June 18, 1887 Vol. I, No. 24Whole No. 24

THE STANDARD

VOL. I.—NO. 24. | NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1887. | PRICE FIVE CENTS

[Mailing label: 52 Dr W Mendelson / 209 W 46th St]

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ANTI-POVERTY.

Dr. McGlynn’s Lectures.

On Thursday evening of last week Dr. McGlynn spoke at Hoosick Falls, and on Friday at Oswego. He had been invited to both places by the Knights of Labor and had large audiences. His engagements for the present week were at Auburn on Monday, at Rochester on Tuesday, at Elmira on Wednesday, at Port Jervis on Thursday, at Middletown on Friday. At Auburn the Academy of Music was crowded. Among those present were Mayor Austin, Judge Cady, Rev. J. J. Brayton, Rev. C. C. Hemenway, Rev. Arthur Copeland, Rev. F. H. Hinman, John W. O’Brien, B. B. Snow, T. J. Searles and Dr. West. Wherever the doctor has visited in the state he has brought many within the folds of the party of the land for the people. The opposing newspapers all concede his sincerity of purpose and admire his eloquence. Letters are constantly being received at room 28, Cooper union, telling of his effective work in many places.

PHILADELPHIA’S ANTI-POVERTY SOCIETY.

McCaull’s opera house in Philadelphia was crowded in every part last Sunday evening at the first public meeting of the branch of the Anti-poverty society of that city. President William J. Atkinson called the meeting to order and explained the objects of the society. Henry George spoke on “The Cause and Cure of Poverty.” At the close of his address numerous questions were put to him by people in the audience. A collection amounting to $115 was taken up. The audience was enthusiastic throughout the evening, evidently having caught the spirit of the parent society. Another meeting will be held on Sunday evening next, at which Louis F. Post will be present.

Two Enthusiastic Meetings in New Haven.

On Sunday last the Rev³⁸. Charles P. McCarthy delivered two addresses in New Haven, under the auspices of the land and labor club and the united labor party.

The afternoon meeting was held in the Central labor hall at three o’clock, the subject of the lecture being “The evils arising from the unjust distribution of wealth.” The lecturer pointed out that the only possible cure for social wrongs was their abolition, and that most, if not all, of these spring from the present unjust distribution of wealth, all of which was produced by labor. He pointed out and emphasized the fact that measures which did not strike at the root of the disease were worse than useless and that half-way reforms were worthless.

In the evening an open-air meeting was held on the green opposite Yale college, nearly two thousand people being present, when Mr. McCarthy delivered an eloquent address. The names of Henry George and Dr. McGlynn were received with prolonged cheers and enthusiasm.

At the close of the discourse the editor of the Advocate announced that these meetings would be continued throughout the summer, and eminent speakers from New York city and other places would be in attendance.

THE PACKARD STUDENTS AND HENRY GEORGE.

It is the custom of the students of Packard^3940?’s Business college to take up for discussion on Friday mornings some of the burning questions of the day, the object being more especially to incite the young mind to more general reading and thinking. For some weeks past they have been discussing private ownership of land. Finally, in order to settle certain differences of opinion which had arisen in the discussion, Mr. Packard suggested that Mr. George be invited to be present on the next occasion, and to answer such questions as might be puzzling the minds of the young people. Mr. George acceded to the request, and on Friday, May [27?], met a large lecture room full of students and their friends. Mr. Packard had formulated a few of the leading questions which had been presented to him in the previous discussions, and opened the exercises by reading these questions in their order, Mr. George responding as they were read. After this more formal opening the matter of questions passed into the hands of the pupils, who spoke entirely from the spur of the moment. As the brief newspaper reports of these questions and answers has been made the subject of considerable press comment, the following verbatim report, made by the pupils of the shorthand department of Packard’s, is here printed:

Q.—Under your proposition to tax land to an amount which would be equivalent to confiscation, would not great injustice be done to owners of mortgages thereon?

A.—I don’t think it would be a great injustice; but supposing there should be some injury it would be very much less than the injury now done to the community by the continuance of the present state of things, and the people who might lose somewhat as mortgagees would gain so much by the general improvement in the condition of the community that they also would be great gainers.

Q.—Has land intrinsic value?

A.—No; nothing has intrinsic value.

Q.—Does not all the value that inheres in land come from the labor of man in one direction or another?

A.—The value which attaches to land comes from the demands of men. If I understand the question it is, Does not the value which inheres in land come from the labor bestowed upon that land? No, it does not. You may have a piece of land on which no labor has been bestowed, and if there is a demand for it it will have a value. Land⁴¹ has a value when^sic, and not until, some one will pay for its use; in other words, if land⁴⁴ is to be used for a productive purpose it has no value until some one, for its use, will consent to give the owner^sic of it some portion of the product of his labor; or, to put it in another form, land has no value until two or more people want the same piece. The demand for use constitutes the real value of land, but land may also have a prospective or speculative value due to the confident expectation that in the future some one will be willing to pay for its use. For instance, land on the outskirts of the cities has a higher value than the present demand for its use would give it. This value is based on the confident expectation of the growth of the community.

Q.—Is not the private possession of land one of the greatest inducements to industry, sobriety and good citizenship?

A.—Private possession, yes; private ownership, no. Possession is necessary to the use of land. No one, for instance, will sow a crop unless there is some certainty that he shall reap it. No one will put up a house unless he has security that it may stand. No one will open a mine unless he can benefit by it. But possession is a very different thing from ownership. Many buildings in this city are put up by men who do not own the land. Nearly the whole city of London has been built in that way, the builder being one man and the land owner another. The Sailors’ Snug Harbor owns a great deal of land in this city, which is let out on ground rent. Buildings are erected upon it by persons who have no ownership in the land on the certainty of the possession for a given series of years. Security of possession is absolutely necessary to the best use of land, but private ownership is not. For instance, if the Sailors’ Snug Harbor can hold certain blocks here, retaining the ownership thereof, and yet induce people, by security of possession for a long term of years, to put up the finest buildings, so the whole land of the city of New York might be held by the corporation—that is, by the people of New York in the same way. There would then be no private ownership of the land of New York, but private improvers would have, possession^sic; a possession sufficient to give them the security necessary to improvement.

Q.—Would not the evil of putting the rental of land in the hands of the government be greater than any evil likely to come from private ownership?

A.—No. What underlies that question is the idea of the corruption of the government by the vast fund there would be to spend. But in taking the rental value of land for public purposes we could dispense with many other taxes that we now collect, and which in their very nature foster corruption, give incentives to fraud and demoralize our whole public system. Take, for instance, the principal tax by which our national government is supported, that on imports; it is a constant cause of fraud, for it tempts men desiring to get taxes levied for their benefit to spend money in politics, and to bring a pressure upon congress for the passage of laws which favor a class to the injury of the whole people. There is, besides, a source of corruption in the large number of employes required, which adds to the number of places to be filled by the adherents of the winning party. Then, again, look at the perjury, fraud and corruption involved in the collection of these duties. So it is with the taxes on personal property and improvements all over the United States. The rich men constantly escape—in very many cases by direct bribery of the officials; in others by putting their money in politics, and in still others by perjury. All that would be swept away. The advantage of a tax levied upon land values is, in the first place, that it can be collected with certainty, and can be assessed more fairly than any other tax. Land^42? lies out of doors; it cannot be hid; its value can be ascertained more clearly than anything else. Here is a piece of land on Fifth avenue. You go to a real estate broker, give him the location of it, and he will tell you pretty nearly its value; but he cannot tell you the value of the house without examination, and as to the value of what is inside the house, that is impossible. It may be filled with the most costly furniture and paintings, or it may be bare. Again, in the funds raised for purposes of common benefit, the people would have a direct interest, and public attention would be concentrated upon their collection and disbursement; and finally, something that you will not fully understand until you see clearly what enormous improvements in present social conditions this simple reform would work—poverty would be abolished; no one need be poor if he is willing to work, and in that condition of society the greed for wealth would also surely go. Men would become less grasping than they are to-day. It would be possible to get for public service the

p. 3, col. 2 best talent and the highest character. Society would be elevated—elevated from the very foundation, and the social conscience improved.

Q.—In the Captain^43? Kidd illustration given by you, would not the same argument pertain equally to the possession of personal property which may have been unjustly obtained?

A.—No; as I say in that very illustration, the wrong done in the appropriation of personal property ceases with time. A horse is stolen, a watch is picked out of one’s pocket, a ship is taken, and the injury soon ends; but when land is wrongfully appropriated it is not merely taken from that generation, but the robbery goes on with all succeeding generations. Personal property tends to decay, and passes away in a very short time; in one or two generations at the most it is gone; but the land remains forever. One generation after another will live on this land. Where will this building be one thousand years from now? But others will be living on this land.

Q.—In case people could hold land only as tenants, would not the tendency be to deterioration in all matters of improvement, especially in beautifying homes and in scientific and esthetic farming?

A.—Possibly, if they were to hold land as tenants liable to be put out in a short time. But we don’t propose the actual taking of land by the state; we don’t propose to make the holders of land formal tenants. We propose that land shall be held precisely as it is now, the only change being the increase of the tax on land values and the abolition of other taxes. The effect of this would be that no one would care to get hold of land that he did not wish to make use of, and the formal ownership of land, the real possession of it, would pass into the hands of those wishing to use it. Under this system a man would own his home just as securely, in fact far more securely, than he can now. The house would be his, the possession of the land would be his. He would still be its owner, subject to the condition of paying this tax, and could give it or sell it, just as he does now.

Q.—Inasmuch as the popular sentiment and the calm judgment of the people are opposed to the spending of our present surplus for the benefit of any part of the country or of any special interest, may we not infer that were the government the great landlord, it would be powerless to do anything with its land, except in the most economical and parsimonious way? And would not even this limited power open the flood-gates of political corruption?

A.—I think probably you have in your mind that the government will take the position of th e owner of the land on whose shoulders rests the burden of improvement. This, as I have said, we do not propose. As for the surplus that remains in our national treasury, the real cause of its existence is the system under which we now raise our revenues. Everybody knows that we are raising too much; but when an attempt is made to repeal any of these taxes, up jump selfish interests to protest, log roll, and bribe, against the repeal of the tax which benefits them, though it injures the public at large. Sweep away that system, and you are rid of one great cause of corruption. But you should understand that we do not propose that the income from the taxation of land values should go to the general government, except in very small part. We have no necessity for much revenue for the general government. We have no need whatever for an army, a navy or a lot of ministers abroad; and very many of the present expenses of the general government would be largely reduced by the simpler system of raising revenue.

Q.—Do you not think that the best way to civilized^sic the Indians is to confer upon them the private ownership of land?

A.—No, on the contrary; if you ask the Indians themselves they will tell you that this simply means destruction, extermination. Where the Indians can hold their lands in common, under the tribal system, as is the custom with all primitive peoples, there is among them no such thing as pauperism. The father may be a drunkard, but when the children come they have a chance to earn a living, an opportunity to make homes for themselves. Wherever the Indian lands have been divided up in severalty they have in a little while passed into the possession of speculators. I was talking recently with a gentleman who spent a number of years at Saginaw, Mich., and he told me the saddest stories of a tribe that was living on that peninsula. They were living in contentment in a simple state and still they all had enough. A lot of speculators got a bill through congress to divide up their lands in severalty, and the consequence was that in two years there were only fourteen who had any land left; the rest had become mere tramps.

Q.—Is there any greater wrong or any greater temptation to wrong in holding large quantities of land for a rise than in holding the products of land for a similar purpose?

A.—Certainly there is. The effect of speculation which raises the price of corn, wheat, or anything of that kind, is to increase the incentive for production; but you cannot produce land. The effect of speculation in land is to deprive people of the opportunity of producing other things. One might corner all the wheat in the world, and the effect would not last very long; but let one become the absolute owner of all the land in the world and what would become of the people? They could only live as his serfs.

Q.—Would the inability to own land have the tendency to equalize the ownership of wealth? Under such a dispensation should we not be just as likely to have Goulds and Vanderbilts as we are now?

A.—Inability to own land is hardly the way to put it. What we propose is to levy upon the land a tax equal to its annual value, irrespective of improvements upon it. This would strike at the heart of the great fortunes of the Goulds and the Vanderbilts. It would do this by making it unprofitable for any one to hold land which he did not want to put to use. The consequence of this would be that there would be no such thing as a class of men who could not find employment for themselves. There would be a demand for all possible labor. Then that intense competition that now drives down wages in all vocations would be gone, and in thus striking at the root of poverty you strike at the root of great wealth. The power that a man gets by the possession of millions comes not so much from the fact that he has the millions as from the poverty of the people, who are glad to do anything to get only a few dollars of it. A man can have all the money he wants in a condition of things where everyone could find employment and get a good and independent living, and he could do no harm, further than these fortunes of which you speak. As for the fortunes that have come with the rise of the railroad systems, they have come because we have left in private hands a great public franchise⁴⁶. We have done what would have been equivalent in old times to making over the highways to individuals. Now, properly, the maintenance of highways is a public function, and this is just as true when those highways are of iron as when they are of cobble-stones, or Macadam, or mere earth. The difficulty that stands in the way of our taking these highways and managing them for the public benefit, is simply the corruption of the government. The simple plan that we propose of levying a single tax, leaving everything else free, would be to simplify our government so that we could take possession of these railways and even run the roads (or run cars over them) with far less danger of

p. 3, col. 3 demoralization than is involved in our present system of taxation. Our tariff is, to my mind, productive of far more corruption than the running of the railroads by government could possibly be.

Q.—Does not the “unearned increment” idea apply with as much force to personal property as to land?

A.—It does not. What is the kind of personal property that increases with the growth of society? Can you think of any? Here, take this house; it is not more valuable than it was when it was built. On the contrary, it is less valuable. It is nearer decay, and, further than that, the improvement in building has been such that a similar house could now be built for less cost. The building has not increased in value, but the ground on which it stands has. What other thing is there that with the growth of the community grows in value, save land? Land, always and everywhere, does, and it is the only thing. What John Stuart Mill called the “unearned increment” is this increase in value, unearned by the owner. The value of a piece of land is not what the individual owner has given to it; it is the value caused by the growth of the community. He may be asleep, or he may be off in Europe, or traveling around the world; this increase of value goes on all the same. It is a value created by the community, and it should belong to the community.

Q.—How about the accumulation of interest? Is not that equally an “unearned increment?”

A.—No; interest is the return for the use of capital, which is the produce of labor used in further production. Interest does not increase with increase of population. Is interest here any higher than it was fifty years ago?

Q.—Under the present condition is there any unwholesome tendency to the acquirement or the possession of land?

A.—Unquestionably there is, if you mean by that is the possession of land concentrating? All over the United States, it is concentrating in obedience to a general law. As the land goes up in value it steadily tends to concentrate. If you take Macaulay⁴⁹’s introduction to the “History of England,” you will find it states that at the time of the accession of James II the majority of English farmers were owners of their own land. At the beginning of this century there were so few of them owners of their own land that they had ceased to be considered. The great agency in producing this concentration was the rise in the value of land. Land, as I said before, lies out of doors. It cannot be stolen; it cannot run away. There it is, and there it will remain. For that reason, under the system of private ownership, land is the most secure investment, and the people who have large amounts of money are willing to pay for land—for the purpose of having a secure investment—more than it is worth to the owner of only a small amount of capital. For instance, the English farmer having a piece of land that would sell for £1,000 could not borrow what capital he wanted to use for less than six, seven or eight per cent; but he might sell his land and then get back its use by paying a rent of only three and a half or four per cent on the selling price. Manifestly, therefore, it was to his interest to sell the land, and in the mutations that come of sickness, accident and losing speculation, he has gradually lost his capital, and of his successors some to-day are tenant farmers of the English capitalist type, and more are agricultural laborers of England—probably the most degraded race of men who speak the English language; men whose lives are spent in the hardest kind of work, and whose old age—if they live to be old—has no relief but in going to the alms house.

Q.—Would not the placing of taxation wholly upon land work to the disadvantage of cultivators thereof and to the advantage of owners and managers of money and personal wealth?

A.—No, not at all. The taxation of capital does not affect the capitalist. It falls ultimately upon the user of the capital, and it gives, moreover, an advantage to those sharp and unscrupulous enough to take advantage in avoiding the taxation. But to raise our public revenues by a tax upon the value of land alone would exempt the producer and the consumer from taxation. It would be to the advantage of the man who is cultivating land or otherwise making use of it. He would gain far more by the exemption of his labor and all that it produced from taxation direct and indirect than he would have to pay by reason of the increased tax on the value of his ground. He would be a great gainer.

Q.—Would not the doing away with the private ownership of land destroy one of the most sacred charms of home—the home feeling? This question is one which has seemed to trouble the minds of our young ladies.

A.—Well now, young ladies, look around you in this city. Here we have private ownership of land. What are its results? In this city not four per cent of the people live in separate homes of their own. Over sixty-five per cent of the families of this city are crowded together more than two families to the floor. There are thousands of families in this city living in single rooms. Do you call that home? Can there be a home in the condition in which the vast majority of the people of this city live? Look, then, to the country. What is the condition of the ordinary farmer’s wife? Can anything be more dreary than that isolated existence? People are scattered so far apart that they have none of the conveniences and intellectual enjoyments of neighborhood. It is a most significant fact that insanity is rapidly increasing in this country, and it is nowhere increasing more rapidly than among farmers’ wives. Now, the effect of the reform we propose would be that, no one having any incentive to hold land idle, the population in our cities would spread, while in the country it would come closer together. One-half of the area in this city is yet unbuilt upon—simply lying in vacant lots—not because people do not want homes, not because there is not capital and labor sufficient to cover these vacant lots, but because the owners of the land are holding it at enormous prices, trusting to the increase of population to give them profit. And the isolation of country life is caused by the same thing. Men when they take up land do not take up what they want to use; they grab all they can get, and so you have a population unduly crowded at the centers and unduly separated at the outskirts. Under the system that we propose it would be profitable for no one to hold land that was not put into use. Population in our cities would spread out, and we would get even in our greatest cities populations living in separate homes surrounded by gardens, and in the country, instead of the present isolation, people would settle closer together, so that they would have opportunities for social enjoyment and intellectual life. So far from destroying homes, the system we advocate would make it easy for every one to get a home. What to-day stands in the way of a man getting a home? The big thing is the price he has to pay for the lot on which a house is to be put. Then comes the tax gatherer and [fines?] him for having built himself a house. Under our system he could get his land for nothing, and he would have little or no tax to pay. Now, which system is the best in that respect?

It was here proposed that Mr. George briefly state his scheme so that it might be understood, Mr. Packard remarking that, although the young men and young women had been diligently pondering over “Progress and

p. 3, col. 4 Poverty,” “Social Problems^4547?48?” and “Property in Land^5051?,” nobody seemed quite to understand the “George theory.”

Mr. George—I am afraid that is because you have read rather what the newspapers say of my books than the books themselves. However, I set out with the proposition that land—that is to say, the material universe, because it is only through land and by land that we can use any part of the material universe—is something that belongs in usufruct⁵² to all men and women equally and of natural right, while the things produced by human labor belong exclusively to the producers. Now to secure that common right of all in the land in conformity with the individual right of the producer to the things he produces, so that all may have access on equal terms to the element necessary to life and labor, and all may have the fullest possession of that which their labor of hand or of head adds to the common wealth, what we propose is this: To let the present legal title to the land remain as it is, and to simply abolish all taxes upon production or upon accumulation—not to tax any man for building a house, for making a piece of goods, or for erecting a factory, or for bringing into the country any wealth from abroad; not to tax him because he accumulates wealth, no matter how much he accumulates; but, abolishing these taxes, to raise our public revenues by a tax levied on the value of the land, irrespective of improvements—raising this tax as fast as we may, until we come as near as possible to taking the full, actual value of the land, thus giving to the community that fund which arises from the development of the community and grows with its growth, and leaving to the individual all that his industry or thrift gives him.

That is our scheme. It is very simple, it involves no revolution, it will not add to the functions of the state. All we have to do to carry it out is to abolish taxes. We now put some tax upon land values. By increasing this tax we can dispense with other taxes, taking more and more of the annual value of land, until finally we take the whole. We would thus get not merely enough to pay our present expenses, but to do very much more. We would have a great public fund to be used for public recreation, education and amusement; that could be used to give us clean streets, fine walks and splendid parks; for purposes of scientific investigation, etc., and finally, could be used—as I believe a portion ought to be used—for taking care of the widow and orphan; not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of right. Everyone in a civilized community like this is a co-heir to a great estate. Here is an enormous value constantly growing, produced by no individual, but by the growth of the community, that should be used for the common benefit. This is what we propose, and the gains that we look for result, first, from the simplification in our present form of taxation; second, from the exemption of the results of labor from taxation; third, from the utilization for public purposes of what is now supposed to be unjustly gathered by individuals, and, fourth, from the opening of land, now monopolized, to the use of labor.

Q.—(From a young lady.)—Do you think that fund could ever be used equitably for the people so long as God has made them so unequal—some born with evil hearts and grasping dispositions, some unscrupulous, some honest, some immoral, drunken and shiftless; in short, so long as God sees fit to create them so widely different, can we set them on an equality by any plan that can be devised?

A.—I do not think God creates people as unequal as our conditions make them, either mentally or morally. I do not think God makes them so wicked as bad conditions lead them to be. I do not think the human heart is altogether evil. On the contrary, my experience is that most men are inclined to be just and generous; that they become hard, greedy, grasping and unscrupulous by reason of the fierce struggle for existence in which they are engaged. The motto of our society to-day is in reality, “Devil take the hindmost”—either crush others or be crushed yourself; and the thing that we really worship is not the living God, but the golden calf. Let man get wealth by whatever means he pleases, let him but get wealth, and he will be honored, and will have all that, to the eye at least, makes life worth having. Abolish poverty, give us the state of society in which every child that comes into the world could at least have wholesome surroundings, could at least have a good education, could at least have an opportunity of making a good living, and I think the temptation to greed would be gone. Under a condition like that we could not admire wealth as we do now. We admire wealth because we fear poverty. Under that state of things I do not think we would have an immoral class or a pauper class. I do not think that men would be as bad as they are to-day, and that all the influences and good motives that animate men would have a much stronger sway.

There are, as you say, differences among men; but the great differences of which you speak are owing mainly to human institutions. There are children coming into the world in this city every day who come in absolutely disinherited, who come in amid squalid surroundings, under conditions in which healthy development is absolutely impossible—many of them under conditions which drive them out of the world within a few months or years. We can certainly change this state of things; and then whatever differences there are among men—differences of industry, of prudence, of capability, let them have their sway and produce their natural result. Let him who works hardest get his natural reward. Under our present condition of things the man who grabs best, or whose ancestors grab for him, is the successful man.

No; I do not think the present evils of society result from the wickedness of the human heart, except as that wickedness may take shape in social institutions which give scope for greed, and then react upon the characters of men; but if we can conform our institutions and laws to promote right and justice, we will be doing away with that tendency.

Q.—(Student)—Would it be just for the owner of a plot of ground with only a small building of two stories, say, to pay as much tax on the land as his neighbor on the opposite corner who owns a similar piece of land, but has a fine six-story fire-proof building on his property? Would that be fair for the poor man? He would be taxed just as much as the rich man.

A.—If I go up here to the Fifth Avenue hotel and order a room, they will charge me just the same whether I am a big man or a little man, whether I am rich or poor. Just the same whether I make use of it or not. And the reason is that I am taking that room and keeping somebody else out of it. If one man has little buildings it is not the fault of the community. He is holding the ground on which he might put big buildings. We give him the opportunity; if he does not put up big buildings it is his own fault.

This is the true system of taxation. It is not what the man himself does, but the opportunity that the community gives him that ought to be considered, and if the opportunities are equal, taxation ought to be equal.

Q.—(Student)—Do they charge as much for a little room as for a big one?

A.—No; nor should we charge as much for a little lot as for a big one.

Q.—(Student)—Does not England dictate to the landlords their prices?

A.—Yes; and the people who are support-

Q.—(Young lady student)—Why do we need no army or navy?

A.—We have no use for an army or navy because we are sixty millions of people, the richest, the brightest, the most inventive, and therefore the strongest of any nation upon earth, living upon a continent separated by three thousand miles of water from all the wars and quarrels of Europe. We are so strong that nobody on the earth would dare to pick a quarrel with us. We ought to be so just and so righteous that we would pick a quarrel with nobody; and we no more want an army or navy than John L. Sullivan⁵⁷ would want a stuffed club in walking down Broadway.

Q.—(Same)—Although so strong, we once were weak enough to quarrel with ourselves.

Mr. George.—I hope we never shall quarrel with ourselves again; but this is certain, that our preparations for war, our army and navy that we had before the war did not do much toward putting it down or making it impossible; and to maintain an army and navy would not make internal quarrels any more improbable, but on the contrary, might be an inducement to quarrel. A man and his wife sometimes quarrel, but it would be a dangerous thing for them to keep weapons at hand in case they might quarrel.

Q.—(Student.)—How would a poor man get money to put a building on a piece of land?

A.—Supposing he could not get it he would have this advantage, that he could get buildings that other men put upon land much cheaper than he can now. To make monopolization—the holding of land without using it—impossible would be to make land cheap for the putting up of buildings, and to take the taxes off buildings would be to increase by that much the inducement to put them up. Therefore, men who have money would go to work and put up buildings on what are now vacant lots. It would increase the number of buildings, and the man who must rent a building could get it by paying less rent than he does to-day.

Q.—(Student)—With no army, what protection would you have against mobs?

Q.—(Student)—In 1886, during the great labor strikes, the employes of a factory in Chicago were urged to strike by a man who it was afterward found had never worked in his life.

A.—You must not believe all you read in the newspapers. I think that story is not quite correct, and even if it were correct there is underneath some real basis of complaint. Do away with that and you will have no difficulty.

Q.—(Student)—To abolish poverty and to give the poor people money we must take it out of the rich man’s pockets, and he would not like that very well.

Mr. George.—Where does the rich man get his money?

Student.—That has nothing to do with the man who hasn’t any.

Mr. George.—It has everything to do with it. If the rich men got their wealth by making it, by giving something fairly in return, then all right. We do not propose to take it from them. But if they do not, then it must come from somebody who does work to produce it, and the wealth they have is really the robbery of the poor. This we aim to stop. It is utterly impossible for any man to fairly get the monstrous fortunes that some have in this community. What we want to do is to give men a fair opportunity. Under the present system thousands and thousands of men must constantly pay other men for the privilege of living and working—must pay somebody else for the privilege of using that which was created for their use. Abolish that system; do away with this primary injustice, and then all men will have equal opportunities and you can secure to those who produce wealth the full enjoyment of it.

Q.—Did not all land once belong to the government?

A.—Yes; but, supposing somebody’s forefather had had the foresight to lay claim to property in the sun, and were to leave his children the right of charging other people’s children for the enjoyment of the light of the sun, would that be a reason why other people’s children should be such fools as to keep on paying it? What right had Adam and Eve to give away this world? When they died and went to some other world they certainly lost all right in this. And what right has any one since then had? All the generations of the world have had no right to give any one perpetual title to the use of the earth. Every child that is born is born with a natural right to the use of land—a right that nothing can bar.

Q.—(Student)—You say the government is not corrupt, but the men who go into the government corrupt it?

A.—No, I did not say that. I said that our laws of the present day, and especially our laws for raising revenue, foster corruption and put a premium upon fraud, and that they tend to make the government corrupt.

Q.—(Student)—Would not your plan make the people slaves to the government?

A.—No; but even if that were true, the American people had better be serfs to a government which means but themselves than to be serfs to private individuals. The great mass of American people are fast passing into the condition of serfdom. What is the essential thing in serfdom? It is that you must give your labor and ask no return. The majority of children that are born to-day must give their labor for the privilege of living and working in their native land, for the privilege of breathing the air or using the sunshine.

Q.—(Student)—Suppose a man owns a house and lot worth, say, $15,000, and it is all he has. From the rent of that house he lives. Would you have the government take it from him without an equivalent, and thus destroy his only income?

A.—I would let things remain as they are now, the only difference being that I would take taxation off from the personal property and improvements and put it on the value of land. The man who now has a $15,000 house which he rents would continue to rent it and receive the rent as he does now. The only difference would be that he would have to pay to the community a higher tax upon the value of his land, and no tax upon the value of his house. The relation between him and the tenant would be just the same as it is now. The tenant, however, would have the advantage in this, that the tendency being to erect more houses the tenant’s rent would fall.

Q.—(Young lady student)—Is not the ocean as well as the land the gift of the Creator? Should not the people who use the ocean pay taxes?

A.—Yes; if that use is exclusive. Wherever the use of any part of the ocean becomes a valuable privilege, then the best way would be to have the user pay a tax; as, for instance, on the valuable fur fisheries in the Aleutian islands a tax is paid to the general government.

Q.—(Young lady)—Ought not the people who have refrigerators to pay taxes on the air they use?

A.—Wherever, if you can imagine such a case, the use of air is necessarily exclusive; but in that case the valuable privilege would give value to land. If you had some piece of land where the air was peculiarly good, that

p. 3, col. 6 piece of land would have a value resulting from the opportunity to get good air, and that value ought to be taken for the public.

Q.—(Young lady)—You say that land can not be produced. How about the Netherlands?

Mr. George.—Tell me how the Netherlands were produced.

Young lady.—They were wholly reclaimed by human labor.

Mr. George.—What kind of labor?

Young lady—By draining, and diking, and digging trenches and canals.

Mr. George.—Where did they build the dikes?

Young lady.—Partly in the sea, and then filled in with earth and reclaimed the bottom of the sea.

Mr. George.—What would they have done if there had been no bottom there? The improvement is the result of human labor, and that is something for which no one ought to be taxed, for at least a specified time. But what was the bottom before it was filled up?

Young lady.—It was presumably land.

Mr. George.—Yes; and if any value attached to that it ought to be taxed. Land^{5354?55?56?58?} doesn’t mean simply the surface of the earth which you see. It is all land in the economic sense, down to the center. You have got to have some foundation before you can improve. The ocean has value in only specified places, where some exclusive advantage is attached to its use, as in pearl fisheries or in an oyster bed. Land, as I said in the beginning, has no intrinsic value. All the land on the continent of America was worth nothing before men came here.

Q.—(Student)—How do you account for all the land destroyed by human labor, etc.?

A.—You cannot destroy land; even where you wash the soil away, land remains.

And now, young ladies and gentlemen, I find that my time has more than elapsed, and I must conclude. I have been greatly pleased with your questions and have answered them as well as I could so briefly. I fully agree with Mr. Packard that the only way to get knowledge is to get it for yourselves. You will, indeed, remember very little of all I have said, but it may induce you to think and read, and out of that I hope some good may come.

The Crusaders’ Song.

(Air—“Marching Through Georgia.”)

“Egypt” in the Catholic Herald.

CHORUS.

Chorus—

Chorus—

Chorus—

Chorus—

Plain Common Sense.

Rev. H. O. Pentecost in New Jersey Unionist.

The New York Herald says, in speaking of the activity of the real estate market in that city: “New York cannot grow without causing the growth of her suburbs, and new facilities for getting to and from those places must inevitably raise the value of their lands.”

Precisely. All improvements in any community “raise the value of lands”—the selling and the renting value. Wages have not been raised in Harlem by the better facilities of travel which the elevated roads afford, but rents have. If passengers were carried free on those roads the ten cents a day the laborer would thus save would ultimately go to the landlord, because the rush of persons to the termini of free railroads would immediately push up rents.

Suppose New York had the best public schools in the world and the best wealth producing machinery and methods of exchange (trade) and all her laboring population were total abstainers, very industrious and economical, and that burglaries, murders and other forms of crime were unknown. What would be the result? New York would then be a very desirable place of residence, and the value of land would increase, but wages would not. Wages could not increase, because when the men who own the land take all the effects of industrial and social improvement in the form of rent the laborer is just where he was before the improvement came about. The land owner holds a first mortgage on all the wealth produced, and he has the legal right to take it all, and he does take it all except what it is expedient to allow the laboring man to retain (as interest or wages), to make him willing to go on working for the land owner’s benefit.

Facts for Farmers to Consider.

Chicago Daily News.

It appears that in the states of Kansas and Nebraska, in counties taken at random, from fifty per cent to three-quarters of the farm lands are mortgaged up to within sixty to seventy-five per cent of their cash value; that there is no accumulation of capital in the hands of the farmers; that in case of a failure of crops the owners would have to buy the lands; that in the states of Kansas and Nebraska there are 134 real estate loan companies who charge from eight to twelve per cent interest per annum; and, finally, that the much-denounced landlord system of the old world is rapidly appearing in a most revolting, plutocratic form in the new.

Direct Taxation.

Detroit Advance.

There is a claim made that the change will work injustice to the farmers who, as is well known, are the class of all classes of workers the most tax ridden. Certainly any system that would any farther oppress them ought to be resisted, but placing all taxes upon land values will not oppress the farmers. On the contrary it will place the burden of taxation upon the valuable land of the large cities, and the very valuable mining and oil lands, when a square acre often has more value than a whole fertile farming county.

THE STANDARD.

HENRY GEORGE, Editor and Proprietor.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1887.

THE STANDARD is forwarded to subscribers by the early morning mails each Friday. Subscribers who do not receive the paper promptly will confer a favor by communicating with the publisher.

DEACON S. V. WHITE of Brooklyn and Wall street recently made a speech at Galesburg, O^sic., in which, after boasting of the immense opportunities offered to industry and enterprise in this country, he referred to the fact that he himself began his business career thirty-five years ago by sawing wood in Galesburg at seventy-five cents a day, the necessary inference being that any American who begins life by sawing wood, or performing other manual labor, may, by diligence and thrift, come to be as rich as Deacon^6061? White is, within thirty-five years.

The same New York paper which reports the deacon’s speech informs us that the drivers and conductors of a street railway chiefly owned by Mr. White are complaining to district assembly 75, K. of L., that they are allowed only half an hour for dinner, instead of an hour, and that there is no regularity in their trips.

The connection which Deacon White endeavored to establish in the minds of the people of Galesburg between sawing wood at seventy-five cents a day and becoming a millionaire within thirty-five years is somewhat difficult. The connection between the unpaid daily performance of half an hour’s extra work by some hundreds or thousands of men, and the rapid increase of the wealth of the man for whom they work, is decidedly obvious.

THE pro-poverty economists and papers tell us that in thus demanding a daily extra half hour’s work from every one of his drivers and conductors, Deacon White is acting strictly within his rights; he offers his employes a certain wage for a certain amount of work; if they don’t feel satisfied with it, let them leave the job and go elsewhere. Then one of two things will happen—either men will come forward who will be satisfied to work for Deacon White on Deacon White’s own terms, or the deacon, finding it impossible to secure men for the wages he offers, will be compelled to accede to his present employes’ demands. In either case, the matter will have been settled without friction, and in strict accordance with the laws of trade. There is an appearance of straightforwardness and simplicity about such a statement of the case that is very captivating—to people who don’t take the trouble to think.

“This,” says Deacon White to his conductors and drivers, “is my railroad. If you don’t choose to work on it on my terms, leave it! If you want to dictate the terms on which a railroad shall be run, go get a railroad of your own!”

All right. Suppose they do it. Let us fancy that the conductors and drivers, taking the deacon at his word, and favored by extraordinary good luck, hunt around until they find people willing to let them have the use of sleepers and iron and cars and horses—the whole equipment of a railroad, in short. Still something is lacking—the most essential thing of all. Before they can lay or operate their road, they must get something more, which Deacon White has, and which they haven’t—the franchise⁶³—the privilege of using the streets. Without that, ties^6264? and iron and cars and horses and their own brawn and muscle are useless to them^6566?; their condition is practically unchanged; they must still accept the deacon’s offered terms or remain idle.

“This is ridiculous,” says the pro-poverty advocate. “There are plenty of occupations besides railroading; let these discontented fellows select some other vocation for which no franchise is needed, and go to work at that.” And where, pray, are these vocations to be found? Mr. Maloney, the car driver, could make an excellent living by crossing the river to the Jersey shore and breaking the solid rock of the Palisades up into paving blocks. There is plenty of demand for these blocks; there are millions of tons of rock to split them out of; a hammer, a drill and a pound or two of gunpowder are all the capital required for the business. But let Mr. Maloney go to work on the Palisade rocks, and straightway some fellow will appear with his little franchise paper, duly signed, sealed and delivered, confounding Maloney’s impudence, and vigorously explaining that he doesn’t want paving blocks split out of that rock just now, and when he does, he’ll hire a man to do it at suitable wages.

Is Mr. Maloney an agriculturist? There are thousands of acres of arable land close at hand, untilled and vacant; but for every acre some individual possesses a written franchise, such as Deacon White holds for his railroad. Is he a house builder? Before p. 4, col. 2 he can go to work appears some franchise holder from whom permission to build must be bought. Soil, rock, mineral, over each and all of them stand people waving franchise papers, forbidding any man to go to work unless he gives them so much out of what he makes, and contemptuously bidding him, if he doesn’t like the terms they offer, to go elsewhere.

In the light of these facts, Deacon White’s fair-seeming suggestion to his employes to go look for work somewhere else if they don’t like his hours or his pay is something of a mockery. And the methods by which, within the space of thirty-five years, a man can develop from a wood sawer at seventy-five cents a day to a several-times millionaire are pretty evident. An immense and steadily increasing mass of humanity is urged to labor by the pressing need of food and shelter; a small body of men hold franchises which enable them to say whether other men shall go to work or not. Manifestly, the sure way to wealth is, not to work, but to become a franchise holder and sell the privilege of working to others^sic. And this is what Deacon White and other millionaires have done. What the good man meant to say in his Galesburg speech was, not that the way to get rich is to saw wood at seventy-five cents a day, which is absurd, but that a man may begin life by working at seventy-five cents a day and get rich nevertheless, provided he is cunning enough, and unscrupulous enough, and lucky enough to get possession of a sufficient quantity of franchises to make an army of men work for him.

IN a blind, unconscious, groping sort of a way these facts are recognized by our law makers and administrators. Only the other day there arrived in this port of New York fifteen Irish families—ninety-three souls in all—from Killarney, in Ireland, against whom the heinous charge was made that they had no money wherewith to buy permission to go to work. The grown persons among them were stout, able-bodied and healthy, and of good moral character—the same sort of people exactly as were the ancestors of the best and most aristocratic families of New York and other of our cities; but they brought with them nothing but a willingness to work, and—and—in fact, all the work franchises have been gobbled by the best families aforesaid, and there are no more left. And so free America sought to bang the door in the face of oppressed Ireland, and but for a judicially discovered “defect” in the law would have sent the fools who had fled hither to be rid of landlordism back to Killarney, bidding them put money in their purses before they came again.

It was a cruel thing to try to do, but strictly logical. It rather takes the point off our Fourth of July oratory to be sending the oppressed of Ireland back to Ireland and refusing them an asylum here, but really it’s the very least we can do, in justice to Mr. Maloney, the car driver, and his fellows. For if we insist that Mr. Maloney and the rest of the people already here shall compete, each with all the rest, to see who will give most to the holders of franchises in return for the privilege of working for a living, it would be a manifest injustice to make the competition keener by introducing fresh competitors.

There is an alternative, of course—there always is. We might tell Deacon White and the other franchise owners that God evidently provided this earth for the use of the people living in it, and that if they want to control the franchises of car running, and stone cutting, and grain raising, and coal mining, and so forth, to the exclusion of Mr. Maloney and his fellows, they must be content to pay for them whatever they may be worth. Such a system would very soon throw the work franchise open, not only to Deacon White’s car drivers and conductors and all the rest of the plundered poor of these United States, but also to as many Killarney families as might choose to immigrate; or, for that matter, to the whole population of Europe if they came here in a body.

But then it wouldn’t be possible for a man to begin life by sawing wood at seventy-five cents a day and become a double or treble millionaire within thirty-five years.

IT is said that the various manufacturers and importers of india rubber have decided to pool their interests in one grand combination, to be known as the “rubber trust;” and, whether the report be true or not, it is interesting as illustrating one of the strongest tendencies of the modern industrial system—that toward combination and consolidation. The small producers are swallowed up by the larger; the large producers are combined into corporations; and these in turn are aggregated into pools or syndicates or trusts, in such a way as to render competition among producers not only needlesss^sic and unprofitable, but absolutely impossible. By acting together in this way the coal mine owners settle month by month what shall be the people’s allowance of coal, and what price the people shall pay for it; the railway monarchs impose upon commerce such rates as it can bear; the Standard oil trust prevents competition among the refineries; the phosphate rock-syndicate regulates the phosphate mining of South Carolina; the cotton seed oil trust rules the market of the whole United States, and the rubber trust will fix the price of its raw material, regulate the manufacture of rubber products, and determine, with mathematical certainty, the highest rate of profit that can be exacted without unduly checking consumption.

Thus the march of concentration goes on, in obedience to the law of social evolution; tending more and more to abolish p. 4, col. 3 that competition which is said to be the life of trade, while enforcing and rendering keener the competition for employment among the great mass of the people who have only brain and muscle to offer in exchange for the necessaries of life. That these combinations are well nigh irresistible engines of oppression is a truth which even the pro-poverty press and preachers are forced to recognize. What is less generally understood is that their power of oppression is mainly due to the counter pressure against their victims of the unyielding wall of landlordism. Between the syndicate which will give him work only upon its own terms and the land monopolist who either absolutely refuses him permission to work, or grants it on terms still more oppressive, the laborer is rapidly being squeezed to the limit of his endurance. The situation is becoming plainer every day to whomsoever, having eyes, will see. It is fortunate for our civilization that as the evil becomes more apparent the remedy also grows more evident. When once the equal right of access to the general bounties of nature shall have been restored to men by the absorption of land values in taxation, if these giant combinations are not transformed from instruments of oppression to beneficent agents of production, the way to deal with them will at least have been made clearer.

> THE labor party is petitioning the pope to reinstate McGlynn and denounces O’Brien because he refuses to advocate the theory that the Irish should steal their landlords’s^sic property.—[Mail and Express.

Two deliberate falsehoods. The labor party has never thought of petitioning the pope or any other foreign prince, and it denounces William O’Brien, not because he refuses to advocate the theory that the Irish should steal their landlords’ property, but because he persists in advocating the theory that the landlords should only steal seventy-five per cent of their tenants’ property.

A CORRESPONDENT calls attention to the fact that a sale of land is mentioned in the Bible before that by which the people of Egypt delivered up their lands and their bodies to Pharoah^sic to gain relief from famine. This is true, though the sale was not one such as we would even at this day call a real estate transaction. It was merely the purchase of a burial lot. Sarah being dead, Abraham begged of the children of Heth that they would give him possession of a burial place, and Ephron sold him the field in which was situated the cave of Machpelah for the purpose. This certainly indicates that private ownership in land was known to the Hittites, or children of Heth, but it must be remembered that the Hittites were a Hamite race, neither of the country nor kindred of Abraham or Isaac, and that the Old Testament does not represent them as enjoying the favor and guidance of God. THE STANDARD, therefore, appears to have been right in showing that the first real estate operation, as we understand the term, was that which delivered the Egyptians into slavery, and that the direct command of God to the chosen people forbade to them the system of ownership in anything more than the mere right to the use of land.

QUERIES AND ANSWERS.

Land Grabbing in Henry VIII’s Time.

OSWEGO, N. Y.—The present immoral theories of private ownership of land are comparatively modern and were allowed to grow and assert themselves after the causes of the feudal tenures had ceased to exist, but at various times they were opposed even by laws. The 13th of the 25th of Henry VIII, after reciting the fact that greedy and covetous persons had accumulated a vast multitude of farms and had kept them in their hands to the exclusion of husbandmen, thus driving them to robbery and theft or to cold and hunger, enacted that no person should hold or own more than two farms, and even restricted the owners in the manner of use of such farms. The act was aimed at the merchants of London, who were becoming large land owners and were pleased to think that they could use their lands in the same manner as their goods and merchandise. The change of the tenure of land and the doctrine of its private ownership gradually drove the small land owners into the ranks of the agricultural laborers until the present land monopoly was reached.^70?71?

The statesmen of early times were charmed to see the small land owners disappear. They held that the possession of a small estate tended to make its owner revolutionary and democratic, while, on the other hand, the great landlords would be interested in maintaining present institutions—that the land would be better cultivated, and thus the nation would become richer and more prosperous. Even the great Bacon lamented the law against inclosing the commons, holding that it was a blow at the prosperity of the nation. He evidently considered the wealth of a few individuals or of a class the index of the prosperity of the whole people. Our able statesmen make the same great mistake.

The vast amount of unoccupied land in this country has made us as indifferent to the immorality of the present system of land tenure as the English of those days were to its gradual appearance. They also had land enough and to spare, and would have thought the present condition of the people of England impossible.

C. N. MATSON.

Owners of Lands and Lives.

CHIHUAHUA, Mexico, June 1.—Your doctrines have been my day dreams for years. I have been a soldier asleep on his arms for lack of a leader. Your books are trumpet calls to battle. Among my friends are many Mexicans who share our views. To the few who read English I lend your books, and to those who cannot I talk about the subject, which we have dubbed “Duenos^sic de tierras y vidas,” viz, “Owners of lands and lives.” There are millions of acres in private hands here, where the miserable “peons’” sons inherit nothing but a right to slave and pay the debts of their fathers. The hopelessness of it all is that these people are as content as swine when hunger is satisfied, and when not, they are patient, very patient, and die easily. Even now the municipal lands set apart for each town and village are passing from the possession of the people; even their “burros” can no longer graze on the common lands at liberty lest they should encroach on the rich neighbors’ corn fields. This land is owned by the township and the rents go to the town, but the rich men of the town fix the rents, so that the workers gain little or no advantage. Truth is our beacon.^72?

N. D. ALMA.

Truth Told in a College Oration.

B. J. Hazen of Middlebury, Vt., in a college oration recently, said: “Let us consider for a moment what would be the result if one, shrewder than his fellows, should put an invisible barrier of ownership about the fishing ground, saying: ‘This is mine. You can not go there except upon my terms.’ The men who wished to fish there would no longer have the whole product of their labor, but would be compelled to hand over whatever proportion of their earnings the owner chose to take. There is no difference in the last result whether a man owns the labor of other men or whether he owns the land upon which those men must live. In either case the proprietor grows rich by appropriating the products of the toil of others”

Dr. McGlynn as an Orator.

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 1.—I had the great pleasure of hearing Dr. McGlynn here, and regret that I could not form his acquaintance. I have rarely heard his equal as an orator, and I have heard Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Phillips and others. At the same time I more cordially responded to everything he said than to any speech I ever heard. After seeing and hearing him I can understand how it is that he holds his old flock, in spite of his church authorities, spell bound. God bless and preserve him, and speed the good cause!

DAVID R. GOODLOE.

A Path Marked by the Footprints of the Savior.

RAHWAY, N. J., June 14.—It is the prominence which Dr. McGlynn gives to the religious aspect of this grand reform that arms him with power. It heretofore has been the weakness of social reformers that they have ignored (to a great extent) the Gospel. It is this which makes socialism and communism so utterly powerless to influence the American mind, and it is because the “new crusade” emblazons the cross (symbol of the teaching, suffering Christ) on its standard—for that and that alone—I have enrolled myself among its defenders. To me, a pledged minister of the gospel, Jesus Christ is first, last and everything; and He is so because I find in Him all truth. Himself the “Good Samaritan” of His^73? p. 4, col. 5 own parable, He came to bind up the wounds of suffering humanity, to pour on them the soothing oil and to wash them with the healing wine. To follow Him in this is to do what that “priest of the people” and you are aiming to accomplish, and I go with you, whom I have never seen and may never see, because, and only because, I see the path to have long before been marked by the footprints of my Lord. Fealty to Christ demands it.

(Rev.) WILLIAM ROLLINSON.

Mr. O’Brien Evicted a Great Principle.

CHICAGO, June 12.—I am delighted with the manner in which you handle William O’Brien in your issue of the 11th. Without being an Irishman or a Catholic, I have seen the “Irish issues” deftly manipulated and mixed up with American “issues,” lo! these many years! And now comes this Mr. O’Brien and fears the intrusion of American “issues” upon the holy cause of collecting money for the Irish parliamentary party from the Hoffman^74? house genus of the saviors of American society.

Possibly the practical question with Mr. O’Brien was $25,000 without consistency, or else consistency without $25,000; he chose the former with tears trickling down his cheek for the poor, oppressed, evicted tenants of Lansdowne, while he himself was evicting the reform principle from his own heart.

AUGUST E. GANS.

Bulletin Boards as Missionaries.

EAST SAGINAW, Mich., May 30.—Let me suggest that a good way to “spread the light” would be by use of the bulletin board. On this could be pasted an extract from some article on an industrial topic, one of those short, sharp and decisive arguments so often found in THE STANDARD, for instance. These bills could be printed in one place at small cost, in large, bold type, and the locals of the Knights of Labor, labor unions, granges, brotherhoods or any other societies or organizations might hang out a board either before their rooms or in some prominent place, and in this simple way supply information to great numbers of people.

J. SISSON.

An Edifice of Liberty.

BROOKLYN, June 9.—Of Irish descent, I was born, bred, and have ever been a strict Roman Catholic, believing that to be the one true church. But I always believe that Americans will never tolerate foreign dictation in our political affairs, for that determination is inborn in them, and those who become citizens soon imbibe the same feeling. Father McGlynn and you are laying the foundations of an edifice of liberty that will never crumble, and are sowing seeds that will yield good fruit, lifting men up and not dragging them down and disgracing them. All hail, and God-speed to you both, and to your heaven born cause.

PATRICK O. MALONEY.

Didn’t Know How to Grind His Ax.

DETROIT, Mich., June 6^sic.—If landlordism is wrong in Ireland, it must be wrong the world over, and I don’t see how Editor O’Brien, with all his metaphysical skill, is to get out of that box. Given a principle that is wrong in one place, it must assuredly be wrong altogether. What is sauce for the goose will do just as well for the gander. Mr. O’Brien had an ax to grind, and at the last moment he inadvertently let the edge fall on the grindstone, and so undid in a moment all his labor. Who have been supporting the Irish land league? Is it not the people? Certainly not the moneyed interests, excepting at election times.

J. F. DUNCAN.

A Great Day for Cincinnati.

The Henry George club of Cincinnati is completing arrangements for a rousing celebration of the Fourth of July. It has engaged the Zoological garden, which comprises sixty-five acres of woodland, lake and pleasant walks, and in addition to the usual entertaining features of music and games, there will be elaborate exercises peculiar to the day. Addresses will be delivered by Joseph R. Buchanan of Chicago, Warren W. Bailey, editor of the Vincennes⁷⁵, Iowa, News^sic, and Henry George. Arrangements have been made for excursions from all parts of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. It is expected that many thousands will attend.

An Eight-Year-Old Anti-Povertyite.

Will you please send me some tracts? I go to school every day, but I can give them out after I come home. My mamma and papa belong to the Anti-poverty society and I will join, too, when I get money enough, if they will take a boy eight years old. I get all the tracts I can find when I go to the Academy of Music Sunday nights. but^sic I only get a few. We all love Dr. McGlynn, but we are not Catholics. I will do all I can to help the cause along. I like Henry George, too, and I want to be like Dr. McGlynn when I get older. Please send the tracts to my mamma, Mrs. Burroughs^76?.

HARRY F. BURROUGHS.

Want to Know the Reason Why.

NEW YORK, May 25.—A former democrat, I am now a stanch advocate of your system of taxation, no matter who says it is wrong. The pope and others say it is wrong, but we all ask why is it wrong? And these people answer, “Because it’s wrong!” Now, this may be very convincing argument to their followers, but so far as the masses of us are concerned, more substantial reasons will have to be given. Call the party that seeks the amelioration of the condition of the working people by whatever name you please, and I am a member of it.

A. C. DEGOUT.

The Free Soil Club’s Lecture.

The first lecture of a course given under the auspices of the Free soil club was delivered on Wednesday evening last by Hon. Thomas G. Shearman, at the Cooper union, the subject being “Taxation.” That the subject was treated in a masterly style need hardly be told those who read the gentleman’s paper on “The Single^78? Tax” recently published in this paper. Rev. Charles P. McCarthy and Henry George addressed the audience briefly, Mr. George extending to Mr. Shearman an invitation to repeat his lecture before the Anti-poverty society.^77?79?

“Please Bite on This File.”

NEW YORK, June 9.—Shame on the writer of such stuff as that which appeared in the New York Herald (which so bitterly opposed and ridiculed Parnell and Davitt in their early struggles) under the head of “Please Bite on this File.” It is an insult to Irishmen supposing that they are not competent to understand the false light in which he tries to place Henry George, whose noble doctrine is “the land for all the Irish,” the laborer as well as the tenant farmer. Irishmen do not eat hay. They want no rights for themselves which they are not willing to concede to others.

J. T. C.

A Bright Young Paper.

The Milwaukee, Wis., Review is a young, handsome, union, daily paper, that advocates the abolition of all taxes, save one on land values. It is doing important work in starting a great many people in and around Milwaukee thinking.

p. 4, col. 6

SOCIETY NOTES.

Mrs. J. Hood Wright⁸⁰ gave a garden party at Fort Washington⁸¹ lately. Among the attractions was a Punch and Judy show for the children, with a plentiful supply of strawberries and cream.

Katie Ludwig, aged 16, Carrie [Pöhl?], aged 14, and Annie Ludwig, aged 15, sued the Castle braid company of 103 and 105 Thompson street, New York, for wages due. It appeared in evidence that all three girls were experienced hands, the elder having been at work for three years and the two younger for six and seven months respectively. Their wages were $2 a week, and their hours of labor ten daily. Judgment was given for the plaintiffs.

The Standard oil trust has a capital of over $100,000,000, the Cotton oil trust of $30,000,000, the Cattle trust of $25,000,000, and the Rubber trust, just organized, has a capital of $35,000,000. “In God we trust” may be a good enough motto for the people of the United States, but its capitalists go in for another “trust” altogether.—[Philadelphia Press.

An ingenious young beggar has been doing a brisk business along the East river ferries for a few weeks. He is a small, sore-eyed boy ten or twelve years old, with a pinched, sad face. He always has four pennies and wants one more to pay his car fare to Harlem. He worked Wall, South, Fulton and Catharine ferries very successfully until last Saturday. Then a broker at Wall street ferry recognized the little scamp as the same boy to whom he had given a penny early last week on the same plea. The broker denounced him so vigorously that he hasn’t been seen there since.—[New York Sun.

The whole population deals in real estate—it is a veritable fever; all buy; all sell; thus far all make money. As there has been a steady rise and no break eastern capitalists are constantly sending large sums to back up this endless bargaining. The business blocks built and building are very fine, and the people have erected for themselves many beautiful homes. It is a city built in a night, and has therefore every modern improvement and no obsolete inconveniences. And if you did not plunge from a $50,000 house into a wretched hole filled with almost “squatter sovereignty,” you could enjoy its really natural beauty.—[Kansas City Letter.

A Castle garden confidence man named Mancini ingratiated himself with two Italian immigrant women the other day, and on pretense of buying their tickets for Chicago, got possession of all their money—some $800. The money was recovered by the police, and the swindler lodged in jail.

Jay Gould’s new private car has been completed at a cost of $35,000. It was built at Pullman, Ill., and is called the Atalanta.—[Altoona Independent.

A cent bed house has been established in the City of Mexico, where the poor can find lodgings for that modest sum.—[Exchange.

The Eastern Seaboard bituminous association at a meeting held in Philadelphia, resolved to enforce the rules of the association against the cutting of prices in New York. The association also contemplates making another advance of ten cents a ton in prices about July 1.

On the dusty grass at lunch time I noticed that Mr. Grace’s guests were industriously throwing fragments of their feast from the coach, and that yet not a particle of food was to be seen on the grass. Not less than twenty hungry wretches were hanging about that coach and eagerly picking out of the dust even the smallest and least attractive fragments of food. Chicken bones, scraps of bread and pie crust were eagerly snatched up and fought over. From a coach near by a party of young men gayly inclined were entertaining a crowd of just such starving wretches, tossing bones to them, and deriving considerable sport from their doglike struggles.—[London letter in New York Sun.

A white baby was born in South Sioux City, Neb., the other day, and it being the first occurrence of the sort there the citizens celebrated by serenading the newcomer and presenting it with a corner lot.

Bribery is to be made more difficult and costly in Chicago. Under the new law the city will have forty-eight aldermen instead of thirty-six.

It is reported that the Rev. Dr. Reid, a missionary to central Africa, has been eaten by the natives.

Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy.

DENVER, Col., June 6.—Herbert Spencer⁸³, in his essay entitled “The Sins of Legislators⁸⁴,” tells us that the law passed by the British parliament to relieve the overcrowding of the poor in the east end of London had just the contrary effect to that desired; and that, as a result of the passage of the law, “11,000 artisans were made homeless, and had to find corners for themselves in miserable places that were already overflowing,” and further, that “at a cost of six and a quarter millions of dollars to the rate payers, 21,000 persons were unhoused, and houses were provided for 12,000, leaving 9,000 houseless.” Let these facts cool the ardor of those who expect much good from the millions of dollars to be expended in improving the condition of the tenement house population of New York city. To those who may be able to pay the increased rent demanded for those tenements near the improvements some benefits may accrue, but the abjectly poor, it is manifest, will derive none whatever.^82?

What will most surprise those who are engineering these imaginary philanthropies, is the fact that Herbert Spencer sees and deplores in them a practical step toward that socialism which is the opprobrium, the terror and the raw head and bloody bones of the capitalistic press, churches and classes. Has that madness seized them which it is said the gods visit on those they intend to destroy?

C. S. E.

The Anti-Poverty Democratic Party.

PORT JERVIS, N. Y., June 8.—The name of the new party will be settled in this way: The “old liners” will hereafter coalesce, and this aggregation will be known as the republican party. When the conservatives have got together, what then remains for the radical, go-ahead people—the men and women who move the world? They must in time unite on some great principles. Those principles, I think, will be universal suffrage and “the land for all the people.” These forces are moving rapidly. The democratic party sees the handwriting on the wall. The present democratic party must do something. It must absorb the new forces, or else be absorbed. There is no alternative. And the new forces will be known as the democratic party. It is a good name, although somewhat hackneyed and sadly and shamefully misused. But the economic forces will renovate it and wash it white as snow. It will be once more the democratic party of Jefferson.

W. T. DOTY.

They Came to Scoff, But Went Away Believing.

GREEN ISLAND, N. Y., June 7.—Dr. McGlynn’s lecture in Troy has made him a host of friends. Men came to hear him and to condemn him. With surly faces they watched him as he made his appearance on the stage, and sneered at the grand round of applause that greeted him as he stepped forward. But in a few minutes a pleased expression came over their faces, and before the lecture was half over they were loudest in their applause. Father McGlynn has set many men to thinking and has helped our cause a great deal. At the close of the lecture names and addresses of many who wished to join our organization were handed in, among them two clergymen, one a Catholic priest and the other a Protestant.

HENRY C. ROMAINE.

We Waut^sic the Earth.

(Air—“Killarney.”)

A DAKOTA PAPER.

DAKOTA, June, 1886^sic.—Since my last letter I have stolen a march on my rival, the republican editor. I have started a daily paper. He is left in the lurch with his weekly. He has reproached me, of course, accusing me of breaking the terms of our tacit honorable understanding that we should divide the loaves and fishes of our city’s journalism. My answer was that the unexpressed but understood agreement between us related simply to what was, and not to what was to be. I knew that no explanation whatever would satisfy him, but I made the answer, as a business man, seemingly satisfactory to myself. The truth was, I had been aware that he contemplated anticipating my move, and I overreached him in the nick of time. So the sweet public is chanting pæans of congratulation to me, for if the honest people of our city have been well taught in anything, it is to praise the forestaller and smart trickster. My rival is now printing in his somewhat back number weekly complimentary mention of my energy, together with notices of intention soon to start himself what shall be the daily of our part of Dakota. In his sanctum he is bottling his wrath and mixing gall and wormwood to be administered to me in good time.^86?87?

I, too, have a sanctum of my own. The Daily State Journal must needs have a sanctum. It is a little corner room slightly elevated above the floor level and partitioned off so that I can look out on Main street from one window and on Prairie avenue from another. The partitions are of glass. Through one I can overlook the composing and press rooms; through another the counting and editorial rooms. In the editorial rooms there are two working journalists. The lesser of these two lights is a stripling, whose salary is not to be mentioned. He gathers items, which he heads as “Court Cutlets,” “Police Points,” “Sporting Sprigs,” and “Town Topics,” the latter mainly embodied in such paragraphs as tickle our enterprising fellow citizen, Mr. Push, who is greasing the hinges of his front fence gate; or the indefatigable and talented Professor Tinkle, leader of the city orchestra, who is rehearsing, with his artists, the new air, “The Cowboy Dude;” or, peradventure, Miss Nellie Esmonde, queen of the varieties.

Our other journalist takes to himself the title of managing editor. His duties are manifold. While I, whom he speaks of as “the chief,” attempt to do little more than hold the tiller and suggest what sails to set or take in, he supplies the wind. He knows just what an editorial should be, and so, day after day, he supplies the paper with formal, perfunctory and platitudinous expressions of the prejudices of the great democratic party that we support. He has seized the subtleties of the art of meaningless and non-committal word carpentry and joinery. He can accurately describe the current phases of a political situation. hint^sic at reforms demanded by a much-beloved, logical, conscientious public, and then swing his readers back into the old partisan paths, worn smooth by the tread of the party’s leaders. He glories in controversy. He takes up an article from an opposing newspaper, garbles its statements, misrepresents its meaning, distorts the sentiments of its writer, and then triumphantly demolishes his “unfair” opponent, and throws his party into deserved chaos. Our managing editor, you perceive, is a trained editor.

The new daily not being a very large one, our managing editor does reporting, besides recording his thoughts in its columns. He is by instinct a reporter. It never has been necessary for me to tell him that, as language was invented to conceal thoughts, so newspapers are printed to suppress the news. He can dilate on half truth and leave the truth alone, omit all mention of the significant and spin into columns the details of the trivial, if such a

There is a land boom in town. Our reporting managing editor is reveling in promoting the boom. He collects minute details relating to all real estate sales. He pretends to forecast how far the boom can go, and he places its limit on what I think would be a discount on a population of 20,000 more than we can have ten years hence. His pen sputters wildly as he dashes off “boom” articles. He is excited as he blares to town and country that so and so, whom he dubs a keen observer, or a shrewd speculator, or a rising financier, has cleared $300, or perhaps $1,300, on the sale of a town lot. He stops men on the street and fans the boom flame by loudly asking questions and giving whispered “points” (that he dare not publish as yet, he says) about the plans of the boomers. Curiously enough, he is not making a cent by all his activity. He has no money. His meager salary mostly goes to the maintenance of his large family. The perquisites of his office are only liquid “courtesies” offered by men expecting business notices free. But he, in common with our community, is burning in every fiber with boom fever.

Have you ever stood by a gaming table and watched the emotions of the people surrounding it? At the turn of a card the dealer takes from the table the chips that the bank has won and sizes out upon the table the little piles of chips each player has gained. Agitated men gaze intently upon the play. They all have the startled look of hunted animals. Usually one is playing a desperate game. His actions are observed with the deepest interest as he plunges along betting to the limit of the play. Others bet with him or against him steadily, on theory. The non-players exhibit greater excitement than the players, for they can talk in hurried undertones. In the group you will see, if you scrutinize the men closely, some turn suddenly pale. Others sweat, others tremble, others cannot command their speech. If you could see and feel the mechanism of their bodies what a revelation there would be of nervous tension, of sudden qualms at the stomach, of aches piercing the brain like sharp instruments, of mad coursing of the blood from a palpitating heart through arteries and veins to every part of a shocked and faint body.

Our town is now in such a frenzy. Man, woman and child is talking of its boom. When our paper is issued in the morning its complete reports of real estate sales, and its glowing stories of more to come, are the first parts read by an anxiously waiting and virtuous public. Who has made a winner? Who has proved his business talent? Who is further away from poverty? Who is now in a position to get wealth without working for it? A lucky few are in the front rank of the speculators. Yet all men chatter and suffer from excitement as if all were equally interested. Hundreds have not a six months’ purchase of food or standing room on the earth and never will have; yet the fever is parching their very bones. And our managing editor goes on from day to day firing men’s imaginations, quickening their avarice and corrupting their perceptions of integrity. Does he know that he is doing so? Has he an inkling of the truth?—of the fact that every dollar put on to the price of a lot is a dollar’s mortgage on labor? A few days ago he clipped from another Dakota paper a paragraph (and changed its phraseology slightly to make it his own), that indicated a great advance in his mind of the principles of a question of which he will, I predict, hear more anon. Wealthy foreigners, the thought was, should not be permitted to buy vast tracts of Dakota land; they did not buy their goods of its merchants. His glance was directed toward a wagon that has a star for its guide in moving over Dakota’s broad prairies.

As I look out on Main street I see many vacant lots. Lot No. 210 is owned by a city speculator; No. 212 by some capitalist away off somewhere. To the “sub” in our composing room, who has just brought here his wife and two children, what matter who owns it? He does not own it; cannot; and every week it is going further from his reach. The power separating him from it is one that is pushing him and his worthy working fellow citizens to the back streets “across town.” It is a wedge sent slantwise into society, sliding some upward but driving many into the dust. These are truths our managing editor can not tell—at least in my paper.

Our party primary elections were held last night. Our managing editor reported all three of them. His report gave the names of the speechmakers, the supervising officers, the nominations made and the votes taken. That is as much as the public should know. I attended them and saw more. I saw that the successful ticket in each primary had been settled beforehand in caucus of the bosses. They were compromise tickets, the compromise being made as against what the people might want and in favor of what the disputing factions wanted. The votes for the caucus tickets were ready printed and easily voted; those which certain earnest citizens wanted cast had to be written. The voters for the bosses’ tickets were either roughs or glossy-smooth, small bore politicians; the voters for the earnest but not smart citizens were men who rather grudgingly took an hour away from their homes to perform a duty. Our city and county ticket is now in the field. It is the caucus ticket. I can begin at the top and go through it to the bottom and tell what influence brought every candidate’s name upon it. I know what assessments are to be made on the candidates. I am certain that if the wire pulling, the work behind the curtain, the sharp practice at the primaries, and the amount of the assessments were to be published, our town would have something to talk about that would be heard of even amid the din of the boom. Some pure and lofty minded candidates would have ague⁸⁸ as well as fever. This is all news not to be printed by our managing editor. By the way, he made a speech at one of the primaries. He was called upon to render a tribute to our free institutions as typified on the occasion. It was good. It met the requirements of the hour—sounding well and signifying naught. I can recall one of his sentences: “Our magic city is feeling the embrace of

p. 5, col. 3 the iron arms of the railroad, which has penetrated what but a few short years ago was the howling wilderness, opened up new and fresh avenues of trade, and carried the blessings of our higher civilization far away beyond the crowded streets of the eastern seaboard cities until these great and beneficent arteries of commerce now link the Alleghanies with the snow-capped Sierras, whose cloud-piercing summits are reflected in the broad, limpid bosom of the pellucid⁸⁹ Pacific.” About as true as it is beautiful, dear managing editor, and, between ourselves, bombastic. And something more has been brought here from the older east. In the wake of man advancing toward the setting sun comes a specter vailed behind a thin cloud. Poor men in Dakota in future years will dread that specter, dreaming and waking. It is the awful specter of distress following close upon progress, like shadow upon man. It is invited here by boom criers and by speechmakers who debauch primaries. Dakota, its governor tells us, increased its population last year by 80,000, and there were more prisoners than ever in its two penitentiaries. Its crops last year were bad—the shortage of wheat and oats was one-third from the year before—but its land values increased $20,000,000. Four million more of its acres were fenced in. The black shadow of the poverty specter is spreading over Dakota.

Our managing editor has to-day asked a favor of me. He has written a friendly notice of half a dozen fellow journalists, and wants it to “go in.” Well, it shall. It may do him some good, for they will send back type-honey for him. Poor scribblers! They have little else to give. Of those to whom he offers his little sweet tribute, four are leaving the territory and two are “surrendering their editorial positions” on this “bright journal” or that “enterprising paper” and “assuming the journalistic tripod” elsewhere. Let us not look too closely at the reasons for the transfers. But we may inquire why, when editors are raising the voice of praise for Dakota, Dakota enriches tnem^sic not, but lets them carry their siren tones and pens to other parts of the world. The reason, in brief, is that talk is cheap, that liars are given away, a drug in the market, that the humbug “front” of the profession of journalism can be pinned, badge-like, on to anything that can sacrifice honest sentiments or rattle other men’s rattles.

Yet our managing editor works hard to earn bread for his bairns⁹⁰. What fault of his if he has been put to graze in a field where so much of the growth is rank dishonesty? There he sits now at the other side of the glass partition. He looks fifty, is more than forty. Short, swarthy, stout, bull necked. His hair is thick and red; his face beardless and harsh-featured. He is hard of eye, solid of cheek and aggressive of manner. His clothes are of a sort that wears long and does not show dirt. This pushing, hard working, impecunious⁹¹, shrewd man is but a man. He carries eyes which, seeing, see not. He sees that his business is his duty, and, duty done, that ends his view. Why should he tear away the curtain that hides sham? He knows that the crust between the world and truth is thick; he is rather too light a weight to try breaking through it. He might go to pieces and the crust none the thinner.

B. F. C.

ST. STEPHENS’ PARISHIONERS.

O’Brien Insulted Ireland’s Friends.

NEW YORK, June 11.—O’Brien came and went. His coming was a kind of Sergeant Bates⁹³ business, purely sensational, evidently undertaken for the glory of O’Brien. He posed as a martyr, not for a cause, not for a principle, but seemingly for a cheap notoriety. He told us nothing that we did not know before. He created his preconcerted row in Canada, and on the eve of his departure he insulted a hundred thousand congregated friends of Ireland who gathered together to manifest their sympathy for his oppressed countrymen.

The cause of Ireland is the cause of humanity, and its strength is in the moral support of men everywhere who love freedom and fair play.

If Mr. O’Brien does not know it is time he was told that the little coterie of Irish landlords in New York represent neither the Irish nor the American sentiment upon any question. If they lived in England or Ireland they would simply be English or Irish landlords. Henceforth they will neither do the thinking nor the voting for the Irish population in New York. The toils of Tammany are broken forever, and it will invoke in vain the aid of the Catholic church to compel subserviency in political matters. When labor asserts itself it is invincible.

Is the “Herald” Going to Answer These Questions?

New York Herald.

To the Editor of the Herald: You published editorially in your issue of the 9th an article entitled “A Very Plain Talk About A Very Important Matter,” in reply to a request from a workingman who wished to be informed about the situation in relation to George and Dr. McGlynn, which article I have read with great interest, and, I trust, some profit, and I wish to supplement the inquiry of the workingman referred to by asking a reply to the following queries:

1. Do you really believe that the article in question gave the plain facts and inferences from them?

2. Is it a plain fact that the Catholic church has condemned George’s theories? If so, when did it do so?

3. Is it not disingenuous to state as a plain fact your assumption that the opinion of an Italian ecclesiastic on political economy is the dictum of the Catholic church?

4. Where is the analogy between the lieutenant you cite who defies his general and Dr. McGlynn? Would not the comparison be a plainer fact if you were to say that, whereas

p. 5, col. 4 the lieutenant, as a soldier, fills in the completest measure everything implied in the term, yet as his (the lieutenant’s) theory, let us say, for instance, on “tittle⁹⁴ bats” differs from his general’s, the general may as well take off his epaulettes, because he is defied by his lieutenant, who holds such a theory?

5. Why do you state your very plain talk in a way to create the impression that Catholics must obey every passing whim of the pope on any subject whatever?

6. When has George taught that Catholics must become Protestants before they can be his faithful followers? This statement I suppose you mean to be an inference, but in the face of the fact, which every intelligent Catholic child knows, that Catholics are no more bound than Protestants to accept anything from Rome but her religion, what becomes of your inference?

7. Admitting the absolute right of private ownership in land, by what reasoning do you deny that landlords have not the right to do what they please with it?

8. Is not the “plan of campaign,” by which Irish landlords are forced to accept in some cases only fifty per cent of their rent, a campaign of robbery to that extent and different from George’s doctrines only in degree?

9. Is it not a misstatement to say that George “practically takes sides with the tories, with the redcoats, who smash the peasants’ dishes and kick him into a bog,” in view of the fact that upon one of your own conditions which goes to make up a good Irishman—namely, pay the landlords but half of what they ask—George more than fills your requirement, and he ought, therefore, to be regarded as even better than an Irishman, because he would pay the landlords no rent at all?

10. Why do you state that the followers of George say “it is justifiable to evict tenants” when you know the only reason you have for making the charge is the inference you draw from the fact that George’s followers cannot deny the right to evict if they admit the right of private ownership in land? Can you?

11. Is there anything more incongruous in the fact, which for the sake of argument I admit, of George, a Protestant, advising Catholics not to submit to dictation from the pope than you, a Protestant, exhorting Catholics to obey the pope implicitly and blindly?

12. Finally, was not your plain talk really meant for the maritime cavalry and not for workingmen to aid them in forming a correct judgment?

QUIDNUNC⁹⁵.

New York, June 10, 1887.

Wilful Misrepresentation or Ignorance.

Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost.

The Rev. J. Benson Hamilton, a Methodist minister in New York, is reported to have said last Sunday, in the course of a sermon upon “Real anti-poverty, versus the sham,” in which he strongly opposed the land tax movement.

“This crusade is falsely styled ‘new.’ It brings no new discovery. It is but a redressing of an antiquated maxim: ‘What is mine is mine; what is thine is mine.’ To put its demands into one sentence is very easy—‘We demand that the state shall formally take possession of all land and let it out to the highest bidder, the income from the land shall be divided among the owners, the people. When this is done poverty will have been destroyed.’”

This is sheer misrepresentation. No person defines property more clearly or contends for the sacredness of property rights more positively than Henry George. The motto for the Anti-poverty society might well be “What is mine is mine; what is thine is thine; what is partly mine and partly thine is ours in common.” Is not that a just platform? As for the state taking possession of all the land and letting out to the highest bidder, Henry George proposes no such thing. He would have land free to be taken by anyone who finds it vacant. If it is worth anything in the open market, if it has a salable or rentable value, the user of it will be taken^sic by the community up to its full value, because whatever value attaches to the land is due to the growth of the community. If it is worth nothing the user will pay nothing for its use. No one may take that land by a higher bid to the state. If anyone wants it he must buy it at the occupant’s price. The Rev. J. Benson Hamilton either knows this or does not. If he knows it he wilfully misrepresents Mr. George’s teaching. If he does not know it he should inform himself before discussing the subject.

Dr. McGlynn at Syracuse.

Syracuse, N. Y., Evening Herald.

The doctrine of anti-poverty was peculiarly fascinating as presented last evening at Alhambra hall by the Rev. Dr. McGlynn. His manly presence, his air of thorough sincerity and absolute conviction, and his restrained yet eloquent utterance, combined to hold the closest attention of his hearers, whether they listened with believing or doubting ears, to the outline of the new crusade to which the doctor is devoting himself. In looking upon this man one is first of all impressed by his fearlessness and his philanthropy in jeopardizing his church relations, which are so honorable, for the sake of his suffering fellow creatures. He has not antagonized the powerful Roman Catholic church to become the leader of a new theology nor to promote ambition or greed. He has simply thrown himself heart and soul into a movement which, to his mind, promises the best and most practical solution of the great problem of the distribution of wealth. . . . We do not see how anyone can deny the truth of his descriptions of the existing order of things in society. We all recognize that selfishness, avarice, injustice, vice and crime abound, and we blind our eyes if we fail to see that these evils are more than keeping pace with our progress in population and industrial wealth. . . . If the movement grows, if it can stand the test of time, men will come to its support. Then in the fullness of time conservatism may yield and the new order of things come about when the world is ripe for it.

He Approves Mr. Keeler’s Suggestion.

DENVER, Col., May 23.—I have carefully read every issue of THE STANDARD, and approve of B. C. Keeler’s suggestion that the new party adopt the name of “free soil party” or “free land party.” I have never thought it advisable to use the word “labor,” because of its deterring effect upon a very large class of people for the reason that it has come to have a narrow and technical meaning. Everyone should be made to feel that the new party is the people’s party, the party of liberty, the party of emancipation, of progress and justice, and not that it is the farmers’ or the mechanics’ party. No one man or class of men can get a corner on all the credit that is the reward of those who fight for justice, nor do I think there is any such ambition prevalent.

F. Q. STUART.

“Let Them Strike, But Make Them Hear.”

LOWELL, Mass.—The principles you advocate have many friends here. The attachment of Dr. McGlynn’s friends has increased a hundred fold since the last great triumph of his manliness under the threat of excommunication. I am a Catholic, and I say to him in the words of the poet:

Be thou like the noble ancient⁹⁶,
  Scorn the threat that bids thee fear.
Speak, no matter what befall thee;
  Let them strike, but make them hear.

SAMUEL QUINN.

p. 5, col. 5

THE M’GLYNN DEMONSTRATION.

The O’Brien Incident.

The old party press has allowed the O’Brien affair to pass almost entirely out of sight. It needed but the publication of the facts as they were to show that O’Brien’s course was engineered by the enemies of the labor party, that the workingmen saw it, and that their ranks suffered from no defection in consequence. All the assembly district organizations have had the O’Brien matter before them, and it has had the effect on them of clearly defining the difference between their principles and those of the Irish parliamentary party. John McMackin has been surprised at the number of letters he has received approving the stand taken by him and the committee of arrangements. Resolutions of the same tenor have been passed by numberless labor organizations and land and labor clubs, enough having been received at this office to fill several columns, perhaps a page, of THE STANDARD.

A Debate Before the Free Trade Club.

The Free trade club winds up its monthly public meetings for the season with a joint debate on next Tuesday evening, June 21, between John Jarrett, late a labor advocate and now an officer of the Tin plate association, and F. A. Herwig, the Philadelphia barber who has rallied the carpet weavers of his city to demand abolition of the tariff on wool. The subject of the debate is to be, “How Does Protection Affect Wages?” Mr. Jarrett preaching the doctrine of high tariff, and Mr. Herwig supporting free trade. The meeting will be called to order at 8 p. m., in the large meeting room, No. 24, Cooper Union.

Twelve Hundred Per Cent in a Year.

SAN DIEGO, Cal.—In this town millions have been made from almost nothing within the past few years. Investments in land have enhanced twelve hundred per cent within twelve months, and tramps and beggars have made their appearance. It is strange that the average man cannot see how much more he loses than gains by the present system. All, in fact, but a very few are injured rather than benefited, even if they have made a few hundred dollars by “building lots.”

EVACUTES A. PHIPSON.

The Evolution of the Tramp.

OREGON, HOLT COUNTY, Mo.—Prior to 1860 the population of the United States was practically confined east of the Mississippi river. Suddenly the whole south and all that vast prairie region west of the Mississippi, even through the Rocky mountains, was made easily accesible^sic to our population, and yet since then we have heard of tramps for the first time. It seems to me that whoever will consider of this will be convinced there is something besides our greater population to account for our growing resemblance to European societies.

CLARKE SIMS.

White Slave Emancipation.

Rev. Albert Walkley of Manistee^sic, Mich., in a recent address before a Grand army of the republic⁹⁸ post and the Manistee light guards, said: “The emancipation of the negro was but a step toward the greater white slave emancipation. As the ideas of yesterday become the facts of to-day, larger ideas arise saying, ‘Reach out to us.’ As the ideas of to-day are fulfilled, to-morrow’s glories arise^sic.

The Day of Pentecost Has Come.

DETROIT, Mich., May 31.—I have just read the great and masterly address of Mr. Pentecost, and am very forcibly reminded of a meeting once held upon a day of the same name, when every man heard the gospel preached in such a language that he was able to understand it. Another day of Pentecost has surely come.

HANS LAUDERBACH.

p. 5, col. 6

Fatherland, America.

(Air—“Maryland, My Maryland.”)

JOHN ANKETELL, A. M.

STRAWS THAT SHOW THE WIND.

The pope desires to see Rev. Dr. McGlynn. Perhaps the pope had better sail for New York.—[Cresco, Ia., Plaindealer.^101?

Man has been robbed of his birthright without receiving as much as a mess of pottage in return.—[Letter to Boston Investigator.

New York pays four cents an hour for woman’s labor and $6,000,000 for a Protestant Episcopal cathedral.—[Providence people.

It looks as if Dr. McGlynn and Henry George, despite the utter emptiness of their theories, will play the mischief in New York politics.—[Baltimore American.

The doctrine of the Anti-poverty society “in a practical way supports the belief in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”—[Johnstown, Pa., Real Estate News.

We admire Mr. O’Brien’s determination not to be captured by any political faction, but we fear that like those who attempt to stand up too straight, he has fallen backward—into the arms of Tammany hall. We do not wish for a moment to criticise Mr. O’Brien’s motives or his action.—[Brooklyn Examiner.

The excessive tenderness of all the machine republican organs for the discipline of the church of Rome, and their righteous reprehension of Dr. McGlynn, is extremely affecting. What interests us is the lively zeal of every mouthpiece of monopoly in the land to get McGlynn out of it, and safely embarked for Rome.—[San Francisco Examiner.

In Kingston valuable properties are held by individuals for higher values, the giving of which depends upon no labor or effort of their own; and the non-owners are inclined to the feeling that if the community, as a whole, bestows the benefits, they are entitled to share in them, and can only hope to do so by way of taxation.—[Kingston, Canada, Whig.

The simple fact is that the millionaire bondholders, bankers and rich men of every class, whose wealth is hoarded up and out of the tax collector’s reach, are the most bitterly opposed to George’s land theory and are the first to denounce Henry George as an anarchist, communist and things like that.—[Alpena, Mich., Labor Journal

The discussion of Henry George’s proposal for the nationalization of land has led to the general admission that land can be held only for the benefit of the people, and not for individual benefit, and that possession of land is not actual ownership¹⁰⁵, but is only a trust for the benefit of the community.—[Bobcaygeon, Ont., Independent.

We have been much disappointed in the general character of the answers and criticisms we have seen of Henry George and his philosophy. They are full of laugh, ridicule and prejudice; but we have thus far failed to see anything like what we would term a substantial, orthodox answer. We wish somebody would get down to business and dish up the fallacy, if it is one.—[Kellogg, Ia., Enterprise.

Who is “protected” by a duty which compels the people of this country to pay annually $5,000,000 more for the daylight in their houses than they otherwise would? Not the glass workers, surely. Their wages have diminished. An answer is furnished in the suggestive fact that Mr. De Pauw, the great glass manufacturer of Indiana, recently died, leaving an estate worth $15,000,000.—[New York World.

Let every Catholic in America say to church, pope and priest that they must not attempt to extend the authority of the church over politics, science or literature. Religion, and Roman Catholic view of religion, is the legitimate sphere of the Roman hierarchy and nothing else. Let pope and priest be anathema^102103104 maranatha when they attempt to control the politics or the progress of America.—[Worthington, Ia., Advance.

We can remember when the doctrine of the abolition of slavery in this country was looked upon as even more absurd than this land reform proposition. There were no such quiet meetings in advocacy of abolition as there are now in favor of land reform. The persons who occupied the positions now held by Henry George and Dr. McGlynn were stoned and assailed. They were even led through the streets with ropes about their necks; and they were also clubbed and stoned to death. And yet slavery was abolished. “No one can tell what a day may bring forth.”—[Albany Press and Knickerbocker.

Orator O’Brien was given a draft for $25,000 by the patriotic citizens of New York to be used in behalf of the suffering tenants in Ireland. If the pursey patriots of New York will subscribe an additional $25,000 toward the relief of New York tenants who feed on street garbage and sleep fourteen in a room, they can knock Chairman John McMackin’s sarcastic allusions higher than Gilderoy’s kite. At present, John has the best of the argument.—[Harrisburg Star.

A displeased correspondent of the New York World wrote to that paper and asked it to answer, if it could, “What unpatented American industry is a monopoly in this country?” That journal referred him to the oil and coal industries. If the correspondent wants further information let him come west—come to Nebraska and gaze upon the workings of both patented and unpatented monopoly industries. We can show him where railroad companies not only own coal mines, but where they fix a price that is beyond all reason, and make the price within one hundred miles of the mines the same as they charge four hundred miles further east. We can show him where unpatented lime is owned and handled exclusively by one railroad company and peddled all over the state at the same price—distance making no difference. We can show him where salt from great salt works is sold in the same manner. We can show him how unpatented dealers get special inducements, and how outrageous freights are charged on unpatented railroads. We could show him “unpatented American industries which are monopolies,” by reason of the aggressions of great corporations, until his eyes would water and he would gasp for breath. Come west, young man, and grow up with the country—and while growing up learn the ways of the world as they are here presented.—[Omaha Bee.

BACK TO THE LAND!

THE LETTER.

Landlordism Robs All Classes.

Hitherto we have confined ourselves almost exclusively to the consideration of the various forms of injustice, and the spoliation of private property which the existing system of land tenure enables the proprietors of the soil to inflict on the tenant farmers of Ireland. But the tenant farmers, though a numerous, an influential and an important section of the nation, are, after all, not the nation. Despite our cruel misgovernment in the past, some few of our national industries still survive, as well as the industry of the cultivation of the soil. Then there are, moreover, certain trades and professions whose services are indispensable to any nation that has any claims to be considered civilized.

But the Irish system of land tenure wrongs and impoverishes not only those who live by and on the land, but all other classes in the community as well. It robs not only the cultivators of the soil, but every man in the community, of a substantial portion of the hard-earned fruits of his labor, no matter what the trade or profession in which he may labor for his living. It is, therefore, not a local or a particular grievance, but a great national injustice, and that, I think, is its most objectionable peculiarity. I have already shown that the land of every country is the public property of the people of that country, and consequently, that its exclusive appropriation by a class is a substantial injustice and wrong done to every man in that country, whom it robs of his fair share of the common inheritance. Then the injustice of this appropriation is enormously enhanced by the fact that it further enables the landlords, without any risk or trouble, and in fact makes it a matter of course for them, to appropriate a vast share of the earnings of the nation besides. They plundered the people first of God’s gifts in the land, and that act of spoliation puts them under a sort of necessity cf^sic plundering them again of an enormous amount of their direct earnings and wages. The line of argument that leads directly to this conclusion seems abundantly clear. I have already observed that the chief peculiarity of the land of a country was that its value was never stationary, that it was always progressive and rising, that in fact it increased in a direct ratio with the growth of the population and the advancing progress of the industry of the nation.

Land Values Intended by Providence for Public Purposes.

It would seem as if Providence had destined the land to serve as a large economical reservoir, to catch, to collect and preserve the overflowing streams of wealth that are constantly escaping from the great public industrial works that are always going on in communities that are progressive and prosperous. Besides the permanent improvements that are made in the land itself, and which increase its productiveness and value, there are other industrial works not carried out on the land itself, but on its surroundings and in its vicinity, and which enhance its value very considerably. A new road is made for the accommodation of a district; a new bridge is thrown across a river or a stream to make two important localities accessible to each other; a new railway passes close by and connects it with certain large and important centers of industry; a new factory or a new mill is erected, or a new town is built in the neighborhood. Industrial works like these add very materially to the value of all the land in their vicinity. It is a well known fact that a new railway has in several instances doubled the value of the land through which it passed, in consequence of the increased facilities it had afforded for the sale of its agricultural products. In every state of society, which is progressive and improving, such industrial works are continually going on, and hence the value of the land is rising also everywhere in value.

Why Wages Do Not Increase.

But its value rises enormously with the enlarged growth of the population of a nation, and with the increased productiveness of its industry. The United kingdom itself furnishes an example that is singularly illustrative of this fact. “A given exertion,” says Mr. Cairns^sic, “of British labor and capital will now produce in a great many directions five, ten or twenty times, in some instances perhaps a hundred times, the result which an equal exertion would have produced a hundred years ago. It is not probable that industry is, in any direction whatever, less productive now than it was then; yet the rate of wages, as measured by the real well being of the laborer, has certainly not advanced in anything like a corresponding degree; while it may be doubted if the rate of profit has advanced at all.” A given amount, then, of British capital and labor is now ten or twenty times more effective than a hundred years ago, while, on the other hand, the quantity of such effective labor and capital now engaged in British industrial production is perhaps twenty times larger now than formerly.

Now, the ordinary food of the operatives and people of every country is what is called “the raw products of the soil:” that is to say, the beef, the mutton, the bacon, the poultry, the eggs, the milk, the butter, the flour, the meal, the potatoes, and the vegetables that spring directly from the soil, and that require only the simplest and the most inexpensive industrial processes to fit them for immediate use. “The raw products of the soil” will then be sold to the operatives as to other people at the highest price they will bring, on the principle of open competition and free sale. When, therefore, the competition is thus for the necessaries and luxuries of life, and that the competitors must be reckoned by millions, and that their means for purchasing must be reckoned by hundreds of millions, the demand for the raw products must be enormous, and the prices which they will bring must range very high. This enormous demand will exhaust all the food-producing resources of the country till a point is reached at which a further supply of food from the soil would cost more than its production in foreign countries, plus the expense of its carriage and delivery here. The prices, therefore, of “the raw products” thus ranging very high, the value of the soil which produced them also rises enormously; indeed, the vast sums which the nation pays for its food, for nearly all the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life, pass directly, and with little expense or trouble, into the hands of those who hold the ownership of the land, with the single deduction of the remuneration due to the usufructuaries or farmers. If the land had not been appropriated by individuals and diverted from the original purpose for which Providence had intended it, the high prices which the nation thus imposes on itself by the vastness of its numbers and by the abundance of its wealth, in the purchase of the raw products of the soil, should be regarded as a most just and natural tax, which it instinctively levies on itself to realize the large sums that are necessary for the support of its public burdens.

But now the great national property which Providence had destined for the support of the public burdens of society has been

p. 7, col. 2 diverted from its original purpose to minister to the wants, the necessities, and perhaps the extravagance of class. The explanation of this extraordinary act of national spoliation will be found in the fact that hitherto this class could just do as it pleased; the government of the country lay for centuries exclusively in its hands, and despite the combined influence of English radicalism and Irish obstructionism it is practically in its hands still.

The enormous value then thus superadded to the land from the two sources just indicated pass directly with the land itself into the hands of those who own it. Those who hold the ownership of the land hold also the ownership of all the accessions of value it receives from all quarters. This increase in the value of their property cost no sacrifice, demanded no painful effort of labor. Even while they slept their rent rolls went on increasing and multiplying.

The value continually imparted to the land by the industrial exertions of the community, in the construction of harbors and bridges, in the making of new roads and railways, in the erection of new factories, mills and houses, etc., has all gone with the land, has all been confiscated and appropriated by the owners of the soil. Professor Cairns feels sorely perplexed to account for some of the anomalous results of this appropriation. “A bale of cloth,” he says, “a machine, a house, owes its value to the labor expended upon it, and belongs to the person who expends or employs the labor; a piece of land owes its value, so far as its value is effected^sic by the causes I am now considering, not to the labor expended on the land, but to that expended on something else—to the labor expended in making a railroad or in building houses in an an adjoining town, and the value thus added to the land belongs not to the persons who have made the railroads or built the houses, but to some one who may not have been aware that these operations were being carried on—nay, who perhaps has exerted all his efforts to prevent their being carried on. How many landlords have their rent rolls doubled by railways made in their despite!” It never occurred to Mr. Cairns that he had here given, quite unconsciously to himself, an unanswerable argument, ex absurdo, to prove the injustice of the appropriation of the land. If the land has not been confiscated^sic no such absurd or unjust result could have followed. The value imparted by labor to the land, exactly like “the bale of cloth, the house or the machine,” would belong to the persons who expended or employed that labor, that is to say, to the public, by whose industrial exertions it had been created.

Lastly, the vast accessions of value which the land is constantly receiving from the proceeds of that “self-imposed tax” which the nation levies of itself in the high prices it pays for the “raw products of the soil,” together with the increased productiveness of the soil itself, go all, as Mr. Cairns is forced to confess, “neither to profits nor to wages nor to the public at large, but to swell a fund ever growing, even while its proprietors sleep—to the rent roll of the owner of the soil.”

Private Property in Land the Real Robber of Labor.

Thus the appropriation of God’s gifts in the land led naturally, and as a matter of course, to the appropriation of an enormous amount of the wages and earnings of the nation, which, in the designs of Providence, kept constantly dropping into the land, accumulating on the land, and adding to the value of the land: not for the enrichment of the landlords, but for the support of the public burdens of the state. Now a system of land tenure which thus despoils the people of a nation of a vast amount of their earnings, which transfers a valuable property which they have created by the patient, painful and self-denying efforts of their labor, to a class who do not labor at all, and make no sacrifices whatever, can, I think, be fairly characterized as a system of national spoliation. The hard-working, industrious masses of the nation are taxed twice, and for an enormous amount each time. They are taxed first for the benefit of the owners of the soil, to supply them with all the comforts, the enjoyments and the luxuries which they desire, and they are taxed again to the amount of eighty millions annually for the government and defense of the country. With two such enormous drains on the productive industry and labor of the country, I cannot share in the astonishment which Mr. Cairns feels at finding that, notwithstanding the increased productiveness of British industry, “the rate of wages, as measured by the real well-being of the laborer,” has not improved to any material extent, while it may be doubted whether the rate of profit has advanced at all. Both capitalists and operatives, therefore, are intensely disappointed and supremely dissatisfied with these disheartening results, and mutually reproach each other with fraud and foul dealing in the division of their common earnings. Their mutual misunderstandings and rival claims to a larger share than they actually receive have given rise to “lock-outs” on the one side and “strikes” on the other; to combinations of capitalists among the employers and “trades unions” among the laborers. Thus their mutual relations, which ought to be of the friendliest character, have at last settled down into the permanent form of an insane internecine war, which inflicts irreparable injury on the common interests of both. It never occurs to either side that a third party could possibly be liable to blame. I think I have shown that neither party has received, or at all events can retain for his own use and enjoyment, its fair share of their common earnings. The existing system of land tenure, like a great national thief, robs both parties of an enormous amount of their earnings for the benefit of a class who do not labor at all. As the operatives complain the louder, so the case they make against the capitalists seems really the weaker and the worse founded of the two. Mr. Cairnes, with many others, proved to evidence that unless in rare and exceptional cases it is perfectly impossible for the capitalist to withhold from the operatives their fair share of their common earnings.

Does it therefore follow that the strong, widespread and permanent feeling of discontent which prevails among the laborers is the result of fancy or imagination, having no solid foundation whatever in fact? Undoubtedly this feeling proves the laborers to have substantial grievances, although I think they failed to trace them to the causes that have really produced them. The money wages of the English operative is now considerably higher than in any past period of English history. But if his money wages is now high, the price of the raw products of the soil, that is to say, of the necessaries and comforts of life, is vastly higher still. A given amount of money will not now procure for him the same quantity of food and of the other necessaries of life as formerly. In purchasing the raw products of the soil, he must pay not only for the necessaries and comforts of life which he enjoys himself, but also for the comforts and luxuries which go to the enjoyment of the owners of the soil. The price, therefore, of the raw products is a payment and a tax; a payment for what he consumes himself, and a tax for what is consumed by others. Then, again, a vast margin of the earnings of the English people is expended in direct and indirect taxation. The public burdens of every nation fall mainly on the vast masses of that nation, and the operatives of England are the vast masses of the English nation.

The Only Hope for Labor—“Back to the Land.”

If the English operatives could only retain for their own use and benefit the vast sums which, under the existing system of land tenure, go on the one hand to the owners of the soil, and the sums that an economical system of taxation would save for them on the other, their material comforts and enjoyments would be multiplied a hundred fold. Under the existing state of things their condition is utterly incapable of any improvement in the future. Political economists can see no possible way in which English operatives can permanently improve their condition, except they have recourse to that revolting and unnatural expedient of voluntarily restraining and limiting their numbers. “This, then,” says Mr. Cairnes—the limitation of his numbers—“is the circumstance on which, in the last resort, any improvement at all of a permanent kind in the laborer’s condition turns.” If the self-commissioned apostles who preach this new doc-

p. 7, col. 3 trine only warned the people against the consequences of reckless and improvident marriages. I would^sic join and go with them heartily. But when they advise them (as they seem to me to do) to increase and multiply according to the requirements of trade, and in such proportions as they may be wanted in, for the benefit of their betters; when they advise them to increase and multiply only when trade is prosperous, prices are high and commerce flourishes, I am heartily opposed to them. These teachings appear to me not only unchristian, but revolting and unnatural; and their wickedness is only surpassed by the astounding ignorance of human nature, which they reveal in men who ought to be better informed. The British workman has no need to have recourse to such an unnatural expedient for the purpose of improving his condition. The chief, the fundamental obstacle he will have to overcome, will be found in the existing system of land tenure. British operatives and capitalists, of all men living, appear to me to have the largest and deepest interest in a thorough and radical reformation in the system of land tenure in our country as well as in their own. Trades unions, therefore, instead of wasting their energies and resources in a fruitless struggle with capitalists, would do well to turn their attention in this direction. They have a wide field here for their efforts, and their labors here cannot possibly be fruitless. The rallying cry of capitalists and laborers ought to be—“BACK TO THE LAND.”

LAND AND LABOR.

The “Post” is Tired.

New York Evening Post.

The public of this city is getting very tired of the George-McGlynn movement, whatever it may be. The introduction of the O’Brien trouble brought a little variety into it for a moment, but only for a moment. O’Brien is now gone and the controversy about him must necessarily languish in his absence. Can Mr. George and Dr. McGlynn not take a brief holiday and give the press and the public a rest?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

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[Remainder of this advertisement (the extract from George’s preface) not transcribed: see scan. — transcriber]

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The following have already appeared:

No. 1. “First Principles.” By Henry George. 4 pages. No. 2. “Land and Taxation.” A conversation between David Dudley Field and Henry George. 4 pages. No. 3. “The Right to the Use of the Earth.” By Herbert Spencer. 4 pages. No. 4. “A Christian Minister on the Remedy for Poverty.” A sermon by the Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost of Newark, N. J. 2 pages. No. 5. “A Sum in Proportion.” By T. L. McCready. 2 pages. No. 6. “The Settler’s Nightmare.” By Louis F. Post. 4 pages. No. 7. “New York’s Docks: The True Mode of Raising Revenue.” By. J. W. Sullivan^sic. 4 pages. No. 8. “Unemployed Labor.” By Henry George. 4 pages. No. 9. “Voices for Reform.” 2 pages. No. 10. “A Mysterious Disappearance.” By Lewis Freeland. 6 pages. No. 11. “How to Increase Profits.” By A. J. Steers. 2 pages. No. 12. “The American Farmer.” By Henry George. 4 pages. No. 13. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor and the Randall Farm.” By W. T. Croasdale. 12 pages. No. 14. “The Collegiate Church and the Shoemaker’s Field.” By W. T. Croasdale. 12 pages. No. 15. “Only a Dream.” By Abner C. Thomas. 4 pages. No. 16. “The Anti-Poverty Society.” Dr. McGlynn’s address at the first meeting. 8 pages. No. 17. “The Cross of the New Crusade.” A poem. By David Rorty. 2 pages. No. 18. “It is the Law of Christ.” By Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. 4 pages. No. 19. “My Landlord. By John Jones^sic. 4 pages. No. 20.”Thou Shalt Not Steal.” An address by Henry George before the Anti-Poverty Society. 8 pages. No. 21. “Christianity and Poverty.” An address by Father Huntington before the Anti-poverty society. 4 pages. No. 22. “Poverty and Christianity.” An address by Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost before the Anti-poverty society. 8 pages. No. 23. “The Single Tax.” By Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages. No. 24. “Hymns of the New Crusade”—No. 1. 4 pages. No. 25. “Hymns of the New Crusade”—No. 2. 4 pages. No. 26. “Religion vs. Robbery.” Address by Rev. Dr. McGlynn before the New York Anti-poverty society, June 12, 1887. 8 pages.

Prices, free by mail: 2-page tracts—50 copies, 10 cents; 100 copies, 15 cents; 1,000 copies, $1; 5,000 copies, $4.25. Four-page tracts—25 copies, 10 cents; 100 copies, 25 cents; 1,000 copies, $2; 5,000 copies, $8.50. Six-page tracts—25 copies, 15 cents; 100 copies, 37 cents; 1,000 copies, $3; 5,000 copies, $12.75. Eight-page tracts—25 copies, 20 cents; 100 copies 50 cents; 1,000 copies, $4; 5,000 copies, $17. Ten-page tracts—25 copies, 30 cents; 100 copies, 75 cents; 1,000 copies, $6; 5,000 copies, $25.50.

Other numbers in preparation.

[Advertisement] Henry George’s Solution of the Labor Problem

HENRY GEORGE’S SOLUTION

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WHY I PREACHED ON IT.

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A sixteen-page pamphlet. Price 5 cents.

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[Advertisement] German Edition of “Progress and Poverty”

GERMAN EDITION OF “PROGRESS AND POVERTY.”

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Von HENRY GEORGE.

Price $2.00.

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PUBLISHER’S NOTES.

“How long, O Lord, how long?” says M. D. of Evansville, Ind. “Our triumph will be glorious, but shall I live to see it? Will it come in our day and generation? Is it reasonable to hope that such a social revolution as we are striving for can be brought about in less than a hundred years?” And pray, why not, M. D.? Events move fast in this wonderful nineteenth century of ours. How long is it since the abolition of poverty was regarded as a mere pleasing dream—an idle speculation, fascinating to the imagination, perhaps, but not worth the attention of practical men? Yet to-day, what subject so engrosses public attention? Take up any pro-poverty paper and lo! in some part of it you will find the editor, with his little broom of platitude or ridicule, trying to sweep back the rising tide of sentiment. Talk to your neighbor of the new crusade—he has been thinking of it, too, it may be ignorantly and blindly, but thinking nevertheless. The tide is rising fast, and the day is not far off when it shall sweep all opposition before it. Meantime, M. D., be sure and do your share of work, and approve yourself a worthy soldier of the new crusade. Get your friends to read; you’ll find they need mighty little urging. See that in Evansville, at least, THE STANDARD has a goodly list of subscribers. While you are working in your neighborhood, ten thousand others are laboring elsewhere to spread the light. Cheer up, M. D.; tell us how many sample STANDARDS we shall send you, and make up your mind to send us at least one new subscriber every week.

Here is a letter from a Tammany hall¹²⁸ politician, which is worth reading, as showing the drift of public sentiment, and the way in which the gospel of God’s kingdom upon earth takes hold of men almost in spite of themselves:

I am a member of the Tammany hall organization, and have taken an active part in politics for thirty years. Old and loved associations, business interests and the daily needs of my wife and children will not permit me to openly advocate the grand truths you so well and nobly proclaim.

I am with you, however, heart and soul, as are thousands similarly situated, to whom it would be suicidal to publicly avow their true sentiments at the present stage of the contest. I read your splendid STANDARD with much benefit and pleasure, and most heartily do I wish it and you and the good Dr. McGlynn godspeed and a speedy triumph of the scriptural doctrine of the land for the people.

“Thus saith the Lord, I have made the earth and created man upon it. One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. Moreover, the profit of the earth is for all. And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God.”

I have written solely for the purpose of assuring you of the sympathy and support of numbers of intelligent men, who are so situated that they cannot voice their feelings without doing material injury to their business and families, and this unknown and silent army will at the proper time, and by the peaceful weapon of the ballot, go very far toward deciding the whole questions at issue^sic.

Inclosed please find five dollars for anti-poverty.

SALMON.

All right, friend Salmon; we understand your position thoroughly, and shall not urge you to jeopardize the welfare of your wife and little ones by making an open confession of your faith. The day will come, sooner than you think, when you will not be able to restrain yourself; and then, perhaps, you’ll find the consequences less dreadful than you anticipate. Your five dollars shows your anxiety to serve the cause; when you feel you can afford it let us have another contribution.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Your plain talk in “Publishers’ Notes^sic” has given me a shaking up that I really needed. I understand now that there is no room for idlers in the ranks of the new crusade, and please God I will be an active soldier from this time on. I commenced active work a week ago, and send you four subscribers as the result. I thought when I started out I should have to meet considerable ridicule, but I find people are doing a lot of quiet thinking down here. One old gentleman said to me: “I don’t see that all this mining and manufacturing has benefited the people of Birmingham very much. We are getting to have a few rich men, but we’ve got a mighty sight of poor ones!”

ELLIS CONDON.

Your old gentleman is a shrewd observer, Mr. Condon. As long as the people of Alabama allow Alabama to be bought and sold, they must expect to see poorhouses and palaces pretty close together. God made a noble provision for the people of your state, but if you are fools enough to let a few shrewd fellows monopolize it, you must bear the consequences. There are quite a few men living luxuriously here in New York on the labor of Birmingham people.

SOUTH HANSON, Mass.—I am a subscriber to THE STANDARD, and am so well pleased with it that I have got four subscribers, whose names and addresses I send with remittance. The extra $2 is for the recruiting fund. The statement of Dr. McGlynn that there is only a small discount between Editor O’Brien and Lansdowne just fills my bill exactly.

E. DAMON.

HARTFORD CITY, Ind.—Inclosed please find $4; $1.25 for renewal of my six months’ subscription, $1.25 for six months’ subscription of —— ——, and $1.50 for “Protection and Free Trade.” I sympathize with the archbishop and with the pope, too, since I read his recent letter. I always sympathize with the man who opens his mouth and puts his foot in it. Deal gently with these erring ones. They have given the movement a boom that will last.

WILLIAM NOONAN.

CHICAGO, Ill.—I have been assisting THE STANDARD to spread the light. Please send the paper for twelve months to the following fifteen addresses, and enter my name as a member of the Anti-poverty society.

M. F. COYNE.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—God speed the cause and hasten the day when poverty shall vanish. I send you eight subscribers for six months, and am hustling round for more. I am enlisted for the war; and if I can’t be a general, I mean to be a fighting private.

E. B. SIMS.

OAKVILLE, Ore.—As my subscription to THE STANDARD will soon expire, please find inclosed an order on Wells, Fargo & Co. for $3—$2.50 for THE STANDARD, twenty cents for “Social Problems,” twenty cents for “The George-Hewitt Campaign,” and ten cents for “The Land Question.” I like your publication. It has the right sound for God and humanity.

JAMES BAMFORD.

WACO, Tex.—Here is my third club—twelve new subscribers. The new crusade is spreading like a prairie fire down here in Texas. I had to work hard to get up my first club. People hadn’t heard of THE STANDARD, and knew nothing about land reform. But now they are waking up and want to have the thing explained to them. One thing is certain—every man who takes THE STANDARD will keep on taking it. He can’t do without it.

F. S.

These are active soldiers in the war against poverty—men and women whose belief finds expression in deeds—who are doing what in them lies to bring about the change that shall lift the yoke of slavery from our necks and herald the actual coming of God’s kingdom upon earth. There are many such, but more—aye, a hundred fold more—are needed. Good reader, won’t you join the band of workers and do your share to help the cause along? Believing what you do, knowing what you do, can you, dare you, remain idle? Hard, stubborn facts stare you in the face. Little children are perishing by thousands and by tens of thousands, literally thrust back from and crowded off the earth for want of living room. Women who might be happy wives and mothers are being forced into lives p. 8, col. 2 of degrading, life shortening toil, or driven to sell their souls for bread. Men who might be honest citizens, loving sons, good brothers, devoted husbands and fathers, are being forced at the point of poverty’s sharp bayonet into the rum shop, the poorhouse and the penitentiary. The tramp from whom you turn away disgusted appeals to you to lift him from the foul slough into which society has crowded him. The millionaire who plays his gambling game with human lives for counters is a direct result of the robber system against which we fight. Your children call upon you to make life’s path smoother and happier for them than it has been for you. Up, then, with the cross of the new crusade! Stand forth like a true soldier and do your share of fighting. Be urgent with your neighbors and drag them into line. The work is easier than you think for. Men’s minds are ripe for new ideas; the world is thinking. Will you do what you can to make its thought bear fruit in action?

The recruiting fund is doing well, but should do better still. It is enabling us to do yeoman service in the work of spreading the light in dark places. People who have never read THE STANDARD before are having it thrust upon their notice week after week, and, as a rule, they take kindly to it, for THE STANDARD is a journal that it’s pretty hard to throw aside unread. Here is what a new subscriber, one of many whom the recruiting fund has brought us, writes:

I send you my subscription for a year, and I don’t know whether to thank you for the copies you have been sending me or not. You have made me discontented with myself and the social conditions around me, and I don’t feel as if I could rest until I get to the bottom of this new doctrine you are preaching. And then, I suppose, I shall turn into a crank and go out trying to convert other fellows. The only criticism I can make on your gospel is that it’s too good to be true.

DETROIT, Mich.—Find inclosed $5, of which place a part as a year’s subscription to THE STANDARD, send me ten copies of the current number for distribution, and apply the rest to the recruiting fund.

A. D.

Mac, Brooklyn, N. Y., sends a dollar for the fund, and forwards at the same time the name of a “rank heathen,” whom he wants to see converted. We will see what we can do with your heathen, Mac, and hope to get him into the fold for you.

Thoroughly understanding the principles advocated in THE STANDARD, and considering it the best channel for spreading the light of truth in the minds of men I inclose five dollars for the recruiting fund, regretting that I can give so little for such a noble purpose. I consider it the duty of all those who have seen the light to help on in every way they can the spreading of the truth, that God has provided plentifully for all his children, but that men through their stupid enactments have prevented the working of the natural laws, thus divorcing the laborer from the land, murdering the one and wasting the other, while enabling the few to escape the command of God, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” When the people once see this truth we will have the kingdom of heaven on earth.

JEROME O’NEILL.

The new crusade has its friends all over the world. A subscriber in London, Mr. H. A. Freeman, sends a pleasant letter, inclosing his initiation fee in the Anti-poverty society and a contribution of $1.40 to the recruiting fund.

The recruiting fund now stands:

A Gospel That Promises Something for the Poor.

I must acknowledge that whereas I was blind to the sufferings and wrongs of the wage workers and had settled down to let things go on as they are without trying to right them, Henry George has done not a little to open my eyes to see. If saying this puts me out of the synagogue, then out of the synagogue I must go. I ask no man to follow Mr. George or myself, but I do demand, and always shall, that every man follow the truth by whomsoever spoken and at whatsoever cost. . . . Would “Lenox” have me speak “beautifully and feelingly” the sermon on the Mount, and then ignore all practical applications of it? For my part, that beautiful preaching seems no blessing, but a curse. The reason why the wage worker and poor man stay away from the churches is because the whole business is a luxury of the rich. Henceforth I renounce the abstract questions about the nature of God, between old theology and new theology and preach a gospel that promises something for the poor, not only hereafter but here.

Farmers Would Have Less Taxes to Pay.

If all land, not the improvements thereon, is taxed at its full value, then each holder pays in proportion to his holding; that this is the very spirit of equity, no one can deny. The vacant lands, which now are held for speculative purposes, would then contribute their full share of taxation, and this would reduce the taxes of those who are cultivating their lands. This change would fall with a heavy hand on those who own immense tracts of idle land. It would actually destroy landed monopoly, for no one could afford to hold more land than he could use. The farmer’s gains are in his improvements, and he should have the full benefit of them, and not be compelled to divide with an adjoining owner who will not spend a dollar to improve his land. The taxes of the average farmer would be much less than they are now, under this system, for all land would bear an equal share, but as it is, the far greater portion of taxation is levied on the land in actual use, and this is clearly detrimental to the agricultural interests.

B. F. HALLOCK.

Poverty Unnatural.

Fort Worth, Tex., Southwest.

Dr. McGlynn, Henry George and a number of other reformers, writers, thinkers and workers have founded a society in New York called the Anti-poverty society. The object is a grand one. The blight of poverty is a terrible curse upon poor humanity, and any agency, effort or organization which will aid in minimizing it should be encouraged and commended. No thinking mind but must admit that poverty is not only unnecessary, but unnatural, in this country at least. Its present painful prevalence is due to vicious systems and unjust laws. Nine-tenths of existing poverty is artificial and can be removed when the people make an honest, earnest and intelligent effort in that direction. Success to every anti-poverty movement.

Fencing 447,000 Acres.

Socorro, New Mexico, Bullion.

The actions of the so-called owners of the Armendari’s grants^sic, lying in the very heart of this and Sierra county, and comprising 447,000 acres of land, enough to make happy homes for 5,000 families, shows what these great corporations will do in case they can control the land. They are at this time erecting a barbed wire fence around their possessions and making it a desert as far as concerns the prosperity of New Mexico. The would-be owners of the Maxwell grant propose doing the same thing.^129? p. 8, col. 3

M’MACKIN ON O’BRIEN.

Under the Hoof of the Land Monopolist.

Iron Molders’ Journal.

Giffen’s statistics for 1885 startle us with the fact that only about 5,000,000 acres of good arable land remain available in the United States for the actual settler. Every thoughtful man knows what that means, viz.: that with the last acre gone the real struggle between the masses and the classes (as Gladstone p. 8, col. 4 aptly puts it) will commence. The wealth producer of the American continent will be under the hoof of the land monopolist, as for ages past his European brother has been.

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[Notice] A.—TO SECRETARIES OF TRADE AND LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND LAND AND LABOR CLUBS.

A.—TO SECRETARIES OF TRADE AND LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND LAND AND LABOR CLUBS.

We have received an order to send a copy of “PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE” to every trade and labor organization or land and labor club that may wish to have it, up to the number of one thousand. A copy will be accordingly forwarded to the secretary of any labor organization, local assembly of the K. of L. or land and labor club on receipt of twelve cents for postage.

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[Notice] MEMBERS OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS

MEMBERS OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS and others wishing to canvass for subscribers to this paper on a liberal commission are invited to send their names and addresses to the publishers of THE STANDARD, 25 Ann street, New York.

UNITED LABOR PARTY.

[Notice] McGLYNN PARADE.

McGLYNN PARADE.

23D ASSEMBLY DISTRICT ASSOCIATION,

UNITED LABOR PARTY,

Will meet at cor. 105th street and Third avenue, on SATURDAY, the 18th inst., at 5 p. m. After a parade with band through the district, will take elevated train for position on Eighth street, west of Broadway. All residents of the district are invited. By order

COMMITTEE.

[Notice] 23RD ASSEMBLY DISTRICT MEETS

23RD ASSEMBLY DISTRICT MEETS every Monday evening. German speaking members every Tuesday evening at Vincent hall, 1897 Third avenue, corner 105th street. Open every evening for enrollment of members. Thursday and Saturday evenings free debates of the Progress and Poverty club

LAND AND LABOR PARTY.

“THE NEW CRUSADERS.”

“I care not who write the laws of a country so long as I can write the people’s songs.”

We want to re-write some of the laws of our country. Let us begin the work by writing and singing the new songs of the people.

MISS AGATHA MUNIER,

known so well, not only as the former Leader of the Choir of St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic church, but for her earnest sympathy and active endeavors in behalf of the Labor Movement in this city, has decided to organize and instruct several Great Choruses of Male and Female voices, enlisted from the ranks of the people themselves. It is Miss Munier’s hope to drill these united voices for active work in the Political Campaign of the coming fall, when by concerts for the benefit of the Labor fund, and by free music at lectures and public meetings, the voice of the people may be heard in the songs of labor.

Applicants for admission to these classes may address or call on MISS MUNIER, at 223 East Thirty-second street.