Another point that you have obviously overlooked, and one that goes to the heart of the social problem, is the element of land monopoly. Your tribesman was not satisfied with selecting the best land, and fencing so much thereof as he could till by his own exertion, but he fenced in vast areas that he could not use, and also claimed that as “his own.” By so doing he not only enjoyed the fruits of his own labor, but forced the other twenty to share their products with him as a tribute for using that part of “his land” which he himself could not, or did not, care to use. You may say that they had equal opportunities with him to get first choice. Even if this were granted, it makes no difference in principle. The fact still remains that he has the power to wring unwilling tribute from them. Only one could have the best, and though his contemporaries may have been justly punished for their lack of foresight—which I do not admit—there is yet another side to the question. What is the status of future generations in relation to this proposition? Are they guilty of sleeping upon their rights when all the land has been taken before they were born, or are they born into conditions which they have had no voice in making? If your lonely tribesman, for whose welfare you manifest such solicitation, had been content with the amount of land he could utilize to good advantage, had he been willing to contribute his just share to the common expense, and had he been sufficiently just to recognize and respect the equal rights of his compeers, the common would yet have remained after all had been supplied. What was true of the primitive state is true today in our highly organized society. Shifting conditions make no changes in universal principles. “Society” (did not) “as a matter of self-preservation admit the principle of private ownership of land.” It admitted it because it did not know a better plan—because it did not know the Laws of Rent and of Compensation. You deny that “great estates were the ruin of Italy.” “Before a few could buy up all the land there must have been some great cause at work, some advantage which the few held at the expense of the many.” “What was that advantage?” you ask. No better answer can be given to this query than to refer you back to your own illustration of the farmer tribesman. Did he buy the land? You say he “fenced it in and claimed it as his own.” In like manner did all land pass into private control, each individual claiming far more than he could use. After all the land of Italy had been “claimed” and enclosed, or that of any given community thereof, the power that these land _claimers_ held over subsequent comers is obvious. The only asset of the individual without material wealth is his labor, which is only one—the active—factor in production. Under circumstances such as the foregoing, he is debarred from the passive factor—land—and can apply his labor to it only by paying tribute to those who have _claimed_ it.