FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF WAB 34 1 



of industrial unrest, will not overlook either the land question or the 

 gold-dei^reciation question. I am certain that it will not do so if it is 

 earnestly seeking to remove the fundamental causes of unrest. 



Smumarizing, I will say that the present discontent is due, pri- 

 marily, to great economic wrongs accentuated by gold depreciation — 

 that is, by the high and rising cost of living and of doing business. 



To right those wrongs and to bring peace and contentment on earth, 

 we should : 



1. Stabilize gold or adopt some other standard of value. 



2. Take land values for public purposes. 



3. Establish free trade between all countries. 



4. Establish public ownership of all public utilities — railroads, street 



railways, telephones and telegraphs, electric light and gas com- 

 panies, etc. 



5. Liberalize our patent laws so that they will more promptly and fully 



benefit the masses and no less fully reward inventors. 



6. Keep the initiative, referendum and recall in force at all times. 



Direct legislation not only safeguards the rights and liberties of 

 the people, but is valuable for its educational features. It prac- 

 tically forces the voters to study public questions. It is as neces- 

 sary in a republic as are public schools. 

 I am not alone in holding these views as to the fundamental causes 

 of discontent and wars and as to how to remove them. It is true that 

 not many of those who are now most in evidence in our newspapers and 

 magazines are discussing what I regard as the real causes of wars. 

 For the most part, they are putting the blame for wars on big arma- 

 ments and military preparedness; on the desire of growing nations to 

 expand, to have colonies, etc. ; and on governmentalism or " monarchial 

 governments," as Charles W. Eliot calls it. It is true that some of 

 these writers mention popular government and free trade as possible 

 preventions for wars, but very few of them lay stress on these ideas 

 and still fewer mention or discuss the land monopoly as the greatest 

 of all causes of discontent and, therefore, of wars. Only Free Traders, 

 Single-Taxers and Socialists appear to have any comprehension of the 

 real underlying causes of unrest and wars. 



I will quote a few authorities on tariffs as a cause of wars. 

 Jacob H. Schiff, in his discussion with Charles W. Eliot, printed 

 in the New York Times of December 20, said: 



The perpetual cessation of all war between the civilized nations of the world 

 can, as I see it, only be brought about in two ways, both Utopian and likely 

 impracticable for many years to come. War could be made only to cease entirely 

 if all the nations of Europe could be organized into a United States of Europe 

 and if free trade were established throughout the world. In the first instance, 

 the extreme nationalism which has become so rampant during the past fifty years 

 and which has been more or less at the bottom of every war, would then cease to 



