Pope Leo is mistaken. All human subsistence is not derived either from labor on one's own land or from some laborious industry. Some human subsistence, as the Pope says, is derived from labor on one's own land. Some human subsistence is derived from laborious industry on the land of others. And--what the Pope seems to ignore--some human subsistence is derived by owning land and letting others work upon it, taking from them part of the fruits of their labor in exchange for the mere permission to labor. By no construction can such ownership be classed as a "laborious industry." Yet such owners generally enjoy the very best of "human subsistence." Nevertheless, a few sentences further on, the Pope naively asks: "Is it just that the fruit of a man's sweat and labor should be enjoyed by another?" Had the Pope pondered over that question more profoundly, he might have come to far different conclusions from those which he seems to have reached. It is unfortunate that the Pope through a desire to uphold the just rights of property should have been led to maintain the privileges of monopoly, and still more unfortunate that so many Catholics will consider his blunder an article of faith and feel it binding upon their consciences to oppose all further efforts to impair private ownership of land by taxation--the only way in which individual possession can be reconciled with the common right of all mankind to the earth. In one place the Pope seems to doubt the extent to which the principle of private ownership is applicable to land, for he says: "The limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry _and the laws of individual peoples_." But if the laws should tax the monopoly value out of land, then the holder of land would not be able to get any profit out of it except by his own labor. It would be no longer such ownership as exists to-day which allows private owners to confiscate the results of other's labor. The Pope here abandons the unqualified ownership which he elsewhere maintains. It might well be asked if he is prepared to excommunicate the legislators and assessors who, in nearly every civilized country to-day, do tax land, and thus to a certain extent impair ownership. And if the same principle were extended so that the tax would equal the entire rental value there would be no chance for the land monopolist to exploit the earnings of labor. Man's means should not be "drained and exhausted by excessive taxation," as the Pope seems to fear, showing that he has a vague idea of the method by which it is proposed to destroy ownership. But as the rental value to-day is already paid by labor, the proposed plan could not drain or exhaust labor any more than at present, while such a tax falling upon lands held for speculation would cause their abandonment, and thus open new fields for labor. Workingmen would then be really "encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land," and