injustice, the best equitable answer to the “taxing-out scheme” is probably that of the Nationalization Society: We answer that while the land is _ours_ by every moral right, and we propose to assume possession of it by compulsory process, we recognize that a very large number of honest men (neither robber barons nor their descendants) have invested actual earned money in land, either as individuals or as members of building, insurance and co-operative societies and trade unions. “Therefore, we do not propose to confiscate that money (i.e. that portion of the rent which represents the value of the bare land) and leave to them what is theirs (i.e. that portion of the rent which represents the value of the improvements)” (_The Land Nationalizer_, May, 1919, p. 5). The Secretary of the Land Nationalization Society writes thus: “We who favour compensation justify it on grounds which appear to us to be grounds of equity. We say that the landlords of the present day did not found the system of private property in land, and should not be punished (by spoliation) as if they did. The original wrongdoers are dead and past punishments. Neither are the present landlords alone responsible for the maintenance of the system. That system is supported by the well-to-do classes generally, who look upon land as legitimate private property, and even by the great mass of unthinking landless people who send a majority of landlords and friends of landlords to Parliament at every chance they get. If landowning is a crime, then the majority of the British people are aiders and abettors of it.... We must be prepared to give a fair value for the land whether it be held by a duke or a working man.” (_State Land Purchase_, by Joseph Hyder, p. 3.)