302 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



circumstances, as tillers of the ground. In a contest between vast 

 bodies of people so circumstanced, and the owners of the soil — 

 between the purchasers without reserve, constantly increasing in 

 numbers, of an indispensable commodity — the negotiation could 

 have but one issue, that of transferring to the owners of the soil 

 the whole produce, minus what was sufficient to maintain in the , 

 lowest state of existence the race of cultivators." 



But this result has been most clearly and forcibly 

 demonstrated by Mr. Henry George, who makes it the 

 very key-note of his book, and demonstrates it by a wealth 

 of illustration and a force of argument which must be 

 carefully studied to be appreciated. I can here only find 

 space for an abstract of one of his illustrations. 



Imagine an island, with no external communications, 

 and but moderately peopled, in which the land was equally 

 divided among all the inhabitants ; and let us suppose 

 that there was free trade in land as in everything else, 

 just as desired by our most advanced politicians. After 

 fifty or a hundred years let us look again at this island, 

 and we shall certainly find the land most unequally 

 divided ; some will be very rich and have large landed 

 estates, many will be very poor and have sold or otherwise 

 parted with all their land. We may suppose there to be 

 no wars, a pure government, few taxes, no state church, 

 no hereditary nobility ; yet inequality in ownership of 

 land will have caused pauperism and virtual slavery. 

 For, all must live on the land, and from the products of 

 the land ; therefore those who do not own land can only 

 have the use of it or obtain its products on the terms of 

 those who do own it. They are really slaves ; for, in order 

 to live, they must accept the landlord's terms and do as 

 he bids them. 



If landlords are rather numerous it will not seem like 

 slavery, because the forms of free contract will be observed. 

 But there can really be no free contract, because the land- 

 owners can wait, the landless cannot. The}^ must work on 

 the landowner's terms or starve. And thus, just in pro- 

 portion as population increases, and the competition for 

 land and its products, especially for bare food, becomes 

 keener, the landowners will obtain a larger and larger 

 share of the products of the soil — in other words, rents 



