PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 733 



tions. Taking the accepted law of rent, he has only insisted that, 

 where the whole produce is between three factors, the law that de- 

 termines the share of one 7nust necessarily give the share of the other 

 two. He has only pointed out that, if rent takes all above a certain 

 amount, wages and interest can't have more than this amount. 



The fact that the laws of wages, interest, and rent must be mutu- 

 ally dependent, Mr. jGeorge thinks so evident, that he marvels that so 

 many acute thinkers could have failed to grasp the proper relations. 

 He is even tempted to believe that some have seen, but, seeing also the 

 enormous consequences, have turned away, remembering that "a great 

 truth to an age which has rejected and trampled on it is not a word of 

 peace, but a sword ! " 



In finding the cause of the persistence of poverty in the continuous 

 advance of rent, the remedy is at the same time found, and Mr. George 

 does not hesitate to apply it. He would make land common property. 

 He reviews all the remedies proposed and finds none save this sufficient. 

 No alleviation would follow from a decrease of the expenses of gov- 

 ernment, as this would be equivalent to an increased production, of 

 which the landholder would take all the gain. Education and habits 

 of industry can increase the laborer's share in production to only a 

 very limited extent. Such qualities are like speed in a horse — it is 

 only available in so far as it exceeds that of its competitors. Better 

 material condition, it is true, is usually associated with the possession 

 of such qualities, but the condition is the cause of them and not they 

 of the conditio-n. Little, likewise, can be expected of combinations of 

 workmen. They can, indeed, increase their wages by such means, and 

 not at the expense of each other or of capital as is commonly supposed, 

 but at the expense of rent ; but they can do so in so small a degreS 

 that the effect is relatively unimportant. In any contest between 

 employers and employed it is not a struggle between labor and capital, 

 but between labor and the owners of land, and it must always be an 

 unequal one. Such a contest is, moreover, a destructive one — a war 

 which, like any other, lessens wealth. And the organization for such 

 a war, as for any other, must be tyrannical. Contests of this sort are, 

 therefore, destructive of the very things sought to be gained by them 

 — " wealth and freedom." 



The hopes of those who see in cooperation the instrument of indus- 

 trial regeneration seem to Mr. George doomed to perpetual disappoint- 

 ment so long as land remains appropriated. If cooperation has any 

 power at all, it is one analogous to an improvecl instrument of produc- 

 tion, which can increase the amount produced, but can not augment 

 the laborer's share in this amount. Governmental direction and inter- 

 ference can only, in the present state of industry, be mischievous and 

 inefficient. 



The remedy most counted on, by those who have seen, in a vague 

 way, that there is some connection between industrial distress and land 



