"As effects follow their cause," Pope Leo says a little further on, "so it is just and right that the results of labor should belong to him who has labored." There he strikes the key-note of the right of property upheld alike by the best churchmen and economists in all ages. That is the natural law of labor. It is opposed to the theory of State socialism, and to what many in this country understand by nationalism. If the Pope had adhered to that proposition, he would have been saved from his illogical position. It is undoubtedly true that a man is entitled to that of which he is the producing cause. And in some branches of labor which are more intimately associated with the earth than others, such as agricultural operations, it is true that the results of labor, and the improvements made upon land, become physically inseparable from the land itself, so that he who would own what his labor has produced must also have security of tenure, and exclusive possession of "that portion of nature's field which he cultivates." It is for want of distinguishing carefully between possession and ownership that the Pope falls into his ludicrous economic blunders. This part of his encyclical is absolutely self-contradictory. He is arguing for the securing to the laborer of the fruits of his labor. The workman on land must have ownership of those things he has produced, and hence must have exclusive possession of that part of the earth which he tills. He must have such disposal of it as will enable him by the exertion of his labor to secure a proportionate reward. But this is not ownership. Ownership carries with it something more than this. Once "divide the earth among private owners," as the Pope puts it, and you have this condition of things: that those who do not happen to be among the private owners must compete for the privilege of living on the earth, they must pay a part of the results of their labor for permission to work, and on the other hand the fortunate owners receive something for which they themselves render no labor. It is strange that the Pope did not see the absurdities of his own propositions. He says:-- "Moreover the earth, though divided among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all; for there is no one who does not live on what the land brings forth. Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; so that it may be truly said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one's own land, or from some laborious industry which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth."