i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is a good deal further away from those farms than good society 

 and the raih'oads are. But, according to the doctrine of those 

 who are afflicted with George's peculiar land-f etichism, it should 

 be already there. 



It is probably true that Western farming is a better business 

 than that which prevails in the East ; but an anecdote is told of 

 that which, if not literally true, is illustratively so for many who 

 are engaged in farming. It does not, at any rate, overstate the 

 gravity of the task which many persons assume who undertake to 

 own the soil that George would sequester to the state. And this is 

 the anecdote : A farmer in the West, who kept his business going 

 until he nearly became bankrupt, was obliged finally to sell his 

 farm to his chief creditor, who happened to be his faithful hired 

 man. After a term of years the new owner found himself hope- 

 lessly in debt, and he proposed selling out to Jiis hired man, who 

 happened to be the previous owner, and who by this time was 

 able to buy back his old farm! Whether this process of ex- 

 change continued to go on like that syllogism of Epimenides the 

 Cretan, with no conclusion, I can not say. But when anything 

 like it can happen once, how is a mere divisional share in the 

 soil to mend or make over the world ? 



To return for a moment to the "unearned increment," the 

 question one would like to ask is, why an increment on the value 

 of land is any more wicked than it is upon a ton of coal or iron 

 taken from the land ? The title to a house or chair made of 

 wood can not be good if the soil which produced the wood is 

 held by spoliation. That which vitiates or annuls in one in- 

 stance must in the others. The increment-reasoning, too, if it 

 proves anything, proves too much. Is nothing earned in this 

 world but mere wages ? Is nothing due to foresight or perceiv- 

 ing what is likely to happen ? Must profit all be resolved into 

 day -wages from muscular effort solely ? Are mind and thought 

 and skill not to be considered factors which a man may use in 

 the struggle for existence ? Is the inventor, who is usually 

 a poor toiler, to have no benefit from his wits ? The sect of 

 " labor " seems to say " No " to all these questions ; and both it 

 and the Georgeites, if they could have their way, would put us 

 all on an express train toward barbarism and the Bedouin Arab, 

 who is a George communist, and to the extinction of all that 

 makes a civilized life possible. 



The " unearned increment," it should be noted, is not a dis- 

 covery of Henry George's. Mill and Spencer gave it a theoret- 

 ical existence, but projjosed no such drastic remedy for the ills 

 supposed to flow from it as Henry George formulates and would 

 apply. They saw that in London, where poverty is wide in 

 extent and squalid in character beyond that of any other spot on 



