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
And this is obvious in agriculture also. That the creation of value
does not take place all at once when the crop is gathered, but step
by step during the whole process which the gathering of the crop
concludes, and that no payment of wages in the interim lessens the
farmer’s capital, is tangible enough when land is sold or rented
during the process of production, as a plowed field will bring more
than an unplowed field, or a field that has been sown more than one
merely plowed. It is tangible enough when growing crops are sold, as
is sometimes done, or where the farmer does not harvest himself, but
lets a contract to the owner of harvesting machinery. It is tangible in
the case of orchards and vineyards which, though not yet in bearing,
bring prices proportionate to their age. It is tangible in the case
of horses, cattle and sheep, which increase in value as they grow
toward maturity. And if not always tangible between what may be called
the usual exchange points in production, this increase of value as
surely takes place with every exertion of labor. Hence, where labor
is rendered before wages are paid, the advance of capital is really
made by labor, and is from the employed to the employer, not from the
employer to the employed.
“Yet,” it may be said, “in such cases as we have been considering
capital is required!” Certainly; I do not dispute that. But it is not
required in order to make advances to labor. It is required for quite
another purpose. What that purpose is we may readily see.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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