SOME POINTS ON THE LAND QUESTION. 509 



mines is worth a few cents a ton, perhaps ; * but coal in mines inac- 

 cessible byroads, in its absolute natural state, has no price whatsoever. 

 When we buy tish we merely pay the fisherman for his labor. It is 

 cheaper for us to do this than to go ourselves and catch the fish. 

 When we require grain, or lumber, or wool, or cotton, we simply em- 

 ploy some one to do the work necessary for the production of grain, 

 wool, or cotton, or for transporting the lumber to our door. Land, 

 coal, the metals, etc., are therefore all alike — they are wealth by vir- 

 tue of certain conditions ; they are not wealth in their natural state. 



A community of ownership in land is demanded, and yet under 

 our present social arrangement every man has his share of all that 

 land produces. Land is occupied by one class of producers, but these 

 producers do not enjoy its bounties one whit more than other classes 

 do.f Practically, the land — confining ourselves for the present to 

 agricultural land — is now as much the property of the community 

 as it was when private ownership was unknown. With primitive 

 peoples the possession of land is indispensable for existence. There 

 are but two industries, the feeding of herds and the planting of corn, 

 and the man or the tribe without land must needs perish. Civiliza- 

 tion has brought about a very different state of things. The develop- 

 ment of agriculture and the multiplication of industries have released 

 a large body of workers from the soil. But the latter are by no means 

 thereby cut off from the benefits of the land, for the products of their 

 labor in other directions exchange freely for the products of the land, 

 and secure for their enjoyment as much of these products as if they 

 themselves had delved for the ore, planted the corn, or tended the 

 herds. The world is not poorer, but richer, as a consequence of this 

 separation of some part of human industry from the soil. If I am in 

 possession of land I must labor on the land if I would enjoy its yield ; 

 and if it is not in my possession I have still the privilege of enjoying 

 its yield by paying some one else to perform the labor. As matters 

 stand, I would rather pay Farmer Black for a bushel of potatoes than 

 purchase and cultivate a garden in order to raise my own potatoes. 



* I recall an instance of an owner of a coal-mine being paid for the privilege of 

 working it six cents a ton for all that was mined. 



\ "Are there not bonanza mines, fortunes in petroleum, monopolies of metals and 

 minerals ? " will be asked. No rule can be made that docs not have its temporary excep- 

 tions. Taking the silver and gold mines of the world during long periods, we will find 

 that they have not paid their workers more than the average of profits that other forms 

 of labor yield. If a man has a monopoly of any special product, he is enabled to tax his 

 fellow-men to his own great advantage ; but the gratuities of Nature are so distributed 

 over the world that monopolies are exceptional, and very rarely maintained beyond short 

 periods. I generalize from common conditions, from the usual and ordinary operations 

 of production. The demand for whale-oil may temporarily be so much more than the 

 supply that those who hold the oil are enabled to command excessive profits ; but we 

 can not argue from this that the whales in the sea are not common property — are not 

 absolutely gratuities of Nature, conditions only determining the price of their product in 

 the ma-ket. 



