Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
Take the case of any one of these vast masses of unemployed men, to
whom, though he never heard of Malthus, it to-day seems that there
are too many people in the world. In his own wants, in the needs of
his anxious wife, in the demands of his half-cared-for, perhaps even
hungry and shivering children, there is demand enough for labor, Heaven
knows! In his own willing hands is the supply. Put him on a solitary
island, and though cut off from all the enormous advantages which the
co-operation, combination, and machinery of a civilized community give
to the productive powers of man, yet his two hands can fill the mouths
and keep warm the backs that depend upon them. Yet where productive
power is as its highest development they cannot. Why? Is it not because
in the one case he has access to the material and forces of nature, and
in the other this access is denied?
Is it not the fact that labor is thus shut off from nature which can
alone explain the state of things that compels men to stand idle who
would willingly supply their wants by their labor? The proximate cause
of enforced idleness with one set of men may be the cessation of demand
on the part of other men for the particular things they produce, but
trace this cause from point to point, from occupation to occupation,
and you will find that enforced idleness in one trade is caused by
enforced idleness in another, and that the paralysis which produces
dullness in all trades cannot be said to spring from too great a supply
of labor or too small a demand for labor, but must proceed from the
fact that supply cannot meet demand by producing the things which
satisfy want and are the object of labor.
Now, what is necessary to enable labor to produce these things, is
land. When we speak of labor creating wealth, we speak metaphorically.
Man creates nothing. The whole human race, were they to labor forever,
could not create the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam—could not
make this rolling sphere one atom heavier or one atom lighter. In
producing wealth, labor, with the aid of natural forces, but works up,
into the forms desired, pre-existing matter, and, to produce wealth,
must, therefore, have access to this matter and to these forces—that
is to say, to land. The land is the source of all wealth. It is the
mine from which must be drawn the ore that labor fashions. It is the
substance to which labor gives the form. And, hence, when labor cannot
satisfy its wants, may we not with certainty infer that it can be from
no other cause than that labor is denied access to land?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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