July 30, 1887 Vol. II, No. 4Whole No. 30

THE NEW PARTY.

The state convention called by the united labor party to meet in Syracuse on the 17th of August promises to be a large and representative gathering, in spite of the fact that the personal interests and motives which induce men to spend money⁴ and time in attending the conventions of the old parties will be altogether wanting. It will be a political convention from which professional politicians will be conspicuously absent, and in which there will be no struggle for the loaves and fishes. The object of the men who will come together from all parts of the state will not be that of securing offices, but of advancing principle.

Over the platform there is not likely to be any dispute. The principles on which the new party is consolidating are well stated in the Clarendon hall platform^12? on which the municipal campaign was made in this city last year, and in the call for the convention. They are that land values shall be appropriated for the benefit of the community, and taxes on production or its results be abolished: that businesses in their nature monopolies (such as railroads, telegraphs, etc.), and functions that can be performed better by the people in their collective capacity than by individuals (such as the issuing of money), shall be controlled or managed by the community, and that no citizen shall be given any legal advantage over any other citizen. These principles may be tersely summed up in the phrase “no monopoly;” and with them fully harmonizes the salutary principle of no special favors to churches or other private institutions, suggested by Dr. McGlynn^sic in the article from the North American Review, reprinted on another page. There can be no disposition to fall back from the Clarendon hall platform, neither can there be any disposition to go further in the direction of advocating governmental interference. The socialists of the German school, who form a section of the party more influential by their activity than by their numbers, must be contented with this, and doubtless will be contented, as the wiser heads among them must recognize the hopelessness of opposing their distinctive notions to the ideas of individual freedom of action which are so strongly held by the great majority of the American people.

The name of the party, however, is a matter as to which there is likely to be some diversity of opinion, and though “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” this is a question of some importance. The name united labor party came naturally, as the party was formed in the first place by the united action of the labor associations of New York city. Where organized labor exists in strength the name has power, but in the country there is a feeling that the term “labor” has narrow associations and would handicap the new party with the notion that it is merely a class movement. As a farmer delegate to the conference that was held in Cincinnati on the Fourth of July said: “The farmers around me are mostly tenants, and have to work like slaves for a poor living; but they never seem to think that they are really laborers, and look on a ‘labor party’ as something relating to the workingmen of the towns, which cannot include them.” But, though many other names are suggested, there is as yet none which seems to command general assent, and while this is so, the matter can well be left to the national conference, which ought to meet some time before the close of the year.

The great difficulty which the new party will have to meet in making anything like a fair showing of its strength in a state election is the want of machinery and money. Politics, even legitimate politics, are, under our vicious system, very costly. Upon the printing and distribution of ballots, “the manning” of polls and the hiring of halls, etc., both the old parties habitually expend large sums, which are raised partly from assessments levied upon candidates and officials, and partly from the contributions of those having pecuniary interests in party success, or wishing to stand well with party managers. The new party has not these resources, and will have to rely upon zeal and voluntary contributions.

But the enormous disadvantage under which it will labor in this respect emphasizes the crying need of what is, perhaps, the greatest single reform in the mechanism of our politics that could be made—the adoption of the Australian system of voting. Under this system the names of all candidates are printed on an official ballot, which is handed to the voter when he enters the polling place, and on which he indicates his preference by a pencil mark (an apartment secure from observation being provided for that purpose) before he deposits it. I urged the adoption of this system in an article entitled “Money in Elections” published some years ago in the North American Review, and again urged it at the congratulatory meeting of the united labor party held after the last election, as the simple remedy for many of the disadvantages we had experienced in that election. It has since been strongly advocated by a prominent democratic city official, Mr. W. M. Ivins, and his views have received the endorsement of several of our influential papers. If the united

p. 1, col. 2 labor party will make a point of pressing the adoption of this system upon the assemblymen and senators who are to be elected this fall, and shall in this receive the co-operation of the journals that have expressed themselves so favorably to Mr. Ivins’s proposition, there may be some hope of getting it adopted before another election comes on, no matter what may be the result of this election. The reform is one that should commend itself to every good citizen whatever his political affiliations. It would cut off a great part of what are now the necessary expenses of election, and which furnish a foundation and excuse for levying political assessments that in many cases debar from office all but the rich or the unscrupulous; it would do away with the expensive, demoralizing and corrupting custom of employing ticket peddlers to surround the polls; and it would make bribery impossible, by preventing others from knowing what ballot a voter cast.

The evil of bribery has in this state grown to an alarming extent, and is far more widespread, direct and open in some of the agricultural counties than in the city. In such a little town as Hudson, it is estimated that out of twenty-two hundred voters or so, nine hundred or a thousand expect to be paid for their votes, and in some places even well-to-do farmers expect such pay as confidently as they expect pay for their butter or eggs.

The evil of intimidation which would also be cured by the adoption of the Australian system is little, if any, less than that of bribery. In an article on the lodging house vote, in the June number of the North Amerioan Review, ex-County Clerk Henry A. Gumbleton says:

The present system of voting, intended to give the voter a secret ballot, practically does nothing of the sort. By the exercise of a little adroitness on the part of the inspector of elections, who is the selected officer of party, the voter’s intention is easily ascertained and the vaunted inviolability of the ballot becomes a mockery. Our system is not advanced enough for the present day. We are a quarter of a century behiad the age. More scientific methods are in use in younger communities, which give the elector absolute freedom of choice and the necessary secrecy, such as the very act of voting contemplates in a free community.

There are thousands and thousands of voters in this state to whom the freedom of the ballot is as much a fiction as it was to the poorer class of Irish tenants previous to the adoption of the Australian system in Great Britain and Ireland. It was this system that made the parliamentary national party possible. And its adoption in this state would give similar freedom to many thousand American citizens who are now on election day controlled by their fears instead of by their convictions.

In the article referred to, Mr. Gumbleton calls attention to what is known as the lodging house vote, which, he declares, has been decisive at many elections held in this city since 1880. Says Mr. Gumbleton, referring to the poorer class of lodging houses licensed by the health department:

The sanitary condition of these places has improved under health regulations; but in the inverse ratio of this improvement they have become a dangerous element in municipal politics. They have become the centers in which corrupt and fraudulent voters herd together immediately before each election, and shamelessly hold their votes to the highest bidder of any party or faction. Three thousand one hundred and seventy-five electors cast their ballots at the election in November, 1886., from 256 of these hives of the franchise. That they were not of the order of men who make up the greatness of the state goes without saying; that they were mainly composed of the vagrant lost to every sentiment of manhood and honor, who subsists principally by mendicancy and petty thieving, tramping the country and suburbs during the summer, and gravitating toward the city with the return of cool weather, does not admit of contradiction. . . . The workers for the machines recognize the value of these votes, and provide for them in the disbursements of the campaign. Indeed, it has been claimed that any closely contested election in which there were three tickets running could be carried for the side securing the lodging-house vote. The arrangements for the lodging-house vote are made generally by the men in charge of the election districts. It is secured by purchase—pure and simple—and when completed the voters are marched to the polls in squads of twos, threes, and fours, depending on the ability of their conductor to hold them together and prevent interference from others. They are compelled to hold their right hand up with ballots exposed, so that, in the expressive language of the adroit campaigner, they can do no “funny business in changing ballots.” Their ballots are taken generally unchallenged; or, if challenged, their vote is sworn in. Their reward is paid them by another worker—generally quite a superior person—after the vote has been deposited to the satisfaction of their conductor.

At times, the lodging house keeper is himself a politician, and then he makes his own arrangements with the party representative, or the candidate personally, for the votes of his lodgers. In one case of which the writer was informed in his investigations, the competition was unusually active on the local candidates, and the lodging house keeper locked his voters up and kept them under duress, until he had voted them all in convenient squads.

This, it may be incidentally remarked, is even a blacker indictment of the social conditions of the American metropolis than it is of our political methods. But even as regards these methods the case is worse than Mr. Gumbleton describes it. In many cases one set of men are registered and another set of men vote, and votes of this kind are cast from houses which are not regularly licensed by the board of health, and consequently are not included in Mr. Gumbleton’s estimate.

This vote was one of the agencies by

p. 1, col. 3 which the “saviors of society” defeated the united labor party at the last election and which they will use as long as it is deliverable. As to the votes coerced through the police department, the excise department, the district attorney’s office, and those controlled through the use of the public patronage, who shall say how many they are? “Practical” politicians estimate that the district attorney’s office, “used for all it is worth,” is, to the party controlling it, good for fifteen thousand votes.

All this power would vanish with real secrecy of the ballot.

The corrupt and corrupting elements of politics will, of course, be against the new party in the coming election, as they were in the last, but the new party has on its side something that in the long run will prove stronger than them all—the power of a great idea capable of arousing men to enthusiasm; and as certain as the sun rises, so certain is it that the party which holds its first state convention in Syracuse on the 17th of August, will ere long carry the state and then sweep the nation. But in the meantime and from the first it should use whatever strength it may have for the improvement of elective methods and the purification of politics. The corruption of government always means the rule of the rich and the unscrupulous.

The citations given by Judge Maguire⁸ in the issue of THE STANDARD of July 16, to show the constitutional power of the legislature to make land values the exclusive subject of taxation, even to the point of absorbing them entirely, were probably enough to convince even the Times of the foolishness of the assertion that there is any constitutional barrier to this measure of justice and good policy. A correspondent writing from Albany adds, however, to the citations given by Judge Maguire by calling attention to a recent utterance of the court of appeals of this state, in which, in The Matter of McPherson (104 N. Y. Reports, p. 316), it is declared that “It (the legislature) may impose all the taxes upon lands, . . . or all upon houses.”

The gentleman who calls attention to this citation goes on to explain that, while he does not wish to see such stupid objections urged against it as that it is unconstitutional or revolutionary, he is not ready to commit himself to the proposition that all taxes should be levied on land values, for he adds:

As to some of the conditions you lament, I do not see that they would be cured by the system you propose. For instance, you admit that a man may be the owner of the fruits of his labor, and dispose thereof as he may see fit. This would give a man the ownership of the house he might build. Now a house to live in is as necessary to a man as land to live on. Would not the owner of the house rent it, and prey upon the necessities of his fellows in the matter of buildings, just as you complain that he does now in the matter of land and buildings? In other words, would we not have, in cities especially, a class of house-lords where now we have land-lords, and entailing the same difficulties upon the people that they now labor under?

The difficulty with my correspondent is precisely that which prevents socialists of the German school from realizing how all, and far more than all, that they could hope to accomplish for the abolition of “wage-slavery” by their cumbrous and unworkable schemes could be accomplished easily, quietly, and naturally, by the simple device of opening land to labor by taxing land values. His mistake is in the assumption that “a house to live in is as necessary as land to live on.” He has but to think a moment to see the grotesque error of this assumption.

Men lived before there were houses, and had to live before there were houses in order that there might be houses; but no man ever lived, or ever could have lived before there was land. It is true that in our civilized society the great majority of men do live in houses for a large or the greater portion of their time, and that houses are necessary to their comfort; but, while there are men who temporarily or habitually live without houses, no man can live without land. There may be individual cases under certain conditions in which to be put out of a house would cause death, in weeks, or days, or even hours; but how many minutes would it take to cause the death of the strongest and most resourceful human being were he put off the land into interplanetary space? So far from houses being as necessary to men as land the prior access of men to land is indispensable to the existence of houses. For houses can only exist on land and are composed of materials drawn from land. The man who owns a house owns only what labor having access to land can produce. But the man who owns land owns that without which labor can neither produce nor exist. The ownership of a house is the ownership of a human production capable of indefinite multiplication, liable to destruction by accident or design, and in its nature constantly tending to decay. The ownership of land is the ownership of a slice of the planet. Human power can neither increase nor destroy land, and it remains from age to age the dwelling place and reservoir of the generations of men who come and go^sic,

Such are the essential differences between, not merely houses, but all things produced by human labor, and the natural element from which they are drawn—differences that are ignored by those who imagine that the ownership of wealth or capital in any of its forms can give the same power of oppressing and robbing

p. 1, col. 4 labor as can the ownership of land. Where one man is the owner of the element on which and from which other men must live, if they are to live at all, he, having control of that without which they are absolutely helpless, becomes to them as a lord or God; but when land is free to labor there can be nothing like a “house-lord” or “wage-lord.” For if men do not like the terms on which the owner of a house will yield its use to them they are free to build houses for themselves, and if they do not like the terms that a would-be employer offers for their labor they have opportunity to employ it themselves.

Another correspondent asks me to define my position with relation to socialism. I have already done so at some length in that chapter of my book “Protection or Free Trade?” which is entitled “Free Trade and Socialism⁹,” and in a note to which I say:

The term “socialism” is used so loosely that it is hard to attach to it a definite meaning. I myself am classed as a socialist by those who denounce socialism, while those who profess themselves socialists declare me not to be one. For my own part I neither claim nor repudiate the name, and realizing as I do the correlative¹² truth of both principles can no more call myself an individualist or a socialist than one who considers the forces by which the planets are held to their orbits could call himself a centrifugalist or a centripetalist. The German socialism of the school of Marx (of which the leading representative in England is Mr. H. M. Hyndman, and the best exposition in America has been given by Mr. Laurence Gronlund), seems to me a high-purposed¹⁰ but incoherent mixture of truth and fallacy, the defects of which may be summed up in its want of radicalism—that is to say, of going to the root.

The cardinal defect of socialism of the German school is its failure to make a clear distinction between the primary factor of production, land, and the derivative factor, capital—a confusion largely due to the use of a terminology singularly lacking in any approach to scientific precision, and to the ignoring of that power of co-ordination and adjustment which comes from the free play of individual interests, and is to the social organism what the unconscious functions are to the human organism. Confusing land with capital, these socialists imagine that it is as necessary, in order to prevent the robbery of labor, to do away with the private ownership of capital as to do away with the private ownership of land; and failing to recognize the primary cause of the helplessness of the mere laborer, where land is monopolized, and the co-ordination in production and justice in distribution that would result from really free competition, they imagine the evil lies in the wage system, and that competition must be abolished by committing to organized society—virtually the government—the direction of both production and distribution, in order to prevent waste and secure to each the fair reward of his labor. Socialism is not akin to anarchism, as so many who know nothing of either seem to suppose. It is its antipode¹¹. The socialist, as the term is commonly used to denote German or state socialist, would, to secure the proper direction of industry and the just distribution of its fruits, commit its control to government; the philosophic anarchist, seeing the abuses to which government is liable, would do away with government altogether, and trust everything to the co-ordination of individual impulses and needs. Both make a like mistake in seizing on one side of the truth and ignoring its correlative.

There is this truth—and it is a very important one—in socialism, that as civilization advances the functions which pass into the proper sphere of governmental control become more and more numerous, as we see in the case of the railroad, the telegraph, the supplying of gas, water, etc., but this is all the more reason why we should be careful to guard against governmental interference with what can safely be left to individual action. In some things our existing system is too socialistic and in others too anarchistic. The proper line between governmental control and individualism is that where free competition fails to secure liberty of action and freedom of development. The great thing which we should aim to secure is freedom—that full freedom of each which is bounded by the equal freedom of others.

If it were absolutely necessary to make a choice between full state socialism and anarchism, I for one would be inclined to chose^sic anarchism, preferring no government at all, bad and inconvenient as that might be, to a government which should essay¹³ to control and direct everything. And I imagine that this would be the choice of the great majority of the American people, for individualism is strongly rooted in all the habits of thought of the peoples of English speech, and we seem to lack the capacity for governmental direction and administration that has been developed on the continent. This is the reason why socialism of the German school can never make the headway here that it has on the continent of Europe. It is, in fact, the product of a state of society in which people have become largely used to governmental supervision and direction, and are accustomed to look to government as a sort of special providence.

But in the meantime there is no reason why those who entertain such views as I do should not work harmoniously with socialists of the German school as long as

p. 1, col. 5 we go together, or why we should be perpetually accentuating our differences. The ultimate aims of socialism are high and noble. They seek to obtain for society that abolition of poverty for which we would strive. Any dispute as to means may well be postponed until it is necessary to raise it. I and my friend both wish to reach the Pacific ocean. I think we shall reach it at San Francisco; he is firmly of the opinion that it will be necessary to keep on until we get to China. So long as we are willing to travel westward in the same car, we can well postpone disputes.

Mr. Blaine¹⁵, according to a cable dispatch, has told an English ironmonger who called on him to talk over the annexation of Canada, that “We don’t need Canada, and we don’t want her.” In this Mr. Blaine is consistent with his protective principles, since the annexation of Canada would involve the abolition of the double row of custom houses, with their attendant searchers and seizers, that now line the border. If, as protectionists on both sides of the line insist, these are really needed to prevent us from ruining Canadian industry, and Canadian industry from ruining us, then annexation would mean mutual injury. But if consistent with his protective theories in opposing the annexation of Canada, Mr. Blaine was certainly inconsistent in supporting the war for the union. If the southern states had been permitted to secede, they, too, would now have constituted a “foreign country,” and we should have had another wealth-increasing tariff line, with a largely augmented staff of spies, inspectors, and tax collectors, stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. And it is impossible to assign any reason why we do not need Canada that would not as truly, if not as strongly, have applied to the southern states.

The truth is that we do need Canada. It is not perhaps a vital necessity any more than the keeping of the southern states in the Union was a vital necessity. We can live without Canada; but still we need her. We need her to round off our northern boundary; to make the American republic truly continental; to secure for our trade the freedom of its natural outlets and courses; to prevent bickering and increase the consciousness of national strength, and to promote the prosperity and fraternity of both sections of what are essentially the same people. And Canada needs us for the same reasons that we need Canada, and which are all the stronger in her case because she is the smaller. The only thing that prevents the two countries from fulfilling their natural destiny is the absurd delusion that material prosperity is increased by tariff taxes. Once abolish the custom houses on both sides of the line, and the two peoples would so rapidly grow into one that political union would become easy and inevitable. In the mean time Mr. Blaine’s not wanting Canada is suggestive of what the attitude of the New York protectionist would have been toward New Jersey if the thirteen states had retained the power of levying independent tariffs. The most beneficent provision of the federal constitution, the most substantial advantage of the American union, is that which gives us free trade over the better part of a vast continent.

HENRY GEORGE.

By permission of Allan Thorndyke Rice^sic17 we reprint on the fifth page of this issue of the STANDARD the greater part of an article by Dr. Edward McGlynn on the new know nothingism and the old^{35?6?7?14?16?}, which will command much attention.

The United Labor Party on Staten Island.

STAPLETON, S. I., July 20.—Last Monday evening Mr. Patrick Doody organized the united labor party of Richmond county with headquarters at this place. And so the banner of the new crusade has been raised in this the “banner county of the democracy of the state.” Heretofore at every election the democratic politicians have spent some money for drinks and said, “Now, boys, be true to your record and roll up a handsome majority for the straight ticket.” But that is now played out; there is a force on which they cannot base their figures nor will it obey the “whip,” consequently they are more than a little worried.

Last spring, with about two weeks’ work and no organization or money, we polled a large vote. Our “saviors” were terror-stricken and they have repeatedly asked since, “What will you do next?”

There are a number of readers of THE STANDARD down here and I take this means of inviting them to join us.

JOHN H. SCHILLING, R. S.

Catholics Will Stand by Dr. McGlynn.

NEW YORK, July 17.—The ecclesiastical death warrant of the able, eloquent and revered Dr. McGlynn has been sealed in Rome and delivered by the representatives of Tammany hall. Our twenty million of Catholics are insulted thereby, but their mourning will be turned into joy.

MICHAEL BLANCHFIELD.

Horse Flesh Worth More Than Human Flesh.

A full-formed horse will in any market bring from twenty to two hundred friedrichs d’or. Such is his worth to the world. A full-formed man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a good round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself.^18?

THOMAS CARLYLE¹⁹.

Don’t Worry—The Principles Will Come Out Ahead Yet.

Lancaster, Pa., Inquirer.

When the press of a free republic seeks to justify and approve such an attempt as that of the Catholic church against Dr. McGlynn, and even rejoices at its probable success, it is pretty good evidence that the true principles of freedom are not understood as they should be.

p. 1, col. 6

THE NEW PARTY’S NAME.

A Name for the New Party.

EAST ORANGE, July 25.—The united labor party stand squarely upon true principles, but the name labor party is too restrictive. Thousands of people stand in antagonism to anything labeled “labor,” thinking it only a “class movement”—a fight for wages for the worker only. These people are prevented by their prejudices from considering our claims for support, and from knowing that we represent the interests of the whole people. I think, therefore, it becomes important for us to take on a name which, in significancy, may embrace all “classes.”

Jefferson said that the land in usufruct²¹ belonged to the living, and we believe that we are true exponents of the rights of man as set forth in the immortal declaration, which was mainly the work of Jefferson. What better name, then, can we adopt than that of Jeffersonians? The word democrat, as an affix²², runs against the prejudice of past republicans, besides we know that the democratic party in the past were the supporters of southern slavery. Personally a party name makes little difference to me. I seek to know what it stands for or represents. In the interest of our fast growing movement, however, I would like a name that would not be repellant to many because of the narrow construction of its meaning. The name “progressives,” or even “crusaders,” I think would be more generally acceptable than “labor” party, with any conceivable prefix or affix. The time has come in my opinion when we should enlarge the base of our agitation as much as possible, and one of the means to that end, it seems to me, is the adoption of an all-embracing title or name. Yours for the cause,

E. C. ALPHONSE.

Why He Doesn’t Build a House.

ALBANY, N. Y.—I am a barber, and by persistently scraping faces I have scraped together enough money to build a little house—not one big enough to hold tenants, but with just room enough for myself. When I found I had money enough to build a house, I began to look for some mud to build it on, and I went to a man for whom the Lord made lots of mud, but he wanted such a price that I would have to mortgage my labor for years to come. So I will have to wait until some fellow patents some kind of a grappling hook by which I can hang my house to the sky, but I am afraid the land owner underneath will demand space or air rent, claiming that I shut off the sun and rain. In this case I’ll have to wait until it rains titles, and then perhaps I can grab one.

JOSEPH C. ROSHEIT.

Cut Off the Revenue.

ST. LOUIS, MO., July 11.—So Pope Leo thought more of Corrigan’s word than he did of the telegram from the 100,000 men in New York city and he excommunicated Dr McGlynn. Now let those 100,000 men show pope and archbishop their manhood and make it clear that they cannot be bullied. Let them cut off all revenue for pope and archbishop and fight the thing out.

DAN MALONE.

The Dr. McGlynn Fund.

The publisher of THE STANDARD acknowledges the receipt of one dollar for the McGlynn fund from Mrs. B. of New York city.

A CROWDED AND ENTHUSIASTIC MEETING AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC.

An Eloquent Address by Dr. McGlynn—The Religion in the New Crusade—The True Teachings of Christianity Clearly Opposed to Poverty—The Ecclesiastical Machine and How to Resist It—What Catholics Should Do if Refused Absolution Because They Don’t Believe in Poverty.

The Academy of Music was as usual crowded on last Sunday evening, several hundred persons having waited on the sidewalk in front of the building for half an hour before the doors were opened.

The meeting was presided over by Mr. A. J. Steers. He created a great deal of laughter in introducing himself as “the overweeningly ambitious Irish widow” who led Dr. McGlynn from the paths of rectitude by giving him a copy of “Progress and Poverty.” “No man,” he continued, “can tell what the effect of his most trivial action may be. No one could possibly have made me imagine at the time when, very innocently, I asked the good doctor to read that book, that I was awaking the Galahad whom we have all recognized by this time. Therefore it is to each and all of us an example in the Anti-poverty society to move forward honestly and do the best under the circumstances, as the most trivial action may lead to unforeseen results.

After the chairman had announced that the Anti-poverty society would hold its picnic on Saturday, August 13, and the Fourteenth assembly district on Saturday, July 30, the chorus sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” Mr. Steers then explained the plan of the executive committee in relation to receiving periodical contributions from members of the society. While he was speaking President McGlynn entered and was received with unbounded cordiality and enthusiasm.

While the collection was being taken up the choir sung “The Crusaders Song” to the air of “Marching Through Georgia.” The chairman then said: “It now becomes my pleasing duty to introduce to you the speaker of the evening,”the Peter the^sic Hermit of the new crusade,” the Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn.

Dr. McGlynn said:

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen—There can be nothing worthy of the enthusiasm of the human heart or of sufficient importance to engross all of the thoughts of the human mind that does not rise far above mere time and sense and find its source and its complement in the things of the spirit and of eternity. The cause in which we are enlisted were not worth the breath that is expended upon it if it had for its object merely the bettering of the temporal condition of men. If there were no hereafter—if the souls of men were to perish with their bodies—then I confess that I for one should instantly be counted out of this struggle, for I should agree with those who in the despair of their hearts have said that the battle is not worth the fighting, the race not worth the running, the burden not worth the bearing, and the life not worth the living. (Applause.) If these strifes and anxieties, these hopes and fears, these victories and defeats, these loves and hates of this lower sphere, had not their explanation in something higher and better, then life would be more like the jest of some horrid fiend than the order of an all-wise, beneficent and loving Father. All our science, all our political economy, all our politics, all our joys and sorrows, would be without their proper significance. We might well envy the brute creation the fewness of their wants and their comparative exemption from the cares and anxieties that create so much misery for the human heart and mind. Our cause must be essentially a moral one, and therefore a religious one, or it is not worthy of our pursuit.

In Philadelphia last Sunday evening, immediately after an address which I there delivered, an estimable lady, the wife of a clergyman, no doubt a very religious woman and a most earnest one, offered to me a serious objection. She said she thought better of the anti-poverty doctrine now that she had heard it explained, but at the same time she could not clearly understand what I had asserted of the religion that was in it. She said: “You talk of bringing men back to Christ and to God by the preaching and the practice of this doctrine, and yet your crusade seems to be so largely concerned with merely bettering the temporal condition of men. You are actually trying to make all men rich, while Christ preached the blessedness of poverty.” (Laughter.)

Now, this is a serious objection; and to many earnest minds that are honestly seeking the truth, it may seem well taken. Therefore it is eminently proper that we should answer it, and I have already begun to do so.

The fact is that Christ did not preach the blessedness of poverty. (Applause.) But He did preach the blessedness of the poor among whom He lived; because He came to deliver His message first to the poor, to the outcast, to the obscure, to the lowly and to the unlearned; and therefore He said: “Blessed are the poor, because the gospel is preached to them.” (Applause.) He pronounced them blessed, because to them, most of all, and first of all, was preached the gospel of emancipation, of equality, of liberty and fraternity, of the bringing from heaven to earth of a new society which He called the kingdom of heaven on earth, in which men should not be reduced to poverty in order to be blessed, but in which poverty should be abolished by making common to all men the things that the Father from the beginning had intended should be common to all. (Great applause.)

And, while we are not required to believe or to teach that Christ exacted, as a one condition of affiliation in that society, of which He told us that it was to be the kingdom of heaven on earth, that its members should actually renounce all individual ownership of property of whatsoever character, yet we see clearly that He exalted such renunciation as the highest type of the perfection of human character as exemplified in Himself, and as He would have it developed in those who should come nearest to him^sic, and who should be worthiest to be His followers and His witnesses and His apostles to all the world and people and ages. (Applause.)

And so we read that a certain young man came to Him whom, when He looked at him, He loved. And this young man asked a mighty question—“What shall I do to be saved?”—the question that must concern every rational human being. What shall I do to be saved from the lusts of the flesh, from the doubts that perplex the human intellect, from myself? What shall I do to know whence I came and whither I am going, and by what means I shall best and most directly attain the end of my being? The answer was, “Observe the commandments.” But the young man said, “This have I done from my youth up.” Then the Master said: “If thou wouldst be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast and p. 2, col. 2 give it to the poor, and follow me.” (Great applause.)

Now, those who accept Jesus of Nazareth as their Lord and Master, their teacher, their savior and their guide, cannot dispute His word that tells us it is more perfect not to possess individual wealth, but to sell all that we have and give to the poor; not to throw it into the river, not to waste it, but to increase the wealth of others by diminishing our own. (Applause.) The blessedness that He preached concerning the poor was surely not simply that they should have more to eat and drink and a little better clothes to wear, and some better shelter than they had had before; but it was that through the gospel of the fraternity of men under the fatherhood of God mer^sic would have such measure of freedom to develop their character by learning the lessons and fulfilling the tasks assigned them that they might fulfill the end of their creation here by being called up higher to the Father’s house from school, to enjoy the lessons that they here had learned, and the reward of the task that they here had performed.

To speak of poverty—the poverty that we would abolish—as if it were a good thing to be fostered and encouraged as an ordinance of God; to speak of the abolition of poverty as if it were a kind of sacrilege, as if it were a sacrilegious interference with the plan of God, is actually to attribute to God an unwisdom and a cruelty utterly unworthy of Him. (Applause.)

If we believe that our lives come from a wise and beneficent Creator, and that it is not merely our right, but our duty, to maintain these lives, then surely we must believe that it is the will of the Creator that we shall have means by which these lives can be maintained. (Applause.) If a mere inspection of our nature and its faculties make us see clearly that it was the design of the Maker that man should be a social animal, that in building up his social institutions he should establish communities, villages, towns and cities, that by the proper working out of his capacities and the necessities of his nature he should cultivate art—the love of beauty—and science—the love of truth—and that he should exercise virtue—the practical love of good; if all this is clearly written in the nature of man, then it is clearly necessary and proper that he should have abundant opportunity of working upon the general materials of nature, upon all the raw materials out of which men have to make the instruments for their own instruction, the instruments for the cultivation of their own æsthetic nature, the implements and the instruments by which alone they can exercise and carry out their culture to the full.

It actually seems strange that at this late day we should be called upon to prove that poverty is not a good thing to be cherished, but an evil thing to be abolished as far as possible. (Applause.) And the greatest wonder is that the Christian philosophers, and, sad to say, the Christian ministers and Christian prelates who are so eager apparently to teach us that poverty is a good thing for the mass of men, seem to have so little confidence in their own medicine that while they are willing to dose the rest of the world with it—(uproarious laughter and deafening applause, interrupting the speaker for several minutes)—they are extremely careful never to take a single drop of this panacea for all the ills of other people themselves, if they can help it. (Laughter and applause.)

Christ said, “The poor you shall always have with you,” and therefore these wise interpreters of the scriptures—just about as wise in this generation as were those other interpreters of the scriptures who put Galileo into prison (applause) for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun—argue that in saying so He enacted a law that poverty should always exist in the world; and that it should be the aim of those who assume to be nearest to Him, and to represent Him, and to preach His word, and to minister His sacraments, to see to it that this poverty should never be abolished out of the world. (Applause.)

It might be odious to allude too pointedly and specially to modern times and places near home, but we can safely say that in other countries, two and three centuries ago, there were conspicuous instances of the mass of the people—in France, for instance—being oppressed, and enslaved, and robbed, reduced to and kept in horrid misery and wretchedness, largely by and because of the enormous wealth of the church of Christ. (Applause.) A very large portion of the lands of France were held by the church. which by a rule^sic most beneficent to churchmen could never be alienated; so that the church might accept the whole kingdom as a gift, but could never alienate the slightest portion without all sorts of roundabout processes and without the express permission of the pope! (Hisses.) It never required permission for anybody, even the lowest minister or servant of the church, to accept a gift, but it did require all sorts of difficult processes to alienate anything. (Laughter.)

An American bishop, who had recently returned from Rome, told me a year or two ago that it was desired by the authorities in Rome to insist that no ecclesiastical property in this country should be alienated to the amount of $5,000 or upward without the express permission of the sacred congregation of the propaganda. (Hisses and groans.) This bishop explained to them that that would be a very great hardship, that he might see an opportunity of procuring a desirable plot of ground where a church could be built, and he might not have the necessary means to purchase the plot; but supposing the full price to be $10,000, he might get the owner to consent to allow $5,000 to remain on mortgage, or practically to make a loan of $5,000; and he asked them: “Would that be such an alienation of church property as would require your permission?” “Certainly, by all means,” said the Roman gentleman. (Hisses.) So that this putting a mortgage on a piece of land because only half the purchase money could be paid would be an alienation of church property such as could not be permitted without the express permission of the sacred congregation of the propaganda. (Hisses.) “But,” the good bishop said, “there might be danger in delay. What should we do in such a case?” “You should write to us,” said the Roman gentleman. “But by the time we received your permission by mail the owner might have changed his mind or might have raised the price.” “Oh! then, you could telegraph to us,” said the Roman gentleman. (Laughter.)

The actual fact is that under the system of ownership of vast estates by the church in France, Italy, Germany, England, everywhere, religion was largely corrupted, the masses were enslaved and oppressed, and things came to such a pass that the multitudes who should have looked to the ministers of Christ as their friends and fathers, and counselors, and comforters, and benefactors, began to look upon them as their worst enemies. (Applause.)

It was this wealth of the church that corrupted the church. Men sought ecclesiastical positions, not because they loved the Master and desired to do His work, but because they were fond of the loaves and fishes, because they desired the benefices.

About two centuries ago a mere brat of a boy, nine years old, barely out of the nursery, but of the royal family of Guise of France was lord abbot of nine abbeys—a child lord abbot of nine abbeys! He was not a monk. He perhaps did not know how to p. 2, col. 3 read. Abbeys are supposed to be the abodes of learning and prayer. They were formerly great centers from which came out science and religion. The monks in the abbeys had preserved literature and civilized whole nations. They had drained swamps and made the wilderness to blossom and to be productive for the use of man. It was the early and enthusiastic Christian love by which these men were swayed that caused the world to lavish its wealth and power upon the church. The barbarous nations that had been converted to Christianity, the rude tribes that had been taught and civilized, felt that they could look to no others so well as to to those^sic who by heroic self-sacrifice, by virtuous lives, had wrought such changes. But unfortunately the power, and wealth, and consideration, and the ease that came from power and wealth corrupted the human side of the church; and it needed bloody revolutions to purify the atmosphere, to impoverish the church, to break up its case-hardened institutions that in the original impulse had so much of the sweetness and charity of Christ. (Applause.)

When these feudalistic institutions that became so closely and inseparably connected with the Christian church were at their height, the masses were oppressed by churchmen as well as by laymen; the masses were robbed as much by church as by state. They were, as it were, but two departments of the one machine. Noblemen promoted to ecclesiastical benefices the younger members of their families. It was a matter of patronage; no longer a matter of Christian vocation. This same brat of a boy, who at nine was lord abbey of nine abbeys^sic, at sixteen was made archbishop of Rheims. You must not suppose that this boy was ordained a priest and a deacon. He was a mere layman. Why was he made lord abbot of nine abbeys, and archbishop? Because of the enormous wealth that was attached to those abbeys and that see. Some uncle of his, under the name of guardian or the like, was scooping in the revenues that had been originally intended for religion, education and charity. (Applause.)

Of course such churchmen as those would preach to the masses when they began to grumble, “Don’t you know that Christ said blessed are the poor? (Applause and laughter.) You can save your souls much better if you die of starvation (laughter); you can save your soul much better with nothing but a mud floor and a leaky thatch, and a little oatmeal and potatoes in your stomach, than if you had a decent floor and a comfortable bed and something a little better than oatmeal and potatoes.” (Laughter.) But the unfortunate or blessed poor people might sometimes be bold enough to say to the preacher, “Father, your reverence, my lord, your lordship, your grace, your holiness, your eminence (applause and laughter), do you really believe what you are preaching? (Uproarious applause.) Do you really believe that it is much easier for one to save one’s soul through starvation, and hunger, and cold, and wet? Do you really believe that it is easier for a man to save his soul when he sees his children naked and starving all around him; when he sees his wife sick unto death, with her life trembling in the balance, evicted by a crowbar brigade? Do you think he can save his soul better? If so, your reverence, your lordship, your grace, your eminence, your holiness, why is it you don’t consistently try to practice what you preach? (Applause and laughter, continued for several minutes.) Is it really possible that you shepherds of the fold of Christ, teachers in Israel, the salt of the earth, the light of the earth, ministers of Christ’s sacraments, preachers of His word, apostles of Christ, are deliberately choosing for yourselves for a few brief moments of time the enjoyment of these things at the risk of losing your souls, and so disinterestedly managing to help keep us in poverty in order that we may be better able to save our souls? That surely is a devotion and a self-sacrifice so heroic that it far transcends that even of the martyrs who were burned at the stake. (Laughter.) It is something simply wonderful that some men should consent to go to hell themselves by acquiring far more than their share of the good things of this world (laughter and applause), so that they may insure the salvation of the poor creatures who by poverty are supposed to save their souls.” (Laughter and applause.)

Now, the fact of the matter is that those who preach that way do not believe what they preach. (Great applause. A voice: “You are right.”) At the same time they do seem to believe that a very considerable degree of poverty in this world is a result of the law of God; that it helps the poor to save their souls by giving them opportunities to exercise patience and humility and respect for their betters, and all those other beautiful virtues that should characterize the poor; while it gives to the rich a very easy and comfortable means of paying their way into heaven by giving a mere tithe of their wealth in the name of charity. (Applause.)

A certain priest here in New York who was suspended once upon a time—(deafening applause and cheers)—and for aught you know to the contrary, may be suspended still, was actually suspended largely because in a conversation with a newspaper man, which was somewhat imperfectly reported, he was alleged to have said that it would be better to abolish poverty than to be forever patching up remedies for it here and there; that it would be better to purify the blood, to purge the whole system, rather than, while leaving the system unpurged and unpurified, to be simply putting a plaster upon a sore shin or a sore head (laughter and applause); and that while charity was well enough in its way, mere almsgiving to help in an immediate emergency, the greatest charity that any man or set of men, or society itself could do would be to abolish the cause of this widespread poverty and the vice, misery and crime of which poverty is the fruitful source. (Applause.)

And the poor priest, in the letter of suspension that was sent to him on the very same day, was told that in those utterances he had spoken disrespectfully of our holy father, Pope Leo XIII—(hisses and groans)—and that it was absolutely necessary that he should be suspended forthwith. And the fact was that there wasn’t the slightest allusion in the conversation with the newspaper man to the pope, or to anything that the pope had said, and in the printed report there wasn’t the slightest allusion to the pope. But it appeared that the pope had written a letter some time before, which had been incorporated in the pastoral letter to the bishops; and in that letter of the pope there was something said magnifying the work of the Catholic church in building asylums, hospitals and refuges for all sorts of poor, as showing that the church was a great friend of the poor. And this was a kind of an offset to the tendency of modern society to demand rights for the poor, rather than alms. (Great applause.)

Now, I wonder whether it ever occurred to his holiness to reflect that this Catholic church that is said to have built all these hospitals and asylums and refuges and the like, never made the money itself, or still less got it by way of some delicate elevator running up and down between the earth and the skies. (Laughter.) I wonder where all the money for the building of those poor houses and hospitals and refuges and similar institutions came from. Didn’t it come from the very beggars themselves that are the beneficiaries of them? (Applause.) And when you begin p. 2, col. 4 to look into it, there is not any very particular merit in people constituting themselves the administrators, the incorporators, the supervisors, and, to a certain extent, the beneficiaries on a large scale of the charitable institutions that they are administering for the benefit of the poor; if they do not actually make the money themselves and give it to the poor.

There is a pretty decided competition in this town among respectable gentlemen to be appointed commissioners of charities and correction. (Laughter.) Although not much of a politician myself (applause and laughter), on account of my philanthropic and humanitarian instincts, I am willing to confess that I have on one or two occasions been guilty of so grave a sin as to exercise such influence as I could bring to bear in the matter of an appointment of a commissioner of charities. But it has never occurred, I think, to any of the commissioners of charities, or to any similar official here to think that he deserved great credit for the wonderful things done for the poor of New York—ten thousand people of all kinds and degree taken care of in the hospitals and the like on Blackwell’s island and other of those watering places. (Laughter.)

Now, when these hospitals, such as they were, and asylums and the like, were simply built with money that was received from land tilled by wretched peasants groveling in misery, living in huts scarcely fit for beasts, living upon such meager diet that the wonder is they could live at all, while all they could produce over what was barely enough to enable them to keep soul and body together, went to church and state and very largely to the church to support that brat of a boy and his uncle, the boy who was the lord abbot of nine abbeys, (Applause) surely there was no charity or very little charity in building here and there a poorhouse and orphan asylum and the like. It was only a very slight, very partial, and altogether inadequate restitution, a duty, an act of justice but slightly fulfilled in giving back to the beggars what belonged to them by the law of God. (Applause.)

These people are strangely inconsistent in praising poverty as the best friend of virtue. If such be the case, why not let poverty work itself out to its logical conclusion? Why not let people die of poverty? Why this desire to keep people barely alive in their poverty and to do no more for them than barely to keep them alive? The preachers and teachers of this doctrine do not really believe it. They do not think poverty is a good thing for themselves or for their nearest relations. They do not think that poverty is a good thing for those who are their friends.

Christ then, when he said, “The poor ye have always with you,” did not enact a law. He did not express a desire that poverty should continue to the end; but he simply predicted a very unpleasant fact. It would be just as absurd to say that anyone who might predict that sickness and disease shall continue in the world, that certain kinds of contagious diseases shall never be entirely eradicated, should be charged with expressing the wish that disease shall not be exterminated. The predicting of a fact is totally different from expressing a wish that that fact should be. (Applause.)

The teaching of the gospel of Christ, of the brotherhood of man, the teaching of justice, the very commandments of the natural moral law which were reinculcated by the laws given by the Master on Mount Sinai and in the law of Christ, this natural moral law is largely concerned with the abolition of poverty, and not the maintaining of it. (Applause.) The duties of parents to their children, the duties of children to their parents, are largely concerned with just this obligation on the part of parents to see that the children do not suffer poverty, and that in their old age the parents do not suffer poverty. (Applause.) The commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” is based on the necessity of the right of property and the enjoyment of property for the well being of men.

When the commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal,” it is but enacting the law of universal equal justice, that every man shall have his own, that what God gave to all shall belong to all, that no man shall appropriate absolutely to himself what nature and nature’s God gave equally to all—“Thou shalt not steal.”

Now, we have gone into it time and again, and it is hardly necessary to go into the minute details of the proof this evening, that the cause of poverty in this world is chiefly the appropriation by a few, by a privileged few, by the classes, of those things which were made by nature and given by nature’s God for and to the mass of men equally and indiscriminately, in equal, joint, undivided usufruct, as Thomas Jefferson calls it. So that that commandment of God, properly interpreted, is a divine commandment written upon the very heart of men by the finger of the Creator, enacting a law the very object of which is not the abolition of poverty, but the making of poverty impossible from the beginning. (Applause.)

This justifying of poverty as a good thing would stultify the Creator. It implies just this: That the Creator has given men the capacity and necessity for certain things; that He has given men an irresistible craving and impulse to work out their destinies by satisfying the necessities of their animal natures with food and cultivating the necessities of their mental, æsthetic and spiritual natures by the acquisition of science and the production of works of art. And at the same time that God, by another law, would render it impossible for men rightly and properly and adequately to fulfill their destiny. God would not have given men capacities without the opportunities of exercising those capacities. He would not have given them necessities without the adequate power of satisfying those necessities. God would have been rather a mocking fiend than a wise, a loving, a beneficent Creator had He done so. (Applause.)

It is not true that poverty is the best friend of virtue. It is a conspicuous fact that poverty, want and the fear of want are a terrible incitement to vice, that men are constantly tempted to all manner of evil things because of the degradation of want and the worse than degradation that comes from the fear of want. But were human society so regulated that all men able and willing to work could find abundant employment at the highest wages, then want would be a thing that the world need no longer fear; and with want itself and the fear of want, the vice and crime of which want and its fear are the perennial source, would vanish from the world. (Applause.)

This preaching of the blessedness of poverty by those who get as far away from poverty and the fear of it themselves as they can (applause) is a libel upon God’s creation. It actually implies that these instincts and capacities that God has given us were given without a proper design on the part of the Creator that the energy should be exerted and the instinct should be satisfied. The wiser teaching of Christian philosophy and ot^sic Christian theology, the teaching of the Master himself, is that by giving men abundant opportunity to provide for their temporal necessities, they will be the better able to work out their destinies here, and to attain to their completion hereafter; they will be the better able to form character by the discipline of labor that shall have its proper reward, by p. 2, col. 5 the cultivation of their minds, their hearts, their moral faculties, their æsthetic natures; in a word, by the full, rational, and free development of all that is in them.

It is notorious that drunkenness and immorality of every kind find their constant recruiting ground among the ranks of debasing poverty. It is again equally true that the most enormous crimes against society are perpetrated because of the horrid greed for gain on the part of men who are not actually suffering want, but who are tormented by a fear of want—that morbid, insane avarice that makes even the millionaire feel poor, that makes the possession of money seem to be the one supreme good, because by money people are protected against poverty and the fear of poverty.

So it is that this avarice that the apostle calls idolatry, this worship of the golden calf, is the immediate result of poverty and the fear of poverty. (Applause.) The greed, the unseemly scramble, the horrible competition of life, are all the results of poverty and the fear of poverty. It is this that makes the difference between a well ordered company of ladies and gentlemen, of men and women, sitting down to a table abundantly supplied, at which there is room for all and to spare, and the scramble in which people are almost trampling one another to death, where there is not enough for all, where those who by main strength can get the first places at the table are alone sure of getting anything.

The present condition of society is precisely that—a scramble, a condition of society in which men and women and children are taught that what is called success in life is the prize of comparatively few. And therefore there is a race in which only a few can win the prize; there is a battle constantly fighting in which victory implies necessarily the overreaching of a large portion of our fellows. (Applause.)

These preachers of the blessedness of poverty are themselves an awful example of the debasing power of the fear of poverty. (Applause.) The very love of wealth by which many of the preachers of this gospel of poverty to others are possessed and animated, is an awful example of the power of poverty and the fear of poverty to debase and to degrade the minds and the hearts even of men consecrated to the preaching of Christ’s gospel and to the ministering to Christ’s poor. (Applause.) I have no particular desire to be unduly severe toward the preachers. I am nothing but a preacher myself. (Applause and laughter.) So by way of illustration, without any particular moral, I will tell you an anecdote.

When I was a student in the propaganda (hisses) there was a venerable old Italian priest there, a very worthy man, resident in the college, whose office it was to preach to us. And, by the by, it was he, I believe, who told us that while there were about four thousand ecclesiastics in Rome, all having their little benefices and canonries and I don’t know what, you could count about sixty or so who were really doing the actual missionary work, preaching the gospel in season and out of season in Rome. So somehow or other there was an ecclesiastical machine that managed to do a very large part of the good work that it had to do with sixty men, while there were four thousand others going through the motions of doing something and somehow never doing anything. (Applause and laughter.) Very much like that king of France celebrated, if not in history, at least in nursery lore, who with forty thousand men marched up the hill and then marched down again. (Laughter.)

This good old man told us once that if the people of Italy were asked to tell what was the great fault of the clergy of Italy they would say, by a great majority, What? “Avarice.” Here were some thousands of ecclesiastics in Italy, and here was an old ecclesiastic, an Italian too, who said that the verdict of the people would be that the predominant fault among the ecclesiastics was avarice. And those ecclesiastics were the very people who would preach to those poor people of Italy, to those degradingly poor of northern Italy who were subject to a horrible skin disease because of the inadequate food that they were barely able to support life upon, that poverty is a blessed thing and that the more of that thing they enjoy the better will they save their souls. (Laughter.)

It were a libel upon the Creator to say that these capacitiees^sic and energies and instincts of human nature that compel men to work, that compel men to make things not only useful but ornamental, that compel them to make even the food and clothing of the animal a work of art and thing of beauty—it were a blaspheming of the Creator to say that these things were not given expressly for the purpose that they should be used for the production of all manner of good things, in order that society should produce more and more of these good things that serve to elevate and take men further away from the brute and^sic bring him nearer to the maker. It is necessary that men should be able to labor and enjoy the full fruits of their labor, that no man should steal from them either the opportunities for their labor or the full and free use of what they have produced by their labor. (Great applause.) “Thou shalt not steal.” If poverty were such a good thing, then the best thing we could do for the world would be to steal as much as we could, because we would be decreasing the possessions of others while increasing our own.

He who gave this commandment gave it because in His plan it was best that every one should have his own, that every one should have equal, free, untrammeled opportunity to employ his labor, and that what he makes by his labor no one should dare take from him. (Applause.) Is it not the boast of these Christian apologists and preachers that the Christian religion has civilized the world, that the Christian church, the Catholic church, has been the home of the fine arts, of painting, of poetry, of sculpture, of music, of architecture? Are these things good things or bad things? If they are bad things, then you are strangely inconsistent with your panegyrics of the civilizing influence of the Catholic church. If they are good, then the building of cities and the invention of labor saving machinery and all the other things that human society has devised in trying to get away from poverty and accumulate wealth must be good things also. (Applause.) It is the teaching of right religion and sound reason, and therefore of Christianity, that wealth in itself is neither good nor bad except so far as it is a means toward the attainment of those higher moral and spiritual things that are the stimulus to human life and human society. (Applause.) But since the Maker himself has clearly made labor, and since it is by labor that we obtain the necessary means for the development of character and the carrying out of the destiny of the human family, it is strictly true that labor is in the plan of God indispensable for human society. The wealth that Christ cursed was not the honestly acquired wealth of God-given bounties. Such wealth was ever the reward of industry, the reward of virtue; and in the Old Testament we read of the benediction of God in the enjoyment of peace, and repose, and comfort, and plenty by those who observe God’s law.

The moral law that affects us in this world is largely concerned with the wealth and comfort of people here, since this life that God has made for us is plainly a good thing. It is to be fostered and preserved. It is not a bad p. 2, col. 6 thing to be hated and destroyed. To say that would be to blaspheme the Maker. (Applause.)

Christ had, it is true, words of the severest censure for the rich. But why? Because they were unjustly rich; because they were rich whose wealth was accumulated by robbery of the poor, by usury, by land grabbing, by land robbery, by simple stealing. This wealth that is born of injustice is a curse to the owner as well as to those who have been cheated and robbed and deprived or the necessaries of life^sic by the acquisition of that property. The wealth that is honestly acquired and usefully employed is a blessing to the world. The very word of God himself confirms the teaching of ripe reason. The proverbs of the wisest and saddest of men tell us that the poverty of the poor man is his destruction, and his father, the royal psalmist, begged God to give him neither poverty nor riches.

So we would seek no riches, because extravagant wealth can hardly ever be rightfully enjoyed. Our large fortunes of to-day are largely unjust, and in most cases I am constrained to say are the result of conscious injustice. But even where they are not the result of conscious injustice, they are the result of injustice all the same. There are no doubt men who ignorantly believe that the land is their own, and who are saying here to-day what used to be said by the landlords of Great Britain and Ireland: “Can’t a man do what he pleases with his own?” Believing through ignorance that the land is their own, they believe ignorantly that all they can squeeze out of it in the way of rent is legitimately theirs.

If they, through their incredible stupidity and ignorance honestly believe that, we may excuse them from deliberately sinning against their consciences; but we must, all the same say they rob the masses, and preach to them that this extortion of rent and putting it into their private coffers is a robbery of the masses for the unjust benefit of the classes. (Great applause.)

That good lady in Philadelphia was somewhat concerned at our apparent anxiety to make people rich in this world. The good lady need not have felt very much concerned lest we next week or next year or in ten or fifteen or twenty years from now should be able to elevate the poorest of the poor to the condition of the millionaire to-day. There is not very much danger of that. (Laughter.) So her fears probably are a little excessive on that score. We are not particularly anxious to give to the individuals of human society such wealth as is enjoyed to-day. That is wealth for which men need not labor, for which they do not labor—the rent that comes to them when they are absent just as well as when they are present, while they are asleep, as much as while they are awake. We have no desire to give such wealth to each individual of the human race. The wealth that we desire to give them is the result of honest toil. We wish to give to the mass of men equal opportunity of employing their labor (applause), and we wish to say that when they shall have employed their labor, they shall have either what they make or a fair equivalent for it in what somebody else has made. (Applause.)

We wish to abolish, therefore, the unjust possession of wealth. We will increase the general wealth of the whole community enormously. But when it shall be more equally distributed there is no fear that the great mass of men will run the risk of actually pining away in idleness and suffering that loss of mental and bodily and spiritual health which is one of the curses that attach to wealth unjustly acquired and unwisely used. (Applause.)

There need be no fear that we shall be able to get so far ahead of consumption by production that the human family shall be able to fill all the granaries and storehouses that they can build so full of food and manufactured articles that for many years there will be nothing for the human family to do. (Laughter.) In that case, when the human family shall be able to produce such wondrous quantities, they will not be such fools as to keep producing things so far ahead that they will actually become moth-eaten before they are able to use them. They will only produce in advance a moderate supply of wealth for the rainy day and the sore foot. (Laughter.) And after they have produced this moderate provision against the rainy day and the sore foot they will stop awhile and have more holidays. They will then begin to play and go fishing. (Laughter.) A large part of the labor that is now expended upon the mere necessities of life can then with propriety be expended on the ornaments of life. Then a large part of the people will have more of the ornamental of life^sic—books, music, pictures and much more comfortable and artistic homes to live in.

Will that not be a good thing? (Applause.) Would not the taste and the cleanliness and the ornament and the art of the private abode be justifiable for precisely the same reasons that justify the building of marble cathedrals and filling them with stained glass windows and golden candlesticks, all of which is good? Should not each home be, as it were, the family altar? (Applause.) Should not everything about the home be cleanly and sweet and wholesome? Shouldn’t there be every possible provision for privacy and decency? Does not a proper development of health and refinement require that people should have breathing space? Is there not enough work for the human family in building houses, and not building them so high, and utilizing the spaces that are not now utilized?

Never fear. There will always be enough work to do. When wealth is distributed as it should be, nearly everybody will have to work. (Applause.) They will only work a few hours. It will be a healthy exercise. It is a necessary part of man’s nature that requires for his proper physical and mental development that he shall be busy, and occupied in producing something by the labor of hand or brain. (Applause.)

We have often said before, and we may well repeat it here to-night, that the chief attraction of all this is its spiritual side. The mere feeding of the animal, the mere making the animal more comfortable, would not be a noble object. It does not appeal to the higher instincts of humanity. The highest instincts are mental, and moral, and spiritual. But we find that in our natures there is the greatest mingling and blending of these two things. So we can say that the lesson of these things of time and sense is just this: That they are the means and instruments and signs and symbols of things mental, spiritual and eternal. (Applause.)

The daily tasks we are called upon to perform, to earn our living, to obey the law, to perform our duties, are simply matters in which we can produce things inestimably precious for eternity. A cup of cold water that is given in the name of the Lord shall have its reward. This human society of ours should be the beginning of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of unveiled truth. It is the kingdom in which the minds of men shall be permitted to see the unveiled beauty of the uncreated God. It is the kingdom in which the mass of men shall be eternally filled, yet never to satiety, with the perfect beauty that is in God.

Our minds, our fancies, our wills were made to know the truth, to love the good, to enjoy the beautiful. And so these visions of truth continued on p. 3 → [continued on page 3] ^{23?24?25?26?27?28?29?30?31?32?33?34?35?36?37?38?39?40?41?42?43?44?45?46?47?48?49?50?51?52?}

Swift Boats, Good Refreshments, Original Speeches and Advantageous Tides will Combine to Make It an Enjoyable Affair.

The Anti-poverty society will hold its first grove meeting and excursion on Saturday, Aug. 13, going to Oriental grove⁵³, on Long Island sound. Preparations have been made for the entertainment of six thousand persons. The caterers have been given the privilege of selling lunches and refreshments only on condition that they give the same quantity and quality as would be given in the city for the money. The prices will be conspicuously posted on all the boats. Dinner will be furnished in the grove hotel for fifty cents.

Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn, Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost and Henry George will deliver addresses at the grove. Bayne’s band will furnish the music.

Tickets will be mailed on August 1 to all the members of the society, from whom they can be bought by those desirous of attending the excursion. Tickets can also be purchased by mail from Henry George, 25 Ann street, or Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn, 28 Cooper union. The price is fifty cents each; children, between four and ten years of age, half price.

The boats will start as follows: foot of West Eleventh street, 8:30 a. m.; foot of Broome, E. R., 9 a. m.; foot of Eighth, E. R., 9:30 a. m.; foot of East Thirty-second, 10 a. m. The boats must start on schedule time in order to avail themselves of the advantage of the tides.

Nob Hill and Bob Hill.

SYRACUSE, N. Y., June 30.—Two highlands in opposite parts of city, one as desirable for building purposes as the other. Now suppose, as is the case in this city, one was built up with very fine houses by the rich and the other with the cottages and dwellings of those in moderate circumstances. If taxes were put on land values alone, would not the tendency be for some of the rich to build their houses where the poor had settled, sending up the price of land and consequently the tax, and thus forcing the poor to the less desirable sections? Would not this be eviction?

COLLEGE STUDENT.

Washington heights⁵⁴ in New York city is a highland which is just as desirable for building purposes naturally as the highland of Murray hill⁵⁵, but the rich do not leave Murray hill to build on Washington heights. A tax on land values would not influence them to do so. It is not natural advantages alone that make particular locations especially desirable.

Another Poor Landlord.

NEW YORK.—Although a believer in your theories I am not yet well enough educated in them to answer all questions. A friend of mine in supposing a case remarked that two adjoining vacant lots would, of course, be taxed the same amount under your system. Now, suppose A, who is a comparatively poor man, builds upon lot No. 1 a small house to be used as a dwelling place and store. B, who is a richer man than A, builds upon lot No. 2 a larger house, which, by subletting, brings in an income twice as large as A’s. How would the taxes be regulated? I told him that the land would be taxed in accordance with the amount of improvements on it, thereby making B’s taxes larger than A’s. I also told him that it was very unlikely that a comparatively poor man would build next door to a millionaire.

JOS. P. BOYLE.

Your second reply is correct; you are in error as to the first. The two men would be taxed alike if the ground rent value of each lot was the same.

If B could make it profitable to build a large house on lot No. 2, it would be profitable for A to build a large house on lot No. 1. It would also be to the best interest of all classes in the community, himself included, that he should do so. If he could not or would not do it, he ought to take a lot which he could improve up to its highest capacity and let some one use lot No. 1 who would not waste the opportunity it offered. One of the objects of the land value tax is to compel the best use of valuable land.

Under our present system of taxation B compels his tenants to pay all that part of the tax that falls on the house, paying nothing himself but that which fails^sic upon the value of the land. Under the land value tax B’s tenants would really pay no taxes, for ground value tax would be paid by B out of the rent he would obtain from them anyhow, and cannot be shifted to the consumer as a house value tax is. Under our present system A pays all the tax on lot No. 1 except what falls on the store, for he is the consumer as to all the rest of the house.

A little observation will convince your friend that in nearly all the cases that are at all like the one he supposes, A is not an owner, but a tenant. And whenever A is a tenant, his house rent would be reduced by exemption from taxes, and the ground rent he pays would not remain in the pocket of his landlord, but would go into the common treasury.

Relation of Wages and Rent.

NEW YORK CITY.—Will you please answer this objection in your “Query” department: “The assertion that wages are high where land is low, and vice versa, is shown to be untrue by the incontrovertible evidence of department statisticians at Washington. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where land is high, the average yearly wages per capita are $364 and $340 respectively. In North Carolina, where land is least valuable, wages average but $152 a head.

PHILO.

These statistics are not trustworthy. They comprehend only wages that are paid by one man to another, throwing no light on wages earned by independent laborers. And even as to wages paid by employers the figures are misleading. Unemployed labor in New England is not taken into account at all, while the wages of highly skilled labor go in to increase the average. It is probable, however, that in dollars the average wages in Rhode Island and Massachusetts are less than the average in North Carolina. But a workingman can live in greater comfort and respectability and with less fear of want in North Carolina than in Massachusetts, and that is the best of wages.

There is still another consideration, and it is of chief importance, which the pro-poverty arithmetic man ignores. Land is not low in North Carolina. In proportion to its general productiveness it is about as high there as in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The land of North Carolina is wholly appropriated, and its owners demand for ground rent all that the laborer can part with and live, just as is done in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In a new country where free land is productive wages are better than in an old country where there is no productive free land. But wherever all land is appropriated wages are very nearly equal. Thus, if the statistics quoted were complete and correct, they would show that the average cost of living among workingmen in North Carolina is $152, in Rhode Island $340, and in Massachusetts $364.

When it is said that wages are high where land is low, what is meant is that where land is low compared to its productiveness, wages are high. Thus: If North Carolina land produces 20 and rent is 5. and Rhode Island land produces 20 and rent is 10, land values are higher in the latter state than in the former; but if North Carolina land produces only 15 and rent is 5, while Rhode Island land produces 20 and rent is 10, land values are no higher in the latter state than in the former, but are upon an equality.

Concentration of Land Values^sic,

PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—The other day when arguing with a man about the danger to humanity in general that would result from one man or a few men owning the earth, as is at present a possibility, I was very much nonplussed when he said that that was not the tendency, and instanced the general subdivision into separate holdings of William Penn’s estate, the state of Pennsylvania. I was unable to meet his point, and I would like

FRANK SCANLAN.

Penn’s farm was large in area, but small in value. Its area has been subdivided, but the value of the parts has, as a rule, increased in greater ratio than the subdividing process. A few lots in any of the great cities of Pennsylvania or one of its mines will command greater value in labor products than the whole “farm” would when Penn owned it; and it requires more labor to become the owner of a farm or city lot now than would have bought a whole county in Penn’s time. In other words, while there has been a subdividing of the area of Pennsylvania land, there has been an increase of value which has made it constantly more difficult of access to men who have only their labor to offer in exchange for an opportunity to labor.

Debt Laws.

FALL RIVER, Mass.—Mr. George has several times advocated the abolition of all laws for the collection of private debts, but he has not, to my knowledge, explained the reason or utility of such a step. Those laws may be defended, first, as police laws. It is the duty of government to preserve order. Creditors should not be obliged to fight for their dues with physical force. Second, as favorable to the production of wealth. Commerce and exchange are steps in production. Bills and notes are important instruments used in exchange, a fact recognized in “Protection or Free Trade.” Would not the abolition of these laws be injurious to private credit and thus to production?

1. Trade debts are paid without resort to the courts when they are justly due and the debtor can pay, and it is no part of the business of the community to determine private disputes or to harass unfortunate debtors.

2. It is not laws for the collection of debts that make bills of exchange and promissory notes useful. It is confidence in the financial standing and personal honesty of the makers and indorsers. Bankers rely more upon the anxiety of makers and indorsers of commercial paper to preserve their credit than upon debt laws.

Think It Over, Mr. Nagle.

CHICAGO, July 5.—Admitting the justice of the principle that to the people, or living generation, belong the natural elements of the creation, and that no one person should be allowed to appropriate them to his own exclusive use, your proposed method of bringing this principle into practical operation seems to me so obviously defective that I am surprised that you, too, do not see its impracticability.

Your object is to take the revenues accruing from rents, which now go into the pockets of land or mine owners, and put it into the city or state treasury. You propose to effect this transfer of money by taxing the land for the amount the land owner now receives from the tenant. A tax always adds to the cost of an article to the consumer. It is roughly estimated that the rentals from land are four times as great as all present government taxes. If the title remains in the land owner, what is to prevent him from charging this great tax to his rent, just as he now does the smaller tax? Even if you could put all the present government expenses on the land owner, without increasing the rent, you still would not get more than about one-fourth of the rental value out of it. But what is to hinder him from continuing to put your taxes on to his rents? Is it not plain that you must dispossess him—in other words, confiscate for public uses all the private values in land? Does it not involve this? If it does, then proclaim it as boldly as the abolitionists did the confiscation of slaves before the war, and prepare the way for it! Shall it be gradual, partial, wholesale, by purchase, or by civil war? You must meet the issue squarely. Which shall it be?

A. F. NAGLE.

And your objection is so frivolous that we are surprised so intelligent a man as you should not see its absurdity.

It is true, as you say, that “a tax always adds to the cost of an article to the consumer;” or, to put it more accurately, “a tax on a product adds to the value of the product.” The reason for this is that taxes on products are burdens upon production, which the consumer must assume or production will diminish. In other words, a tax on a product tends to reduce the supply of that product relatively to demand, and consequently the value rises to meet the tax. But it is not true that a tax on land values adds to the value of the land. Land is not a product. It exists in fixed quantity, and nothing affects its value but demand for it. A tax on land values is not a tax on production; it is a tax on monopoly. It cannot be shifted to the consumer, because the tax does not tend to diminish the supply, as in the case of products. On the contrary, a tax on land values tends to increase the market supply by making it unprofitable to hold land on speculation.

If land rentals are now four times as great as all government taxes, one class of the community is drawing an income from the working class three times as great as all government revenues; and if the land value tax were imposed to its full limit, public revenue might be four times as great as now. With this we could pay off the public debt, manage railroads, telegraphs and telephones, as we do the postoffice, at cost or less; run street cars free, as the owners of big buildings run elevators; provide justly for widows and orphans; revive our commerce with the world by abolishing custom houses, and in many other ways give all the people the benefit of these great improvements of our times which has thus far been denied them.

It is not necessary or desirable to dispossess users of land, and the land value tax will not do it, but it will dispossess mere appropriators.

We meet the issue squarely. You doubt it only because you do not understand the issue. To put all taxes on land values is to deny the right of property in land. When this shall have been done. and one fourth (if that is the amount) of present ground rents are taken for public use, it will not be long before the other three-fourths will be taken also.

Through a Glass Very Darkly.

RICHMOND, Va., July 4.—(1) I have read “Progress and Poverty” with intense interest; but neither there nor in your reply to my question in last week’s STANDARD do I see how you secure sufficient fixity of tenure. My questions was^sic: Were B to offer the government a higher rent for A’s farm than A is paying, would A have to pay that higher rent or give up his farm to B? You say “the government would have nothing to do with the matter.” If A and B can come to terms, may be not? But if they can’t come to terms,

p. 3, col. 6 B (and one B would be enough) would be justified in letting the government know that the community would be just so much richer were he to get the farm now occupied by A, and the government, as representing the people, would not be justified in refusing to accept the highest rent they could get for the people’s land.

2. Had your land system been in vogue in Israel in the days of King Arab^sic need Naboth have been stoned?

W. N.

If A and B cannot come to terms A will continue to occupy the farm. B might be justified in letting the government know that the community would be so much richer if he got the farm, but the government would not be justified in getting rich that way. A solitary offer from B would not determine the value of the farm. It is only when people generally are willing and able to pay a particular price for a piece of land that its value is increased by that price. So it would be the market value of A’s farm, not B’s solitary offer, that would fix the basis of A’s taxation. The question would be, “What will A’s farm, irrespective of improvements, sell for in the market?” and upon that value the tax would be calculated. If A’s farm rises in market value his taxes will rise; if it falls his taxes will fall; if it is stationary his taxes will be stationary. This secures fixity of tenure. If his farm doubles in value (speculative values being eliminated) it is because the farm has for some reason become doubly productive with the same labor and capital; then A can afford to pay double taxes without being any worse off. If, for example, A can produce $100 a year in grain, paying $25 land value tax, and in consequence of the growth of a city near the farm he produces $200 in garden truck with the same labor and capital, he can pay $125 land value tax as easily as he paid $25 before. His fixity of tenure would not, therefore, be affected, even if he were assessed five times his former tax. The only case in which fixity of tenure would be disturbed would be cases of men holding land out of use and in the comparatively few cases of men who are settled in locations which suddenly change from residence to business use.

2. Your ideas of what constitutes land values are sadly mixed if you think Ahab could have driven Naboth off by raising his land value tax. Naboth’s taxes would have been no more when Ahab wanted his land than before, for Ahab’s desire in that direction would not, in itself, have increased the value of the land.

In reading “Progress and Poverty,” which it would be well for you to do a second time, do a little thinking as you go along.

Tax Titles.

SHAWANO, Wis., June 29.—I read the “Queries and Answers” with interest, and am led to ask if your proposed land tax and the sacrifices of lands or improvements is in fact very different in result from the present system of taxation, by which a man is liable to be sold out of house and home for not paying his taxes, and being ousted on tax titles?

W. S. W.

Very different. We would not tax improvements, nor would we tax land which had no value. If land speculation were killed, as it would be under this system, no unused land would have value, and a great deal that was used would have none, while a great deal more would have much less than it has now. As a result of this, no one could be deprived of a home or an opportunity to work because he was unable to pay taxes, for there would be plenty of places on which to put a home and plenty of opportunities to work free. Under such circumstances no man would occupy land which had not a rental value sufficient to enable him to pay the tax and leave him as well off as if he occupied land on which no tax was imposed.

If a man took possession of valuable land and tried to defraud the community of its tax by appropriating that value to his own use, the tax would of course be collected of him by some summary process similar in some respects probably to our present tax sales. But none of the hardships of tax sales would result, for in a state of society in which every one can get land free, and is not taxed unless he takes up more productive land than that which is free, no one but a thief would be in arrears for taxes. Under the present system it is honest people who suffer most from taxation. while thieves of the respectable order profit by it.

Notes.

J. S., Washington, D. C.—We think your figures are below rather than above the mark, but doubt if there are any trustworthy statistics on the subject.

FRIEND OF THE LAW, Grand Junction, Col.—A man who used land for pasture would pay taxes on the value of the land if it had any value; if it had no value he would pay no tax.

J. F. K., Waterford, N. Y.—If the land tax were put in operation there is no reason to fear that the pro-poverty crowd would be able to influence the assessors to so distribute the tax as to make it unpopular. The poorest man in the community would not only know whether the tax was honestly laid, but he would also have a direct personal interest in seeing it honestly collected.

C. H. MATCHELL, Brooklyn, N. Y.—(1) Such lending as there was when natural opportunities were free would be upon interest.

2. We do not believe that lending would continue in such measure as to enable whole families to live without work. When every one could soon accumulate capital of his own production borrowing would tend to diminish; no one would long want to borrow unless he could make more with borrowed capital than by producing his own, and owners of capital would expect to get interest by using their capital rather than by lending it.

3. It does accord with moral ethics and Christian precept that the lender of capital should charge the borrower what by himself using the capital he could make in excess of wages.

R. A. MORRIS, New York.—Your proposition that any person in a city of 100,000 inhabitants, desirous of purchasing vacant land for building purposes, should have the right to apply to the supreme court to have the land appraised, and upon paying the appraised value should be entitled to a deed therefor, would not prevent speculation in land, because the appraisement would be on the basis of selling value into which speculation enters. If the assessment for taxation were made conclusive as to value, your plan would be a good one. It would be more difficult of accomplishment in this state and less effective, however, than the plan that we propose. There is no constitutional objection to shifting all taxes to land values, while your plan is unconstitutional; and you would find it as bitterly opposed by the defenders of vested interests as ours is.

SATURDAY, JULY 30, 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.

The Anti-Poverty Society Listens to Reports From Its Officers at Irving Hall.

Thursday night, July 21, a business meeting of the Anti-poverty society was held at Irving hall. Every seat on the floor and in the gallery was filled, and several hundred persons stood throughout the evening. The entrance of Dr. McGlynn at a little later than 8 o’clock was the signal for a storm of applause. When the doctor went upon the stand he spoke for a few minutes in a conversational tone, referring to the frequency with which one hears the question, “How does the Anti poverty society propose to abolish poverty?” and describing the three main planks of the united labor party. The doctor then said that the executive committee of the society had decided to ask each member to endeavor to secure four new members. The members were also asked to sign blanks by which they would record their willingness to contribute one dollar at such periods as they felt themselves able to do.^91?

Benjamin Urner, treasurer of the society, made the following statement of its finances:

Receipts from date of organization.

Payments from date of organization.

Balance on hand………. $92 90

William McCabe, chairman of the excursion committee, reported that he had arranged for the excursion of Saturday, Aug. 13, to Oriental grove, on the sound. He had hired a steamer, three tugs and four barges.

In conclusion, Dr. McGlynn said that the Anti-poverty society numbered clergymen of many denominations among its members and sympathizers.

The Thirteenth Assembly District Speaks.

At a meeting of the Thirteenth assembly district, united labor party, held Wednesday evening, July 20, the following resolutions were offered by Mr. Frey, and unanimously adopted:

Believing that political ecclesiastics, abetted by politicians and aided by an un-American press, have been the cause of the unjust and dishonorable treatment of Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn;

Be it resolved, That we highly commend and approve of the patriotism and heroic conduct of Dr. McGlynn, and will uphold the grand principle that he suffered for by our votes at the ballot box.

Resolved, That we indorse the principles of the Anti-poverty society, and will heartily co-operate with them in their objects—the restoration of the land to the whole people, ameliorating and eventually abolishing poverty.

Howled Down.

At a recent meeting of rich men called by the lord mayor of London to inaugurate a fund for erecting a permanent colonial and Indian exhibition building, the veteran reformer, Thomas Briggs, offered the following resolution:

That in the opinion of this meeting the surest way for her majesty to secure the peace, contentment, prosperity and loyalty of her subjects would be to repeal all customs and excise taxes and raise the imperial and local revenues by direct levy from land rents.

The “saviors of society” promptly howled the motion down.

Loyal St. Stephen’s.

The weekly meeting of St. Stephen’s parishioners was held on Friday evening, July 22. Chairman Feeny first addressed the meeting, voicing the loyalty of those in attendance to their soggarth aroon. Dr. Carey and Mr. Morris followed, their addresses being received with hearty applause. Miss Munier sang. The parishioners are arranging for a picnic, to be held Aug. 23, at Jones’s wood.

Good Work in Wilkesbarre.

WILKESBARRE, Pa., July 20.—I am meeting with great success in making converts for the land and labor party. I believe that when we come to organize a club, which we expect to do very soon, we will be able to commence with at least 100 members, and that 500 other citizens will be in warm sympathy with us.

C. S. H.

In the Right Direction.

BOSTON, July 18.—The land question is attracting general attention. At one of the workingmen’s Sunday meetings a resolution that “land values should be appropriated for public uses” was, after debate, adopted by a unanimous vote.

E. M. WHITE.

p. 4, col. 4

How is This?—Even Corrigan Allowed That God Meant People to Have Water.

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—This city is supplied with water from the Kaw (Kansas) river, which is very impure in the hot summer months. Near the city are several springs, known as Silver spring, Bethsaida spring, etc. This water is delivered in the city at five cents a gallon, and is purchased by all who can afford it for drinking purposes. Consequently to own a good spring in the vicinity of Kansas City is quite a bonanza. Persons will often drive out to one of these springs and get a good, refreshing drink of clear, pure water, one of God’s most beneficent gifts, and return with a jugful in the carriage. Recently some ladies drove out to Bethsaida spring, and, thinking they were charged too much for their jug of water, asked the owner of the farm as they drove by the house what he charged a gallon for water. The man, a German, replied in broken English: “Dot dare man down dare pays

p. 4, col. 5 me $2,500 a year for dot spring, and he needn’t give you a dom drink if he don’t want to.” There are enough springs in and near Kansas City to supply all the inhabitants with good drinking and cooking water. Do they all get their share? The reply of the German to the ladies answers the question.

J. E. F.

A Meeting at the Grand Opera House in Brooklyn at Which Good Work is Promised for Next Fall.

A meeting was held last Sunday night at the Grand opera house, Brooklyn, under the direction of the united labor party of Kings county. Victor A. Wilder, chairman of the county committee, presided. Mr. Wilder said: “The labor movement in Kings county has made favorable progress, and our party now presents an organized fighting force and is prepared to contest the questions at issue at the polls. After repeated contests within our own ranks, chiefly with the emissaries of the old parties, which contests have served only to bind us closer together, we are prepared for the coming fight. Here and there there may possibly be some of our nominal leaders who will desert us, but other and better leaders will be found ready to step into the vacant places. As far as I can see, we have sufficient brains to carry on this contest, and we have what the old parties do not possess—heart. I have the pleasure to announce that the Henry George Anti-poverty club has hired the Grand opera house for a series of Sunday night meetings, to begin next Sunday night, when Dr. Edward McGlynn will be the speaker.”

Mr. Wilder then introduced Henry George as the man who has given the working masses of the country their only battle cry: “The land for the people.”

Mr. George spoke for an hour on the text furnished by the battle cry. The greatest enthusiasm was roused by the following words: “Excommunicated though one of them be by his own church, Dr. McGlynn, and Father Huntington, the Rev. Mr. Pentecost and the other clergymen who are in sympathy with us are to-day preaching the real, essential truths of Christianity, and are doing more to imbue the masses of men with real hope and true faith than all those preachers of the ‘poor you have always with you,’ and the blessedness of poverty. This movement must conquer. It is going forward, and day by day and night by night people are coming to our ideas. When these ideas once get hold of a man they never let him go. Those whom we get, we keep. Every man and women who comes^sic to us will in time bring other men and other women. Let us show a good front, then, in the next election. We will do it in New York, if you men in Brooklyn keep up your end. Show your strength by your votes next November, and you will see how respectable we suddenly shall become. The land question is not everything, but it is the fundamental thing. The labor classes have been groping for a better state of things. Now they are beginning to find out how to get what they want. The equality we are aiming at is not an equality of earning, but an equality of opportunity.”

A Specimen of the Best They Can Do.

NEW YORK, July 11.—Here are some gems of logic from an erudite theologian of this city. This gentleman, in conversation with me a short time ago, unaware that I had any convictions on the land question, made the following statements:

1. Henry George proposes to tax away all value of the land so that the land owners can get nothing from it, not even a living.

2. If private ownership in land is unjust then any man has a right to put his neighbor off the land.

3. It has been the universal opinion of mankind that private ownership in land is just. Therefore it is just.

4. The scriptures are authority for the justice of private ownership in land. Ananias was struck dead for lying about the receipts of the sale of his land. St. Peter said to him, “Why did you lie to me; the land was yours to sell?” Therefore private ownership in land is just.

5. The church has always held private ownership in land to be just. Therefore it is just.

6. The man who takes up and improves a pieces of land^sic gives form to the land, just as the sculptor gives form to a piece of marble. Therefore the land belongs to the improver, just as the statue belongs to the sculptor. Therefore private ownership in land is just.

7. Henry George says the land of a nation belongs to the people of that nation. So it does—to the people as a whole. But that is not to say that each individual is entitled to a share of it.

8. George makes great stock of Ireland in support of his theories. It is well known that the misery of Ireland is due not to private ownership of land, but to the tyranny of the English government, which will not permit Ireland to open up and work her natural resources.

9. I distinguish between pauperism and poverty. The relief of pauperism must be accomplished by the Christian acts of Christian men. It is only since the Christian spirit has left men’s hearts that some men are paupers. The rich have too little charity. In the middle ages there was no pauperism, because men possessed the proper Christian spirit.

10. While asserting the justice of private ownership in land, I say that monopolies that oppress the poor should be restricted by law. Men should be forbidden by statute from accumulating wealth over a certain amount.

11. Christ says, “The poor ye shall always have with you.”

Our conversation wasn’t illumined by any more scintillations of controversial brilliancy.

This reverend philosopher has written a “refutation” of your land principles that is highly regarded in pro-poverty circles. In it he makes a great point of the so-called analogy embodied in statement six of this letter. It is plain to be seen that following out the lines of thought laid down above, this defender of the divine institution of poverty has safely intrenched private ownership of land among the most unassailable of eternal truths.

CATHOLIC MCGLYNNITE.

The Pope Has Lost the Doctor, and Captured All the Editors.

Cooley’s, Norwich, Conn., Weekly.

There is no great loss, it is said, without some small gain. The pope has lost Dr. McGlynn, and captured all the great American editors from New York to Podunk. The strictly spiritual and religious tenet of the “land theory” is responsible for the conversion. It will of course be remembered by all devout New Testament readers that the founder of the church, in His Sermon on the Mount, declared His unequivocal belief in the right of “private ownership in land.” At the same time he stated no less plainly that all persons who did not honestly believe this doctrine should be excommunicated ipso facto, nominatim et seriatim, et verbutim^sic and they could not expect Christian burial and could not inherit the kingdom of heaven. It will be observed that he talked very differently on this occasion from what he said to the young man who had “great possessions,” or to the “money changers.” Indeed we would advise “ecclesiastical superiors” everywhere to get a copy of the Bible and read the remarkable sermon we have quoted from; it might interest them. They ought to know something about the opinions of this remarkable man.

p. 4, col. 6

Thinks God Will Damn a Simple Priest Just to Oblige an Archbishop.

Milwaukee Catholic Citizen.

Dr. McGlynn may have forced a perception, even among his censors, of those elements of goodness of motive that probably prompted his first actions and were intermixed at the beginning of his downfall. But at what a fearful cost to himself! No man should damn his own soul to save the universe. No man is called upon to do so under the polity of a just providence.

H. F. RING’S SPEECH BEFORE THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR IN HOUSTON, TEX.

A Terse and Full Summary of the Anti-Poverty Doctrine—Objections Anticipated and Answered.

The following is the text of a remarkable speech delivered by H. F. Ring^78120? at a picnic of the Knights of Labor in Houston, Tex., on the Fourth of July:

Ladies and Gentlemen—Mr. Powderly, in recommending that the land question be discussed to-day in the presence of the hundreds of thousands of Knights of Labor who are gathered together in assemblies like this all over our land, has shown the deep interest which is being rapidly developed in this subject.

The land question is simply a question as to how the use of the bounties of nature shall be regulated and controlled. By bounties of nature I mean the coal beds, the mineral deposits, the land—all those natural elements which were not created by human industry, but which a kind Heavenly Father has freely and abundantly provided for the use and enjoyment of all his children; and I propose to show in my poor way how the right of access of capital and labor to these natural elements should be regulated by government so as most to conduce to the happiness and well-being of mankind.

I am a Henry George man, and a discussion of the land question by me can be nothing more than a mere attempt to expound the teachings of that great master. The most that I can reasonably expect to do with the limited time and more limited ability at my command, is to interest, here and there, some earnest minds in the merits of that great crusade against poverty, which, under the leadership of Father McGlynn and Henry George, is developing to such magnificent proportions in the city of New York, trusting that time and reflection and further information will work a complete conversion.

George at the outset calls attention to the marvelous improvements in the arts and sciences, the discoveries, inventions and labor saving machines which, within the past 100 years, have so immensely increased the productive powers of the human race. Is it not a moderate estimate to assume that on an average the labor of one man to-day with all these labor saving inventions will produce as many of the comforts and luxuries of life as the labors of four men would a hundred years ago? And does it not follow that the average workman of to-day creates by each day’s labor four times as much wealth as the average workman did a hundred years ago? George teaches that if the workman of to-day on an average creates four times as much wealth as the workman of a hundred years ago, then the services of this workman of to-day are four times as valuable to society, and why should not his wages of right be four times as great? Why should he not be four times as independent? Why should it not be four times as easy for him to make a living and support his family in comfort and decency? Will any one presume to assert that this is in fact the case? On the contrary, is it not just aboat as hard for the poor man to make a living to-day as it ever was? Doesn’t he dread the loss of a position to-day just as much as he ever did? George asserts that labor saving machinery ought really to lessen the burdens of labor, to make it easier for the laborer to live and in fact to lighten his toil. But alas! from some apparently mysterious cause, a cause which many pious and comfortably well to do people insist is one of the unseen mysteries of a divine providence, what George claims should rightfully result from inventions does not result from them. And still we are all the time making new discoveries, and year by year increasing, by means of new inventions, the productive powers of working men, and yet, with the increase of population, the lot of those who produce all this wealth seems to be becoming more precarious, less independent and more and more wretched.

Who denies bat that under the present social system, wages tend to fall irresistibly to the point at which the wage worker can barely subsist? This is called the iron law of wages, and all the strikes conceivable can only temporarily, and but fitfully, arrest this steady tendency. The worker may create quadruple the wealth, but he is not permitted to retain any more of it as his share.

Now, where does this wealth go to? What becomes of it? Who gets it? What is the cause of this so-called iron law of wages? Henry George has discovered it. He has pointed it out, and he has shown us the remedy. He has demonstrated beyond doubt or question that it does not result as a fatal necessity from the nature of things, but that it is the result of a violation of natural law, of a refusal on the part of society to recognize the inalienable right of every citizen to access to the bounties of nature, within the territory of his country on equal terms with every other citizen of that country.

Let me now give you a short lesson in the elements of this new political economy.

Three factors enter into this creation of every conceivable kind of wealth. By wealth I mean anything created by human industry, which gratifies human desires. These factors are land, capital and labor. Wealth in a civilized community is created only by means of a union or partnership, as it were, between land, capital and labor. Labor does the work, capital loans the tools, and land furnishes the natural elements out of which all material things resulting from human industry are created. In speaking of land in the new political economy we never include improvements or anything which is the result of human toil. We simply mean the opportunities which land and the elements within it afford for the employment of capital and labor—we mean the raw elements as they lie on or in the bosom of the earth untouched by the hand of man.

Now, as before remarked, the product of land, capital and labor is wealth, and after it is created it is divided among those factors entering into its composition. A certain portion of it, called rent, goes to land either directly in the form of rent, or in the form of interest on the selling price of the land or the coal bed, or whatever it is; another portion of it called profit or interest goes to capital for the use of the tools which capital has furnished, and the balance left after land has been paid rent and capital has been paid profits goes to labor as wages for the work which labor has done, including the labor of superintendence.

Now, what does rent signify as used here? Rent is the price paid for the privilege of access to the raw material of production—for the mere privilege of getting hold of something not created by man, out of which labor and capital can create wealth. This rent may be paid periodically, or it may be paid in a lump in the form of purchase money. In either case the result will be the same. Is it not clear that in the division of wealth after it has been created by this partnership between land, capital and labor, the more land gets for rent the less there will be left for capital and labor. Is it not quite as plain as A B C that the more it costs capital and labor to get hold of these natural elements, the coal

p. 6, col. 2 beds, the mines, the water fronts, the land—the gifts of nature which a kind Providence has provided for the equal use and enjoyment of all—the less there will be left for labor and capital to divide between them.

In the new political economy you must never confuse land with capital. One is never the synonym of the other. Land, as before stated, is simply the natural opportunity, exclusive of improvements or anything done to it by man. Capital is something which has been made by man, like a machine, for instance, which is useful in the production of wealth, which wealth, when used to produce more wealth becomes itself capital.

But some one says suppose the capitalist who is using the coal bed or using this natural opportunity, whatever it may be, is also the owner of it. Where then does your partnership between land, labor and capital come in? I answer just the same as before. A sum equal to interest or the value which the natural element has in the market, independent of anything done to it by the hand of man, is in such case the factor of rent. The owner, in addition to profit on capital, as I have defined it, is bound to take from the wealth produced a sum equal, approximately, to interest on what he could sell the natural element for; otherwise he would sell out and quit. It is evident that the more money the owner is obliged to invest in purchasing the coal bed, for instance, the greater must be the sum which he takes out of the wealth produced to cover interest on this investment, and hence this interest money is simply rent paid for the use of a natural element. for the privilege of access to one of the bounties of nature. Therefore is it not equally plain in this case that the more paid for this privilege of use the less will labor get as wages?

We read in the newspapers of a great boom in the vicinity of Birmingham, Ala. We are exultingly told that the lands containing the coal beds and mineral deposits in northern Alabama have gone up in value from $750,000 to $50,000,000 within the past six years. What does this signify? It means that when capital and labor shall attempt to utilize these coal beds and mineral deposits, when capital and labor shall unite together, the one to furnish the tools, the other the labor with which to produce wealth out of this raw material, then will a set of pretended owners step forward and block the enterprise with a demand of $50,000,000 for the mere right of access to these free gifts of nature, or in lieu of it the payment of $3,000.000^sic a year as tribute money, that being the interest of $50,000,000 at six per cent. There lie the coal beds and the mineral deposits, untouched by man, fresh from the hands of the Creator, intended by Him, if He is the just and benevolent Being whom we have been taught to worship, for the equal use and enjoyment of all his children; and yet our laws say that capital and labor must pay a few forestallers $3,000,000 a year for the privilege of applying the hand of industry to these elements.

And after this blackmail has been paid how much will there be left for the wages of labor? The answer is, just as little as labor can subsist upon. Why? Because this monopolization of the gifts of nature, going on not only in Northern Alabama, but everywhere else, enables capital to drive a hard bargain with labor. For this reason, and this alone, they can’t deal with each other on equal vantage grounds. Suppose Labor demurs and says to Capital: “I’ll not accept the pittance you offer.” Capital replies: “All right, go elsewhere.” And so Labor starts out to get work for himself, and what does he find? Here he is living in a country capable of raising food for ten times its present population and he finds nine-tenths of the land untilled or but partially cultivated. He finds nine-tenths of the coal beds and mineral deposits unused. He finds vacant land and unused lots on every side. He goes to New York city even and he there finds within its corporate limits half the area of that city vacant, unoccupied and unused, although there are miles and miles of tenement houses, in which men, women and innocent little children are packed and crowded like maggots, as though there wasn’t ample room in the city for the comfortable housing of every human being in it. He finds unused natural elements all around him wherever he goes sufficient to give employment to, and to support in abundance tens of millions of happy families. But now suppose Labor attempts to make use of any of these unused natural opportunities. Suppose he concludes to go to work for himself upon a piece of vacant land, what happens? An individual comes along and waves a title deed and orders him off the premises. He finds that all these unused natural opportunities are owned by individuals and claimed as private property. He finds himself frustrated at every point. He finds that he can’t go to work anywhere without paying blackmail to the owner of some natural element for the mere privilege of working, and so he strikes back to northern Alabama and takes off his hat to Capital and bows very low and says: “Please, sir, give me a bare living and I will be your slave.”

And that is about all that he does get, and it is all that he ever will get under the present system of land ownership, though you may strike and boycott and putter about graduated land taxes and graduated income taxes and graduated nonsense till doomsday.

With advancing population the greater becomes the demand for natural opportunities, and the higher the prices which can be extorted for the privilege of using them. As population increases, the town lots, the coal beds, the mineral deposits, the water fronts, the land, go up in value, and so goes up also the amount of the tribute money which labor must pay for that privilege of access to them, for the privilege of employment. The more of the products of industry which goes for the payment of this constantly increasing tribute the less and less will grow the share allowed the laborer, and the more dependent and the more wretched will his lot become.

Here in Houston to-day, suppose Enterprise has $20,000 to put in the paper mill business, a sum barely sufficient to put up the building, buy the machinery and carry stock. He finds a beautiful site for his mill on the banks of the bayou. It is a vacant block. The hand of man has never been applied to it, and it stands there now just as it stood when the Indian roamed over the site of this city. The owner of that block, however, thinks he can make Enterprise pay him $10,000 for the privilege of giving employment to labor on that natural opportunity—that piece of ground. That is the price, and if he can’t get it to-day, he will get it when the city grows a little larger. But Enterprise says to him: “I have only $20,000 capital, all of which I shall need in my business.” The land owner replies it is not his lookout, and so Enterprise turns away checked and baffled, and the mill is not built.

And so it is everywhere. Wherever we find a portion of the vacant surface of the earth which can be utilized by capital and labar, and which affords an opportunity for human toil and enterprise, there we find a human vampire with a paper title in his hand warning off labor, and that vampire must always be placated by the payment of blackmail before the wheels of industry can begin to turn. Need we wonder that these wheels turn slowly, and that they are always getting out of gear; that we are always talking about dull times; that men are always out of employment and always hunting for work, re p. 6, col. 3 garding it as a favor even to be allowed to work; that we are all the time growing too much cotton, when millions of human beings have only one shirt to their names; that we are producing too much food, when half the population of the world is insufficiently fed; that carpenters are out of work, when half the people are uncomfortably housed; shoemakers wanting work and millions in need of shoes? How could it be otherwise when labor is compelled to beg for work in the midst of limitless unused opportunities for work, on which opportunities, however, sit these human vampires, these dogs in the manger, waving labor back with their paper title deeds.

Now let us go back for a moment to that partnership between land, capital and labor. For illustration, suppose the wealth produced by the partnership were created by the application of capital and labor to those coal beds and mineral deposits in northern Alabama, now valued at $50,000,000. In the division of the wealth produced we have shown how, say, six per cent of this $50,000,000, or $3,000,000, must go to land as rent. Or, in other words, $3,000,000 a year must be paid to land owners for the bare privilege of utilizing these free gifts of nature. Now, in the division of this wealth created, why is labor entitled to any portion of it? Clearly because labor’s industry has contributed to its creation. Why is capital entitled to any part of it? Because capital has furnished labor tools with which to develop the mineral deposits. The capitalist who owns these tools can trace his title back to the creator of them, to some individual or set of individuals whose industry produced them and from whom he has purchased them. The title, then, of both labor and capital to a portion of the wealth created from these mineral deposits originates in human industry, and it is a sacred title. Now, then, why should land get any portion of this wealth created, to produce which capital has supplied the tools and labor has done the work? Here land claims the right of making capital and labor pay him interest on $50,000,000, or $3,000,000 a year for the mere privilege of access to this raw coal and raw ore. Ought we not to scrutinize most carefully his right to extort this immense tribute? And if he can show no natural and moral right to claim it, does not society countenance the robbery of labor in permitting him to do so? Where does his title originate? We find that six or seven years ago he paid some one who claimed to own the land in which these mineral deposits are found $750,000 for the raw natural element for which he now demands $50,000,000. Was this additional value of $49,250,000^sic in six years created by his industry? Was it created by the industry of any previous owner of those natural elements? Did it cost $49,250.000 to discover these mineral deposits? We trace back his title a little further, and find that perhaps a hundred years ago it originated in a grant to John Jones from the government—that is to say, the people who inhabited this country a hundred years ago and who constituted the government said we will divide the land and we will give John Jones this particular tract for his private property, But did^sic these people create that land and the coal and iron in it? Can it be shown that they had any better right to it from the Almighty Creator than the people of this generation have? Was the earth intended by the Heavenly Father for one generation to dispose of forever or as an abiding place for all generations? Was Thomas^{8182?83?84?79?} Jefferson right or wrong when he wrote, “The earth belongs in usufruct¹²⁹ to the living, the dead have no right or power over it.” By what authority could the people living here a hundred years ago, long since dead and gone, confer upon John Jones, also dead and gone, a right which would enable John Smith to-day, by tracing a paper chain of titles from him, to extort from capital and labor a tribute of $3,000,000 a year for the bare privilege of getting to that coal and iron, and making it useful to mankind? Who dares blaspheme the name of the Almighty Ruler of the universe by saying that that coal and iron were not intended by Him for the equal use and enjoyment of all His children—the humblest babe born to-day in a garret equally with the child of the proudest duke who ever lived?

Is not man a land animal? Can he live without land? Can he any more rightfully be deprived of access to land than he can rightfully be deprived of life itself? He can no more rightfully be compelled to yield up to a forestaller, a so-called owner of land, aportion^sic of the fruits of his industry for the privilege of getting hold of the raw natural elements than he can rightfully be compelled as a slave to yield up to a master a portion of the fruits of his industry. To compel him to do so is as much a robbery of labor in one case as in the other. Why then is not the humblest babe that God sends into this world naturally and by inalienable right entitled to access to land on equal terms with all his fellow human beings?

Mind, when I say access to land I do not include access to improvements on land, or access to anything created by human industry, a title to which can be shown originating in human toil; I simply mean access upon equal terms to the free bounties of nature as they lie upon the kind bosom of mother earth, untouched and undisturbed by the hand of man. What I produce by my industry is mine. What I obtain by exchanging the products of my industry for the products of another’s industry is mine. What my father or my grandfather produced by his industry was his, and if he has given it to me it is mine. In all these cases human industry is the origin of property right, and property rights originating in human industry must be held sacred, else there would be no incentive to human effort. Do not the values created by the individual belong to the individual creating them? Do not the values created by the community belong to the community? Is there anything wrong, immoral or communistic in this idea? And yet it is the sum and substance of the George doctrine. Take the case of that vacant block on the banks of the bayou which Enterprise wanted for a paper mill and could not get it. Fifty years ago it was worthless. Now labor must pay a tribute of $10,000 to the so-called owner for the privilege of using it. Whose industry has put $10,000 of value on that piece of vacant ground? Not the industry of the present owner, nor the industry of any former owner, because no man has ever done a lick of work upon it. That value of $10,000 has been given to it by the common energy and enterprise of the entire community. Since the community has created that value, why does it not belong to the community? Why has not the community the same right to the values it creates as the individual has to the values which he individually creates?

How shall this derangement of the wheels of industry, this blackmail upon enterprise, this robbery of labor, this eager and fatal competition among laborers for employment, this slavish fear of the loss of a position in the midst of abundant unused opportunities for employment—how shall this curse which our present land system has fastened upon the productive industries of the country be removed? Simply by doing justice. By recognizing in our laws one of the inalienable rights of man; by recognizing in every human being, in every generation, the present as well as the past, an inalienable right of access to the bounties of nature on equal terms with every other human being. How shall this right of access on equal terms be

p. 6, col. 4 secured? Simply by making every individual who claims a right of exclusive possession to a tract of land pay in the form of a tax what the use of that tract of land is worth, exclusive of all improvements on it or of anything done to it by the hand of man.

Some one asks, “Will not this proposed change vastly increase the functions of government and immensely increase the number of government employes?” I reply, no. On the contrary, four-fifths of the present army of revenue collectors and tax gatherers will be dispensed with and the remaining one-fifth will collect this single land tax at one-fifth the expense now incurred in the collection of national, state, county and municipal taxes. Another inquirer says: “Will not this new system offer abundant opportunities for oorruption^sic and partiality in fixing the amount of this tax annually to be paid for the exclusive use of a piece of land? And how do you propose the amount of the tax shall be determined?” It will be determined by the same law of demand and supply which now determines the amount of the tax under the present system. The single tax under the George system will be fixed by the same machinery of an assessor and board of equalization which fixes it now. For instance, under the George system a piece^sic of property rents on Main street for $1,500 a year. Interest, at the prevailing rate on the value of the building alone, added to the annual cost of insurance and repairs, and a sum sufficient to provide a sinking fund for renewals amounts to, say $1,200 a year. The landlord is then collecting the difference between $1,200 and $1,500, or $300 for the use of this naked earth. That is to say, he is collecting $300 a year for the use of something never created by man, to which all are by natural right equally entitled, and which owes its rental value of $300 a year exclusively to the common enterprise and energy of the entire community. This is the sum which, under the George system, he turns over to the government in the form of a tax for the common benefit of the community who collectively have made the use of this land worth $300 a year.

But now some smart Alec hops up and says: “If the landlord has to pay this tax of $300 a year for the use of the land, why will he not take it out of the tenant by raising his rent to $1,800!” Well, suppose he tries it. Suppose he says to his tenant: “You must now pay me $1,800 a year. What happens? Just what happens every day now. If the tenant can do no better he pays the increase. But now mark you, when the landlord goes to pay his tax, what happens then? Why the board of equalization say to him, you have got $1,800 a year rent for the use of improvements only worth $1,200 a year. You are therefore collecting $600 a year instead of $300 for the use of the naked lot, and you will therefore pay the government $600 a year for the privilege of the exclusive use of the ground instead of $300 a year as heretofore. Now what has the landlord made by jumping up the rent? Nothing. What would he make by thus jumping up the rents under the present system? Everything. Under which system would landlords be the more apt to force up rents?

Another way by which the board of equalization under the George system would determine the amount of tax to be paid for the privilege of the exclusive possession of a tract of land, and which would also enable them to compel landlords to collect from their tenants and turn over to the government in the form of a tax the full value of the use of the land would be from observation of the prices which real estate brought in the market. But note, at this point, another smart Alec starts up—and he is likely enough to be the editor of the New York Tribune or the Houston Post—or, I was going to say the Labor Echo, but I will take that back—and he gets red in the face and says: “Why, sir, Henry George don’t want anyone to own any property in land. He wants the government to own it all and to rent it out or to divide it up into 50,000,000 little bits, or do something of that kind with it, and here you are talking about lands being bought and sold under the George system. Why, man alive, you don’t know what his system is.” Now, Mr. Editor, or Mr. Who-ever-you-are, let me say to you that in your profound ignorance, or in your selfish and cruel indifference to the sufferings of your fellow men, or in your cowardly desire to pander to this greed of monopoly, or to the timidity of capital, you may say what you please; you may lie and misrepresent as much as you please for the purpose of bringing odium and contempt upon this great crusade; you may call it what you please—state ownership, state landlordism, ownership in common, communism, nihilism, anarchism, or anything else, but the fact, nevertheless, remains that, under the just and righteous land system which I am trying to explain to-day, land will continue to be bought and sold by the same kind of paper deeds, precisely as it is bought and sold to-day. It will continue in precisely the same way to pass to devisees by will and to heirs of laws of descent and distribution^sic. The right of control, of exclusive possession and dominion over a tract of land, and of the free and exclusive enjoyment of all improvements on it, will be in no way abridged or disturbed. When you buy a lot on Main street to-day worth $10,000, with a building on it worth $10,000 more, your deed recites a consideration of $20,000. Now when you buy this same property under the George system, the only difference in the whole transaction will be that your deed for it will only recite a consideration of $10,000, and $10,000 will be all that you will pay for the property. You will pay nothing for the land, because after you get the property you will pay, in the form of a tax to the government approximately, the full value of the use of it. For this reason the owner of the property would not think of adding anything to his selling price by reason of any value in the land. You thus save an investment of $10,000 in dirt; in lieu of such investment you will pay for the common benefit of the community, including yourself, what the privilege of the exclusive use of that spot of dirt is worth—nothing more, nothing less, and that is simply what you ought to pay. You will have the $10,000, which, under the present system you are compelled to bury in a heap of dirt, left, with which to increase your business, and if you do increase your business with it, and add another story to your building, no tax gatherer will come around and impose an additional fine upon you for doing something with your money which gives employment to labor.

Thus, under the George system, land would be sold and would change hands the same as it does now, but it would only bring in the market approximately the value of the improvement on it. If land in any locality got to selling for much, if anything more, than the value of the improvements on it, that would be a certain indication that the parties using the natural elements in that neighborhood were not paying for the benefit of all the people what the use of the same was worth, and so the board of equalization would put the tax up. As population increases the value of the use of land increases, and with it, under the George system, will the revenue for this tax on land values increase, and thus the entire people, who, collectively create this increasing valuation will get the benefit of the values collectively created by them. As it is now, the increase in the value of land, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the United States, four-fifths of which is increase in the value of city and

p. 6, col. 5 town lots and mineral deposits, goes to a comparatively small number of individuals who do no more to create these values than any other members of the community.

Another inquirer puts this question: “Under the George system you would make the owner of a lot on Main street, with an improvement on it worth but $10,000, pay as much tax as the owner of a similar lot adjoining having a building on it worth $50,000. What justice is there in that?”

Let us see. Take away the improvements and these two lots are of the same value—that is to say, the value of the use of both lots for ordinary business purposes is the same. Suppose it is $300 a year. Now, the man with the $50,000 improvement collects from his tenant ten per cent on this $50,000, or $5.000^sic. He also collects $300, the value of the use of the lot, making in all $5,300. The man with the $10,000 improvement also collects ten per cent upon the value of his improvement from his tenant, or $1,000. He, too, collects $300 in addition for the use of the lot, making in all $1,300. Now, after both have paid the government $300 apiece for the privilege of the exclusive use of these lots, each will have left ten per cent upon the capital invested, and why should one be entitled to any greater per cent upon the capital invested than the other? The fact is, under the George system there will be no such thing as taxes. Taxation as we now understand it will be abolished. The revenue derived by the government from requiring all who use a natural opportunity to pay into the common treasury what the use of the same is worth, if it is worth anything at all, will be more than sufficient to enable the government to dispense with every species of taxation. As it is now, when you pay your taxes, you are simply robbed of a portion of the fruits of your industry, for which you do not get, directly, any equivalent. Under the George system when you pay your single land tax you do get directly a full equivalent for every dollar paid. You get for exactly what it is worth the privilege of the exclusive use of a tract of land.

If this system were adopted what would become of the vacant lots and lands, the unused coal beds and mineral deposits, the unoccupied water fronts and water privileges over which human vampires now stand guard, retarding enterprise and driving off labor? They would become absolutely free. No one could afford to hold them and pay taxes on them. The vampires would turn them loose. Land speculators and land sharks, instead of trying to grow rich by forestalling labor and capital, and thus preying like devouring beasts on their fellow men, would turn their talents to better account. Wherever labor could find an unused lot or coal bed or mineral deposit or unused tract of land, there labor could go to work and employ itself without being required to invest a dollar in the purchase of a right of access to the natural element, without being compelled to first make terms with a dog in the manger, claiming it as private property and holding it for speculative purposes. If that vacant natural opportunity was situated near a centre of population, or was of a character to bestow peculiar money making advantages upon the person using it, this advantage would create a demand for it, and this demand would regulate in the manner already pointed out the amount which labor would pay for the use of it in the form of a tax for the common benefit of all. If that vacant opportunity, for instance, was a tract of land four or five miles from this city, it would have none of the advantages of the character referred to to make the use of it at present peculiarly valuable. Why? Because there is so much vacant land of the same character near here, the use of which is equally valuable that no one would give, as it were, a bonus for the use of that particular tract. Labor would, therefore, at first get the use of that land for nothing. It would have no taxable value at all under the George system until all the other vacant land similarly situated was put into use. Under the George system the taxable values of land would be confined almost exclusively to the cities and towns and to the coal and mineral deposits. Where people congregate there land has value. In New York city alone capital and labor to-day pay to a few thousand land owners in ground rent for the bare privilege of living and doing business, their tribute money amounting to over $100,000,000, a sum equal to almost half the expense of carrying on the government of the United States. It is in these great centers of trade and commerce that land has its greatest value, and from these centers would nine-tenths of the revenue of the government from this single low tax^sic be derived.

If Henry George’s theory were put in force to-day not only would all farmers be relieved from direct and indirect taxation, not only would farmers participate in common with all others in the universal and uninterrupted prosperity which would result from removing the obstructions which now needlessly hamper and clog enterprise, but four-fifths of the working farmers of this country would pay no land tax at all. Why? Because with so much vacant or but partially cultivated land as there is here to-day four-fifths of the farms would have no taxable value at all, and all who are counting on the farmers of America being such fools as not to see how they will be just as much benefited by a just and righteous land system as any other class will certainly find themselves left.

“Yes,” the smart Alec says, “but you propose to confiscate the farmers’ land.” Confiscate bosh! You are a farmer; you own 100 acres of land, with improvements, and all it is worth is $2,000. A hundred acres of raw land adjoining is worth $500. Your improvements are therefore worth $1,500. Now, if the George theory were adopted you would only sell your place for $1,500. Still, with those $1,500 you could buy just as good a place from some one else. The purchasing power of your farm when it comes to buying another farm has not been reduced. Now, your taxes, direct and indirect, amount to at least $100 a year. You may not know it, because an indirect tax always fools the fellow paying it, but if I had time to-day I could show it to you. You are relieved from the payment of all these taxes; but best of all, men who are now idle and who can’t buy what you raise will all be at work under the George system, and not only that, but their wages will be high enough to pay you good prices for what you raise.

Now, coming back to the elements of the new political economy some one says, “What difference does it make to the workman whether labor and capital pay this ground rent to the individual or to the government, since, according to your theory, it must be paid all the same?” In the first place, if it is paid to the individual none of it ever comes back to labor and capital unless value received is paid for it; so far as labor and capital are concerned, it might just about as well be cast into the sea. But when it is paid to the government in the form of a single land tax it does come back to labor and capital again in the form of relief from every species of taxation, direct and indirect.

The revenue which the government would get from this source would be also sufficient to give us better schools, better streets and highways, more parks and public libraries, cheaper rates of transportation and many other public advantages now impossible.

Again, the amount that enterprise would pay the government for the privilege of access to the natural element would be less under

p. 6, col. 6 the George system than is now paid individuals for this privilege. Under the George system the prices could not be advanced by a monopolization of these elements, as is being constantly done now.

But best of all and by far the most glorious result that will flow from the establishment of a just and righteous land system is that it will enable the wealth creator to stand erect, presenting to capital an unterrified front. Return for a moment to the coal beds of northern Alabama, and imagine the George theory adopted. Labor now again demurs to the terms offered by capital, and again capital tells him to go. And again labor goes forth hunting for work, but how different he finds the aspect of things! He finds the same unused natural elements, the same unused coal beds and mineral deposits, the vacant lots and lands, but he longer finds a human vampire^sic sitting upon every vacant opportunity for work and waving him off. They have vanished. They have gone to work themselves. He finds every unused opportunity for labor, wherever it may be, absolutely free. Not a dollar of capital need be invested in buying a natural opportunity, in paying for the privilege of work. When labor went forth hunting work before, he not only had to ask capital to pay for tools, but also to pay, usually as great a sum, to some forestaller, in addition, as blackmail for the privilege of access to a natural element. This is all changed now. It don’t take near as much capital to start enterprises as it did, or in other words, to give employment to labor. In fact, labor can even take an ax and hoe and find plenty of vacant opportunities on which he can make a living without having to bury himself in a wilderness to do it. All this makes him feel independent and enables him to bargain with capital for employment on equal vantage grounds. A large manufacturing firm in Massachusetts adopted the eight-hour system. After trying it a year they gave it up and went back to the ten hour system. The general manager said they could only make five per cent profit on their investments by requiring only eight hours work, and that unless they could make a bigger percentage than that they would not be bothered with the management of a business. They would put their money into town and city lots, because that species of property would certainly enhance in value as much as five per cent annually, and that, too, without any trouble to the owner. And so it is everywhere. Now, is it not perfectly absurd to expect to reduce the rate of interest on the profits or capital below this steady per cent of increase in the value of town and city lots by any combination of labor, or by any legislation which falls short of restoring these land values to the people who collectively create them? Suppose you have $10,000 to-day. The best and safest thing you can do with it is to invest it in town lots in or near some growing town. Ten years from to-day, unless the George theory becomes more generally understood, these lots will be worth $20,000, and you will have drawn to yourself $10,000 worth of wealth for which you have given no equivalent. You will simply have robbed the labor of the country of $10,000. But now suppose the George system to be in force. What are you to do with your $10,000? You can’t buy vacant lots with it now. There is no speculation in them. The tax which you would have to pay for the privilege of excluding capital and labor from the opportunities for employment which vacant lots afford would be too heavy for you. In fact, you can’t get your money into land at all. You can’t even loan it on land alone because land alone has no value in the market. The result is that unless you let your money lie idle and so lose interest on it, you are compelled to invest it so as to give employment to labor. You must put it into buildings, into machinery, into manufactory stock, into farm implements, into some of the products of human industry, into some channel where it will be active and where it will afford employment for labor. Not only must you do this with your capital, but every other capitalist must do the same with his capital. Thus, under the George system capital can only increase itself by calling labor to its aid and giving it employment. Under the present system capital can increase itself without calling in the aid of labor, without giving employment to labor. It does so, and it can only do so by buying dirt and burying itself in land. Under the present system as wealth accumulates it constantly seeks to invest itself in land, to get control of natural elements, and get into a position from which it can blackmail labor. The moment it gets into this position it not only ceases to be a factor in the production of wealth, but it becomes an obstacle in the way. Under the George system, however, wealth cannot thus become an obstacle to the creation of more wealth.

AN EMINENT METHODIST PASTOR ON PAPAL INTERFERENCE IN POLITICS.

No Curse of Rome Can Blacken the White Soul—The Real Reason of the Excommunication—The Pope Assuming to Impose His Political Economy on the World—The Single Tax Discussed—Questions to Henry George and His Answers to Them—A Warning to the Catholic Hierarchy.

The Rev. Howard Henderson, pastor of the Sixty-first street Methodist Episcopal church, delivered on Sunday last an eloquent discourse on the recent aggressive interference of the papacy in American politics. Taking for his text the third and fourth verses of the second chapter of the second epistle to the Thessalonians, the reverend gentleman said:^91?88?

“The papacy wields its power through the doctrine that the pope holds the keys of hell and heaven—the power to curse or bless men for time and eternity, in family, fortune and fame, body and soul.

“As a man values his soul above all things, it is supposed that he will be obedient to any decree of God’s vicegerent⁸⁹ rather than incur the fearful anathema of the holy father, who. in his ire, curses from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, every limb, organ, function and member of the human body, refuses to the outlawed soul the comforts of religion, living or dying, denies the rites of Christian burial, and the poor privilege of laying the body in consecrated ground, and then sends the spirit doomed forever into the great hereafter. Among the credulous⁹⁰ in all ages such a dogma would create a superstitious awe and bring the proudest to their knees. Under the exercise of this frightful prerogative, credited as divine, popes have made kings the supple puppets of their caprice and bidding, ruled in the affairs of empire, stirred the fires and fanned the flames of revolution, sacrificed holocausts of humanity on the altar of fanatical crusades, kindled the fagots of the auto-da-fe, instituted the horrors of the inquisition, exacted treasure from princes and peasants, and rioted in a luxury of despotism.

“But the papal thunder has no more terror for an American born patriot and philanthropist like Father McGlynn than the sheet iron rattled behind the faded scenery of a variety theater to raise the imagination of the groundlings. Leo XIII may lock the chancel gate of St. Stephen’s against its grand priest, withhold the holy wafer from the lips that hunger for the sacrament, decline the consolations of religion to his august soul when his body is dying, forbid his dust repose in consecrated ground, but there is one little territory, free as the philanthropist would make the land, over which God decrees that the individual man shall sway the scepter—the soul. No tyrant dare invade that with his manacles; no poignard¹⁴³ can pierce to its immortal vitals; no curse of Rome can blacken the white soul true to God, to man, to country and to duty.

“To see a man true to the religion of his church. still thrilled and thralled with many of its traditions sacred in his memory, yet free from the assumed prerogatives and capricious politics of the papacy, daring to be prouder of his title as an American citizen than of the pitiful claim,”I am a Roman,” appealing from the self-asserting vicegerent to the King of kings, standing like a rock in the midst of troubled seas that threaten to wreck his temporal fortunes, speaking for republican institutions against foreign interference and ecclesiastical pragmatism, standing for our public school system against class and sect education, resisting sectarian demand for a virtual control of the state and city benevolent institutions, pleading the cause of the oppressed poor, protesting against the exacting demands of his metropolitan, and baring his breast to receive the lightning bolts of the “Roman machine”—this is a spectacle to men and angels. Before it the words of the poet are incarnated into a living fact:

His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, this was a man.

“God has not given the pope power enough to padlock the lips of our patriot priest, nor to pluck up, destroy and scatter the great rerepublic^sic that nursed her noble son into his dauntless freedom, and will crown his brow with her imperishable laurels. Dr. McGlynn but revives the eagle-like cry of Patrick Henry and gives it a fresh echo down the ages—‘Give me liberty or give me death.’

“As Americans it behooves us to inquire, What is the real reason of Dr. McGlynn’s excommunication? It cannot be said that he has violated the precedents of the church by taking an interest in questions of politics. Within the last year the pope has made a dicker^{9394?95?96?149?} for votes in support of the army bill in consideration of certain ecclesiastical privileges accorded Rome in the German empire. Is not the demand for Catholic chaplain service in our benevolent institutions and the opposition to our public schools—the very basis of perpetuity for free institutions—meddling with politics? Why are we constantly hearing of ‘the Catholic vote’ and ‘how it will go?’

“Or was it on account of the land theories he advocates that Dr. McGlynn was excommunicated? Then, indeed, the pope is assuming to impose his system of political economy on the world. That Dr. McGlynn is not a political or moral criminal for advocating what are known as the George theories concerning land will be admitted by all candid persons who understand then^sic. Wishing categorical statements from Mr. George I addressed him a series of questions, which he answered as follows:

Q.—Why should land only pay the cost of administering government?

A.—Because the value of land, irrespective of improvements made upon it. is not a value created by labor, but a value that arises from the growth of the community, and therefore justly belongs to the whole people and not to individuals. Because the value of land can be taken by taxation without fining industry or punishing thrift or in any wise lessening the incentive to produce wealth. Because taking land values in this way for public uses would make it unprofitable to speculate in land, and prevent men from taking land for which they have no use and holding it idle in the hope of profiting by its advance in value. In short, by taking for public uses those values which attach to land by reason of the growth of the community, and making all members of the community equal sharers in the fund created by the growth of the community, we would leave to labor and capital all that they produce, and by preventing speculation would open land to those who want to use it, thus giving labor abundant opportunities for employment.

Q.—Is there any denial of the right of tenure and its transmission to others by inheritance or bequest?

A.—There is none. We do not propose taking land from any one, and holders of land would have as sacred right of possession^sic as they have now, subject to the payment of a tax upon the value of the land, as at present. The only difference would be that the tax upon the value of land, where it had a value, would be increased, and the taxes upon build-

p. 7, col. 2 ings, improvements and personal property abolished. Everyone would be free to bequeath, give, or sell his right of possession as he is now.

Q.—Why should not buildings, furniture, machinery, etc., be taxed?

A.—Because they are the products of individual labor, and should be left in their entirety to those who produced them. Whatever wealth any man produces is his, and to tax a man on his buildings, furniture, machinery, etc., is to infringe upon the sacred right of property. Because the more buildings, more furniture, more machinery, etc., in any country, the richer that country will be. It is therefore against good public policy, by taxing these things, to lessen their production.

Q.—Would the revenue derived from land taxation alone be adequate to defray all the expenses of government, including education, eleemosynary institutions, highways, parks, etc.?

A.—The value of land, and consequently the revenue that can be derived from it, grows with the progress of society; it is nothing where there is only one settler and is largest where there is the greatest population and the most wealth. In New York city the income obtainable from a tax on land values alone would be probably two or three times as much as the amount now raised by taxation. In the country at large it would at least suffice for all the expenses of our various governments. The cheapness of collection of this tax would very much reduce our governmental expenses and simplify the governmental machinery, and it would also lessen governmental expenses indirectly, by opening avenues for labor, and producing such good times that the expenses we are now at for the maintenance of paupers, criminals, courts, etc., would be largely reduced, and finally, I think, almost abolished, and the impetus which would be given to production would so increase wealth, and consequently the value of land, that this fund would constantly and rapidly increase, giving us a vast surplus, which we could use for higher purposes.

Q.—As the farmer now complains that he can barely make a livelihood, would any burdens be placed on him by taxing land values greater than he now bears?

A.—The burden which the farmer now bears would be enormously reduced. Taxing land values irrespective of improvements would tend to shift the burden from the farming districts to the high land values of the great cities, mining districts, etc., and the farmer would get rid of the indirect taxes that now fall so heavily on him.

Q.—Suppose a man should sell his farm for $50,000 and loan the money out, would it be right to exempt him from his share in the expenses of society?

A.—What we ought to tax is what a man has now, irrespective of what he had last year or the year before. Land values should be taxed because land is a gift of God to the whole people, not the production of any one of them, and because the value which attaches to land irrespective of improvements is produced by the growth of the community, not by what the individual does. Money and other forms of wealth of which it is the representative should not be taxed, because they are the results of individual exertion. Or, to base the answer on expediency, which, however, I believe will always be found to coincide with justice, money cannot be taxed with fairness, as its possessors can readily conceal it, and to attempt to tax it is merely to produce evasion and fraud. Land lies out of doors; its value can be clearly ascertained, and its taxation does not produce evasion and corruption. If we succeeded in taxing money, the effect would be to drive it away; we can tax land values all we please and there will not be an inch the less land.

Q.—The tendency now is to the centralization of population in towns and cities. Would the exempting of manufactures and industrial arts from taxation, raising the price of labor and putting the cost of government on land, not have the tendency to withdraw money from agricultural pursuits?

A.—The improper distribution of our population, which is now too much crowded in the cities and too widely separated in the country, results from speculation in land. People are crowded in the cities because of the high prices charged for vacant land. People are separated in the country because every man aims not at getting hold of what land he can use, but at grabbing all the land he can get. To put taxation on land values would, by destroying speculative values, give to our city population the opportunity to scatter and bring our agricultural population closer together, thus giving to the people now crowded together in the cities the advantages of more room, separate houses, gardens, etc., and to the people in the country the advantages of a closer neighborhood with the enjoyment of churches, schools, libraries and much more social intercourse than they now have.

Q.—Would the landholder be equally benefited with the capitalist and the wage earner?

A.—The land owner, pure and simple, would be relatively injured, and finally would be eliminated, for under the system which we propose none would have any object in holding land unless he wanted to use it; but the land owners in the United States are all, to some extent, either capitalists or laborers, or both. They would gain as capitalists and laborers, and still more as citizens, much more than they would lose as land owners.

Q.—Would your views if realized injure any class other than the monopolists whom every just man now regards as tyrants, oppressing by their exacting avarice?

A.—They would not. And this reform would really be for the benefit, as individuals, of those very monopolists, for although we may not see it on the petty scale of individual transactions, it is, I believe, the eternal law of God, that no one can, in the long run, profit by injustice. The very rich are to my mind as clearly sufferers by the present unjust distribution of wealth as the very poor, although in another way; and in a state of society in which no one could get what he did not fairly earn, and every one would have opportunity to fairly earn a good living, the increase of wealth, the improvement of morals and the growth of intelligence would be so great that the change would prove of enormous benefit to every one, even those who are now our greatest monopolists.

Q.—Should the government assume control of the railroads, telegraphs, etc., would transportation be cheapened to the minimum cost, as now in the postal service?

A.—I believe it would be; and I believe we would find it profitable to run many of our railroads, those in cities and towns especially, just as elevators are run in large buildings, free of charge to those using them, defraying the expenses from the added value they gave to land, just as the owner of one of those large buildings defrays the expenses of his elevator by the added value it gives to his rooms. And it must be remembered that the simplification of government that would result from doing away with the present system of taxation would enable much more attention to be given to this department of public affairs, while the abolition of poverty and of the fear of it would tend to do away with that overpowering greed which now produces so much corruption in our public service.

“It is folly,” said Mr. Henderson, “to sneer at a question which raises the hoary and heavy wrongs of humanity, or to ridicule the answers that propose relief. The only way to permanently de-

p. 7, col. 3 feat an error is to prove it such by making obvious the truth that opposes it. Error and wrong acquire no essential rights by age. ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again—the eternal years of God are hers.’ Difficulties of adjustment of the wrongs of men to the principles of justice should only provoke efforts and develop resources for righting. ‘Nothing is ever settled that is not settled right.’ This age is an inquiring one ‘The thoughts^sic of men are widened with the processes of the suns.’ The foundations are being tried. A mighty iconoclast⁹⁸ is abroad, shattering the idols of men. The idola¹⁵⁴ terræ must perish with the rest. This spirit of investigation is to error, prejudice and wrong what the sandal tree is to insects—it requires departure or death. Men may combine in a strong party and get to themselves vast fame and fortune and force, and knead a deal of clay and mold a myriad of bricks, and build a towering and terraced Babel and call it a temple of the sun, and establish a vast bossism and boodle system, but the time of confusion of tongues comes at last and the party is shattered and scattered because it placed itself in antagonism to the will of the universe of right.

“That outrageous wrongs exist that make life a chronic woe to millions the candid must concede. To say these wrongs cannot be righted by proper remedies is to confess Christianity a failure, inasmuch as the gospel is incapable of keeping its advent promise of ‘peace on earth and good will to men.’ If men are forever to set themselves in battle array fighting for their rights, and their war cries must forever be the wails of widowhood, the sobs of orphanage, the curses of the plundered, then the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of men must seem a Utopian vision and Christ the idlest dreamer of all time.

“As I gaze upon the battle field strewn with the slain and watch the survivors with stunted souls and sickly bodies staggering aimlessly along the world’s highways, content to take the dust flung from gilded chariot wheels on the sweat that unrequited toil has beaded on their faces, to me the spectacle is agonizingly sad. I look at them in their wretchedness and woe, their heaviness and hopelessness, and cry, ’Oh, my Father, are these Thy children and do they wear Thy image? Oh, forlorn and ship-wrecked stranger, art thou my brother?”

“Whatever ought to be, will be. If I did not believe that, love would stagnate and hope would die within my breast. Mr. George may not have found the panacea for the wrongs of society; Dr. McGlynn may be deluded as the Peter the Hermit of the new crusade, but that these men feel the wrongs of my fellow men enough to immolate themselves on the altar of sacrifice of a suffering humanity, draws me to them with an open ear to hear their piteous plea.

“I am not a follower of Mr. George, but I am a student of his theories. His style is so fascinating that I fear it may beguile my fancy to the perversion of my reason. That he is telling many wholesome truths, I believe; that he has succeeded in arresting attention to social questions such as they never heretofore commanded, we know; that he has secured a large following is history; that he is a man of transcendent abilities no one but a dolt would deny; that such a man and minister as Dr. McGlynn should stand by his doctrine at the cost of excommunication from his church, should make everyone hestitate^sic to repudiate what he has not thoroughly examined. Whether or not Mr. George’s economics shall ever be incorporated into society, the agitation he is exciting will help forward mightily to the final full solution of the sore problem of poverty. I will in no case, because of the complications and difficulties of the perplexing riddle, abandon the hope that from spheres of supernal light I may get fresh joy by gazing down upon a world of bustling activity, of teeming interests, of invention, production and trade, in which the golden rule shall be the supreme constitution of society, and the legend on the flags of commerce and over the portals of exchanges shall be, ‘Look not every man on his own things, but also on the things of others.’ I will know then that the time for the redemption of my body and the coronation of Christ is at hand. Then heaven will bride the earth—peace will reign and universal good prevail.

Then none will be for party¹⁰⁰;
  Then all will be for state;
Then the great will help the poor,
  And the poor will love the great.
Then shall lands be fairly portioned,
  Then produce fairly sold;
And Christians be like brothers,
  In the age that Christ foretold.

“Blessed are the visionaries! The prophets were seers of visions. Poets are the hierophants of the future. Great and ultimate ideals march at the head of all progress.

“But to recur to our catechism:

“Did not the pope tell the electors of Germany for whom to vote as members of the reichstag? Did not Archbishop Corrigan dictate to the voters of New Jersey what to do with their ballots when a constitutional question was pending in that state, and issue his order through the priests of the diocese?

“The trouble with Dr. McGlynn arises from the fact that Archbishop Michael’s harness does not fit him, and he will not wear it. Could he vote with the archbishop and oppose American institutions against which his grace is set McGlynn could be made monsignor. Could he only retract he could have a parish at Middletown, or in any rural retreat where his influence on public opinion would not be felt. Strange theory that which makes a man unfit to preach in New York suitable to preach in a country town! Poor compliment to Middletown! Intelligence and eloquence are not factors in the proposed shift of parishes—for Father McGlynn is acknowledged to be the Chrysostom^101102?103? of the Catholic pulpit in America, and the peer of any man on the lecture platform. No! They fear the power of his eloquence and example in thwarting the ambitious scheme of Romanizing America.

“How absurd the pretense—‘meddling with politics’—for excommunicating this gifted and good man, set forth by a church that has made crowns and croziers its playthings, been crafty in diplomacy, and shifted its game of power as easily as the chess automaton does the kings and queens, knights and bishops on the board before it! Dr. McGlynn is the first martyr to this stealthy power in America. The outrage visited upon him is an assault upon the American doctrine of citizenship—upon liberty of opinion, speech and action—an attempt to muzzle an orator as eloquent as the silver trumpet of the Levite was musical, and make him take his politics from a foreign dictator who claims the power to doom for time and eternity all who resist his political views. I regard this patriot priest as one, pointing to the tower of Inde-pendence hall, in which hangs the bell of American freedom, and crying: Ring! Ring!

Ring out the grief that saps the mind;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring out the false—ring in the true,
Ring in the love of common good,
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the Christ that is to be!

“As a representative of Americanism against the domination of foreign ideas, monastical and monarchical, peculiarly pedestaled for attention, Father McGlynn is the central figure of the age. His dictum is, ‘All the religion you please from Rome, but no politics.’ Born in New York and educated in its public schools, he has imbibed the spirit of the republic. Residing for a season at Rome

p. 7, col. 4 for theological training, he has witnessed the operations of ‘the machine’ whose politics, as a loyal American and a pure philanthropist, he feels bound to reject.

“In a country like ours it is of the first importance that our people be made homogeneous. The separation and education of our children in class and sectarian schools tends to fierce jealousies and dangerous divisions in society. The public schools are the nurseries of the republic. They foster the spirit of patriotism by the nature of their studies, the training and character of their teachers, the songs that are sung, the flags displayed at their fetes, and the gratitude they inspire to the state for having afforded the advantages of education as a preparation for intelligent citizenship. To break these barriers to its progress down is the chief aim of the papacy. Against this a native American son of the church has protested. To applaud him for his manliness is but to buttress our own principles. Against religious dogmas we may protest with reasons, but against political interference in American affairs by churches, or popes, or potentates we will resist.

“It concerns us not as citizens what any man thinks about sacraments, masses for the dead, absolution, holy water, bells, or ground, or purgatory. As protestants we will debate these questions of faith with those we think in error. But any attempt to establish a Romish hierarchy in America we will resist because we are republicans, and political popery is inimical to the genius and dangerous to the destiny of free institutions.

“If the pope proposes to throttle our public education; to dominate our state and municipal benevolences; to dictate to our voters; to bribe our legislators; to intimidate our publicists—in a word, to Romanize the United States—we will take the alarm, forecast the future, and with the spirit of our Puritan and Huguenot fathers stand and ‘strike for our altars and our fires, for the green graves of our sires, for God and our native land.’ Flying from just such oppression as the pope would reinstitute in our fair land our pilgrim fathers escaped to our shores, and we

Will call it holy ground,
  The place where first they trod;
They left unstained what there they found,
  Freedom to worship God.”

Rev. Alexander Jackson of Pittsburg on the Question of the Day—“Free as Air” and “Free as Land” Should Be Synonymous.

Pittsburg, Pa., Penny Press.

Rev. Alexander Jackson spoke on July 11 in the chapel of the First Presbyterian church, on the subject of Henry George, Father McGlynn and the land question: “There is much misunderstanding in regard to this land question and the division of party lines;” said he. “Father McGlynn and Henry George have been spoken of freely as socialists, com-munists and anarchists. Now there should be a clear idea as to what these terms mean. Our legislature is largely socialistic, even communistic in recent years. Communism means where the property of one, honestly earned, is taken for the interest of other people. That is, where a tax on labor and industry and right is made in order that public good may result. Henry George and Father McGlynn are directly opposite and antagonistic to these ideas of anarchy. Any tax on personal property, earned by honest thrift and labor, is not right, and is so pronounced by Henry George, who says: ‘I hold that that which man has earned is rightly his, and should not be taken away from him, even for public use or for public good.’ They are not opposed to personal property in any form, if honestly acquired. There are three factors engaged in the production of wealth—land, labor and capital; these are in almost equal proportions. Now, man was born upon land; all his habits and instincts tell him that he is formed to live there, yet a very large per cent of the citizens of the United States have not an inch of land to live upon, except they pay some one else for that privilege. The great mass in the cities has no right or title to any part of this world’s surface. except, perhaps, in the public streets and parks. The city of Pittsburg, for instance, has an acre or so upon Second avenue, which may be trod upon if you ‘keep off the grass.’

“All land, whether improved or not, should and does retain its natural value, and the market value which is put on it does not belong there, but is owing to the abuses of men who have it in their possession. For instance, Manhattan island, on which New York now stands, was sold some 200 years ago to a Dutchman for $24. Now, according to Messrs. George and McGlynn, if that man raised vegetables and produce upon it he was rightly entitled to the revenue, but he is not entitled to one red cent more. People come on his island, towns are built and a great city arises; what is the result? One single acre of that land has been known to bring $4,000,000.

“He who takes what belongs to me, whether by law or not, is a thief and a robber, and should be obliged to return the stolen goods. Every man contributes a certain amount to the value of land, and that being so, the state robs him for an individual’s aggrandizement. This should be righted, as this value is artificial and each man who adds his quota to the general value is entitled to it. How has land come into the possession of individuals who have no right to it? By legislative authority, by conquest, by appropriation, or by grants from one who has no right to it himself. What, then, is his title to it? ‘Free as air’ and ‘free as land’ should be synonomous^sic, and whoever fences off either for his individual uses wrongs God and man. The difficulty of righting this question is very great; it is a question of time and proper methods.

“The press of to-day, by misrepresenting, is trying its best to kill Father McGlynn. Ministers also preach against his views, but I say that there is no man to-day who stands out in the light more like Martin Luther than Father McGlynn, and unless he should make some fatal mistake will in the future, I believe, be thought of even more highly.

“Some of you ask, ‘How can this wrong be righted? It is the government which can do this, as it is only the will of the people. Let the people demand it. Again, you say that possession gives right. I ask you ’How long does a man need to own a stolen thing to make it his?’”

After Rev. Jackson closed there was an interesting discussion by the gentlemen present, and the result of the meeting was on on the whole^sic favorable to the views of Messrs. George and McGlynn.

SONNET

On first looking into “The Standard.”

NORMAN MACLENNAN.

Glasgow, Scotland.

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Here is a letter from a friend of the Anti-poverty cause in Baltimore, who proposes to make good use of his vacation. We trust that secretaries of land and labor clubs and other organizations along the line of Dr. Hill’s proposed trip will communicate with him promptly:

BALTIMORE, Md.—The suggestion made by THE STANDARD of July 16, in reference to spreading the gospel of the land for the people, makes me think that I can be of some use on the same line.

During August I contemplate a trip through Pennsylvania and New York, stopping at the following points: Pittsburg, Pa., Chautauqua, Niagara, Syracuse and New York city. I hope to be able to attend the Syracuse convention as an observer, and see the chiefs of our party face to face for the first time. I am anxious to have information from members of the K. of L. or other labor organizations on the route above mentioned, as to times and places of meeting. My trip will extend from Aug. 8 to 22.

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PUEBLO, Col.—I am a mechanic and a student of your land theories as written in your works and paper, of which I take several copies, keeping one for reference and sending the others where I think they will do most good. This morning I could only get two copies; they came in on the night mail, and at 10 o’clock there was not a copy to be had. More codies^sic of THE STANDARD are sold over the news stands than of any other New York paper. Inclosed find $1 for copies of Mr. Pentecost’s sermon for distribution. God speed the right.

WILLIAM BRADFORD.

BARTON, Ark.—I received your sample copies. Shall do what I can for the circulation of your paper; and as for the doctrine you advocate, I am afraid I shall become a “fanatic” over the subject. Just what is needed everywhere. Find inclosed 25 cents, for which please send the following tracts. . . . I shall commence with that many as soon as they arrive. This thing must be worked up in this state.

F. W. WHITE.

ANNISON, Ala^sic.—I am proud to say to you that my effort to introduce your plan for social reform is about to be crowned with success. A short time ago I could hardly find a person in this city of seven thousand people who knew anything at all about it. You sent me a bundle of copies of THE STANDARD and I circulated them where they were likely to do good, and the result is that our newsdealer here now sells a good many copies from his news counter.

I send you $1.20, for which please send me as many of those small tracts as you can for distribution here.

We have at last found something that all classes can feel interested in, and it does not interfere with any religious opinion that may be held. It is a matter of humanity and the easiest way to benefit the large number of poor people.

The money I send you was handed to me by a few of my friends, and to show you how your theory can cement people of different beliefs into one common brotherhood there are among the friends mentioned above one Roman Catholic, one devout hard-shell Baptist, one Universalist, one Episcopalian and one atheist.

Every man who has the good of humanity at heart will aid you.

J. M. WATERS.

CLOVERDALE, Cal.—I am overwhelmed with gladness at the splendid growth of your movement. It has such a momentum now that nothing can check it, and its further growth can only be likened to that of an avalanche.

I would like to write you a long letter, but am mindful that your time is precious and that I probably could advance no thought with which you are not already familiar. I read THE STANDARD and fairly feast on all the good things it contains. Inclosed find money for subscription and books.

THEODOR MOLLER.

PASADENA, Cal.—Inclosed is a subscription for four copies of your paper for three months. We have formed a club here and shall send for a charter soon. It is hard work to get men to think; but when we can get anyone to understand your principles they are with us to stay. There is nothing like THE STANDARD.

L. A. HILL.

ST. LOUIS.—Please enroll two more in the ranks of the crusaders. We want to fight with Ormuzd. The additional dollar is for an assortment of tracts, of your own selection, which please forward as soon as possible. What a business this of fighting stupidity—truly a herculean task. “Against stupidity the very gods do strive in vain.” No, Schiller, I refuse to believe that truth cannot conquer even stupidity in the end. Courage, then! “Where thou findest ignorance, stupidity, brute-mindedness—attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God!” You will hear more from me anon.

ALEX. HELMLE.

So the letters pour in upon us, telling how men and women the country over are laboring for the truth, and working because they cannot rest while work is to be done. And you, friend, who have as yet done nothing for the cause—whose armor hangs rusty, and whose swords are dull and pointless for want of use—do not these stories of what others are doing quicken your pulses and stir your hearts with ardor for the fray? Who is there among you that cannot do something to help the work along? When the battle we are fighting shall have been won will it not be well for you if you can say, “I, too, struck a blow for truth?” The time is passing, friends; the triumph is in sight; the day is coming when the muster-roll shall be called. See to it that your names be entered ere it be too late, lest hereafter you should have to hide your heads and say, “I saw the truth and knew it, but dared not stand before the world avowing it!”

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A word about the recruiting fund.

We have a steadily growing list of names of people to whom THE STANDARD may be sent with advantage. These names are sent us by friends whose means do not allow them to contribute money to the cause, but who long for its triumph with all their hearts. And the object of the recruiting fund is to enable us to utilize this list of names by sending STANDARDS to its various addresses. You soldiers of the new crusade who have money to spare should see to it that this fund is strengthened—that the efforts of your less wealthy brothers and sisters are not wasted for want of the assistance that you can give. Bear this in mind, and let your dollars come.

Miss Munier’s Concordia chorus, whose services to the Anti-poverty society have been so great, send $5 for the fund, with this cheery note:

NEW YORK.—Inclosed please find $5 for the recruiting fund, which is the balance of the money contributed by the chorus to pay for carriages used in the McGlynn parade. We would like to take this opportunity of saying to those silk and gold covered ecclesiastics who

and underhand blows and knocks at that, that they had better pay us a visit here in barbaric America. We should like to see them, for instance, in the Academy of Music, within forty days of the receipt of this communication, and on that occasion without any Latin nonsense. We will take pleasure in singing in

p. 8, col. 4 any desired key some good old songs that will make the blood dance in their veins. We hope all readers of THE STANDARD who can get there will be there to look on.

THE CONCORDIA CHORUS.

The recruiting fund now stands:

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