496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" The appropriation of land does so interfere. To test the prin- 

 ciple, it will be proper to take for illustration a community like 

 New York or Massachusetts, whose laws maintain private prop- 

 erty in land, and in which all the land has been fenced in or sub- 

 stantially so ; for such communities are numerous, and, as popu- 

 lation increases, will become more numerous. In such a com- 

 munity, obviously, a landless man can not do anything individ- 

 ually. He can not obtain for himself food or clothing or shelter 

 or fire ; he is dependent upon other men for such alms or for such 

 employment as they are willing to give him." 



When the fight against the English corn laws was in progress, 

 it was urged by the protectionists that agriculture was the most 

 meritorious of all employments, because it furnished food, without 

 which man could not exist. I recall the apt reply of General Per- 

 ronet Thompson, who said that, if you were to throw two men into 

 the street, one without any products of agriculture and the other 

 without any products of manufacture, there would not be much to 

 choose between them. One of them would be hungry and the 

 other naked. But the naked man would very soon be as hungry 

 as the other, because he would have no tools to cultivate the land 

 with, and if the temperature happened to be at zero the naked 

 man would be frozen to death before the hungry man would be 

 starved to death. 



Mr. Clarke, I believe, makes his living by the practice of law, 

 and, being a landless man, " can not do anything individually." He 

 is " dependent upon other men for such alms or such employment 

 as they are willing to give him." I, too, am in this plight. We 

 two are therefore worse off theoretically than any of the Connecti- 

 cut farmers whose pecuniary condition has been ascertained for 

 us in the report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I say " theoret- 

 ically," but I suppose that actually the case is somewhat different. 

 If we are dependent on farmers for food, they are dependent on us 

 for law and newspapers. They might get on after a fashion with- 

 out law and without newspapers, perhaps, but they could not get 

 on without houses, clothing, tools, wagons, railroads, ships, medi- 

 cines, etc., the producers of which in turn have need of law and 

 newspapers. The only man who can do anything " individually " 

 is Robinson Crusoe. Neither of us would care to swap places 

 with him. 



There are other economic formulas in the essay before us as 

 unsubstantial as this, but space serves to notice only one more. 

 The merit or demerit of this belongs to Mr. George, Mr. Clarke 

 having merely condensed what Mr. George has set forth at greater 

 length. It relates to land held for speculative purposes, and the 

 argument is, that the single tax will wipe out this speculative 

 element and thus benefit society. Thus, it is said : " A very great 



