XVII LAND NATIONALIZATION— WHY ? AND HOW ? 303 



will rise, and wages will fall or remain stationary. Now 

 let us introduce a fresh element — labour-saving 

 machinery. This will enable more wealth to be produced 

 with the same labour or with less ; but it will not decrease 

 the dependence of labour upon land. All the increased 

 production of wealth will go to the wealthy — the landlords 

 and capitalists, the landless remaining as poor as before. 

 As the climax of this argument, Mr. George supposes the 

 case of labour-saving machinery to be brought to absolute 

 perfection so that all wealth will be produced by various 

 forms of automata, without human labour. Then all 

 wealth will belong to the landowners, for even standing 

 room for houses and machinery cannot be obtained ex- 

 cept on their terms, and the landless multitude must 

 necessarily starve in the midst of plenty, or live as 

 servile dependents on the landlord's bounty. Thus, 

 private property in land — even were all other social 

 and political evils removed — necessarily makes the many 

 poor that the few may be rich ; for it prevents free 

 access to those natural elements without which man 

 cannot live, and thus directly causes poverhj and pauper- 

 ism, and the long train of miseries and crimes that spring 

 therefrom.^ 



By this preliminary inquiry we have shown — 



(1) That private property in land can never justly arise, 

 because land is not a product of human labour. 



(2) That the monopoly of the land by a class is incon- 

 sistent with the fundamental rights of individuals in a 

 professedly free country. 



(3) That the whole commercial value of land is the 

 creation of society, not of landlords and tenants, and should 

 therefore belong to the community. 



(4) That private property in land necessarily leads to 

 the poverty and subjection of the many for the benefit of 

 the few. 



I therefore claim to have completely answered the 



^ If we trace the social condition of the United States from 

 the early part of the nineteenth century to the present time, we 

 see that all these changes have taken place as £\, result of increasing 

 land-monopoly. 



