732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wealth, and men generally have seen that the desire for consump- 

 tion is not lessened. They have all felt that the difficulty lay rather 

 with a choking of exchange. There has been a hitch somewhere 

 by which production and consumption could not meet and satisfy 

 each other. Looked at closely, an industrial crisis always reveals the 

 fact that there has somewhere been a check to production. These 

 producers stopping, their demand for the things they consume ceases, 

 and the check is thus rapidly propagated throughout the entire in- 

 dustrial organization, cessation of demand resulting in cessation of 

 supply, and this in turn manifesting itself in a new cessation of de- 

 mand. It is not necessary that production be really less, but only less 

 relatively. In an advancing community, the failure of production to 

 increase proportionally would have the same effect as decreasing pro- 

 duction in a stationary one. How, then, is this check in production 

 brought about ? If we trace it from one point to another, we shall 

 ultimately find it in some obstacle which checks the expenditure of 

 labor on land. The speculative advance in rent crowds down wages 

 and interest to the point at which they will no longer consent to repro- 

 duce, production ceases, and the effects of this stoppage are propagated 

 throughout the entu-e framework of industry. Deduction from the 

 law of rent shows that unchecked rise in rent must show itself in an in- 

 dustrial crisis, and the facts, he holds, abundantly support the deduc- 

 tion. Production may be likened to a steam-engine and rent to its gov- 

 ernor. A lightened load, an increased pressure, and the engine bounds 

 forward with accelerating speed. But the power that drives the engine 

 drives also the governor ; the force that has doubled the speed is the 

 force that must ultimately check it — the governor, overtaking the en- 

 gine, throttles the power that gives it action. And so in endless repe- 

 tition. 



Here, then, is the explanation of the facts that mystify and per- 

 plex whoever considers them. Here, then, in the relation of rent to 

 wages and interest is the primary cause of the failure of invention and 

 discovery to benefit the workingman. Wages and interest steadily 

 tend to a minimum, but the incontestable fact in material progress is 

 the rise in land- values. The great machinery of modern industry does 

 not benefit labor and capital, because it does benefit the landholder. 

 So long as men can control the land which all must use, they can com- 

 mand all the fruits of labor above what is necessary to a bare living. 



" Everywhere, in all times, among all peoples," says Mr. George, 

 " the possession of land is the base of aristocracy, the foundation of 

 great fortunes, the source of power. As said the Brahmans ages ago— 

 'To whomsoever the soil at any time belongs, to him belong the 

 fruits of it. White parasols and elephants made with pride are the 

 flowers of a grant of land.' " 



Mr. George does not think that he can be said to have advanced 

 any theory, but that he has only pointed out the most obvious rela- 



